Just the other day I came across another resource. It’s called cmconnnect. It’s a social network for Children’s Ministry. At first I was like, come on… another place for me to socially network. Right now I’m having trouble keeping up with Kidology, Facebook, Twitter and my ever-expanding blogroll. Sheesh, when is it going to end. However, once I jumped in, it looked kinda cool. Actually I was intrigued for two reasons.

• It was a Ning social network. My favorite podcast mentioned this a few weeks ago… I think it was ranked by webware as one of the best Web 2.0 services this last year. It’s a service where you can create your own social network. I remember looking at it and being interested in how you might take one of their templates and make a social network. Well, cmconnect has done it… and it looks pretty good, actually better than I expected.
• There were a bunch of people I didn’t know. Actually, there were several people that I knew of, but have never connected with them on kidology, facebook or any of the other standard CM gatherings.

So, I’m on cmconnect. I’m not sure what will come of it, hopefully an opportunity to connect with people I haven’t met in some of the other venues. If you make it there, look me up and I’ll be your friend (thrilling, isn’t it?)

Okay, I’m going to wrap up my series of Twitter posts with this one, sharing one more resource and a cool story.

I noticed that a lot of the bloggers I follow on twitter have installed and application that sends a twitter feed when they write a blog. It’s a great add-on. Now for most of these people, I already subscribe to their blog feed, so I’m going to read their post at some point. This application though provided another way for me to get to their post. However, there are many people on Twitter that I don’t subscribe to their feed. Through this little application, I’ve found some new blogs that I now follow. So it’s a great tool. Using Google I found this great post here. It has the 10 best twitter tools for wordpress blogs. I’m sure you can find the same tools for type pad, blogger or whatever blogging service you use. I installed the Twitter Updater which does what I just said. I also tried the "Twit This" application but I couldn’t get it to work. Because my Twitter feed update my facebook status, people who only follow me on facebook are more likely to follow or even discover my blog. You can’t tell me this isn’t great stuff.

Oh, and now for my story. I’ve actually heard a few people complain about linking your twitter feed to your facebook feed because it just looks kind of silly. True, I won’t argue with that at all. However, I know many people who don’t update their facebook status very often, so they either have an out of date status or no status at all. Those who twitter are more likely to update more often, so people following them on facebook see their update more often. *** I did notice that if you start your twitter with @someone’stwitterID (a personal note to someone), facebook will not bring that update into the status. ***

But here is what is cool. I was driving to camp last Sunday and made a snide remark on twitter about driving through East Texas in the dark. A friend who I haven’t seen in over 10 years and recently became a friend on facebook contacted me the next day and said, "you’re in East Texas… we should meet up." Three days later I had a little reunion at Cracker Barrel for breakfast as I drove back home. Because Twitter, facebook and this blog are all interconnected, I have a greater possibility to communicate to the most people possible. Isn’t that what technological advancement is all about, merging services and devices to where they all talk and work together.

I just read this article about a church that used twitter during a church service. You really should read it, absolutely amazing! In case you’re just skimming, I’ll give you the gist. The church planned ahead and let people know that a particular Sunday was going to be Twitter Sunday. So, people walked into the service with their iPhones and laptops. They had over 70 people following the church feed. There were big screens all over the auditorium displaying the feed as people interacted with all parts of the service. How amazing is this?

They said that there was humorous banter going on in the early part of the service, which kind of eased people into the feeling of community. Later on there were great moments of reflection and agreement and solid points displaying during the service. The end result? About half of the team loved it. The other have hated it. They didn’t say, but I’d be willing to guess the age/personality temperament of those who hated it.

Here’s what I love about this. Have you recently watched a teenager on the computer? With facebook, myspace and whatever chat clients they have going on, they have all of them open on their desktop and they are doing 3 things at once while actively participating in at least two separate conversations. It’s crazy. I’m not saying this is healthy, but it is the reality of the generation entering the adult church population. Why not create this type of experience in a worship setting? Why should a church service be totally passive for the hundreds or thousands sitting in their chairs. The lead teacher/communicator doesn’t have to “interact” with the feed, but it could happen in conjunction with the service. Here is his follow-up post about the hurdles they had to overcome to make this happen. What do you think? Would you find this a positive experience or terribly distracting?

Technorati Tags: Twitter,iPhone,Worship,Church

Over the past few months I’ve been highlighting different blog posts, articles and web pages that have unique takes on Twitter. Here are some links for you to follow if you’re interested.

Searching/Networking on Twitter: Pudge talks about searching on Twitter using Summize. Very cool!

The Spiritual Discipline of Twitter: Interesting take on using Twitter to help you become a better person. Yeah, I can buy it.

What would Jesus Twitter: If Jesus had a Twitter account, is this what you’d see in his feed?

What would Peter Twitter: Actually, Perry Noble wrote this one before CMS wrote the WWJT above. I like it!

How to Update Multiple Twitter Accounts: For the Twitter Rock Star that you are!

Using Twitter for Missions, Church and Ministry: Some ideas for Twitter use.

Enjoy the Twitter links. I hope you find them as helpful as I did!

I said in my previous post that I’m not quite the early adopter that I’d like to be. Matt McKee had been talking about it for well over a year before I finally decided to try it. The biggest reason I didn’t twitter was because I don’t text. Well, I didn’t. I had a data plan, so I paid out the nose to be able to email people… which would irritate me when they would text me instead. So for me, twitter was a cool idea but without text, it wasn’t as convenient.

When I was between jobs this last year, I didn’t have a data plan. I found myself sending text messages more often. I fount that text messages was actually the best way to stay in touch with some family and friends. Then, just before Orange, I decided to really give Twitter a go. I fell in tech love.

I didn’t find that twitter created a new community, but it enhanced the blogging community. Most of the people I follow in twitter also blog, so twitter is usually all the fun, information and sometimes useless stuff that will never make it into a blog. I see some great potential for twitter. To me it is really just about fun and enhancing the blogging community, not really anything more. However, I feel that twitter or something inspired by twitter is right around the corner that could become one of my most valuable communication tools.

What do I use twitter for?

• For fun!
• To update my facebook feed (there are dozens of friends who have ABSOLUTELY no use for twitter, but because they are my friend on facebook, they are in a sense, following my feed. Here is the twitter app for facebook.
• To post updates on the front page of my blog
• I haven’t yet, but I need to install the plugin that sends a twitter out when I update my blog… I find those very helpful when others do.

I must say this though. My wife was not thrilled about my new found twitter addiction. I didn’t change my text plan with ATT and I had $35 in text fees last month. Oops!

If you’re interested, follow my twitter feed here!

Many moons ago I wrote this post.

For once, I thought I was going to be the early adopter of something. I guess compared to a lot of people, I am an early adopter on a lot of things in the tech world. However, I didn’t start using Twitter until 6 weeks ago (although my friend Matt talked it about a year ago) and I haven’t even tried Jott yet (but I plan to, I promise). When I heard about bacn, I started dropping it into my conversations (bad idea, if people question your geekieness already, they certainly will after you use the term bacn when talking about email) and even blogged about it. Then… nothing. I’ve heard very little about bacn since then. On the podcast I listen to regularly, I hear it on occasion (and they don’t explain what it is which shows that at least in their circle, the term has been adopted).

However, today I was very pleased. I found this article on "Learning to Speak like a Generation Millennial." The very first word in this article that was added to the 2008 Cultural Dictionary (you don’t have to point out that the list is in alphabetical order) is none other than… BACN! Woo hoo! I guess I’m not spending enough time with Generation Millennial.

I’m sure there is someone out there thinking this in their head right now, "Kenny, how do I become an early adopter?"

Yes, you too can become an early adopter of Bacn. Here is how:

• If you run a blog, write a post this week and sneak in the word bacn. You can write an entire post about it if you want, but to prove your early adoptive-ness, just use it in a sentence. Link your use of the word "bacn" to this web post so it will show up as a track back in the comments.
• If you don’t run a blog, see if you can find the term bacn being used somewhere on the web. If you do, send a link in the comments.

All of those who participate (I have my expectation set at one participant right now… am I the optimist or what?) I will bestow upon you the title of "Grand Bacn Early Adopter." I might even make you a certificate for you to hang on your wall. No, I don’t have that much time on my hands… so it is special!

Are you a blogger? Do you use Firefox?

May I recommend a pretty cool blogging tool?

I have a Wordpress blog. Initially I would log into my Wordpress admin page to write posts. I don’t any longer.

For the past 5-6 months, I’ve been using Windows Live Writer. It’s a great little program. It has some bells and whistles that make is stand out from the rest. However, the other day I came across Tony Morgan’s list of favorite Firefox add-ons. One of them was the ScribeFire add-on. It’s so cool! I’ve now written 6 or 7 new blog posts using it. It manages multiple blogs and is still much better than the Wordpress admin editor. I still think Live Writer is a better program with more options (a lot of great photo effects and scalers). However, I’m really enjoying ScribeFire for quick posts that I may write without a lot or pictures.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Mozilla , Firefox, ScribeFire

Last week I posted about getting a new Dell Inspiron 1525 with Vista. A few expressed their concern over me taking a Vista machine over a Mac. Not as many as I thought. Let me first defend myself. I’m not an Apple hater. I even posted a blog post on what I like about Apple. I’m just not ready to go back… yet.

To be honest, I don’t know how some of you do it. Do you not at all feel a little demasculated carrying around a little dainty computer? Every time I use one, I feel like I’m going to break it if I type too hard. Does using an Apple make you want to stick your pinky out while sipping your morning coffee? (I’m willing to bet I’m going to get a few comments on this little paragraph)

Nah, I’m just kidding. Okay, back on subject. I’ve been using Vista for a week and I must say that it’s not all that bad. To be honnest, I don’t feel like it’s all that differnet from XP. As cool as the Aero looked before Vista released, it’s just eye-candy. I haven’t had any driver problems. I still don’t know where everything is, but my experience has been without any incidents. Perhaps my experience would have been different if I had gotten Vista 12 months ago. I’m running with 3 GB of Ram and it still seems like it takes forever to load when I boot up.

So, I don’t plan to upgrade my personal laptop from XP to Vista until I have to. I dont’ see the beniffit of spending the money for an upgrade. I have a feeling that on my personal machine, I’ll upgrade from XP to the OS after Vista unless Microsoft somehow forces people to upgrade to Vista. So, that’s my take… for what it’s worth.

Technorati Tags: Vista, XP, Apple

I just got my new laptop for work. I’ve been using a desktop in my office for the past few weeks. When at home I’ve used my own laptop and have been able to do everything necessary. However, now I’m glad to have my own equipment and able to set it up for getting stuff done.

However, it’s loaded with Vista. Hmmmm. Not sure how I feel about this. I’ve been an XP user for 5 years and have become very comfortable with it. I’ve been keeping tabs on the mess Microsoft has had with the Vista release. I know at some point a person must move on… I guess now is that time for me.

Before all you Macheads (you know who you are) suggest Apple as another option (and some of you would probably say the only logical option), I am not ready to go “ther” yet. Yeah, I actually had the option. Actually, the IT guy was disappointed that I didn’t. So, we’ll just have to wait a little longer on that end.

Anyone else using Vista? Anyone in a Vista recovery group yet? I’ll let you know how my transition goes….

Several weeks ago I discovered YouVersion. It’s a project being developed by the guys at LifeChurch. It’s actually a really amazing concept. It’s an online, collaborative Bible.

No, this is much different from Bible Gateway. It allows you to tag verses and passages. You can keep a journal and even share thoughts on scriptures that you’d like to make public or keep private. It’s all brilliant!

Today I discovered a new YouVersion trick. I just signed up for the “Yearly Bible” reading plan RSS feed.

However…

YouVersion is still in beta. There are a lot of features that will be added soon that is going to make YouVersion absolutely amazing. I think that once they add the “groups” feature, I’ll be able to use this as a collaborative Bible Study with others. We can study the Bible together, share notes and encourage each other. So, although I haven’t used it much yet, I anticipate using the group portion for study.