July 31, 2005

Microsoft and Web 2.0

I realize this post from Robert Scoble at Microsoft is more than a month old, but since it's kind of long I just now had the time to read the whole thing. It's a though-provoking take on what Microsoft should be doing to support the new web. It will be a new world if they end up doing what he suggests.

In summary, he wants Microsoft to make it easy to take content and data from existing Microsoft applications and publish them to the Internet -- pictures, e-mails, appointments, music, documents -- literally everything. By publishing to the Internet, he means not just traditional web sites, but blogs, podcasts, and every other Internet publishing technology.

July 25, 2005

MSN Virtual Earth

MSN's new Virtual Earth service will give Google Maps a run for its money. In fact, Virtual Earth seems better to me in some ways. I'm in a hotel in downtown Portland. The auto locate feature said I was within about 3 blocks of my actual location. I'd say that's amazingly good. Some other locations I checked had better satellite imagery than Google Maps. Cool!

July 19, 2005

July 13, 2005

Jambo - connect with others in the room

Another in our series of posts on social networking. Jambo helps people at a conference (or people in a large church?) connect with each other and then physically get together.

July 11, 2005

Most Influential

Cool! Church of the Resurrection is #7 and Ginghamsburg is #9 on the list of the Top 50 Most Influential Churches.

Dumping SunRocket

Mike Wendland is switching back to Plain Old Telephone Service.

More podcatchers

Chris Lanier gives a list of more podcatchers besides iPodder and iTunes.

July 09, 2005

Even better than Skype?

Glenn of Vine Hosting directs our attention to Gizmo, a new Skype competitor that could be even better:

  1. No limit to the number of people on a conference call
  2. Has voicemail
  3. Uses SIP and interoperates with SIP IP phones everywhere at no charge (according to Glenn)
Worth checking out.

July 06, 2005

Digital Community

This is what Irving Bible Church calls its "Digital Community". It's mainly forums, including prayer requests. A busy design, but hip.

Skype toolbar for Outlook

This new toolbar from Skype integrates with the Outlook address book and provides presence information. I haven't tried it yet.

July 05, 2005

Consumer VoIP

Mike Wendland has dropped his regular phone line at home in favor of SunRocket VoIP service. $199/year for unlimited local and long distance calling. It's no longer an experimental thing; it's real.

July 04, 2005

July 03, 2005

Keeping up with what's happening "out there"

In this post, Dave Winer explains how companies can and should use blogging to find out what their customers are thinking. It's not fun to be publicly criticized, but it's dumb to miss out on the conversation because failure to take legitimate customer criticism into account will open an opportunity for competitors.

Richard MacManus agrees.

I believe this thinking applies to the church as well. It resonates strongly with Adam Hamilton's ideas in his book Leading Beyond the Walls. As church leaders, we have to work very hard to keep up with what is happening outside the four walls of the church. Yet that's where the unchurched people are that we're trying to reach.

Comparing Google and Yahoo rankings

A German blogger has posted a cool tool that compares Google and Yahoo rankings. I tried it on "church Kansas City".

July 02, 2005

A church website built completely as a blog

Emmanuel Episcopal Church built their website within Typepad, a popular blogging platform. The website doesn't have a blog, or refer to staff blogs, it IS a blog.