Children’s Ministry Online

A few days I posted (along with the rest of the blogging world) about what Phil Vischer has going on at Jelly Telly. When I posted, I had only watched the first 10 minutes or so of the Phil’s video. A few days later I sat down to watch the rest. It was all good. I’m very anxious to see Jelly Telly in action and hope it is crazy successful. What intrigued me the most; however, is Phil’s strategy to fund Jelly Telly. I love what he’s going to do.

Phil decided to go the subscription model. Pay a monthly fee and get access to great programming. Sounds reasonable. There are many other subscription services for kids that are worked well right now. Then Phil dropped the bomb. How much will it cost per month? It’s up to you. You pay what you feel it’s worth! WOW!

Several months ago the British band Radiohead tried something just like this. Rather than sell their album the traditional way, they allowed fans to download their album for whatever price they wanted. It was a huge risk. No one had done this before. The results? The profits from the digital downloads far exceeded the combined profits of digital downloads of all their previous studio produced albums. I think I read somewhere that the average price paid was $6 or $7 per album. Although that is less than they’d get for an album sold the traditional way, the band actually made much more money since they cut the studio out. Their innovation started new movement.

What I love about Jelly Telly is that it is pure capitalism. If they produce good content, then they’re probably going to be successful. People will want it, they’ll value it and they’ll pay for it. If not, they’ll have to find another way to pay the bills. So, hats off to Phil Vischer. I look forward to seeing what he cranks out and wish Jelly Telly the best!

written by Kenny

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

written by Kenny

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….

written by Kenny

Over the years I’ve had used several programs to convert videos. Whether it was a video I got off the web, a video from a volunteer’s camera or one of my own videos that I had to get into a certain format… and man are there a bunch of formats. Presentation software I’ve used often requires the full gamete of files from wmv, mpeg1, mpeg2, avi, or mov. In addition, there have been times when I’ve had a huge avi file that I needed to make smaller. Most recently I used inexpensive video encoding software from ImTOO. Although I still used ImTOO quite a bit, I’ve had a lot of fun with Zamzar. It’s really simple to use and it’s free.

Continue reading »

written by Kenny