Mister Nifty

Mister Nifty was started one year and 300 posts ago!

It’s been a good year of helping churches out.  We started out with no loyal readers to an audience of 500 regular visitors per month.  It’s not much by internet standards, but mostly each visit represents a church with many members.  So, statistics can never reveal how many people Mister Nifty has reached through our technology reviews.  Happy Birthday/Anniversay Mister Nifty!  If you have any comments or suggestions, please leave a comment on this post!

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I just found this nifty little social network for children’s ministries.  It’s a great place to stay in touch with people of like passion for your ministry.   You can upload photos and videos, keep a blog, create a group to stay in touch with your ministry volunteers, create forum discussions, and post events for your ministry!  This is a great way to interact with other ministry leaders from around the country.  There are children’s ministers from small churches to churches with 3,500 children in attendance on Sunday. 

Kidology is one of my favorite places to go when looking for creative ideas.  There are hundreds of people posting ideas.  A good portion of them are free, but it’s well worth the small subscription fee to get access to a bigger chunk of content.  It’s mind boggling how much material they have there.  You have to see for yourself.  Check it out!

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I have been anxiously awaiting this great web app to come out of beta testing.  It’s finally here and it’s totally free!  DimDim offers free web meetings to anyone who wishes to share any information simultaneously over the web.  They boast of webcam/audio, whiteboard, powerpoint/pdf presentation, live chat, and desktop sharing.  The maximum amount of people that can attend your meeting is twenty, however if you are a tech head, you can download the community edition and host it yourself with unlimited attendees.  Say goodbye to Webex (Charges up to $375/month for five users) or GoToMeeting ($49/month).

Here are some ministry scenarios where this software can be useful.  You could host a remote staff meeting.  A teacher could share a powerpoint presentation over the internet if no projector is present.  An IT person could share desktops to help resolve tech issues.  The list goes on and on.  You should try it!  It’s free for all.

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I just found this awesome tool! It’s a web app that allows you to create custom badges for any purpose. This can be useful if you are taking a missions trip and need id’s for your travelers. If you have an event, this can help identify staff. Another application might be for private schools to create student ids for all of their attendees. Use it for whatever you need because it’s free!

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I just love it when my phone rings at 7am every Tuesday morning me and the computer voice tells me, “Get out of bed Brian.  Pastor is waiting for you at staff meeting.”  If you think I’m crazy I’m not.   I typed those words in and set a weekly reminder at Wakerupper.com.  You can set all kinds of reminders and it gives you a jingle at the right time.  It’s annoyingly wonderful at times.   Go check it out.  They have opened their service up to beta testers.   If you are a hopeless romantic geek, you can set a reminder to go to your significant other’s phone and read them a sweet message.  I sent one to my wife and she told me it was weird, but sweet…hmm don’t know if Wakerupper will score you points with the wife, but it sure helps you keep track of stuff.  Plus, it’s free!

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There are plenty of times I’ve been away from my design software and I need to do some retouching, but I don’t have access to good tools. Splashup is an awesome way to edit your images online. It has layering, effects, blending modes, and a multitude of other features. You can import your images from a variety of social networks including Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa.

Another one I’m watching is Aviary. I can’t wait until all their intense tools are finished. It’s still in alpha mode (they just opened up to the first testers) and you need an invitation. If you want to check it out I have five invitations left. The first five people to ask get one. The only thing I ask is that you leave a comment and give your invitations out to other Mister Nifty guests as well. Fair?

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In the past six months I have clicked over 10,000 frames at weddings, studio sessions, engagements, graduations, and anything you can think of. That’s a ton of photos to manage. This post is by request of several people wanting to know about my workflow when I post process my photos. I have stuck with my free dogma in the world of photography as well. Here are the tools I use to process batches of photos and get them on the web.

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How many times have you had a block of data you needed to keep organized, but didn’t have the tools to manage it?  For example, you’re taking your youth group on a trip overseas and you need give out applications.  How do you store all that application data?  Many times people put the data in a spreadsheet, but I’ve a lot of people use a word processor to store info.  The problem is you can’t sort it, you can’t export it or merge that information to letters, name tags, or whatever you need to print with everyone’s info on it.

Zoho Creator is an easy application designer for your specific needs.  You can design a data entry form in seconds.  It creates a data view for you that allows you to see all of your data and edit specific entries.  It allows you to upload files (photos, documents, etc.) with each record.  Plus, you can export it all as a spreadsheet, a print-ready view, and much more.  For the more techy savy, you can script the back-end to send an email whenever the form is filled out or whatever you want the form to do.   You can embed the form and data views right on your website very easily.   The beautiful part about all of this is, you got it….FREE!

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I need your help! I have had several requests from people asking about projection software. I am not the expert in that area. I have installed projection systems, but I rarely find myself behind the screen of the projection software. I have not taken the time to find out the quarks of all the softwares out there, but you have. Currently my church uses Song Show Plus. Other popular softwares are Easy Worship and Media Shout. We want to hear your opinion! Please post a comment and let us know what software your church uses and what you think of it.

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It has been exactly one month since I posted on Mister Nifty. The reason, I took a media fast. You’ve heard of fasting I’m sure. I decided to stop intaking videos, movies, blogs, news, magazines, radio, and any other form of media so that I could focus more on the more important things in life like God, my wife, church, family and friends. It was a journey that has changed my life. I found after taking those voices and noises out of my head, I was able to think clearly and I accomplished a lot that I needed to get done. I was not on information overload all day long. The cloud in my brain went away.

I found that media of any form affects our lives whether we like to think it does or not. It produces temptations in all forms for us to get our minds off what God wants us to be thinking about. The point is, we can’t get so caught up in techyness that we lose out on the simpler things and spiritual things in life. By no stretch am I going to become a hermit. I have decided to leave some forms of media out of my life because I’ve seen how pleasant life is without them. I challenge you to examine your media intake and look how it is affecting your life. You might be surprised!

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Many people ask me to post about projection software for their churches. I have been hesitatant because a lot of the software out there is $400-$1000. For smaller churches, this kind of budget is unfeasible, and I love free stuff. Enter OpenLP. This software is open source, which means if you have a programmer in your church, they can even tailor it to your specific needs. Another great thing about open source is it’s free! This seems to be an easy fix for churches without a budget. This is a list of features I found from Christian Tech:

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Several months ago I stumbled upon what I think is the best solution for broadcasting your church service. For many churches, the technicalities of online streaming video is way out of their league and budget. Truthcasting is a phenomenal solution that brings simplicity and economy to the table. They offer free bandwidth, storage, and archiving of videos and podcasts of your services forever. The only cost to the church is the purchase of a Mac mini. The retail is around $700.00. This is a one-time fee that gives your church the hardware you need to get this running. You own the equipment and have a turnkey solution almost immediately.

The process is simple. You record your services on DVD (with no singing for copyright purposes) and you insert the DVD into the Mac Mini. The TruthCasting software rips your service into a streaming video and podcast MP3 and uploads it automatically to their server. The only thing your video person needs to do is title the sermon, and enter some other information about the service. Lastly, you post a link on your website to your very own TruthCasting channel. For more information check out their informational video here.  Also, check out this interview we received from TruthCasting.com  READ MORE

A few short years ago, the time and expertise it took to host video content on a church website was available to a few, technically saavy congregations. YouTube launched it’s video sharing site in February of 2005 allowing user generated content to quickly find it’s audience. However, the technical limitations (most video sharing sites limit video length to 10 minutes) and social ills associated with YouTube and other sites have prevented sermon content from taking advantage of this distribution platform. TruthCasting, a new place to view and store your full sermons online, offers a bold approach and an innovative solution. Mister Nifty took time to track down one of the founders of TruthCasting, Matt Frazier, and ask about the future of online sermon broadcasting.

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