The idea

As I’ve written before, on overnight youth trips I like to embed my Twitter account’s RSS feed into our youth group website so parents can get the play-by-play action of our trip while we’re gone. They love it for so many reasons!

Now that our new youth group website includes a special LiveStream just for our group’s online social activity, I’m taking the mobile updates to a new level for this summer’s youth group trips. Instead of all the web updates, mobile pictures and videos coming solely from me, I’ve opened it up so all the kids on the trip can contribute to our LiveStream while we’re away. I think there’s a couple benefits of this:

• All the kids feel like they have some ownership in sharing the story with what’s going on.
• Parents can see and read the trip from the perspective of the teenagers.
• Parents feel included and have a lot to talk about with their teen when they get home besides asking, “So how was it?”
• We have an ongoing “digital scrapbook” of pictures, short video clips and updates for every trip. Everyone can contribute to it.

How to set it up

I’ve already explained how to setup the website for collecting all the updates. The rest of it is really quite simple. It basically entails setting up a couple email addresses and passing them on to the kids to send updates, pictures and videos to.

1. Set up a Twitter account for your youth group. Twitter is limited to receiving updates from only one mobile device, so I use TwitterMail.com to setup a special email address for the youth group’s twitter account that can receive messages from anyone. Any message sent to that special email address is automatically posted to our Twitter feed.

2. Set up a TwitPic account for your youth group. TwitPic.com allows users to take a picture with their mobile phone and post it to their Twitter updates. Again, you’ll get a secret email address to send pictures to that will automatically publish the images to Twitter.

3. Set up a YouTube account for your youth group. Then grab the mobile “secret address” for your YouTube account. Any videos that are taken with a cell phone and sent to that address will automatically be added to your YouTube account.

Once all your youth group accounts are setup, plug each one of them in to the Lifestream WordPress Plugin you setup on your youth group’s WordPress website.

Then, right before the trip, give the teenagers the “secret addresses” for Twittermail, TwitPic and YouTube and let ‘em loose (within reason, of course). I recommend encouraging them to add the email addresses to their cell phones as individual contacts for easy access. And it might be best to ensure that you or someone at home has access to moderating the messages through the plugin throughout the trip just in case something inappropriate is posted.

And no, teens do not have to send messages as an email for this to work. Sending a text message, picture message or video message to an email address works just fine for most mobile providers and does not usually require a data plan or incur extra charges beyond their normal messaging plan.

For advanced users

Since I plan on utilizing this for most of our overnight trips, I want the kids to be able to use the same “secret addresses” over and over again without having to update the contacts in their phone for every trip. But neither do I want them to be able to continue updating the LiveStream on our site randomly throughout the year. I want to control when they can and can’t update our youth group website with those addresses.

So I went into our webhost’s control panel and created an email forwarding address for each of the services: one for the TwitterMail address, one for TwitPic address, and one for YouTube address. (For example, trippics@alexandriayouth.com forwards all messages to our secret TwitPic address and tripupdates@alexandriayouth.com forwards all mail to our TwitterMail secret address.) Instead of handing out the original secret addresses, I instead hand out the forwarding addresses to kids so they can use them on every trip. For the time between trips, I will delete the forwarding addresses so no messages pass through to the social stream during that time.

Plus, it just looks cool to use addresses from your own domain.

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Support Life In Student Ministry by checking out MinistryWebsites.biz for easy, simple and effective web communication for your ministry.

Six months ago I told you all about how I got a free Xbox 360 Elite, iPod Touch and more for free. I try not to blog about this too often because some of you think this is a scam and some of you just get too envious, but for everyone else, twice a year doesn’t feel like too much to keep you updated on the free stuff I earn and information on how you can get these items for free, too.

Since my last post on freebie sites 6 months ago, I’ve earned a free Canon HD video camera, and external microphone for it, and a Macbook for my wife. All for free. Not bad, eh? Here are some proof pictures. (Click an image to see it larger.)

How it works

1. Companies (like Blockbuster, for example) are looking for new potential customers to try out their products and services.

2. Blockbuster goes to the Bonus Network and says, “Hey, we’ll give you $80 for every customer you send our way to try out our online DVD rental service.” (Some advertisers pay Bonus Network $80, some pay them $40.)

3. So Bonus Network comes to you and says, “If you try out Blockbuster’s service and refer other people to try it through us, or one of our other advertising partner’s services, we’ll split the $80 with you for each person you recruit.”

4. You try out Blockbuster’s service and get 6 other people to try it, too (or another product/service offered through Bonus Network’s site) by giving your friends and family a special link that Bonus provides for you to share. (Of course, your friends can then get people to sign-up under their special link so they can work toward a free prize, too, but know that the people they refer have no benefit for you.)

5. After your 6 friends try a product or service, Bonus Network says, “Thanks! We’ll give you $240 ($40/referral x 6 referrals) or an iPod Touch. Which do you want?”

6. About a week later, your prize shows up in the mail, or your money shows up in your PayPal account.

Interview with co-owner of Bonus Network

Last October I interviewed a co-owner of the Bonus Network, Fehz, about his company and how it all works. Watch it below:

List of Bonus Network sites

*The login you create at one Bonus Network site is valid for all the other sites.

Prizes	Sign-up Link	100% Legit
iPod Touch, Nano, Classic, Shuffle, cash	BonusiPod.com
iPhone, Apple gift card, cash	BonusiPhone.com
Wii, Wii Fit, cash	BonusWii.com
Xbox 360, Halo 3 edition, Xbox 360 Elite, cash	BonusXbox360.com
PlayStation 3 (40 GB), PlayStation 3 (80 GB), cash	BonusPS3.com
Laptops from Apple, Sony, HP, Dell, more, cash	BonusLaptops.com
Plasma TVs from Samsung, Sony, LG, more, cash	BonusPlasmas.com

Common excuses

Most people would love to earn some of these free prizes, but there’s three common excuses:

1. It’s a scam!
2. I’ll get hit with a ton of spam mail.
3. Completing offers costs more than the prize itself!
4. I don’t think I can get others to complete referrals for me.

For #1, check out my story above and the links below. I’ve done it several times and received several prizes, so I know it’s not a scam.

Concerning #2, I have not received one single shred of spam as a result of completing these trial offers or freebie sites, not via email nor postal mail. These companies actually have pretty aggressive privacy statements.

Number 3 also is not true. I’ve paid about a total of $100 out-of-pocket for all these free things combined. The most I ever paid for a single offer was $24.98 for a sheet of photo stamps. Most offers cost between absolutely nothing and $15. Some of the services I stuck with past the trial because I really liked what they offered. Some of them I didn’t like and canceled when the trial period was over. There’s no commitment either way, except that you complete the offer and give it a fair chance.

And about #4, check out this post I wrote that gives 10 ideas for how to earn referrals for your freebie site. They work for me, anyway. It may take some patience and persistence to get the first prize (especially if you’re going for a big one), but after it shows up on your doorstep and you have physical proof for the skeptics, all the other prizes flow in pretty easily. In fact, after I got my Xbox 360 Elite, I tried for the 16 GB iPod Touch and it took only 5 days to get all the referrals I needed!

My other prizes

For almost two years now I’ve been getting free stuff from freebie sites online. The list of prizes I’ve received is too long to name each item individually, but here’s a start:

• FREE Xbox 360 Elite, 12-month Xbox Live Gold subscription, Halo 3
• FREE 16 GB iPod Touch
• FREE 32 GB iPod Touch
• Canon HD video camera, external mic for the video camera, Macbook. See above. (I took cash prizes and purchased these items on my own.)
• and thousands of dollars in cash from the iPhone site, PS3 site, Wii site, and more.

If you have any questions about the process, I’ve done it many many times, so feel free to ask in the comments below. Fehz, a co-owner of the Bonus Network, will also be around this post in case you have any questions for him, too.

Our online communication has changed

One of the most important aspects of any ministry is communication. Two years ago one of the main places that took place for our group was through our website, AlexandriaYouth.com. Over the years, however, the way we communicate online morphed and our youth group’s website effectiveness dropped. I think it was due to a couple reasons:

• Teens dropped our site’s interactive features (like forums and live chat) for Facebook
• It was cluttered with too much information
• The home page was overloaded
• The site had too many target audiences, causing us to hit none of them

Our response in the new website

It was time to make adjustments and overhaul the youth group website, so last week I hunkered down and cranked out a new AlexandriaYouth.com that reflects some of the trends of how we communicate online.

• It’s simple. There’s not a lot of navigation menus, sidebars, and trails to follow. Pretty much everything you’re looking for is found right on the front page.
• We decided to use Facebook to our advantage by hosting as much media and information on our Alexandria Youth Facebook Page as possible.
• The site’s target audience is our youth group teenagers. There’s a little bit of information for perspective visitors and parents, but not much.
• To reflect the “status update” trend of social media, we’ve added a livestream of random photos, videos, and updates that I can easily update from my cell phone throughout the day, especially while we’re gone on youth trips (parents love it!). It aggregates all my youth group posts from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in one place.

How I put the site together

For the nerds out there, here’s how I put it together:

• It’s built on WordPress. (No more Joomla!)
• I’m using the free Irresistable theme from WooThemes.
• The livestream is powered by the Lifestream plugin for WordPress.
• I use the Selective Twitter Facebook App to have youth group tweets update our Facebook Page status and the livestream on our site so they all stay in sync. (I removed line 110 in extensions.php in the Lifestream plugin so the “#fb” in twitter updates don’t show up on our site.)
• The calendar is obviously Google Calendar with a simple copy and paste of embed code (technically iframe code, but whatever). Just make sure you made the calendars public.

That’s really all there is to it. Pretty simple, just the way I like it.

If you’re looking for a webhost to build something like this yourself, I’d recommend the host I use for AlexandriaYouth.com, Buyhttp.com, because they don’t oversell their shared servers (i.e. cram too many accounts on one server and overload it) and their support for WordPress is pretty solid. Alternatively, for an easier hosted solution you don’t have to mess with, you could check out my side-business, MinistryWebsites.biz.

Social media we’re using

The social media we’re using is Twitter, Facebook Page, and YouTube.

I chose to stick with YouTube for video on our website instead of Facebook because Facebook’s video embed code sometimes glitches on our site and the dimensions are wrong if you view it on Facebook while not logged in. Plus, YouTube offers better streaming for people with slower Internet connections. So I post our youth group news videos on both YouTube (for our site) and on Facebook (for people who see it there).

Feel free to ask questions about any of this in the comments below.

[ Visit AlexandriaYouth.com ]

Animoto.com is the easiest to quickly create professional looking video slideshows from all the pictures you’ve collected of your seniors over the years. Upload your photos, add your own soundtrack, Animoto analyzes the music, and melds it with the photos in a way that feels somewhat like MTV video.

A free account will get you unlimited 30-second slideshows, so if you want something longer than that you’ll have to pay $3 per video or upgrade to an All Access account for $30/year. Alternatively, I heard some churches are scoring free All Access accounts through Animoto’s “For A Cause” program. (Click on “a cause” at the bottom of the screen on their site.)

Here’s a video I made a couple weeks ago mostly with Animoto.com for our Volunteer Appreciation Sunday at church. (I used iMovie to put our church’s intro and outro on it.) Check out our Volunteer Appreciation video on YouTube.

[ Visit Animoto.com ]

Ok, raise your hand if you’ve ever actually read that little FBI warning at the beginning of a movie! Well, lucky (and unlucky) for us that little warning has absolutely nothing to do with showing a movie in a youth ministry setting.

Over my years in youth ministry I have moved through the following progression when it comes to the issue of movies and copyrights.

• intentional ignorance on the matter of copyright law
• learning a little about it and then not really caring too much
• taking the copyright issue pretty seriously

About 7 or 8 years ago, when everyone was rocking Napster (the illegal predecessor to napster.com) I began to do some research on the reasons why breaking the music copyright was so bad. Hopefully, all of us are now on board with that issue by now, but that issue got me thinking about other areas of copyright law.

I’ve realized that as a representative of Christ in my community and as a model for my church, I need to “play by the rules” in order to not only live a “life that is above reproach,” but simply so I’m not stealing from others.

On to talking about movies, though…

Common Misconceptions

1. The FBI warning says that I can’t charge money for people to watch the movie so my event is ok.
The FBI warning actually pertains to an individual showing a movie within their home.

2. As long I am using the movie as a church event I am within the copyright laws.
This is a false statement because the only instance in which a movie may be screened, outside of a home, without a license, is in a non-profit educational setting with “face-to-face instruction.”

3. If I make a lesson out of the movie I want to show I will be within the copyright laws.
A non-profit educational setting has previously been specifically defined as a non-profit academic institution. The main activity of a church is not academics.

4. My church has the CVLI license, so we can show movies at any church event that we do.
This license only pertains to a church showing movies “in its facility(ies.)” This means that if you have a current CVLI license, you may show any legally obtained movie in your church property. (See points 1 and 4 on this page at CVLI.com.)

Also, the CVLI license only covers those movies “produced and/or distributed by CVLI affiliated motion picture companies only,” according to point 6. But you may be able to contact the motion picture company and get written permission to show the movie. As the copyright holder, if it is the copyright holder, it can waive its rights and grant a church or ministry permission to show the movie. If you want to do this, do it well in advance, the process is s l o w.

5. I can throw up a sheet, a PA system, and a projector to show the movie in the back yard of the church because I am within the church property.
The CVLI license specifically says that movies can be screened in its facilities. Upon speaking to a representative at CVLI, I pressed for clarification of “in facilities.” The answer that I got was that you would most likely be within the spirit of the agreement if the movie was screened outdoors only if in a secluded area where there was no chance that someone from the general public would see or hear any portion of the movie that was being screened.

6. Since I’m not charging a fee, I am showing the movie inside of my church, and I have the CVLI license, I can advertise my event in any fashion that I want.
In case you missed reading point 4 of the CVLI terms, “No specific titles, or any characters from such titles, or producers’ names will be advertised or publicized to the general public unless authorized by certain producers.”

Much more info on this topic can be found at:

• http://www.cvli.com/about/terms.cfm
• http://www.copyright.gov
• http://www.mplc.org/faq.php

So what should you do!?

• Make sure that your church has a current CVLI license.
• Only show movies at a youth ministry event within your church or at a camp location that has its own license since the license is restricted to a physical location.
• Invite a few students over to your house, where you show a movie inside, with out any advertising of any sort through your church.

It is possible to still do a movie event for the public, you’ll need to procure a license from mplc.org but make sure you follow their guidelines.

I hope this helps clear up some of the movie copyright confusion. Of course, there are a ton of other areas that I could have addressed, but I’m not a copyright lawyer, I’m a youth pastor. So, I am not giving you any legal advice on this matter, just a few tips and pointers. If you have questions about your situation it would be best to chat with your church’s attorney or speak directly with an attorney who specializes in copyright law since this is a very in depth area of law (which you noticed if you checked out copyright.gov).

———————————————————————-
Chris Szulwach is a youth pastor in Liverpool, NY. Chris has 11 years experience as a volunteer, para-church staff, and as a pastor.
Blog: CoffeeWithChris.com | YouthMinBlog.com
Twitter: twitter.com/CoffeeWithChris

Belize Missions 2008 Pictures

Thirty-second clips are free, or you can upgrade to an unlimited All Access pass for $30/year.

OR, you can win a 3-month All Access pass to Animoto.com by contributing to MinistryQuestions.com. I’ll give away one All Access pass every Wednesday for the next 5 weeks to the top user on the Weekly Top User Chart (excluding myself and any previous winners). This chart is based on the number of points you earn. Although you can earn points by asking questions, posting answers, and responding to debates, the fastest way is to be awarded points from others on the site. This is done by rating each other’s questions, answers, and debates with the star ratings in the red division bar below each user’s response. If you think someone gave a good answer, give them some points! If you think they asked an excellent question, give them some points! If you see someone was awarded 4 points for a question, but you think it’s only worth 1, give them a one-star rating and lower the point value of that question. Points are determined by both you and your peers, so have fun!

Head to MinistryQuestions.com and join a community of ministry workers who will invest into your ministry as you invest into others.

1. TxtSignal.com: $30/month

With a couple of my youth group kids burning through 18,000 text messages in one month each (yes, seriously!), it almost seems remiss not to use it to communicate with teens. I use TxtSignal.com to send announcements and last-minute reminders, cancel events, send daily devotional thoughts, run contests, share prayer requests, and get quick feedback about a question or idea, and more. It’s definitely our #1 most effective tool for communicating with teens in our ministry. Although the TxtSignal.com plan I use runs $30/month, you can get plans as cheap as $10/month with a 30-day FREE trial.

2. Youth group website: $15/month

In my youth ministry, our website is the #2 most effective tool we have for mass communicating news and announcements. Although there are places to get free websites (like WordPress.com), I opted to purchase a web hosting plan and build it myself so we could more flexibility in how we use it. Check out the tutorial I wrote about how to build an interactive youth group website for more on what the site entails and how you can build one, too. Of course, you could always check out my own website service at MinistryWebsites.biz and help support the ongoing work here at Life In Student Ministry.

3. Covenant Eyes: $8/month

I have Covenant Eyes installed on every computer in my house. It logs every web page I visit and sends a weekly email report to a couple people for accountability. As a guy in ministry, it is absolutely imperative that I protect my integrity. In case an accusation is ever made, I have reports on record. Definitely worth the $8/month! Use promo code “youthministry” to get the first 30 days free!

4. Volunteer appreciation gifts: varies

Without adult youth workers, there would be no youth ministry. They serve in so many ways, giving up so much of their time, energy and resources, and they absolutely must be thanked. Occasional gifts and thank-you cards can never repay all that they give to teens and the ministry, but it’s better than nothing. In my ministry’s youth budget, I seem to always overspend the “Volunteer appreciation” line item, and they are totally worth it.

5. Animoto.com: $30/year

If you saw the Christmas greeting video from me and Dana, you’ve seen a sample of what Animoto.com does. It takes your digital pictures from your latest youth event, lets you add some titles and music, and spits out a video that is entertaining and very professional. It’s a great way to share memories with the congregation and preserve the experience for kids online. An unlimited pass for the site costs $30/year, but 30-second clips are free if that’s sufficient for you. Sign up at Animoto.com.

Extending youth ministry advice and mentoring online

One of the largest undertakings is the Youth Ministry Mentorship Program, where new youth workers have one-on-one mentoring with a youth ministry veteran for 10 weeks straight, plus they get a slew of books and resources, all for FREE! The demand for the mentorship has been overwhelming. Hundreds of new youth workers apply for each round from all over the world, seeking one-on-one advice, training and input into their ministry to teenagers. Unfortunately, only 13 of them can be accepted into the program for each 10-week round.

I have an idea of how to extend this mentoring, advice, and help to youth workers all over the world online for free, but it will take some initial start-up funds to purchase the scripts, pay designers, and set it all up.

Asking for your support

I’ve never done this before, but people on Twitter encouraged me to do it, so here you go: Since everything else at Life In Student Ministry is completely free, I’m asking that if this is something you believe in, would you mind contributing toward this project of providing youth ministry advice online? My goal is to launch it in mid-January along side of the next YM Mentorship round. The cost of $700 is the bare-minimum to get it launched, so anything above and beyond that is greatly appreciated to compensate my time and server resources. (Monthly costs thereafter will only be the server fees that I already pay anyway.)

Other ways to support Life In Student Ministry

Here’s how I currently support the expenses and the various Life In Student Ministry projects. Any way you can help is greatly appreciated!

1. Link to me.
I know it doesn’t seem like much, but it really helps. Incoming links increase my Google rankings, which means more traffic, a larger audience, and thus higher value for the site’s one (small) advertising space, more Google ad clicks, and higher revenue.

2. Complete a freebie site.
Sign up under one of my referral links for a free iPod Touch, Xbox 360, Wii, Laptop, or whatever and complete two trial offers. Once you’ve done so, I get $50. Plus, after you refer a couple people, you get a free iPod Touch or another prize out of the deal!

3. Donate via PayPal.
Obviously, the easiest and simplest way for both of us is to just donate via PayPal.

4. Buy a ministry website.
In October I started MinistryWebsites.biz, a small business that provides websites for ministries as a way to support the ongoing efforts of Life In Student Ministry. MinistryWebsites.biz gives you a state-of-the-art system for building and maintaining a website that is so simple, intuitive and easy to use. Check it out and sign up for your FREE 3-page website to check it out.

5. Sign-up for a year of service at Animoto.com
In case you’re not familiar with Animoto.com, they make it easy to create very professional videos from your digital photos. For an example, check out the Christmas greetings video I made for me and Dana this year. The guys at Animoto.com have been gracious enough to toss me a couple bucks whenever someone signs up for their $30/year All Access Pass using this link.

Thank you for your investment into teenagers and youth workers around the world!

The glaring oversight that’s missing in both of those posts is where to put the videos on the web once your content is created. Here are my recommendations, each with pros and cons.

YouTube

YouTube has only two things going for it: it’s extremely popular and it’s social. Other than that, YouTube is honestly a horrible place to host your videos because the video quality is very poor and the only distribution methods are to link to it or embed it in your site. Fortunately, YouTube now has a “watch high quality version” feature linked under some of the videos, but even then the quality is still poor and there’s no way to embed the high quality video in your site or link to it directly.

Use YouTube as an outreach
However, I still recommend that you keep your youth group video episodes shorter than 10 minutes so you can post them on YouTube. Why? Because that’s where kids know to look and search for them. Besides, now that Google owns YouTube, their videos tend to rank fairly well in search engines. Just be sure to tag your YouTube videos with your church name, youth group name, town and state so when random kids in your community search to see, “What’s going on in my town on YouTube?” they find your youth group. It’s an easy way to do outreach! If your youth group has a website, put that URL in the very beginning of your video’s description so viewers to see it right away and visit your site for more info about your ministry.

[ Visit YouTube.com. ]

Vimeo

Vimeo is geared toward professional and amateur film developers and thus has amazing video quality and full support for HD (high definition) content. You can create “channels,” which is basically a brandable page that displays all your latest youth group videos, latest udpates from an RSS feed, custom URL, and more. Plus, Vimeo makes it easy to distribute videos by putting the embed code right in the video itself for people to copy and paste. Although free accounts are limited to 500 MB uploads per week, that should be more than enough for most people’s needs. Other than that, the service is phenomenal. The only reason I don’t use them for my youth group videos and the Life In Student Ministry video posts is because it lacks iTunes compatible RSS feeds, which Blip.tv offers.

[ Visit Vimeo.com ]

Blip.tv

Blip.tv is my choice until Vimeo adds a couple key features that I want. Blip.tv offers pretty much everything you could think of and it does it all for free: amazing video quality, customizable video players for your website, a simple interface, unlimited uploads, and an RSS feed that you can plug into iTunes as a video podcast in less than 60 seconds. The iTunes feature really is the selling point for me over Vimeo right now because if my youth group kids subscribe to the video podcast in iTunes, they can easily sync it with their iPods and watch the episodes on the bus, in the car, on a treadmill at the gym, or wherever else they want.

[ Visit Blip.tv ]

Facebook

Of course, if you have a Facebook group or page for your youth group, remember to upload your video episodes there, too. Just be sure that you don’t have any copyrighted material in it (like a music background from song or something) because Facebook will take it down pretty quickly, at least they did with my old ones before I started using only royalty free content.

[ Visit Facebook.com ]

For over a year now I’ve been getting free stuff from freebie sites online. The list of prizes I’ve received is too long to name each item individually, but here’s a start:

• FREE Xbox 360 Elite, 12-month Xbox Live Gold subscription, Halo 3
• FREE 16 GB iPod Touch
• FREE 32 GB iPod Touch
• and thousands of dollars in cash from the iPhone site, PS3 site, Wii site, and more.

Check out those links above for pictures and screenshots of the free iPod Touches, Xbox 360 Elite, and PayPal cash payments as proof that I really do get this stuff for free. For example, here’s the 16 GB iPod Touch I got for free and the Xbox 360 Elite I also got for FREE (click to see full-size):

Interview with co-owner of Bonus Network

Recently I was fortunate enough to be able to interview a co-owner of the Bonus Network, the company I use that gives all this stuff (and more) away. Watch it below:

List of Bonus Network sites

*The login you create at one Bonus Network site is valid for all the other sites.

Prizes	Sign-up Link	100% Legit
iPod Touch, Nano, Classic, Shuffle, cash	BonusiPod.com
iPhone, Apple gift card, cash	BonusiPhone.com
Wii, Wii Fit, cash	BonusWii.com
Xbox 360, Halo 3 edition, Xbox 360 Elite, cash	BonusXbox360.com
PlayStation 3 (40 GB), PlayStation 3 (80 GB), cash	BonusPS3.com
Laptops from Apple, Sony, HP, Dell, more, cash	BonusLaptops.com
Plasma TVs from Samsung, Sony, LG, more, cash	BonusPlasmas.com

How it works

1. Click one the sites listed above and sign up there to create an account.

2. Complete 1 or 2 trial offers (like Blockbuster, Netflix, a credit history check for $1.00, etc.) to reach 100% credit (found under the “Offers” tab when logged in to the Bonus site).

3. Use the your referral link found on the “Status” page of your account to give to other people to sign up for the site and also complete 1 or 2 trail offers.

4. Once they do so, receive your prize for FREE!

My story

It honestly isn’t any more difficult than that. I know it sounds too good to be true, but I promise it is 100% credible. I’ve received so many prizes that I actually stopped blogging about each one as to not annoy you all with it each time. Seriously, just try it out. I guarantee it works and is completely legitimate.

My total out-of-pocket expenses for all the trial offers combined that I’ve completed is about $100. Not bad for an Xbox 360 Elite, Xbox Live Gold, Halo 3, two iPod Touches and thousands of dollars in cash! Some of the offers are even completely free and others cost only $1.00. Just try out an advertiser’s service for a period of time, get some friends to do the same through your Bonus Network referral link, and you get your free prize. Here’s a summary I wrote a while back about my experiences with some of the trial offers I’ve completed so far. (Note that not all of the offers I mention are still available.)

Here are 10 ideas for getting referrals, which is exactly how I earn them myself. And after your first prize shows up, it becomes very easy to earn more because now you have proof for anyone who is skeptical. After I got my Xbox 360 Elite, I tried for an iPod Touch and it took only 5 days to get all the referrals I needed because everyone actually saw my Xbox and knew it would work, because it does!

And as Fehz said in the video above, Bonus Network guarantees that you will receive credit for any trial offer you do with an advertiser through them, even in the rare case that something goes wrong with it. All you have to do is send Bonus a copy of your confirmation email from the advertiser and they will gladly give you full credit for your efforts, so there’s really no risk in trying it.

Common excuses

Most people would love to earn some of these free prizes, but there’s three common excuses:

1. It’s a scam!
2. I’ll get hit with a ton of spam mail.
3. Completing offers costs more than the prize itself!
4. I don’t think I can get others to complete referrals for me.

For #1, check out the links above. I’ve done it several times and received several prizes, so I know it’s not a scam. Concerning #2, I have not received one single shred of spam as a result of completing these trial offers or freebie sites, not via email nor postal mail. These companies actually have pretty aggressive privacy statements. Number 3 also is not true. As I said above, I’ve paid about a total of $100 out-of-pocket for all these free things combined. The most I ever paid for a single offer was $24.98 for a sheet of photo stamps. Most offers cost between absolutely nothing and $5. And about #4, check out this post I wrote that gives 10 ideas for how to earn referrals for your freebie site. They work for me, anyway!

If you have any questions about the process, I’ve done it many many times, so feel free to ask in the comments below. Fehz, a co-owner of the Bonus Network, will also be around this post in case you have any questions for him, too.

What kind of projects do I have in mind? Without revealing too much too quickly, how about a free missions trip this winter with your students and many other youth groups all over the country? (Yes, that’s right, a free missions trip sponsored by ministries like Dare 2 Share, YouthBytes and Xtreme Youth Alliance! Your kids will not pay a dime.) Two other big ideas are still in early development stages and one is in queue to be released within a couple weeks.

So, I’m excited to launch MinistryWebsites.biz, a small business that provides state-of-the-art websites to ministries using one of the most cutting-edge and user-friendly management systems I have ever seen. Seriously, this commercial system makes it so easy and simple to create and manage a slick website that your grandmother could figure it out in less than 5 minutes.

My hope is that this side-project will generate enough income to support all the youth ministry projects here at Life In Student Ministry and allow my time to be focused on development instead of fund raising.

If your ministry wants to establish a web presence for communication, MinistryWebsites.biz is the perfect solution. Check out the features, the free web designs, and the pricing. While you’re there, sign up for a FREE 3-page website.

P.S. If you’re a professional web designer or a php/mysql programmer and are willing to donate some time toward these upcoming youth ministry projects, please contact me. I need your help!

I find great value in keeping parents updated throughout our trips on an almost play-by-play basis.

• Parents feel a part of what’s happening.
• They trust the youth leaders more.
• They feel at ease seeing and hearing the great time their kid is having.
• They know exactly how the trip unfolded, making for a better conversation when the kids get home.
• I can quickly share prayer requests and highlights right when something happens.
• Everyone at home sees the highlights and funny stories right away.
• The kids love reading my updates once they get home and reliving the memories of the experience.

Thankfully, several web services make it simple and FREE to keep parents updated with text, pictures and videos, all from your cell phone (txt/pix/video message charges may apply). I’ve done it almost every trip for over a year now, including just two weeks ago during our jr. high retreat. See individual examples here, here, here and here.

Here’s how you can share text updates, pictures and video clips from your cell phone with parents and anyone else who has access to an Internet connection.

Share short text updates

Twitter is the service that will drive your communication with parents back home. Create an account at Twitter.com and add your cell phone to your account (under Settings and then Devices). Once your number is verified, all you have to do to update your profile page is send a txt message to the number 40404. Within seconds, your message appears online at http://twitter.com/[yourusername]. Give that web address to parents ahead of time and tell them to keep an eye on it for updates while you’re away. The parents in my ministry are usually glued to it, refreshing the page every couple minutes, to get the latest update!

(NOTE: If parents want your updates automatically sent to their cell phones, they can create a Twitter account, too, add their cell phone to their account, and click on the little gray Follow button under your icon on your profile page.)

(NOTE: If you sign up for Twitter, feel free to follow my updates, too: http://twitter.com/rockinyp is my profile page. When logged in to Twitter, click the little gray Follow button under my icon image.)

Add pictures to your updates

Almost every cell phone has a camera on it now, making it easy to share pictures, so why not share photos of your trip with parents right when it happens? To post pictures in your Twitter updates, go to TwitPic.com and login with the Twitter username and password you created earlier. Then click on Settings in the top black navigation bar. There you’ll find a special private email address. Enter that address as a contact in your phone. To post a picture to your Twitter page, just take a picture with your cell phone and send it as a pic message to that email address. Add a brief description of the photo as the Subject of the message and send the picture message. After a few minutes a link to the picture will show up on your Twitter page along with the caption you entered as the Subject in your pic message. Simple.

Add videos to your updates

More and more cell phones are capable of sending video messages now, too. A new service called 12Seconds.tv does exactly that. It works the same way as TwitPic. Register an account at 12Seconds.tv, go to Settings, enter your Twitter login information and check the box to “Post updates to twitter.” Click Submit at the bottom of the page to save your settings. In the right-hand column of your Settings page, take note of the special private email address where you can send videos messages from your cell phone and have them automatically posted on your 12Seconds.tv page and your Twitter page.

(NOTE: 12Seconds.tv is still in early development stages. Joining the site is currently on an invitation basis only. If you request an invitation to join, but don’t get one after a day or so, post a comment below. I have a couple invitations left and I know a couple other people who do, too. We’ll gladly send you one.)

An idea for high-tech nerds

Instead of giving out my Twitter page address to parents, I embed my Twitter RSS feed into my youth group website. It’s easier for me to just tell everyone to keep an eye on our website for regular updates, but for most people it’s probably easier to email a Twitter link to everyone to watch. Of course, you could use TwitStamp.com to embed your Twitter updates into any web page, too.

Twitter can also automatically update your status in Facebook if you add the Twitter Facebook application and set the settings to do so.

A thought on privacy

As you update, be sensitive to what you’re posting. Some parents freak out and immediately think rapists are going to find their kids because you put a picture of them online or mentioned their name. You and I both know that’s absolutely ridiculous, but parents don’t always feel that way. So respect their wishes if they want their kid left out. Either way, use common sense: no sensitive information, no last names, no pictures from the bathrooms, nothing that could be misinterpreted without the full story, no frustration comments about the problem kid, etc.

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Been in youth ministry for 2 years or fewer? Life In Student Ministry has an outstanding team of youth ministry veterans waiting to mentor you one-on-one! [Mentorship made free for you thanks to YouthBytes video curriculum.]

Practical Ideas

Here’s some ideas for how you can start using txt messaging in your youth ministry.

1. Announcements and last-minute reminders
2. Event cancellations (works great when the weather forces you to change plans on the spot!)
3. Birthday wishes
4. Send Bible verses and short devos (watch for this Friday’s Freebie Friday!)
5. Contests, quizzes and polls
6. Prayer chain and praise reports
7. Introduce the weekend’s upcoming lesson
8. Get quick feedback about an idea or question

Several txt messaging services are popping up on the web that present a host of new opportunities to interact with our students using the above ideas and more. Here’s my four favorites.

1. TxtSignal.com

TxtSignal.com has been the backbone of txt communication in my youth group for over a year now. They are such a great company that I’ve already reviewed them twice. TxtSignal makes it simple to create a mass txt “mailing list” of your students. Or, if you don’t want to manually enter their information, send everyone a sign-up link or post it on your youth group website where they can subscribe, unsubscribe, change phone numbers or service providers, and more. Each TxtSignal account lets you organize txt subscribers into groups (i.e. youth group, college ministry, church staff) and into sub-groups called “teams” (i.e. sr. high, jr. high, parents).

Perhaps my favorite TxtSignal feature is the ability to queue txt messages to send at a later date and time. I queue up txt reminders about all our events and Bible studies sometimes several weeks in advance so I don’t have to worry about remembering to do it later.

The only feature TxtSignal does not have that I wish it did is the ability for subscribers to reply to my mass txt messages. Matt Donovan, the owner of TxtSignal, assures me they are working on this feature, but that it is not yet ready for public consumption.

TxtSignal is not free, but with plans starting at $10/month, it is definitely worth the price.

2. PollEverywhere.com

Ever want to poll your audience about something while you teach? Me neither, but the idea sure sounds cool! PollEverywhere.com allows you to ask your audience a question, they vote via txt message and, if you have an Internet connection, the results are displayed on the overhead screen in real time. It easily embeds into PowerPoint or displays in a web page. The service is free if you only need 30 responses or fewer, but anything over that you’ll have to start forking over monthly fees starting at $9/month. PollEverywhere.com could be a great way to make a point during a lesson, guess about a detail in an upcoming event, who will win the high school football game, or see who their favorite youth leader is (j/k!).

3. Wiffiti.com

I’m pretty excited about the ministry potential behind Wiffiti.com. Think of a virtual whiteboard in the front of a classroom that everyone can write on simultaneously just by submitting a txt message and watching it appear up front. Even people who aren’t present can participate! The “whiteboard” can also be embedded into your website and the background image changed to whatever you want.

Imagine a worship experience where, during the music set, students can publicly share prayers with everyone in real time, post reflections on what the Lord means to them, and txt their favorite attribute of God. Or, in a teaching situation, asking how each student will practically apply the truth during the upcoming week. Or a brainstorming session on how teenagers can influence their friends for Christ. The possibilities are endless.

Of course, using Wiffiti in these ways sounds like you might be vulnerable to those who will abuse the system and maybe even post something inappropriate, but fortunately Wiffiti has several moderation options and filters that give you complete control over what actually shows up on the screen.

Oh, and Wiffiti is completely free!

4. TextMarks.com

TextMarks.com is somewhat similar to TxtSignal.com except that it is used mostly for 2-way communication among a group of people. For example, one of your students can send a txt message to your youth group’s special code and it will automatically be forwarded to everyone else on the group. Likewise, when someone replies to the message, it’s automatically distributed to everyone else.

The cool thing about TextMarks, though, is that it can also be used as a “txt info hotline.” You could print your youth group’s special txt code on t-shirts or event flyers and have people “txt YOUTHGROUP to 41411 for more info.” An auto-response is sent to the phone with whatever information you want. This is a great way for people to anonymously find out more about your group or event if they are too shy to ask or just happen to see your promo when passing by.

TextMarks is also free, but remember that standard txt messaging charges apply with all these services.

[ UPDATE ] In the comments below, Lane Gilbert points out that TextMarks includes text ads at the end of the messages. He stopped using them when he saw one for a psychic hotline. Now he uses Txtsignal.

How do I join the conversation?

When Friday at 2:00 PM EST roles around each week, here’s how you can join the LIVE youth ministry conversation.

1. Call (724) 444-7444 and enter ID number 19105#. If you’re a registered Talkshoe user, enter your pin number at the prompt. Otherwise, just press 1#. (Long distance charges may apply.) OR…
2. Visit our Talkshoe page to listen and join the chat. You can also use Talkshoe’s optional free software to talk in high quality with your computer mic.

This Week’s Topic: Balancing “fun” and Bible study in youth group

We all struggle with trying to balance “entertainment” and Bible study in youth group. What balance have you found works best for your group? What “fun” elements should be included in youth group? Or should we disregard the entertainment side altogether? Come prepared to share your thoughts or just to listen to what others have to say.

We also have a lot of catching up to do. Let’s talk about what’s been happening in your ministry so far this summer. How has God been working? What are you excited about? What issues have come up that you’d like to bounce off other youth workers? We want to hear all your stories from this summer so far.

Upcoming Schedule

The schedule and topics are maintained on our LIVE Youth Ministry Conversations page, but here’s a glance at what’s coming up.

• August 1: The balance between “fun” and Bible study in youth group.
• August 8: Getting parents involved in the spiritual lives of their teens.
• August 15: No conversation.
• August 22: Problems with youth group as a “minichurch.”
• August 29: No conversation.
• September 5: Evaluating the spiritual depth of our youth ministries.
• September 12: Working with students who suffer from depression and eating disorders (special guest, TBA).

What is the Life In Student Ministry Conversation?

Join us every Friday at 2:00 PM Eastern Time for a LIVE conversation between me and many other youth workers from around the country. Together we talk about anything and everything pertaining to “life in student ministry” and you’re invited to join the conversation! Although we usually set the topics beforehand, there’s always time for you to chime in, ask for input on an issue, share your advice with others, or just tell us about something exciting in your ministry, all LIVE via voice and video feeds!

More information can be found on our LIVE Youth Ministry Conversation page.

If you’re looking for ways to interact with other youth workers online, here’s where I am online. Feel free to join me or comment below with other places online you’ve found to be significantly beneficial.

Facebook “Youth Pastors Only” group

Unlike most groups of Facebook, Rob Kashow, the creator of Facebook’s “Youth Pastors Only” group (and an old college friend of mine), does a great job of keeping the group alive and active. There’s always new forum posts of questions, struggles and ideas. If you need input about something, this is a great place to start. Just remember, like anything else you post online, this group is open to the public, so don’t write anything you don’t want your kids or other church people to potentially read.

Twitter

The thing I love about Twitter is that I can ask a question from anywhere via txt message and within minutes several people respond with great ideas, insights, or stories to make me laugh. Just last week I asked for a movie recommendation, input on upcoming blog posts, WordPress help, and more. Even cooler, though, is the opportunity to answer other people’s questions, too, and just generally keep up with what other youth workers are up to during the day. If you’re on Twitter, follow me here. I recommend following these youth guys, too:

• Mike Kupferer
• Josh Griffin
• Adam McLane
• Mark Matlock
• Mike Lovato
• Doug Fields
• Youth Ministry
• Brian Eberly
• Youth Specialties
• Kevin Twombly
• Brian Ford
• Dana Schmoyer, my wife

Skype

I prefer Skype as my choice for instant communication because it’s so versatile: text chat, voice chat, video conferencing, SMS, even telephone calls, and it does it all better than any other communication client out there. Since the Life In Student Ministry Skypecasts started, my contact list has grown to include a lot of youth workers from around the world, which makes for a lot of great conversations during the week. Add me to your Skype contact list: rockinyp. If you join our Skypecasts on Fridays, you’ll also start making a lot of these connections, too, which is exactly why I use Skype for our youth ministry conversations over other voice conference-call technologies.

Youth Ministry Blogs

Since you’re already reading this site, you obviously know the value of connecting with the ideas and stories of other youth workers through blogs. I’ve formed great relationships with many youth workers around the world just through simple comments and linking back to others posts.

Here’s a couple of my favorite youth ministry blogs:

• GregStier.org – President of Dare 2 Share Ministries
• Insight – by Grahame Knox, a veteran youth worker in the U.K.
• More Than Dodge Ball – by Joshua Griffin, high school pastor at Saddleback Church.
• Youth Ministry Ideas – Resources and ideas by Steve Blanchard
• Youthblog.org – by Ian, a Anglican youth worker in Oxford.
• YSMarko.com – by Mark Oestreicher, president of Youth Specialties
• Married To A Youth Pastor – Just started reading this one. Fun YM stories!
• Rethinking Youth Ministry – Two guys exploring different approaches to youth ministry
• Thoughts of a Student Pastor – A student pastor in the ATL
• BrianEberly.com – by a youth pastor in Oregon who started blogging around the same time I did.
• The Poulette Family in Mexico – by Dennis Poulette, a youth ministry professor in Mexico

If you use Google Reader and want to share RSS items with me, add rockinyp@gmail.com to your friends list. Or, for non-Google Reader users, grab my shared items here.

Youth Ministry Exchange

Although I’m not a very active participant at YMExchange.com anymore, they still have the best youth ministry forum on the Internet. There’s lot of great youth workers there who love discussing youth ministry and issues therein, so if you want an online community of youth workers all in one spot, that’s probably the site you’ll want to check out first.

Connect with me personally

Here’s a list of where you can connect with me personally through many different social media sites and services.

Connect with other youth workers personally

Do you want to find more youth ministry friends? Do you want to find other bloggers to follow and network with? If so, here’s an opportunity to do just that. In comments below, leave links to any of your social media profiles that you want to promote (Twitter, Facebook, blog, Skype, Google Chat, etc.). Once you’ve done so, add the other people who post their info in the comments. This will only work if you make connections rather than just promote yourself.

Animoto.com takes your pictures, analyzes your music background, and melds the two together in a way that feels somewhat like MTV video. You can either upload your pictures manually or send Animoto to fetch them from other sites like your Facebook account, Picasa, or Flickr. Adding music works the same way: upload your own mp3 or select a track from their growing library of music beds. Once it has your pictures and music, it analyzes both and puts them together in a pretty sweet video. And, for an extra measure of fun, send the pics and music through again and again to get other remixes of your slideshow. No two videos are ever the same.

Animoto.com also has several distribution options. Once the video is complete and your satisfied with the output, you can easily send it off to all your friends, post it on your website, download it, send it to YouTube, and more.

Thirty-second clips are free, but most of us will probably want to opt for the unlimited videos and downloads, which costs $30/year if you sign up with this referral link. Or, you can pay $3/video.

Have fun creating lots of cool photo slideshow videos of all your youth group camps, mission trips and events from this summer! But be careful: Animoto.com really gets addicting. Here’s one I created of our missions trip to Belize two weeks ago.

Here’s what I’ve earned for free so far:

• FREE Xbox 360 Elite
• FREE 12-month subscription to Xbox Live
• FREE Halo 3 video game
• FREE 16 GB iPod Touch
• FREE $580 cash in place of an iPhone
• FREE 32 GB iPod Touch
• $160 cash (click screenshot below)
• $250 cash in place of a free Nintendo Wii (click screenshot below)
• $375 cash in place of a free PS3 (screenshot coming soon)

I interviewed a co-owner of the Bonus Network, the company that gives all this stuff away. Watch it below:

These freebie sites work because advertisers pay them for every trial customer they send their way. The freebie site then splits their income with you in form of cash or a free gift. And all the companies that participate are reputable companies with trial offers you might like to try out anyway, such as Blockbuster, Netflix, Stamps.com, Photostamps.com, Gamefly.com, etc., so it’s really a win-win situation for everyone. If, at the end of your trial, you decide that the service isn’t for you, you’re totally free to cancel it and move on without any further obligation. Either way, you still earn credit at the freebie site just for checking it out. (Check here for a list of some of the trial offers I’ve completed and my experience with each one.) Once you reach 100% credit for completing your trial offer, refer a couple other people to sign up for the freebie site under your unique referral link and get your free electronics or cash as they also complete trial offers!

In case you’d like to get free Apple products or cash, too, here’s how it works step-by-step.

FREE iPhone or iPod Touch

1. For the iPod Touch, click this link: http://www.bonusipods.com/?referral=10265
2. For the iPhone, click this link: http://www.bonusiphone.com/?referral=10265
3. Sign up to create an account.
4. Complete 1 or 2 trial offers (like Blockbuster, Netflix or BlueHost hosting, etc.) to get 100% credit and then refer other people to do the same under your referral link.
5. After you refer enough people who also complete 1 or 2 trial offers, you receive your iPhone, iPod Touch, or cash for FREE!

It honestly isn’t any more difficult than that. If you have any questions about the process, I’ve done it many times, so feel free to ask in the comments below. If you want some tips on how to earn referrals, check out these 10 ideas.

One important tip
Make sure your browser is set to accept all cookies while you go through the sign-up process both at the freebie site and when you complete offers. If you click an offer and don’t sign up for it on that visit, make sure you clear your cookies before going back to it again. Otherwise the tracking cookie might not register that you signed up for their service from the freebie site and you’ll have to request a manual credit, which can take several weeks to be approved.

Photos

• Picasa – (Windows only) An online photo organizer from Google that allows you to do limited edits on your photos, organize them, and easily share them with others.
• GIMP – (Windows/Mac/Linux) The GNU Image Manipulation Program is a powerful, free Photoshop alternative that allows you to edit photos and save them in a variety of formats.
• irfanview – (Windows only) A graphic viewer that allows you to preview many different types of image, video, and audio files.

Music and Audio

• Audacity – (Windows/Mac/Linux) This music editing software is great for adding sound effects, making long songs shorter, mixing different tracks together, and any other basic audio editing you might need to do.
• Switch – (Windows/Mac) I use switch to convert music files from one type to another. You can output many different files to mp3 or wav formats.
• iTunes – (Windows/Mac) Unless you have lived under a rock for a while, you already know that iTunes can manage large amounts of music and do all sorts of things to playback your audio files as well as add visualizations to your music.

Video

• Handbrake – (Windows/Mac/Linux) Converts videos from DVD to MPEG-4 formats.
• VLC Media Player – (Windows/Mac/Linux) A multimedia player for various audio and video formats that does not require external codecs or programs to work. It can be used to play just about any video format.
• Download helper – (Windows/Mac/Linux) A Firefox extension that lets you save videos from most video sites on the internet, like Youtube, Google, and many others.
• ffmpegX (Mac only) and SUPER (Windows only) both convert video into every and any format you could possibly ever need.

Office/Publishing

• OpenOffice – (Window/Linux) An office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more.
• Taco HTML Edit – (Mac only) A full-featured HTML editor and PHP editor. It allows users to rapidly create their own web sites.

Security and Utilities

• McAfee site advisor – (Windows/Mac/Linux) A Firefox and Internet Explorer plugin that tests websites and warns users about spyware, spam, viruses, and other online problems.
• AVG Anti-virus – (Windows only) Provides users with basic anti-virus and anti-spyware protection.
• Mozy backup – (Windows/Mac) The free version of this online backup offers 2 GB of online storage space, and it automatically backs up your important documents online and encrypts them.
• Caffeine (Mac only) – Keeps your mac awake when activated, which prevents sleeping, screen savers, and screen dimming, perfect for when you are giving presentations.

Study

• E-Sword – (Windows only) A free Bible software package with many versions, commentaries, and other books available to improve your study of the Bible.
• Freemind – (Windows/Mac/Linux) A great mind mapping program that is useful for outlining books, organizing thoughts, and creating mind maps of anything you need.

Web/Email/RSS

• FileZilla – (Windows/Mac/Linux) A fast and free FTP, FTPS and SFTP client.
• Thunderbird – (Window/Mac/Linux) Mozilla’s alternative to Outlook, Thunderbird is very fast and efficient for email organization.
• Burn – (Mac only) An application for burning CDs and DVDs.
• NetNewsWire (Mac only) and FeedDemon (Windows only) are news reader that use a three-panel interface and downloads RSS and Atom feeds to keep you on top of all of your favorite news sites and blogs. Syncs with their online web reader, too.

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Dennis Poulette is a youth ministry professor with Youth Ministry International. He lives and works in Mexico City. You can follow his ministry at ymimexico.org.

• One-on-one discipleship plans
• Handling ministry responsibilities on our day off
• How to answer students’ tough questions about God
• Summer ministry plans
• Some of our favorite youth group games
• And more

It was a fun and energizing time to just hang out, relax and talk about life and ministry. I’m looking forward to the conversation again this Friday at 1:00 PM Central Time. Plus, I’ll have a LIVE video feed running this time, too.

Joining Skypecasts is really quite simple. For details about how this works, visit my new Skypecast page. All you need to listen is a Windows computer and Skype (it’s FREE!). If you’d like to participate in the discussion, you’ll also need a working microphone.

This Friday at 1:00 PM Central Time, login to Skype and hang out with me and other youth workers online. In the meantime, add me to your Skype contacts: rockinyp Oh, and become a fan of my Facebook page so you don’t miss out on opportunities like this again in the future. I’ll be announcing featured guests through the Facebook page who are already lined up to join us in up-coming conversations.

[ Life In Student Ministry Skypecasts ]

Xtreme Bible Study Facebook App
Earlier this week I finished building a Facebook application for them that displays a new teen Bible study on Facebook profiles every day. It also shows up in the left sidebar in Facebook so every day when your kids login they can start with a fresh look at God’s Word. Check out the application and, if you like it, use the app’s Invite link to share it with your students.

Add the Xtreme Bible Study Facebook App

Xtreme Bible Study RSS Feed
Here’s the RSS feed that the Xtreme Bible Study app reads to get the new studies, in case you’d rather subscribe in your RSS reader: http://feeds.feedburner.com/xtremebiblestudy

Xtreme Bible Study Podcast
Also check out their daily 3-minute Xtreme Bible Study Podcast in iTunes. Teens can sync the Bible study with their iPods to listen to short daily Bible studies while riding the bus, working out in the gym, riding their bikes, etc.

Between Facebook and iPods, there’s seriously no way to make the Word of God more easily accessible to teens through mediums they actually use.

If you find these tools to be valuable. feel free to add the links to your youth group website, like I did.

Check out this page if you’d like me to build a Facebook application for your youth ministry.

Here are some guidelines to help enhance your experience as a PlugRug user:

1. Make your submissions stand out by using an avatar.
The default “P” image tends to blend in to the crowd. Get noticed when you contribute to the PlugRug community by using a profile picture.

2. When submitting material, use a good title, brief description and accurate tags.
This will have a big affect on whether people choose to check out the story or not. Accurately describe what your recommended material is about and why you think others should check it out, too.

3. Leave comments.
This is perhaps one of the most valuable aspects of a social site like PlugRug. If you plug it, say why you like it and think it’s valuable. If you bury it, feel free to do the same.

4. Don’t be afraid to bury!
The point of PlugRug is to let the best stuff rise to the top. Without material that is “swept under the rug,” a lot of it may eventually rise to the top and that’s not helpful for anyone. Bury it rather than thinking, “Maybe someone else will like it and plug it instead.”

5. Subscribe to PlugRug’s RSS feeds.
There’s feeds for all published stories, all upcoming stories, upcoming and published stories for each specific category, which helps you stay up to date with all the latest recommended material for your ministry niche. There’s even feeds for individual users whose submissions you typically find to be valuable.

6. Avoid constantly submitting only your own material.
It actually works against you since people tend to ignore your site and your submissions after a while. Try adding the Plug Button to your site and let other people submit your material if they recommend it.

7. Link to the primary source, not to someone else’s post that links to the source.
Pretty self-explanatory. It’s annoying to go to one site just to have to click another link to finally see the story. Take us straight there.

8. You don’t have to visit PlugRug to submit a link.
At the bottom of your profile page there’s a bookmarklet you can add to your browser. Use this link in your browser to easily submit stories with a single click.

[Some of these tips based on 11 Digg Tips.]

For our example, we’ll use a picture my wife randomly took of some markers. Right-click here and “Save File As/Save Target As” if you want to play around with the original image. I’m using PhotoShop CS2 in the screenshots below, but these tools are also available in the slimmed down PhotoShop Elements (available for Windows and Mac) and other image editing applications.

Screen shot #1 and #2. Open the image you want to use as a PowerPoint or MediaShout background and change the image size to the screen resolution you’ll use with the projector. In my case, I’ll use the typical 1024×768, which is probably sufficient for 95% of the cases. (This helps keep your PowerPoint file size smaller so you’re not embedding an 8.0 megapixel image into your slide show.)

Screen shot #3. The text should stand out from the background image, not blend into it, so let’s lighten the image a little. There are various ways to do this, but in the example below I create a new layer, use the Paint Bucket tool to paint it white and then change the layer’s Opacity to 66% so the background layer beneath shows through a little.

Screen shot #4. Next, create another new layer, select the Type Tool and type your title on the image. Change the text color to be something that easily stands out. In my case, I’ll use black. You can change the font and size in the toolbar at the top.

Screen shot #5 and #6. To make the title stand out a bit from the rest of the text that will be displayed in PowerPoint, l’ll add a new layer style to the text layer. First I zoom in to 100% under the View menu so I can see the title at it’s full resolution as I manipulate it. Now let’s try Bevel and Emboss. (Play around with the other layer styles in the left column sometime, too.) In this image I’m using the Inner Bevel style with the Chisel Hard technique to add a bit of 2D perception to the title. Click OK when you’re finished setting the layer style the way you like it. (Hint: Simple is better. Don’t use too many styles together.)

Screen shot #7. Now save the image as a JPEG. In PhotoShop, go to File, Save As, and change the drop-down format menu to JPEG. Give the image a name, save it and use it as your new PowerPoint or MediaShout background!

Here’s my final image if you’d like to see it full-screen or even use it for an upcoming presentation.

The other advantage to this is that you don’t lose your special fonts styles when you transfer the presentation to a computer that doesn’t have the same fonts installed. Everything stays in-tact perfectly.

Here’s the timeline:

1. December 14, 2007: I signed up at a freebie site under someone else’s referral link and signed up for a trial month of GameFly.com.
2. December 17, 2007: My account is credited for doing the GameFly.com trial.
3. December 18, 2007: I posted on my blog that I got my free iPod Touch and also posted my referral link for the free iPhone or $580.
4. February 17, 2008: I had the 11 referrals I needed for $580 cash, so I submitted my account for approval.
5. February 22, 2008: My account was approved and I placed the order for the $580.
6. February 23, 2008: I wake up the very next morning to an email notification that the $580 was delivered to my PayPal account!

I got another FREE iPod Touch, too!
During this time I also completed another freebie site on the side and got the 32 GB iPod Touch. I already got the 16 GB iPod Touch for free from a different freebie site, but now that I have the 32 GB one, I’m probably going to sell the 16 GB iPod on eBay.

If you want to earn a free iPhone or iPod Touch, sign up here for the iPhone or sign up here for the iPod Touch, complete a 1 or 2 trial offers to reach 100% and then refer some people to do the same under your link.

Get a PlayStation 3 or a Wii!

Next I’m going to cash out on the PlayStation 3 and Wii sites. Obviously I have first-hand evidence that this is real and legit, not a rip-off scam or some pain-in-the-neck process. Here’s how you can get a FREE PlayStation 3 or Wii (or cash):

1. For the PS3, click this link: http://www.bonusps3.com/?referral=10265
2. For the Wii, click this link: http://www.bonuswii.com/?referral=10265
3. Complete 1 or 2 trial offers to reach 100% completion and then refer other people to do the same under your referral link. (PS3 requires 8 referrals, the Wii requires 6.)
4. Receive your FREE PlayStation 3 or Wii!

It honestly isn’t any more difficult than that. If you have any questions about the process, I’ve done it many times, so feel free to ask in the comments below.

One important tip
Make sure your browser is set to accept all cookies while you go through the sign-up process both at the freebie site and when you complete offers. If you click an offer and don’t sign up for it on that visit, make sure you clear your cookies before going back to it again. Otherwise the tracking cookie might not register that you signed up for their service from the freebie site and you’ll have to request a manual credit, which can take several weeks.

My experience with offers I’ve completed so far

• Stamps.com — This offer was painless and easy. I signed up for a free trial month of their service at a time when I was selling a lot of stuff on eBay. They gave me $5.00 of free postage just to try it out, but I liked it so much I voluntarily bought a lot more postage for my eBay items. To get credit for trying this offer, just sign up for the trial, download the free software (Windows only) and purchase some postage with the free $5.00 they give you.
• Photostamps.com — Another painless and easy one that credited my freebie site instantly. All I had to do was order a sheet of stamps for $24.98 using a photo. Since my wife was getting ready to send Christmas cards at the time, I order a sheet of stamps using a picture of the two of us together for the cards. It was also nice because there was no trial involved that I had to remember to cancel later if I didn’t like the service.
• GameFly.com — Since my free Xbox 360 Elite, Xbox Live subscription and Halo 3 arrived, I wanted more games to play on it. GameFly.com took a couple business days to credit my freebie account (as it said it would) and for $9.95 I enjoyed a month of unlimited video game rentals.
• Blockbuster.com — This was a fun one. For $10.68 I got a month of unlimited movie rentals through their website, keeping up to 3 movies at a time and 4 in-store movie exchanges. Again, this offer took a couple days to credit my freebie account, but that was on-time for this offer.
• Google SEO Supervisor — Figured I’d check this one out since a lot of my blog traffic comes from Google and I depend on the Google Ads here to cover the site’s expenses. It cost me $4.95 to get two trial weeks of access to their site’s members area to learn how to optimize everything for Google and Adsense.
• Emusic — At first I signed up for the cheapest plan at $9.99 for 30 downloads per month since I didn’t expect to find much music there that would be of interest to me, but actually I quickly found many recent albums from bands I listened to in my teen years that are no longer on the radio. My 30 downloads went fast and there was still a lot more I wanted, so I upgraded to the $14.99 plan for 50 downloads. NOTE: When I first signed up, I could not log into emusic’s site nor did I receive a confirmation email, but by the next morning the email arrived and everything was good to go. I also did not receive credit for this offer, so today I submitted a “manual credit request” with a copy of my confirmation email. I should receive credit within 10 business days.
• FreeCreditReport.com, Free Online Credit Report — Each of these worked the same way. For $1.00 I set up an account to check my credit report with the three big crediting agencies and monitor my credit for a trial period. I didn’t end up keeping any of the services, however.
• Bargain Homes — I never got credit for completing this $1.00 trial period offer. I reported it to the freebie site, sent them the email confirmation Bargain Homes sent me for signing up and the guys at the freebie site were gracious enough to instead give me double credit for different offer I completed there.
• RealtyTrac, Simply You, RealtyStore — All these sites work pretty much the same way. I paid $1.00 each for a trial period to access a members only section of their website, whether that be for personal care products or special real estate deals in my area (mostly foreclosures). My wife and I were looking to buy a house at that time, so I decided to give them a try. Didn’t find anything that compelled me to spend more than the $1.00 or keep the services past the trial period, though.

Freebies I’ve earned

• FREE Xbox 360 Elite, 12-month subscription to Xbox Live and Halo 3
• FREE 12-month subscription to Xbox Live
• FREE Halo 3 video game
• FREE 16GB iPod Touch
• FREE $580 cash in place of an iPhone (see above)
• FREE 32GB iPod Touch (see above)

How to earn referrals for your freebie site
Most people would love to earn some of these free prizes, but there’s three common excuses:

1. It’s a scam!
2. I’ll get hit with a ton of spam mail.
3. Completing offers costs more than the prize itself!
4. I don’t think I can get others to complete referrals for me.

For #1, check out the links above. I’ve done it several times and received several prizes, so I know it’s not a scam. Concerning #2, I have not received one single shred of spam as a result of completing these trial offers or freebie sites, not via email nor postal mail. These companies actually have pretty aggressive privacy statements. Number 3 also is not true. Read above about the offers I’ve tried. The most I ever paid for an offer was $24.98 for a sheet of photo stamps. Most offers cost between absolutely nothing and $15. And about #4, check out this post I wrote that gives 10 ideas for how to earn referrals for your freebie site. They work for me, anyway!

Sell the Vision…
You can have the coolest website or forum that promotes online community, but if you fail to sell the vision to your community, it may be used only by the few that are fairly web-savvy. Helping your ministry see that these online tools are more than just ways of communicating, but are part of the culture and can be used as tools in the ministry will help them to understand the reason behind this new technology.

…To volunteers
When we first started building an online community for our students in August of 2007 I spoke with our volunteer leaders about the importance of being in the student’s world on the Internet. One thing I stressed was using their online profile information as a way into starting a conversation with them. We can in a sense be a student of students by knowing them better through the information they provide on these online profiles. Many students will (sometimes unfortunately) disclose more personal information on the Internet than they will in person.

…To students
In August of 2007 we started using a new online community platform that would allow us to also handle sign ups for our small groups, events, etc. It was a lot of work at first because we were changing the entire culture of doing things. We pushed it pretty hard in the beginning. We made a promotional video, sent home flyers, posted info on our website and had laptops in the back of our facility for students to sign up. We cast the vision as a way to stay connected with our ministry and a way to reach out to new people. One thing we did, which I think was the success to our strategy was that we forced our students to use it. We took one thing (small group sign-ups) and said, “If you want to be in a small group you need to be apart of our online community.” This worked for about 90% of our students over the course of 3-4 weeks.

Conclusion
I have found that people are sometimes skeptical when it comes to new technology or new ways of doing things. Giving them a clear understanding as to why you are using this or doing things a different way will help get them excited about these new opportunities. Don’t be afraid to stop using paper by going completely online. Yes there may be some road bumps, but in the end it will be revolutionary.

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Brandon Riley is the Technical Director of Student Ministries at Denton Bible Church in Texas and is also the Director of User Experience for Tuggle, a social network with built-in management tools for youth ministries.

Just like any Christian community there has to be distinctives that make it “Christian.” Perhaps the same should be true with online “Christian” community. Is it enough to have Christians online in a Facebook group and therefore call it “community?”

As you think about building an online community for your youth group, perhaps you should be asking what makes it distinctively “Christian.” Sure the mere fact of encouraging people and asking how they are doing is good morale, but perhaps you will find this same type of morale among non-Christians as well.

As teenagers spend more and more time on the internet, how are we as youth workers going to reach them in this realm of life for them? There are four areas of focus that perhaps may be of great use in the online community as we strive to enhance “Christian” community that is already taking place in our churches.

1. Testimonies: Stories of life change and stories of being changed by God’s grace are some of the best un-tapped areas that online communities need to embrace. Often online profiles include favorite books and music but no place to include a story of life change. And granted if someone has not experienced life change and has no real testimony at this point in life, perhaps they will look at other profiles to see what this testimony thing is all about and perhaps they might even start to question where they stand with the almighty Creator.

2. Ongoing Dialog: While discussion happens at church and in small groups, the idea of discussing theology or prayer requests or culture ought to be something that Christians are in constant dialog over. As we seek to be a body of believers who not only come together once or twice a week, but are speaking and dialogging together perhaps even at midnight on the Internet about the theology behind the movie I Am Legend.

3. Involvement: Is your online group just an online group? Being on several social networks myself, I have been able to add myself to 15+ groups most of which I never look at or interact with. I simply exist within the group. Is your online community encouraging your students to sign up for things in your ministry such as small groups, praise band or the tech team? Is your online community a place for students to volunteer to go play Wii at a nursery home with the elderly?

4. New People: Does your online community welcome new people and make them feel like they are apart of something unique? Making your online community a place where members can feel welcomed and loved will be a distinctive they may not find in many online groups. Are you welcoming people as they join? Are the members starting dialog with them they
day they sign up? Perhaps students may connect online with others before even connecting in person due the walls that often come down in this relaxed environment.

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Brandon Riley is the Technical Director of Student Ministries at Denton Bible Church in Texas and is also the Director of User Experience for Tuggle, a social network with built-in management tools for youth ministries.

What the website should do:

• Welcome and attract new visitors
• Be a tool for members to invite others
• Communication vehicle for current members
• Get people involved in ministry
• Be a 24/7 info resource about our church
• Be a center of spiritual resources for members throughout the week
• Interact with members throughout the week about spiritual and life issues
• Share the gospel with seekers
• Be graphically and visually stimulating (good design = perceived credibility)

Audience:

• Potential visitors between 18-45 years old (primary)
• Regular attenders between 18-45 years old (secondary)

Possible information:

• Service times
• Driving directions/map
• Building floor-plan
• Nursery/childcare info
• Staff directory
• Info about the church
• What we believe
• Gospel presentation
• What to expect (visitors)
• Current ministry opportunities
• Current news
• FAQs
• Calendar
• Newsletters (email and print)
• Weekly bulletins
• Contact form
• Denominational news
• Missionary updates

Media

• Sermon podcasts (video/audio)
• Sermon archives
• Sermon transcripts
• File and document sharing/downloads
• Event promotional tools (e-invites, postcards, flyers)
• Photo galleries

Interaction

• Pastor, director and missionary blogs (sermon teasers, additional sermon thoughts, family discussion questions, etc.)
• Small group discussions
• Scripture reading lists
• “Ask the pastor”
• Share prayer requests
• Testimonies
• Sermon Q&A
• Polls/surveys

Miscellaneous

• Online giving
• Online registration for events/classes
• Volunteer screening process

1. Be patient.
The key this is patience. We’re all excited by the prospect of getting such cool gadgets or cash for free, but it will take some patience. It took me almost 3 months to get all the referrals I needed for my first freebie — an Xbox 360 Elite — because people think it’s a scam or are naturally skeptical (as I was at first). But after my Xbox finally arrived in the mail and I had physical proof that it’s real, it’s been a lot easier. In fact, after I had proof from the Xbox, the iPod Touch freebie site only took me 5 days to get the 8 referrals I needed for the 16 GB version! (In fact, I even went over by 2.)

From what I’ve seen around the Internet, the story is true for almost everyone. The first freebie takes a while to get, but after it shows up in the mail and you have evidence for your friends, the rest of the freebies roll in a lot easier. So, be patient, stick with it and you’ll get free stuff faster after you complete your first freebie site.

2. Talk to friends.
This is probably going to be your best bet for getting referrals. Just bring it up and tell people about it. Not everyone will be interested, but you don’t need everyone to be interested — you only need a couple. “Hey, do you have an iPod?… Do you like it?… I don’t have one, but I’m trying to get the iPod Touch for free… It’s actually really simple. It works like this…”

3. Post a note in Facebook.
When you post it in Facebook, chances are many of your friends will see it. Don’t write a 5-page essay or something people won’t bother to read — keep it short, sweet, clear and concise.

4. Write about it on your blog.
If you have one, copy and paste your Facebook note to your blog.

5. Post your link in the sidebar of your blog.
Since blog posts quickly get pushed off the front page and buried in the archives, put a link to that blog post in your sidebar so it appears on every page of your site. See my site for an example.

6. Email all your friends about it.
This probably doesn’t need much of an explanation. Mass email to your address book!

7. Put the link in your email signature.
Put either your referral link or a link to your blog post at the end of every email when you sign your name. Most email has a featured called “email signature” that will automatically attach whatever text you want to the end of every email when you send it.

8. Put the link in your forum signatures.
If you’re active on any forums, put your referral link or a link to your blog post in your signature there. That way it will appear every time you reply or start a new thread. If you have a reputation for being helpful and honest, you’ll probably do pretty well there.

9. Put the link in your instant messenger away message.
Those who use instant messaging software tend to have pretty extensive buddy lists. Put your link in your IM profile. When you’re away from the computer, put up an away message that displays info about how you’re getting a certain prize for free and how they can too.

10. Use the freebie site’s promotional tools.
When you login to your account at a freebie site, they provide you with a couple great promotional tools, including HTML and forum code you can copy and paste into your blog or forum signatures, and professional graphics to use. Take advantage of these tools. They want you to refer people to their site just as badly as you do, so they’re more than happy to help you do it. (Find some of these tools in your Bonus Network account by clicking on the “Account” tab at the top of the page.)

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Wait a second, what in the world is a freebie site?

If you’re reading this and have no idea what I’m talking about, basically there’s websites out there that will give you cool electronics or cash for FREE if you sign up on their site, complete a couple trial offers from one or more of their partnering companies and then refer a certain number of other people to do the same. These freebie websites send potential customers, like yourself and your friends, to companies to try their products and services with no obligation. (Although you can cancel at any time, I recommend you be fair to the company and give them a try since they’re helping you get your free stuff). In return, the freebie website gets a commission from the company whose trial you signed up. The freebie website then spends part of it on sending you a nice thank-you in the form of cash or a cool gift like an Xbox, iPod Touch, iPhone, even HDTVs. It’s all 100% legit. I know because I’ve received several gifts myself. See here and here for proof pictures.

How much is this going to cost me?
It depends on which trial offer(s) you decide to try. Some, like trying Stamps.com for a month, are complete free and won’t cost you a penny. Others, like PhotoStamps.com, require only a 1-time cheap purchase and that’s it. Every company is real and legit and most are offers you might want to try anyway, like a month of Blockbuster or Netflix.

Wanna get started? FREE iPhone, iPods, or cash
Right now you can help me out by signing up for either the iPods site or a iPhone site.

If you need help or have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments below. I’ve cashed out on a couple sites already, so I’ve been through the process several times.

Have fun!

1. October 26, 2007: I sign up at BonusiPods.com under someone else’s referral link and signed up for a couple trial offers. My account is credited that same day.
2. November 30, 2007: I posted about how I got my free Xbox 360 and also posted my referral link for the free iPod Touch.
3. December 5, 2007: Only a few days later I had enough referrals of people who completed an offer to get a free iPod Touch of their own. So, I submitted my account for review.
4. December 8, 2007: My account is approved and I submit my order for the 16GB iPod Touch.
5. December 9, 2007: The next day my iPod is shipped.
6. December 17, 2007: My FREE 16GB iPod Touch arrived in the mail!

Here are the proof pictures (click to see full-size):

UPDATE: I interviewed a co-owner of the Bonus Network, the company that gives all this stuff away. Watch it below. For more information about the Bonus Network and how all this works, read my more detailed post about free iPods, iPhones, Xbox 360s, Macbooks, Wii, PS3s, cash, and more.

If you want a free iPod Touch, too, sign up under this referral link.

Get an iPhone for FREE!

Now that both my Xbox Elite and iPod Touch are here, I’m going for a free iPhone through the same company. Instead of taking the iPhone, though, I’m going to take the cash offer instead to put toward vacation next summer. Obviously I have first-hand evidence that this is real and legit, not a rip-off scam or some pain-in-the-neck process. Here’s how you can get a FREE iPhone (or cash):

1. Click this link: http://www.bonusiphone.com/?referral=10265
2. Sign up to create an account.
3. Complete 1 or 2 offers (like Blockbuster, Netflix or BlueHost hosting, etc.) to get 100% credit and then refer other people to do the same under your referral link.
4. Receive your iPhone for FREE!

It honestly isn’t any more difficult than that. If you have any questions about the process, I’ve done it twice, so feel free to ask in the comments below.

A little tip:
If you click an offer and don’t sign up for it on that visit, make sure you clear your browser’s cookies before going back to it again from your BonusiPhone/BonusiPods account. Otherwise the tracking cookie might not register that you signed up for their service from BonusiPods.com/BonusiPhone.com and you’ll have to request a manual credit, which can take several weeks.

Here’s a quick tutorial on how I made it. Granted, these directions are for Mac since that’s what I use, but the same principle applies to Windows and can be done just as easily there, I’m sure.

Step One: Go to the free section of CrowdControlGames.com and download their free interactive host, LT. Unzip the package, open both Flash files and play around with him a little. It’s quite entertaining. He’s the high-tech puppet you always wanted.

Step Two: LT is intended to be used on two seperate monitors, but that’s too much work to set up when all I want to do is record LT on my screen. So I purchased a screencast program called iShowU (Mac only) for $20 and set it up to only record the section of my screen that contains LT, as in the image below.

Step Three: When you’re finished recording your announcement with LT using your screencast software, use your favorite video editing software to add music, text and whatever else is necessary. And wa-la! You have your video announcement! (Just please record a better accent than I did! lol)

1. August 27, 2007: I sign up at bonusxbox360.com under someone else’s referral link and complete trial offers.
2. August 30, 2007: I post here about how to get an Xbox 360 Elite for free and started encouraging others to sign-up under my referral link and complete one of the many trial offers. The post starts showing up in Google searches and is in the sidebar of my blog.
3. November 6, 2007: I finally have 12 people who signed up under my referral link and completed one of the trial offers, so I submit my account for review.
4. November 10, 2007: My account is approved and I place my order for the Xbox 360 Elite, a game of my choice (Halo 3, of course), and a 12-month subscription to Xbox Live Gold.
5. November 13, 2007: Everything is shipped.
6. November 19, 2007: Halo 3 and the 12-month Xbox Live Gold subscription card arrive in the mail from Amazon.
7. November 30, 2007: The Xbox 360 Elite finally arrives. It was late because UPS lost the package, then Amazon went out of stock on the Elites, so they overnighted another one to me via FedEx from Circuit City even though the problem wasn’t their fault. They definitely went out of their way to keep their end of the bargain and communicated with me very well through the whole ordeal.

If you want an Xbox 360 Elite for free, too, sign up here under this referral link.

Here’s pictures for the skeptics out there. (Click the image to view it full-size.)

Anyone else on Xbox Live? Send me your gamertag! Let’s play.

Get an iPod Touch for FREE from the same company!

Now that my Xbox is here, I’m going for an iPod Touch. Obviously I have first-hand evidence that this is real and legit, not a rip-off scam or some pain-in-the-neck process. Here’s how you can get a FREE iPod Touch:

1. Click this link: http://www.bonusipods.com/?referral=10265
2. Sign up and create an account.
3. Complete 1 or 2 offers (like Blockbuster, Netflix or BlueHost hosting, etc.) to get 100% credit and then refer other people to do the same under your referral link.
4. Receive your iPod Touch for FREE!

It honestly isn’t any more difficult than that.

A little tip:
If you click an offer and don’t sign up for it on that visit, make sure you clear your browser’s cookies before going back to it again from your BonusiPods.com/BonusXbox.com account. Otherwise the tracking cookie might not register that you signed up for their service from BonusiPods.com/BonusXbox360.com and you’ll have to request a manual credit, which can take several weeks.

If you missed the live video feed, but still want to watch the seminar, I have the video archived on Blip.tv, so feel free to check it out there. I also have it embedding at the end of this post.

Unfortunately, I had a LOT more content to review than I thought I did. Ten pages of notes is a lot, I know, but the demonstrations took longer than I anticipated. The seminar ended up lasting two and a half hours and that’s even with skipping the entire World of Warcraft section and several other sites I planned to show. I should have just stuck to one or two basic sites, like Facebook and MySpace, rather than making parents feel overloaded with information. Oh well. You live and learn, I guess. A couple other churches in the area have asked me to come give the presentation at their church, so I’ll have more chances to make it better. Too bad my youth group’s parents had to be the guinea pigs, though.

About getting my notes
A lot of people have asked that I make my notes available, but I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to or not. It’s clearly not because I want to just keep them to myself because you all know I give away pretty much anything of quality that passes through my hands. My concern is that people will take these notes and teach from them while not really knowing what in the world they’re talking about. If anyone teaches on this subject, it’s critical that they don’t circumvent the learning and research process involved. I’m not trying to be snotty or anything, I just want to set anyone up to do a disservice to the parents in their group. I dunno. What do you think?

My main resources for this seminar
Here’s a list of the main resources I used for preparing for this seminar. I HIGHLY recommend Anastasia Goodstein’s book, “Totally Wired,” linked below to all parents and anyone who works with youth, regardless of whether you plan to teach on the subject or not.

• Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online by Anastasia Goodstein
• Teens and the Internet CNN interview with Anastasia Goodstein
• Internet Caucus Advisory to Congress
• World of Warcraft FAQs for Christians
• My own experience from being a user of each of these sites.

Click To Play

Watch the video feed using this direct link to the video feed or the embeded stream below.

News and Announcements
When I post an update to the front page of our website, not only is it there for all site visitors to see, but Feedblitz automatically turns it into an email and sends it out to our entire mailing list, as well. So whether ministry participants check the website or not, they get the news either way. Plus, I don’t have to maintain the mailing list because users easily add, remove or update their subscription online.

Event Sign-Ups
Event sign-ups are often an administrative nightmare mostly because the sign-up list is on a clipboard at church. It’s difficult for people to remember to sign up while at church, remove themselves from the list, see who else is going, etc, which usually means I’m replying to a lot of emails and returning phone calls to maintain the list during the week. However, with the event sign-up system on our website, people can take care of all of that themselves. I create a customized sign-up form and people add themselves, remove themselves, submit payments, see who else is attending and best of all, it beautifully puts all the data into an Excel spreadsheet for me. I love it!

Building Relationships
As our group continues to grow and attract new members, it’s almost impossible for kids and leaders to keep up with everyone, but our forum and chat box allows for discussions to take place throughout the week. Perhaps the best part is that students who would normally never talk to each other at church meet each other on our site, talk online throughout the week and then look forward to continuing the friendship at church.

Collecting Data
I do this in a number of ways online, but the most critical one is getting feedback from first-time visitors. First impressions are critical for any visitor since most will form their opinion about our group within the first two minutes and then will decide whether or not they’re coming back within the next two minutes after that. I want to know what their impressions are so we can adjust accordingly, so I ask first-time visitors to fill out this form on our site and give me their feedback. Surprisingly, most of them actually do it.

I use our site in many other ways, too, which you can see at AlexandriaYouth.com.

Sending mass text messages is so perfect for my youth group.

• Students almost always have their cell phones at hand, so they’ll get the message instantly.
• It allows me to easily cancel an event at the last minute due to weather or something.
• It places reminders about a youth meetings and events where they’re sure to see it.

Txtsignal.com makes the process so simple.

• Kids can easily add or remove themselves by using a special link Txtsignal.com provides. I have the link posted on our website, Facebook and various emails.
• I have multiple groups and multiple teams within each group. I have a Sr. High team, a Jr. High Team and a Parents team so I can send appropriate messages to each group of people or send a message to everyone if I want.
• I can schedule messages to send at a later date and time.
• The interface is slick, clean and very user-friendly.
• I can create multiple login accounts with various permission levels so my other youth workers so they can send text message announcements about their various areas of service in the youth ministry.

Discount Code for Faith-based Ministries
Matt, from TxtSignal, created a special promo code for ministries or any organization that works toward ministry efforts. The promo code is good for a minimum of 10% off and even slightly more depending on the plan (for example, the $14/month plan becomes $12/month, or, 14% off). When signing up for service, use this promotional code: —–

[UPDATE: The promo code is no longer available, but if you set up an account, email support@txtsignal.com and they'll setup a 10% discount for ministries.]

Sure, there’s other text messaging services out there that are free, like Twitter and Broadtexter, but both of them require a lot of extra registration steps that no one would normally bother to go through just to get youth group updates, especially not parents. Plus, those companies don’t offer the specialty features and outstanding support that Txtsignal does. Txtsignal is just simple, easy and incredibly effective.

The only drawback
Unfortunately, Txtsignal.com currently does not allow students to reply to my text messages. Matt, the owner of Txtsignal.com, told me that this feature is under development, but it’s too soon to know when it will become available.

One little tip
Several times now students have given me their cell numbers to add to our text messaging list without providing their carrier information. Since Txtsignal.com wants to know that information to ensure messaging quality, I found this free tool for looking up someone’s mobile service provider based on their phone number. Sometimes you have to Google the company name it returns, though, to find out what the commercial brand is.

[tags]Txtsignal, Twitter, Broadtexter, SMS, text message[/tags]

The workshop starts at 7:00 PM central time on Tuesday, November 6, 2007. If you can’t make time for the live event, Ustream.tv will also archive the video, so you can watch it later at that same address.

Here’s my tentative general outline for the meeting so far. Any input, suggestions, comments or ideas?

Overview

• Teen usage of the Internet
• Misconceptions
• Sexual victimization
• Cyber bullying
• How home life affects Internet life
• Statistics

Introduction to social networking sites

• What is a social networking site?
• MySpace demo
• Facebook demo
• Deviant Art demo

Introduction to media sites

• How broadband has changed the Internet
• YouTube demo
• Flickr demo

Introduction to Instant Messenger

• What is Instant Messenger?
• AIM demo
• MSN demo
• Yahoo! demo
• Trillian demo

Introduction to blogs

• What is a blog?
• Facebook/MySpace
• Live Journal demo
• Xanga demo
• Blogger/Wordpress demo

Introduction to MMORPGs

• What is an MMORPG?
• Why are they so addicting?
• What is the spiritual influence?
• What’s good about them? What’s bad about them?
• How much time is too much?
• World of Warcraft demo

Potential upcoming social sites

• Twitter demo
• Virb demo
• Ustream.tv demo

What happened to email?

• Why kids don’t use email to communicate with each other.
• How kids communicate now and why: PM, SMS, IM

Tips for the home: What should we do with this info?

• Strategic computer placement
• Communicate with your teen
• Learn from your kids
• Search Google
• Learn from their history
• Your relationship makes all the difference
• Shoulder surfing
• A better solution than monitoring software
• Join your kids!

General Q&A for Tim and a panel of students

Specific family Q&A (cut the live feed)

Here’s the promo video I made that will run in church services and be sent around online in various ways. Feel free to share it with others and tell people to watch the event on Ustream.tv on November 6 at 7:00 PM central time.

With four pages of typed notes, this will definitely help with the upcoming Teen Internet Workshop for Parents I’m teaching on November 6. I am so stealing some of this. Oh, and by the way, we’ve decided to stream the workshop LIVE online through Ustream.tv, so any of you can watch and participate if you’d like. More info on that coming later.

(ht Ben Gray)

Web Interface
A first glance at RememberTheMilk.com will show you how clean, user-friendly and “Web 2.0″ the site is. Create an account and you’ll be a pro at organizing tasks for yourself in about 5 minutes or less. It’s got all the features you might expect, plus a couple extras:

• Create tasks, to-do items and reminders.
• Schedule due dates.
• Setup different categories for tasks.
• Setup locations where tasks should be completed.
• Set priority levels for different tasks.
• Share tasks and lists with other people.
• Schedule reminders to be sent via email, Twitter, Skype, AIM, GoogleTalk, MSN, text message, and more.
• Sync with Windows Mobile and iCal standards.
• And a bunch more.

Accessiblity
The best thing about RememberTheMilk.com is that your data is not limited to their website. They go through great lengths to make sure it’s accessible where ever you want it. The two options I use the most are the Mac dashboard widget and text messaging from my cell phone.

Mac RTM Widget
If you’re a Mac user like me, download RTM’s dashboard widget and see all your lists and reminders in a single keystroke. As you complete each item, check it off in the widget and it automatically syncs with your account online, iCal calendars (like Google calendar or iCal, for example) and anywhere else you maintain your RTM lists.

Text Messaging
For some reason I tend to remember things when there’s no computer around, like when driving in the car or falling asleep at night. With RTM, that’s no problem. I just send a text message directly to RTM via Twitter and it immediately pops up in my task list and also generates an email to me. For example, if I send a text message to Twitter and say, “d rtm tomorrow Call Paul about teaching this Sunday,” it will schedule the task online, in the Mac widget and my email for tomorrow. Sure beats having to carry a paper and pencil everywhere.

There are so many more slick features to RememberTheMilk.com that you’re just going to have to go check it out for yourself. It really is the perfect system for me to stay current with every little ministry detail I need to remember.

[tags]RememberTheMilk.com, Twitter[/tags]

Why you should use this for your youth group
I also copied the app and made another one to stream my youth group news, updates and announcements straight to my students’ profiles. There’s several advantages to using a tool like this:

• My students have direct access to youth group news right within Facebook.
• All their friends will also see the youth group news, a great outreach tool.
• Every update title automatically links back to our youth group site for more info.
• Students can invite their friends to add the application to their profiles, too, thus spreading the news even further.
• It’s one of the most ideal ways to communicate with students on their turf.
• The app only shows headlines and a summary of the content so it doesn’t overcrowd profile pages.

Two ways to get this Facebook app for yourself or your ministry
This is such a great communication tool that I want to show you all how you can have one, too. There’s two ways to do this:

1. Let me build and host it for you. I realize a lot of people feel lost when it comes to this kinda stuff, but still could greatly benefit from having the tool. So, I’m willing to create the app for you, host it, maintain it and everything! Just click here to find out more details.

2. Follow my instructions below and create one yourself.

Create one yourself
All the credit for these instructions goes to Falko Timme who wrote up a fantastic tutorial on how to set up a Facebook RSS feed for your blog. If you’re a little geeky and want to know how the app works and understand every step involved, his tutorial is very complete. It’s what I used to create my original Facebook application. My tutorial here is not an attempt to steal Falko’s thunder in any way, but to simplify the process for people who don’t administer their own servers or understand a Linux command line. My package below is also customized to offer some minor improvements to how the application handles RSS feeds.

Let’s get started.
In order for this to work, you must have access to a web host that uses PHP5. If you’re in the market for a good web host, I recommend Buyhttp.com. I use them for my youth group website and their service and support is fantastic. They don’t promise terabytes of space for a few bucks like other hosts because they don’t oversell their servers and they don’t offer cheap service like that. Instead of trying to make as much cash as possible, they focus on offering a high quality service that performs well. They offer hosting plans with PHP5, just make sure you ask for it when you sign up.

You must also have access to your hosting account’s cPanel to set up a cron job at the end of this tutorial.

The following screenshots are obviously from my own Facebook app and are only used as an example. Replace my data with your own.

Step 1
If you haven’t already registered at Facebook.com, you’ll obviously need to do so.

Step 2
Add the Developer Application to your profile, as described here.

Step 3
Once the Developer Application is added to your profile, visit it by clicking on “Developer” in the left side-bar. When the developer page opens, click on “Setup New Application” in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

Step 4
A. Give your application a name. I’ve found that the shorter the name, the better. It’ll fit in your sidebar a lot nicer if it’s short. Unfortunately, mine isn’t. Also check the box under the name field saying you agree to the terms of the Facebook Platform.

B. Enter a valid email address where other developers and Facebook administrators can contact you concerning your application.

C. Enter the path to the folder on your web host that will contain your application files. You’ll get the files a bit later. For now, just make sure the folder exists on your host. IMPORTANT: The URL must end with a trailing slash (/).

D. The canvas page is the Facebook address for your application. This is where people will go to add your application to their profile and view your youth group/blog updates, so make it something easy to remember.

E. Make sure “Use FBLM” is selected.

F. Make sure “Website” is selected.

G. Make sure “Yes” is selected.

H. You can do this at a later time if you want. Just upload a 16×16 icon for your app that will display in the left side-bar for your application.

I. Fill in whatever you have from step D above.

J. Enter a brief description of your Facebook application.

K. This is the default text that will display on people’s profiles if something goes wrong with the application.

L. Make sure “Wide” is selected.

M. Again, enter your canvas page URL from step D above.

N. Click “Save.”

Step 5
Now you’ll see your API Key and your Secret for your application. Copy these down somewhere. You’ll need them later.

Step 6
Download this package and unzip it somewhere on your computer:

RSS Facebook Application Files

Step 7
Open the following files with a text editor, like Notepad for Windows or Taco HTML Edit for Mac. Do NOT use a word processor or anything that might format the text. Only replace the text I call for. Leave the apostrophes (‘), quotes (“), slashes (/) semi-colons (;) and commas (,) intact. Also make sure there are no extra spaces before or after the text you replace.

A. Open conf.php

1. Replace API_KEY_HERE with your API Key.
2. Replace SECRET_HERE with your Secret.
3. Replace CALLBACK_URL_HERE with your callback URL from your Developer App settings. (Example, http://www.yourdomain.com/facebook/)
4. Replace URL_TO_THE_RSS.PHP_FILE with the URL to where the rss.php file is on your host. (Example, http://www.yourdomain.com/facebook/rss.php)
5. Replace YOUR_SITE_RSS_FEED_ADDRESS_HERE with you actual RSS feed. (Example, http://feeds.feedburner.com/timschmoyer)
6. (Don’t change INFINITE_SESSION_KEY_HERE yet. We’ll change that later.)
7. Save and close the file.

B. Open index.php

1. Find YOUR_CANVAS_PAGE_URL_HERE on line 7 and replace it with your canvas page URL. Again, make sure you do NOT have two slashes in a row (//) before the “invite.php” part.
2. Save and close the file.

C. Open invite.php

1. Find YOTHGROUP_NAME on line 12 and replace it with the name of your youth group. (Example, “Power Surge Ministries”)
2. Find CANVAS_URL_HERE on line 12 and replace it with your canvas URL. Be sure to leave the trailing backslash in place. (Example, “http://apps.facebook.com/timschmoyer”)
3. Find SHORT_APP_NAME on line 12 and replace it with a short name for your app. About 15 characters or less should be fine.
4. Find NAME_OF_YOUR_APP on line 13 and replace it with the name of your Facebook application.
5. Save and close the file.

D. Open rss.php

1. Find NUMBER_OF_POSTS_TO_SHOW on line 9 and replace it with the number of latest posts you want the app to display. I don’t recommend making this number any higher than 3. (Example, 2)
2. Find APPLICATION_NAME on line 12 and replace it with the name of your Facebook application.
3. Save and close the file.

Step 8
Now that all the files are updated and saved, upload the entire package to the callback folder on your web host so they’re accessible from your callback URL. (Example, upload everything to http://www.yourdomain.com/facebook/)

Step 9
With your FTP client, change the permissions of the folder magpie_cache to 777.

Step 10.
In your browser, type in your canvas page URL (http://apps.facebook.com/mygreatapp) and hit enter. You should be taken to a page that looks like this:

Click the big blue login button.

Step 11
Your next screen will look like this:

Make sure every box is selected and click the big blue add button.

Step 12
You will be redirected to your app’s page where your latest posts are displayed like this:

Check your profile page, too. You should see the latest posts displayed there, as well. Congratulations! You’re almost finished. Now all we have to do is set it up to automatically update with new content from your RSS feed.

Step 13
Log out of Facebook and clear out your browser’s cache, cookies, files, everything. This is absolutely necessary for the next step to work properly and to avoid headaches in the future, so do it right the first time. Trust me, I learned the hard way. If you don’t want to clear your browser’s files and cookies, use a different browser instead and make sure everything is cleaned out before going on to the next step. As far as your browser should know, it’s never been to Facebook.com or your website before.

Step 14
With the browser’s cache, cookies, temporary files and history cleared, type the address to the file get_infinite_key.php on your web host. (Example, http://www.yourdomain.com/facebook/get_infinite_key.php)

Step 15
When the Facebook login screen appears, enter your email address and password and make sure you check the box for, “Save my login info to avoid logging in to Facebook again to use this application.” Click the “Login” button to continue.

Step 16
A screen will appear that displays your “infinite key.” Copy this.

Step 17
Open conf.php, find INFINITE_SESSION_KEY_HERE on line 4 and replace it with your infinite key from step 16. Save the file, close it and upload it to your web host. Make sure it overwrites the existing file.

Step 18
Login to your hosting account’s cPanel and click on “Cron jobs.”

Step 19
On the next screen, click Advanced (Unix Style), and configure one of the lines to look like this:

In the first box (with “Minute” above it), type */30. In the Hour, Day, Month, Weekday boxes, type only an asterik (*). In the “Command” box, enter the absolute path to the cronjob.php file in your facebook application folder. If you do not know the absolute path to your hosting account, search your host’s knowledgebase or contact support and they’ll be happy to give it to you. (Example, /home/account_name/public_html/facebook/cronjob.php) Then click, “Commit Changes.” The cronjob.php file will now automatically check for new posts and refresh the Facebook app with the latest content every 30 minutes.

Step 20
Your Facebook application is now complete! Play around with it a little. Click the “Invite” tab at the top of your canvas page to invite people to add your application to their profiles. Facebook prevents applications from taxing their system too much by limiting the viral spread of applications. They do this by restricting app invitations to only 20 per person per day. So, you can use the invite tab to sent invites to 20 people today and then tomorrow send invites to 20 more people to join. Or, you can send everyone a link to your canvas page so they can add the app directly. There’s no restriction on how many people can add an application directly from your canvas page.

Step 21
Once you have at least 5 readers, your application is eligible for submission to the searchable Facebook application directory. To do this, click on “Developer” in your left side-bar and the click on the little link, “See My Apps” located in the “My Applications” box on the top right of the screen. Click “Submit Application” and fill out the requested info. In the description, be sure include a couple keywords people might use when searching for your app in the application directory. When finished, click the blue “Save” button and wait a day or two for your app to be reviewed.

That’s it! I hope this is not too overwhelming and trust it will help promote effective communication with the students in your ministry.

Again, if these instructions feel like they’re way over your head, feel free to let me build and host this application for you.

Troubleshooting

• Make sure you’re using a valid RSS feed. I ran into problems with one app because the feed wasn’t using the normal “Title” and “Description” meta tags. Odd, but apparently possible.
• If the application isn’t updating your profile page automatically with new content after 30 minutes, manually run your cronjob.php file from a browser (example, http://www.yourdomain.com/facebook/cronjob.php). If you get a bunch of gibberish text, go back and repeat steps 13-17 again. If you get a plain white screen and find that your Facebook app is now updated correctly, re-check your Cron Job settings in your cPanel (steps 18-19).
• If you get this error: Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '{' in /home/rest_of_path/appinclude.php on line 10 find the solution in this comment below.

Here’s the promo video I made that will run in church services and be sent around online in various ways:

Click To Play

My original idea was to use this Facebook application to feed youth group news and announcements to my students’ Facebook profiles and thereby easily make the info accessible to all their friends, as well. That application is still in the works. If you’re lucky, I may even offer that one as a free resource here sometime for you guys to use with your youth groups.

Another idea, inspired by a conversation with Adam McLane, is to make a Facebook application like this that feeds youth ministry posts from across various different authors and sites. Sounds like a great idea to me! I just have two questions for you all before I put it together, though: 1) Is there interest in a Facebook app like this? 2) Nominate a couple youth ministry sites that you’d like to see included. Leave your input in the comments.

In the meantime, if you’d like to add the Life in Student Ministry Reader to your profile, visit the application on Facebook and check it out.

PCWorld also uploaded the same high-quality video to each site they tested and placed a side-by-side video comparison of the top 10 on their site.

In my opinion, Stage6’s video quality is absolutely beautiful and far outweighs Blip.tv due to using it’s own Divx browser plugin to show video instead of using Flash, as every other video site uses. However, therein lies Stage6’s drawback, too. Everyone already has the Flash plugin installed, whereas almost no one has the Divx browser plugin. The Divx plugin automatically pops up to install just like the Flash plugin would, although users with increased browser security settings might not see it. But since Stage6 is the only video site that supports HD content, the little browser plugin is totally worth the high quality videos.

Unfortunately, YouTube still has the majority of Internet video traffic, so I’ll still be posting my videos there for students, but I’ll also put them at Stage6 just for the raw beautiful quality it produces. Here’s the Shrek 3 trailer from Stage6 to see what I mean:

It’ll be interesting to see how Microsoft’s Silverlight, their upcoming rival to Adobe Flash, will shift all of this in the future.

[tags]Adobe Flash, Silverlight, Divx, Stage6, Blip.tv, YouTube, Internet video[/tags]

Here’s two ringtones I made tonight. Sign up at Phonezoo.com and send ‘em to your phone for free if you want.

Create free ringtones at Phonezoo

Create free ringtones at Phonezoo

Free online photo editing at Picnik.com

Free online video editing at Jumpcut.com

[tags]Picnik, Jumpcut[/tags]

Inspired by all the positive response to my post on Simplify Media, I found Jinzora, a free open-source web-based music jukebox. In my true geek-like fashion, I set it up on my church’s server and integrated it into my youth group’s website where the students can now stream their favorite Christian music 24/7. No more checking out CDs, losing them under the bed or copying them several times over.

Click the screen shot below for a clearer picture of what it looks like. Nice, eh?

(Sorry, the library is available only to manually approved members of my church’s youth group.)

Ever since I got my beloved MacBook Pro I’ve been using Mozy to safely backup all my data online. The client sits in my taskbar and automatically backs up all my data online. A free account gives me 2GB of storage space, which is plenty since I don’t bother to backup my iTunes library, pictures or videos (I still have all the music CDs, the pictures are also stored on my desktop at home and videos I manually dump on our church’s backup server). There are three things I love about Mozy:

1. It doesn’t bug me. I seriously forgot it was there until I read Chris’ blog. It just works on its own.
2. It’s easy to set up and use. I just choose what I want it to backup (like iCal, Mail, system preferences, documents, even specific file types or folders) and click OK.
3. It uses almost no system resources. It has never affected CPU usage or memory, the exact opposite from other backup solutions I’ve tried.

Backups are something you don’t usually think of until it’s too late, which is why I love Mozy. I thought of it once long enough to setup Mozy and haven’t thought of it since then. I just love the security of knowing every time I check on it I see something like, “Last backup: 1 hour ago.”

Admittedly, I’ve only used the Mac beta version, so I can’t speak for the Windows version, but if the Mac beta works this well, I can only assume that the Windows version, which is not in beta, works just as well. The biggest downside to the Windows version is, well, that it’s running on Windoze.

Check out Mozy.

[tags]Mozy[/tags]

SpiralFrog is a legal alternative to pirate file-sharing sites, providing a comprehensive listing of artist information, over 700,000 songs to download at no cost – with more added weekly – videos and music discovery tools.

They’re able to provide FREE legal music downloads because of the support from advertisers, so I was kinda expecting to hear 10-second ads at the beginning or end of each track, but was pleasantly surprised to hear that wasn’t the case. Instead, it looks like they ask you fill out a survey and check out some advertisers every 30 days in order to continue your service and renew the DRM licenses on your downloaded media. Granted, SpiralFrog’s music library is considerably smaller than Rhapsody’s, but SprialFrog’s press releases shows agreements made with most of the top record labels in the industry, so given some time SpiralFrog might catch up.

Unfortunately, SpiralFrog didn’t give me any free invitations to pass out. If you want to join the free legal music downloading service, you’ll have to sign up at SpiralFrog.com and wait in queue for your invitation email to show up.

[tags]SpiralFrog, Rhapsody[/tags]

[tags]Simplify Media, iTunes[/tags]

This is a great idea! Looks to me like Reactee is just using TextMarks, though, a free text messaging info service, which means that anyone can take this idea and make their own youth group shirts with it.

[tags]Reactee, TextMarks[/tags]

“Do you mind sharing who you developed your website with? or was it completely on your own?”

I put the site together, but I certainly didn’t code the entire site from scratch. I took free open source web software that other’s have made available and made them all work together like a big puzzle. Here are the “puzzle pieces” for my youth group’s site:

Web Hosting:
Weeding through the thousands of webhosts out there is difficult, but I selected BuyHttp.com. So far my experience with them has been great. Quick and helpful support team and a responsive site. The main reason I went with BuyHttp.com is because they specifically configure their servers to work with Joomla, the content management system I’m using and they don’t oversell their servers (like hosts who give 100 GB of space for $5/month).

Content Management System:
Joomla is the content management system (CMS) I’m using. In case you don’t know what a CMS is, any blog works like a CMS — you login to an administrative section of the website and configure the whole site from there. With my youth group website, I log in to the admin section and set all the parameters, write the content, adjust settings, arrange the layout, etc. I can also install, uninstall and administer all my components from there, too, like the forum, user profiles, photo albums, and everything else.

Template theme:
The template is from YooTheme. Although their themes look pretty slick, they’re a pain in the neck to set up. Fortunately there’s support forums, which I definitely abused.

My main Joomla components
Here are the main components (kinda like plugins) I’m using for the site:

• Private messaging: Clexus
• User profiles: Community Builder
• Download manager: DocMan
• RSS Feeds: DS-Syndicate
• Forum: Fireboard
• Google mapping system: GMaps
• Submit news to front page for youth leaders: JA Submit
• Calendar: JCal Pro
• Comment system: Jom Comment
• Site statistics: JoomaStats
• Photo album: RSGallery2
• Videos manager: Seyret
• Live chat: SMO AJAX Shoutbox
• Event sign-ups: Attend Events
• Streaming music library: Jinzora (not a Joomla component)

There are some other little modules, too, but those are the main parts. You can browse a library of Joomla add-ons like this from the Joomla Extension Directory.

Free Alternatives
Everything here is free except YooTheme, Clexus, and Jom Comment, but there are excellent free alternatives to each of these components.

1. Instead of YooTheme, Google “Joomla templates” and you’ll find an overwhelming number of free ones available. I chose YooTheme mostly because I wanted to have a more unique identity on the web.

2. Instead of Clexus, browse through these free private messaging systems. I chose Clexus just because I had a little budget for the site and thought that Clexus was worth the money. Plus, it integrates well with Fireboard forum and Community Builder.

3. And instead of Jom Comment, use the free AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition or JoomlaComment. I’m using Jom Comment because it was the only commenting system compatible with Seyret, the video manager. Otherwise I’d use AkoComment.

Automatically email front page news
As I mentioned in my previous post, all news posted to the front page of the site by me or a youth leader is automatically emailed to our entire youth group mailing list. The trick for this really isn’t that complicated. In fact, it’s the same process I use here for email subscribers to Life in Student Ministry. I plugged the front page’s RSS feed into Feedburner, registered an account at Feedblitz and imported all my mailing lists.

If you decide to go this route with Joomla, I can save you from a big headache: don’t use Joomla’s default RSS feed. It strips all HTML content, including links and images. Either follow this solution or use the DS-Syndicate component. The advantage of DS-Syndicate is that you can also publish different RSS feeds for different news categories. So, if you post an announcement in the Sr. High category and have that category’s RSS feed linked to a Sr. High mailing list in Feedblitz, the news will only be sent to the Sr. High. A great solution to avoid spamming everyone with irrelevant news every time you update.

The easiest solution for a youth group website
Of course, a simple solution for a youth group website is just to use a blog like Wordpress.com or Blogger.com. It’s less interactive and there’s no logins, personalization or profiles, but commenting on updates might be all you want.

An idea to get this setup for your youth group
I’ve considered starting a little side business of hosting and building youth group websites like mine because the competition is just so expensive. My entire youth group site cost a little over $200, but in my research before building AlexandriaYouth.com I found that most youth group website companies charge into the thousands for sites not nearly as interactive or as flexible. How many normal churches can afford that?! I don’t mind building sites, but offering tech support could become a little overwhelming. Plus, I don’t know what the demand is for a service like this. So, maybe you can help me with the decision:

• Is this a service you’d consider using for your own youth group if a site cost around $300-$500/year (depending on web space and features)?
• Are you a Joomla fan that’s passionate about youth ministry and has time to help me support Joomla-based sites (for pay, of course)?

Post in the comments and let me know.

1. Write on a topic you’re passionate about.
Don’t waste your time (and mine) on something that doesn’t excite you. And definitely don’t write it just to gain some recognition. Ask yourself this question: “Even if no one reads my ebook, am I still willing to write it?” If the answer is yes, then go for it. Readers will pick up your tone throughout the ebook and decide if you’re the real deal or if your ebook is just a homework assignment.

2. Write the content.
Type up everything you wish to say and say it in as few words as possible. No one likes to read something that drags on and on about the same point. The five Bs of public speaking apply here: Be Brief, Baby, Be Brief. You should be more interested that I actually read through the whole ebook rather than trying to explain every detail of every argument. I can fill in the gaps myself.

3. Make it look appealing.
In a sense, how it is designed and formatted is more important than the content. You can have the best content in the world, but if I open up the ebook and skim through the first couple pages, it better catch my eye and look appealing or I’ll probably close it and move on, rendering the content useless. First impressions mean a lot. When I designed my ebook, I probably spent three times the amount of time working on the layout than I did actually writing the content. I even sought help from a graphic designer friend of mine.

I also took the advice on Seth Godin’s “How to make an eBook” Squidoo page and changed my page dimensions to eight inches wide and six inches high. I wasn’t sure if this was the smartest move because it makes printing a little more difficult, but it makes the ebook a whole lot easier to read on a computer monitor. Since most people will read an ebook on a monitor, I went with the 6×8.

The last thing to remember in designing your ebook is to make it clean and simple. Lots of color, flashy images and weird fonts will distract the reader and even cause them to need a break from it. Catch my attention with your appealing design and keep my attention with your great content.

4. Have multiple other people proof-read it.
This is where I went wrong and I’m pretty embarrassed by it. I read my ebook word by word several times and figured all the misspellings and grammatical errors were worked out, so I released it and the downloads starting tallying up. Unfortunately, I soon received feedback from helpful readers who pointed out several mistakes and errors. I corrected them as quickly as possible and released an updated version about 5 different times. It’s embarrassing to know what those mistakes are to think about how those errors are spreading all over the internet as people pass along the ebook to others. To a reader who knows nothing about you, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors question your credibility and professionalism.

NOTE: No one’s contacted me about any errors in my ebook for a little while now, so if you have an older copy, download the latest corrected version from here.

5. Select a Creative Commons license.
Go to CreativeCommons.org and figure out which license is appropriate for your material. Post it somewhere in your ebook. It’s also generally a good idea to print a copy, seal it in an envelope, sign across the flap, mail it to yourself and don’t open it. This is referred to as the “poor man’s copyright” since the postmark is regarded as the government sealing the date of the content inside. In case someone steals your work and it goes to court, having this is at least better than having nothing at all.

6. Convert your final work to PDF.
I used Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional just because I already had the software from an earlier project. There are several free PDF converters out there as well as some free online services. The problem with some of these, however, is that they don’t always keep your fonts and layout exactly intact. It’s worth a try, though. Of course, if you have a Mac, converting to PDF is easy just selecting it from the print menu.

I opted not to add any security to my ebook because I wasn’t sure why it was necessary. To give my ebook away for free and then place restrictions on it seemed a little contradictory to me. If someone decides to alter my content and redistribute it with heresy or something, there’s enough legitimate copies floating around that hopefully it won’t be a big deal.

7. Distribute your ebook.
Decide whether your ebook will be distributed free of charge or if you’ll ask for anything in return, such as an email address for each download or even monetary compensation. There are various benefits to each option, but I chose to be completely hands off. Free ideas always spread better than restricted ones. Besides, my intent is not to make money, but to help as many people as possible.

The platform I used for distributing my ebook is obviously my blog and that’s probably where most people will start, too. However, if you don’t have a blog, consider using Scribd.com. Scribd is kinda like the YouTube of ebooks.

Digg this article

• Stream youth group meetings and events live on our upcoming website.
• Give parents a live window into what we’re doing while on mission trips.
• Let site viewers interact with my teaching by submitting their input on discussion questions for me to address live “on air.”
• Create online discussion “small groups” of viewers using the video feed’s chat features.
• Stream local school sporting events, band concerts and other school performances on our site and archive them for community students to view later.

Here’s my Ustream.tv profile page. Add me as a friend if you sign up. Happy video streaming!

[tags]Ustream.tv[/tags]

University of NSW research shows the human brain processes and retains more information if it is digested in either its verbal or written form, but not both at the same time.

Finally! Now there’s scientific research to confirm what I’ve always felt: PowerPoints that present the same text that’s being spoken is actually detrimental to its retention. I’ve always disliked “death-by-bulletpoints” that put into written form exactly the same thing that the speaker is saying. I almost feel like the speaker is insulting my intelligence: “I know, teacher, I heard what you said,” or “Yes, I may be deaf, but it’s a good thing I can read.”

When I use PowerPoint, I do my very best to make it imagery-based and not cluttered with text. I may put my main headline on the slide, but other than that my slides are mostly pictures and images that illustrate what I’m saying in different ways. And most importantly, I don’t make the connection for them!

For example, here’s a PowerPoint slide I used for a lesson on how God changes people:

I concluded my lesson with this image and never once explained or mentioned the cocoon/butterfly illustration:

My lesson was on how God works in our lives to change us. They can make the connection on their own. And when they do, it’s always more powerful and more memorable than if I had explained it to them. Self-discovery is always the most effective form of learning, so I use it as much as possible.

Some may think this approach is distracting, but I beg to differ. The mind can process information over 5 times faster than I can communicate it, so now I’m giving people’s minds two ways to interact with the information. A picture is worth a thousand words. Pictures will always spark imagination. Text doesn’t spark much of anything.

I’m not alone on this theory, either. Most presentation tips say, “Limit text! Use pictures!”

Jodie McNeill makes an interesting observation on this new research:

The main reason is that I feel that PowerPoint creates a gap between preacher/teacher and congregation/class, and that simply talking allows much more scope for relationship. The fact that Gen Y’s crave experience over explanation points further to the fact that a speaker who speaks with emotion and engages the crowd will be more likely to have an impact than those who present the information in a formal teaching style.

Hopefully I’ll be seeing less boring text and more pictures in PowerPoint presentations now. I want an experience, not a lecture.

[tags]PowerPoint, NSW[/tags]

So now I’m thinking how we can use this new tool in ministry. The only idea coming to mind is to make an account for announcements to those involved in your ministry. Of course, they all have to be users of Twitter, too.

I guess someone could also create an account for sending a “verse of the day” or something to subscribers, too. I dunno. Anyone else have an idea?

[tags]Twitter[/tags]

Here’s what’s automatically integrated into Terapad that’s lacking in Blogger:

• Ready-to-go Paypal shop (great for students to pay for trips and events)
• Image gallery
• Discussion forums
• Visitor tracking
• Event calendar
• Easy to create pages (to offer downloadable forms, for example)
• Built-in integration with Flickr, Feedburner, Paypal, del.icio.us, digg.com, and other services

I set up an account and had a site up and running within two or three minutes. The administrative area of the site is pretty intuitive and looks very easy to manage. Their selection of website templates also looks very professional and attractive for youth oriented sites.

The free account comes with 10 GB of bandwidth and 2 GB of storage, although it also places Google ads on your site. If you want them removed it’ll cost ya $5/month, but they’ll throw in an additional 10 GB of data transfer for the price, too.

Visit www.terapad.com for more info.

[tags]Terapad[/tags]

Gmail provides an excellent spam mail filter for its users, one of the best filters available in the market. There’s no need to “train” the filter to detect what’s spam and what’s legit like some filters, it just works. Since I only use my current Gmail account for sign-ups and registrations on websites, it gets bombarded with a ton of junk, but not once in the year that I’ve been using Gmail has it incorrectly filtered a message. That’s pretty good odds! The best part is that Gmail accounts are available for free, so this filtering system is available to anyone who wants it.

For my youth group e-mail address, I wanted the power of Gmail’s spam filters without having to switch e-mail address in order to start using Gmail’s spam filtering system. Thankfully, with Gmail’s POP e-mail service, I was able to do so. Here’s how:

Step-by-step Process

1. I signed up for a new Gmail account to use for filtering youth group e-mail. (Register here for new users. Current users should send themselves an invitation through Gmail.)
2. Then I set my current youth group e-mail address to automatically forward all mail to the new Gmail address I just created.
3. Next, in Gmail I clicked on “Settings” and then the “Forwarding and POP” tab. There I enabled POP for all email and set it to archive Gmail’s copy of mail.



4. After that, I clicked on the “Accounts” tab and “Add another e-mail address” and filled out the pop-up box that appeared with my name and current youth group e-mail address. When I completed the address verification, I set this address as default and selected the option to always reply from this default address.



5. Finally, I set up my e-mail client (Evolution, in my case, since I use Ubuntu Linux) using the guide Gmail provides.*

*The only downside of sending mail through Gmail (either with a client or through webmail) is that your Gmail address will be included in the e-mail headers of the sender field in order to help prevent your mail from being marked as spam. Most email clients do not display the sender field, though some versions of Microsoft Outlook may display, “From customaddress@domain.com on behalf of yourusername@gmail.com.” If you feel like you need to avoid this, set your e-mail client to check for new messages (incoming mail server) from Gmail, but leave outgoing mail the same (set to use your domain’s/ISP’s/company’s outgoing mail server information).

Youth group e-mail is now spam free! I can always log in to my Gmail account to check any trapped spam messages, but that’s pretty unnecessary.

[tags]Gmail, spam filter, email tools[/tags]

Back in March I blogged about why I stay away from MySpace and even today I still do not have a MySpace account. However, I’ve used Facebook for quite some time now. Here’s why:

• Most of the advertisements on Facebook are not sexually stimulating.
• The layout is organized, uncluttered and gives a sense of uniformity to every user.
• Privacy and security controls are excellent and very customizable.
• I love the variety of groups and the potential they create for interaction.

Personally, I’m glad to see the shift moving from MySpace to Facebook. Facebook seems like a much cleaner and safer environment. And now that Facebook registration is open to the general public, there’s really no advantage to stick with MySpace except that it has many more registered users. Give it some time, though, and the Facebook phenomenon will soon catch up.

If you’re a Facebook user, feel free to add me as a friend. Or, join the Youth Specialties group I created.

(ht to Shift Conference Blog)

[tags]Facebook, MySpace[/tags]

Lifehacker has a survey of which is the top video player and notes that if pure image quality is what you’re going for, YouTube might not be your best bet.

They also link to a site that has the same video clip posted side-by-side from various video hosts. Check it out to evaluate where your youth group videos might work best for your needs. I think I’m sticking with YouTube for reasons I posted two weeks ago.

Likewise, in seminary we were given clay to play with as an example of the kinesthetic learner. As soon as the object lesson was over, everyone put the clay away and immediately took up pen and paper to start writing notes in a neat linear fashion. I, however, was the only one who continued to play with the clay throughout the entire class period. (The prof actually pointed me out at the end of class as a positive example, too. Apparently most seminarians aren’t kinesthetic.)

A couple weeks ago I posted a review on Shane Hipp’s book, The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How media shapes faith, the gospel, and church. In it he makes an interesting observation about the influence of the Internet and, having grown up with the Internet, I think he’s accurate.

A book presents an extensive, in-depth monologue or a thorough argument carefully crafted in linear, successive paragraphs and pages (left brain). In contrast the Internet presents a nonlinear web of interconnected pages and a vast mosaic of hyper links with absolutely no beginning, middle, or end (right brain). (page 132)

I’ve been playing on the Internet for most of my life. Maybe this non-linear influence is part of why I prefer magazines and blogs over books. It’s also why my notes are randomly spread out over a sheet of paper “linked” with lines. Looks like my thought-formulating process has been significantly impacted by the web. Kinda scary how technology unintentionally influences us.

Yesterday I was finally so frustrated with it that decided to sit down and pray. I told the Lord I wanted to install it the easy way from the CD and asked Him to make the CD-ROM to work long enough to last through the entire installation process. With that prayer, Xubuntu loaded perfectly fine. Here’s a screenshot of my desktop to prove it (click it to view full-size image):

I laughed at myself, “Ya know, I might’ve saved myself a lot of time if I had asked God to help me from the very beginning.” Sometimes it’s easy to go through my routine tasks and mindlessly leave God out. I wonder how much different life would be if I conversed with God over every little thing, if I really prayed “without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). God is interested in all the “little things” in my life, too, not just the big issues I can’t handle.

[tags]Ubuntu[/tags]

I checked for a plugin to help address this randomness, but the search turned up pretty empty. Back when my draft list was a lot longer than what’s in the screenshot above, my best solution was to use my browser’s Find feature by hitting CTRL+F and typing in some words that might be in the draft’s title. However, thanks to Google Docs and the ability to upload a document via email, I now have a new solution.

Google Docs gives me a unique e-mail address where I can send either e-mail messages or e-mail attachments (Word, HTML, RTF, OpenOffice attachments supported) that are converted to online Google documents.

This allows me to write my blog drafts in an e-mail, fill in an identifiable subject and send it to my private [tag]Google Docs[/tag] address. Once in Google Docs, I can do several things:

• Edit drafts in HTML mode with Wordpress markup intact.
• Categorize documents with tags.
• Search documents for key words and phrases.
• Share it with others for their input.
• Revert to past revisions of the draft.
• List drafts in my Google Personalized Homepage for easy editing access.
• List documents by tags, recent activity, or title.
• Export documents as HTML, Word, RTF, PDF or [tag]OpenOffice[/tag].
• And a whole lot more.

When a draft is complete, I copy and paste the document’s HTML (to retain markup) to my blog, archive it in Google Docs, add any touch-ups and click Publish. And since Google Docs are online, I have access to my drafts regardless of where I am or what computer I’m using, just like my blog.

Of course, this organization method does not apply solely to Wordpress. It can be used with any blogging system out there.

Sign in to Google and get your unique Google Docs e-mail address..

[tags]Wordpress[/tags]

Will this change the future of communication from the pulpit? It gives the ability to bring up images, change text and form illustrations on the fly, all with simple hang gestures.

ht to ymexchange.com

I find it interesting that the best way to communicate with students (other than in-person, of course) is still by telephone. We spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to use text messaging, instant messaging, forums, podcasts, blogs and e-mail when maybe the old telephone still works best.

Internet Usage

• 87% of U.S. teens aged 12-17 use the internet, up from 73% in 2000.
• 51% of teenage internet users say they go online on a daily basis, up from 42% in 2000.
• 13% of American teenagers — or about 3 million people — still do not use the internet.

What They Do

• 89% send or read email.
• 84% go to websites about movies, TV shows, music groups, or sports stars they are interested in.
• 81% play online games.
• 76% go online to get news or information about current events.
• 75% send or receive instant messages.
• 57% go online to get information about a college, university, or other school they are thinking about attending.
• 55% look for news or information about politics and the presidential campaign.
• 43% buy things online, such as books, clothing, or music.
• 38% send or receive text messages using a cell phone.
• 31% look for health, dieting, or physical fitness information online.
• 30% look for information about a job online.
• 26% look for religious or spiritual information online.
• 22% look for information online about a health topic that’s hard to talk about, like drug use, sex health, or depression.

Ownership

• 84% report owning at least one personal media device: a desktop or laptop computer, a cell phone or a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).
• 44% say they have two or more devices.
• 16% report that they do not have any of these devices at all.
• 12% have three.
• 2% report having all four of those types of devices.

Preferred Communication

• 51% of online teens usually choose the landline telephone when they want to talk with friends.
• 24% said they will most often use instant messaging.
• 12% prefer to call friends on their cell phone. (45% of teens own a cell phone.)
• 5% use email most often to communicate with friends.
• 3% prefer to use text messages.

Where They Surf

• 78% of online teens say they have gone online from school, up from 64% in 2000.
• 73% of home teen users go online from a computer located in an open family area.
• 54% of online teens say they have gone online at the library, up from 36% who reported this in 2000.
• 26% of teens who go online from home do so from a private area like a bedroom.

In two weeks time, that page has over 1,000 unique hits and is still gaining momentum like crazy! Conversely, my most popular youth ministry page of Free Youth Ministry Resources has only a little over 2,000 unique hits over the course of an entire year.

As Ben Gray recently posted, blogging ultimately comes down to passion and communicating that passion with others. That’s why I blog about youth ministry even if it’s not very popular.

I’m a guy who enjoys electronics, gizmos and gadgets. I even supported part of my seminary education by doing part-time I.T. administration for a company here in Dallas. So when I came across Shane Hipp’s book, The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church, I was immediately intrigued and picked it up.

Shane Hipps spent many years as one of the top experts on culture. His job was to constantly study media and culture and teach others how to effectively use it to market their products and services. As he grew in his walk with the Lord, he realized that his job was to convince people that they were missing something in their life and that a certain product would provide fulfillment. So, he resigned and attended seminary to learn to do the same with the Word of God. His writing therefore comes from many years of experience and knowledge of this topic of technology and culture, and it shows!

I used to just take technology for granted and explored any new way of using it in ministry. However, [tag]Shane Hipps[/tag] makes many good points why the statement, “The message stays the same but the methods change” really isn’t true. His argument is, “No, the method changes the message.” At first I couldn’t see how that could be based on anything but personal opinion, but his insights from behind the scenes of media and marketing really indicate a lot that the general public hasn’t realized about the affect media has on what’s being communicated. He starts with scriptural examples, moves on to explain the affect of the printing press and other past “phenomenons” that were considered technology, and then discusses current examples of media in church.

In no way does Shane Hipps doesn’t attack the use of media in ministry. Rather, he helps us think through different aspects of what it communicates and teaches us how to use it wisely and appropriately. It’s very helpful material.

One limitation I’ve found with [tag]Firefox 2.0[/tag], though, is correcting misspelled words I accidentally add to its dictionary. Several times I’ve accidentally clicked “Add to dictionary” instead of selecting the correctly spelled suggestion. Doh! Now how do I get into the customized dictionary of Firefox and fix it?

Fixing misspelled words in Firefox 2.0’s dictionary isn’t really that difficult if you know where to look. Just follow these directions:

1. Close Firefox.
2. Browse to your Firefox profile and make a backup copy of persdict.dat just in case you need it later. (Where is my Firefox profile?)
3. Open the file persdict.dat with a plain text editor (i.e. Notepad).
4. You’ll see a list of all the custom words added to Firefox’s dictionary. Simply correct the misspelled word, save the file, and close it.
5. Open Firefox and consider it done.

Marko had a good blog post today about this very subject. He says (and I agree) that it’s important for teens to question their faith and ask the hard questions. My question is why the church at large generally frowns upon those who ask tough questions and challenge the status quo. If our faith isn’t strong enough to hold up against these questions then maybe it really isn’t worth believing in the first place.

I consider myself to be someone with many questions who is also somewhat intimidated by the Christian public. I think that’s partly why I’m attracted to the blogging community, because here I find others who are also asking questions and are willing to give input into each other’s thoughts.

He’s been the [tag]pastor[/tag] at Main Street [tag]Baptist Church[/tag] in Doylestown, Pennsylvania for 25 years now and mostly blogs about [tag]pastoral ministry[/tag], [tag]spiritual growth[/tag], [tag]prayer[/tag], and other related topics. His heart is for training and discipling young church leaders and pastors, so if that’s of interest to you, check him out: http://www.mainstreetbaptist.org/blog/

Derek Webb, on the other hand, is making his new album, “Mockingbird,” available for download from his site completely free — no strings attached. As a former member of one of my all-time favorite bands, Caedmon’s Call, Derek seeks to use his music to spark discussions among people by using the power of the Internet. He says this:

one of the things that excites me most about the future of our business is how easy it is becoming to deliver music to people who want to hear it. i heard a story once about keith green caring so much that people were able to hear and engage with his music that he gave it away for free, which was a very difficult and expensive thing to do at that time. it’s actually never been as simple as it is today to connect music with music fans. and i want people to have a chance to listen to mockingbird and engage in the conversation.

so this is why, on september 1st, we’re launching freederekwebb.com, a place where anyone can go online and not just hear but actually download, keep, and share ‘mockingbird’ completely for free. In addition, freederekwebb.com will give you an opportunity to invite your friends to download ‘mockingbird’ in order to get them in on the conversation as well.

I’m curious to follow Derek’s plan for communicating his message through music made freely available online. One thing is sure: he must absolutely believe in what he’s doing to go through all the time and expense of recording an album and then to give it away for free. I’m impressed that he would forfeit all monetary profit on something like this for the sake of promoting conversations.

The site currently has six English Bible translations (including The Message) and many dictionaries, encyclopedias and commentaries, though only half of the resources are currently free. The others are made available to your account at reasonable prices.

Unfortunately, eBible is still in beta and not open to public registration at this time. However, current users may invite three friends to join the eBible network and, thanks to Mike Jones, I got one! So now I’m passing along my three invitations to the first three who comment here requesting one. Also be sure to check Mike’s pbwiki eBible page for additional invites. Either way, visit eBible.com and look for it to go public in a couple weeks.

And then today I read Church Marketing Sucks’s blog recommending an audio presentation by Rick Klau, Vice President at Feedburner, a service I use here for my own blog. I intended to listen to the audio stream while working in my office at church, but quickly stopped what I was doing to take notes. Three typed pages later, I’m rethinking my idea of the online youth group community I’ve sought to build these past two weeks.

For anyone in ministry, I highly recommend taking the hour and fourteen minutes to listen to Rick’s presentation. Maybe not entirely surprising information, but definitely good insights. Here are some of my notes:

We need to find our community, learn to engage them and seek to communicate with them. Just being on the Internet doesn’t not mean we’re reaching our audience. We need to go to where they are. Just having a website doesn’t reach people. Our potential to reach an audience online is no different than that of any big company out there.

Give people a voice in our community. Give them a place to interact. This works perfectly in the context of the church. People will be more attracted to us as an organization.

A funny dance video online makes 30 million views in 4 months not from big marketing campaigns but from people telling friends and sharing it online.

For people under 20 years old, two-thirds of their communication is done through instant messaging. Publish your pastor’s IM screen name on your website.

MySpace is overtaking Google for the most traffic on the Internet. People spend more time interacting with friends on MySpace than they do looking for information.

One hundred million people watch YouTube every day. That’s more than how many people are watching TV.

Blogs are Google’s drug of choice. Blogs have fresh content and lots of links. Church websites don’t have content that other people will link to. If someone is traveling to our church, then the info might be helpful, but if we don’t create incoming links to our site and give reason for returning visits then our site will be buried in the Internet and unlikely to be found.

If all we did was post sermons on our site every week, it will increase value on the Internet because now it’s being updated. It tells Google that you have a site that’s more relevant to someone else. Blogs are the single best then you can do to make your site more relevant and more findable.

Sermons from church posted as podcasts allows others to hear the message when they have time to focus. In this sense, the church goes to the audience wherever they are instead of assuming they will always make it to church.

In April 2006 Feedburner managed more podcasts than there are radio stations in the world. Podcasts are not the same as radio stations, and that’s the point! Radio stations are limited to geographical locations and are very expensive. Podcasts go anywhere in the world for free. It’s powerful for our ability to find an audience that wants to hear our message.

Churches are putting their sermons videos online. It’s not hard. More should be doing this. Most of us already have the means to do it. A video camera, computer, Internet connection. Takes about 10-20 minutes to upload to YouTube [Google video doesn't have the 10 minute length limitation] and you’re done.

Get your site started with the content you already have.

Discussion forums exist to closed communities that demand people come to your site to contribute content. Blogs encourage contributing from various places with less limitations.

That last point came from a question in the audience, but it’s the most valid to me. Should my youth group’s website and forum be a source that’s open to the Internet at large or should it be private to those in our group? Before hearing Rich’s presentation I probably would’ve sided with the later, but now I’m not so sure.

What does a youth group website need in order to be an effective ministry tool? Obviously it’s more than just a way of communicating news and necessary information. How can it be used to build relationships, promote spiritual growth, and reach the unsaved community at large? And how can I give everyone a voice besides little forms for comments and a forum used by a minority of the youth group? Please, your ideas and input.

My Web Host Turned NetDrive
I have 100 GB of storage with my new web host, more than I think I could ever possibly use on websites. So, with the help of Novell’s free utility, NetDrive, I set up a folder on my web host and mapped it via FTP as X: drive to my computer. Saving documents and files to this drive works exactly the same way as saving to my local hard drive except files are saved securely to my web folder online. After setting up PHP File Navigator 2.0 on my web host, I have easy access to my files from any computer connected to the Internet. Works great for sharing files between my church computer and home computer.

SyncBack Backup
I really don’t wanna wait until after my data is destroyed to wish I had backed it up, so I finally have a backup system in place. Using the freeware version of SyncBack, my system now automatically backs up the important files I need to a folder on my home-made TiVo. Once I build Dana a computer with something other than Windows 98 our “TiVo” will double as a file server, giving us shared access to all our music and digital pictures. (Man, ya gotta love Linux.)

Firefox 2.0 Beta 1
After reading some great reviews of all the new features in Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 I decided to proceed with the upgrade and try it out. With the help of an extension, Nightly Tester Tools, all my previous extensions and themes work perfectly with the new version of Firefox. The new features are all very nice: integrated spell checker, controls for individual tabs, better RSS options, options to re-open accidentally closed tabs, protection against phishing sites, and more.

Google’s Firefox Synchronization
With the help of this handy extension from Google, my Firefox browsers on both Windows at home and on Ubuntu Linux at church are always in sync. All my bookmarks, history, cookies, passwords, etc., sync to each other with no effort on my part.

New RSS Reader
I previously was using a free PHP aggregator I set up on my web host called Feed On Feeds. It served me very well until I decided I needed to organize my 50-some feeds to make for more selective reading at times. Now everything is switched over to the free version of NewsGator and so far I’m very happy with the decision.

Higher PC Security
There’s too much junk online not to be too careful about your system’s security. So, I’m now running multiple firewalls at home, the newest being the free version of ZoneAlarm. And, after reading this article from PC World, I scanned my Windows system for rootkits with the free program RootkitRevealer. Unfortunately it picked up some suspicious activity. Before I remove RootkitRevealer’s findings, though, I think I need to learn a little more about what it found.

Okay, that’s enough nerdy stuff for now. Back to my youth pastor face…

A tip to those of you who use open-source material: ALWAYS update with the security patches! I always figured, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Well, if you don’t fix it, it will eventually be broke.

A report on the wedding and honeymoon will be forthcoming as time makes itself available.

As we sat in the back of that van driving from the YS Convention in Atlanta back to Philadelphia, I recorded several thoughts that I later only partly developed. Maybe I’ll post parts of it here some other time. For now, however, I’m glad to see what the NY Times reports on how youth ministry, culture, and technology are finally coming together through Teen Mania. It’s about time the Christian community offers something of quality that may actually compete with mainstream marketing. No more cheesy Onesimus video games or lame Christian t-shirts that play off popular brand names. It’s time we graduate from mooching off the success of others and instead successfully advance our own creative innovative ideas for reaching a generation for Christ.

Apparently Microsoft plans to unveil a website later this year that will rival the social networking giant, MySpace. It will offer users “an entirely new way for consumers to express their individuality online.”

FREE DVR is available this week from Yahoo! They are offering a beta version of Yahoo Go, a free Windows download that provides DVR functionality (with no monthly fee), tools for enjoying photos and music, and more.

It looks like Internet Explorer haters are taking action. Google will now pay you $1 for every person you refer to download Firefox.

The movie United 93 comes out on Friday. The tragic events of 9/11 were only 5 years ago. I’m not sure I’m ready to see a film about it yet. Hollywood waited 60 years to make a movie about Perl Harbor. Why this movie so soon? Just watching the trailer gives me a very cold uncomfortable feeling. Paul Greengrass’ defense for creating this film at this time is explained here and on the movie’s website, but even so, I’m still not sure I want to see it in theaters.

The program is still in beta and will not release to the general public until July 4th of this year. However, as a beta testing member, I was granted 5 special membership invitations to extend to friends, family, or whoever. Check out the site and read around a little. PCWorld also did a review that may be helpful.

If you’re interested in trading your old CDs for new music, let me know and I’ll gladly send you an invitation. Obviously, I can only invite the first five people to contact me (either by e-mail or posting a comment). The only info I’ll need is your e-mail address.

Taking an old computer I put together of spare parts, I purchased a PVR card, plugged it in and installed KnoppMyth, a Linux distribution built solely for the purpose of setting up a program called MythTV. MythTV is free, works beautifully and does everything I always wanted in a PVR and more. Just check out this features and screenshots list! My favorite feature: commercials can be automatically cut from recorded programs. Plus, everything I’d ever want to do with a photo gallery, personal videos, games, weather forecasts, music playlists, DVD burning, live TV control, and more, all from a remote control. And, with my 250 GB hard drive, I can store around 115 hours of TV and movies at DVD quality and stream it to any web-enabled computer.

Yeah, I’m a nerd. It’s fun.

Granted, there are two downsides to this: most gaming is written for Windows and the Linux learning curve can be kinda steep. I decided to keep Windows on my home computer since eliminating Guild Wars is simply not an option, but sometime soon I may install Ubuntu as a dual-boot and keep Windows only for gaming. And concerning the learning curve, using Linux for the first time isn’t any more difficult than coming to Windows for the first time. Most people are just familiar with Windows already, so making the switch only feels harder.

If anyone is considering a switch, I’d recommend downloading the Ubuntu CD and booting your computer from it. The Live CD option allows you to play with the operating system without making any changes to your computer. It’s a great safe way to see where the computing industry is heading.

I might try it anyway just because it’s still in beta and is free until it releases in June. Guess I’ll let you guys know how it works out.

However, PC World reported today on the preview of Novell’s Linux Desktop 10 and it sounds pretty sweet. I’m definitely gonna try it out when it releases in a couple months.

Although it’s obviously just a matter of time until Linux becomes a major player in the operating system market, maybe Linux Desktop 10 will be the Linux system I’m looking for much sooner than expected.

The market for digital music downloads via the Internet and mobile phones nearly tripled in 2005, accounting for 6 percent of total record industry sales, a sign anti-piracy efforts are working and digital music is catching on.

I’m not really an expert on this, but as a consumer it seems to me that the increased sales of legal music isn’t really due to anti-piracy efforts. All their law suits and hissy-fits didn’t do a thing to deter me from downloading from newsgroups as fast as my Internet connection would allow. What sold me on legal digital music was that they finally made downloading simple and flexible enough that it was worth my money. I would’ve gladly started paying earlier, but the music industry took so stinkin’ long to catch up to the ease of newsgroups and peer-to-peer networks.

Although I am generally happy with my Rhapsody-to-go subscription, there are still many times I feel like to switch back to illegal mp3s. The music licensing technology still creates all sorts of annoying errors and problems for me. Several months ago I even had to completely format my Creative Zen Micro and re-flash the firmware because, according to forums I googled since Rhapsody’s online support is weak, some music licenses somehow became corrupted and were unrepairable. Fortunately I know enough about formatting and firmware to make my Zen usable again, but I bet the average person would just trash it and give up.

Legal online music may have done better last year, but it has a far way to go until it’s as simple and easy to use as illegal music. I’m looking forward to whenever they stop tempting me to ditch their legal services.

A tutorial on videoblogging can be found at Freevlog.org.

I am the the leader for a guild in the game Guild Wars called the Valiant Knights. Unfortunately most of the Christian guilds in this game are not very good and are generally laughed at by the rest of the Guild Wars community. It seems to me that the more effective ministry route is to join a guild that contains unsaved members and build relationships with them there. We don’t need to create more separate sub-groups of Christians — we need to infiltrate the unsaved communities.

Being a youth pastor and sharing about my “career” with other guildmates has offered many great witnessing opportunities. I’m often teased as being the “pizza party man,” even though I have yet to have a pizza party with my youth group. I’ve earned their respect over the past 10 months and have had several great opportunities to sit in Teamspeak (voice chat) and talk privately with individuals about what they’re going through in life. It’s becoming very apparent to me that many people play games like this as an escape from real-life struggles, so I agree with Andy that it is an exceptionally needy mission field, especially with the millions who play Guild Wars alone. Instead of forming little groups of Christians, though, I hope to see Christians use these online communities to better learn what it means to be in the world but not of the world (John 17:14-15).

1. We all have something to say
2. We have a need to be heard
3. We want to know that our thoughts are valued

I am no different. It appears to me that these are pretty basic staples of human needs.

There are obvious implications for ministry here, but I’m not quite sure what they are. How would our churches be different if members experienced freedom to share their heart knowing that others would listen and be genuinely interested in what they have to say? What if ministry revolved more around listening to people instead of preaching to them? What if we did more to intentionally communicate love through listening and valuing people’s thoughts? What would this look like for the local church? Or do we already have a fair balance between listening, affirming, and returning heart-felt communication? I’m not really sure where I’m going with all this — just some thoughts I’ve been mulling over for a week or so. Anyone have ideas? (I promise I will listen and value what you have to say.)

It’s not like I’m some ignorant computer user who does a lot of stupid things to their system. I mean, I make a part-time living off of fixing these type of issues for other people. How can people who are uneducated about their computers stand to live with such a temperamental and fragile operating system? I just want something that works, is simple and clean. I want something that gives me 100% control over how it looks and operates. I want it to remain stable even if something else in the system goes wrong. Why can’t the different components work like modules so if one module goes bad it doesn’t affect any other parts of the system?

I especially want something where I don’t have to continually clean off constant stream of junk that somehow finds it’s way to the hidden corners of my system, the stuff that slows it down, sucks up resources, and sends off information about me and my computer usage. I’m tired of feeling like I’m competing with every other digital company out there for rights over my computer! Why does Windows have to make it so easy for them to whatever they want with it without my permission?

I set up a Linux system that’s currently sitting on the coffee-table behind me. I haven’t yet officially crossed over to Linux or anything, but I do enjoy playing around with it. Granted, it a little less user-friendly than Windows, (which, in my opinion, may contribute to many of the aforementioned problems), but it’s MY computer. Learning to make it work really isn’t the issue for me — that just takes time. The issue for me is another frustration: Why are a lot of my favorite applications only available for Windows? Rhetorical question, I know the answer, but it’s still frustrating that Microsoft has me chained to a product I don’t even like or want to use anymore.

Maybe someday soon I’ll take the plunge and ditch Windows as my primary operating system. Maybe I’m still waiting for the final straw that will push me over the edge. When that happens it’ll be a decision between Linux or Mac, but that’s another story for another day.

Why Starting a Blog is Like Starting Email

I’ve been talking to a lot of people who are at the edge of starting blogs and fairly nervous about it. One of the fears is that once they start, they won’t have much to say. While this actually could happen, I think it is unlikely. I’ve been struggling to say why, but an idea just came to me….

Remember when email just started up? We all marveled at it, but were unsure what to say to our friends. So we forwarded jokes and we passed along information we received from friends who got it from sources unknown and it turned out to be false. Over time, people got to understand the email channel and how to use it and to that most of us have too little time to enjoy a good joke. We also learned to be extremely careful about sending along potentially damaging information from unknown sources.

Now we are swamped in email–email that we cannot live without. I just suffered a week of email woes while traveling and a day later, I’m still scrambling to catch up with my work. We are mostly prudent in what we send and we understand the problem with the channel is that bad guys continue to gunk it up.

Blogging is like this. It is new and many people don’t know how to use it. But once they use it, they will find an endless amount of things to say. People go through trial and error, but they learn to be accurate and relevant, and they become less fearful of the channel. Finally they will wonder how they spent all those years living without it.

Take the quiz and see how security-conscious you are. Answer the questions based on what you actually do, not by what you know you should do. Post your results here.

“The juvenile, who was not identified because of his age, has been sentenced to 11 months’ detention, to be followed by two years of supervised release, for a series of hacking incidents and threats made over a 15-month period beginning in March 2004. He is also prohibited from using computers, cell phones, or any device capable of accessing the Internet during the period of this sentence.”

lol! What a sentence! Kids crack me up. I love ‘em!

Never underestimate the ability of a teenager!