PastorHacks

Call The Future...

Let's say you need a very specific reminder at a very specific time- say, you are heading to a community dinner (some of you call them potlucks) but you need to head out early for another appoinment and you worry that you'll get to talking with Brother So-and-So or Sister What's-er-Name and you'll totally forget...

Here's a way to have your cell phone ring you at a very specific time and read off the message of your choosing. It's "Call The Future"...

"Hey! Pastor! Put down the bratwurst and get to that Board meeting!"

From the website:

About this tool: This tool dials a phone number and a computer voice reads off the text. The receiving phone number shows up as the CallerID field. You can set the time to any point in the future, or you can leave the time to now and it will call immediately.

Use this for:
Giving yourself a reminder
Pulling a prank on your friends
Giving yourself an excuse to leave a date/family event, etc.

Do NOT use this for:
Harassing someone
Illegal activities
Anything that common sense tells you not to do

And you'd never, ever, ever want to set it to dial your associate pastor in the middle of him or her preaching for you... no. That would be wrong. :)

Link: Call the Future

Open Thread Wednesday: Backups

Okay- I seriously doubt many of you are typing your sermons anymore. We're all using our computers, right? Now, if you are like me, you print them off for Sunday, but don't keep them, don't archive 'em. Why bother when you have electronic copies on your laptop, right?

Which is great until your hard drive dies and you've lost a couple of years worth of work.

So talk to me... what are your back up procedures? Which online/offline resources do you use?

I'm a Dot.Mac guy, so I have my sermons set to automatically backup on Tuesdays. I also occasionally save them to an external hard drive as well as to my iPod...

So what about you?

Free, Online Tracks...

The reason I love Backpack is the share-ability factor. The ability to track what others are doing, to collaborate on projects and issues, to put relevant info all in one place for just certain people to see and to do it easily? Priceless. (Or worth at least the $5 a month for the one-up-from-free level). The other thing I really, really love is the ability to take it off-line with Packrat...

Anyway, if you just want personal help with getting things done and managing tasks, to do's, maybe this is the thing for you- an online app designed specifically for use with GTD.

Kevin Cawley and a couple others had turned me on to Tracks, an application designed to help keep track of your contexts, goals, next actions, etc. It looks very slick.

Only problem was, it was waaayyy over my head in terms of getting it installed...

Now, some one has done all that work for us. Zen list is a free, online installation of Tracks. Just register (you don't even need to give them an email... sweet!) and you are on your way. Define your contexts, next actions, etc...

Check it out!

great websites... easier...

I completely changed our website a couple of nights ago... I did it in about 2 hours while I was also busy building a website for another church.

How?

Easy...

Joomla is an open source content management system- That is, it's more than just a webpage. It's calendars, enabling log-ins and posting by a multitude of people who get different permission levels set for them, it's an amazing back-end (behind the scenes) admin control, it's template based so you can change the look and the feel in a matter of minutes...

And it's all free.

A lot of companies charge big bucks to set up church websites, and if you are a big church, with big bucks, by all means... :)

But if you are a small church, a church plant, or otherwise don't have thousands or even hundreds of dollars to plunk down, consider Joomla.

All you need is a hosted web account somewhere that supports mySQL databases (don't worry- you're a pastor, you're not supposed to know what that means) and somone who can FTP a folder to your host, plug in the name and settings of your database, and run the web-based install. You also will need to tweak the banner picture to match your church, but I'm sure someone in your deal has photoshop, right?

Easy peasy!

Here's ours (I'm still debating whether Jesus looks cool or cheesy...)

ipod... seriously

Okay... I've been avoiding talking about this one for awhile, but I can't not talk about it any longer...

I love my iPod. And yeah, while this might seem like a "Go buy this!" hack, it really is an amazing tool for me.

Here's how I use it, and some ideas for how you can use one too...