so…what topics would make you go, ” Wow, I really have to go read that right now!”?

I recently twittered a thought I was having about impressions during a church service.  For those of you who may have forgotten, missed, or not cared about that I’ll share it again:

Would your church be accepting of me using my mobile device as my bible? Or would I be looked down on for texting and not paying attention?

The week before posting this while at church I was using my Blackberry Curve and my favorite bible app Youversion. No one said anything and I doubt anyone even noticed but it still started me thinking. The use of smartphones is becoming more prevalent and people are used to being able to do everything on the go.  They’ve got email, texting, social networking, calendars, to do lists, websurfing and everything else, of course there will come a time they want a bible application as well.  Now as culture changes in regards to the way we connect with others, do technology, and think of church how will the church respond?

So what are your thoughts? Would your church be okay with me using my phone openly during a service? would the pastor? Should we have a tech service where you can use your laptop, phones, etc?

The rumor was that with using VMware virtualization software you could run a 64 bit host on a 32 bit host as long as you had the right processor. I’ve done pretty much nothing with any type of VM other than downloading them and letting them sit.  After deciding that it might be worthwhile to be able to have Exchange at Woodland I wanted to get a VM installed to play with to see if it would meet our needs. Our new server runs Windows Server 2008 Enterprise 32 bit, which was great except for the fact that Exchange 2007 will only run in 64 bit. Because of this I tried to do Exchange 2003 which also wouldn’t work on Server 2008 32 bit.  After much googling and talking with some other church IT guys, I realized that you can’t run any Exchange on 2008 server bit.  So this is where the search began for running a 64 bit guest on a 32 bit host.  It wasn’t possible with Microsofts virtualization product but it WAS possible with the VMware product.

There are a few requirements of your processor to allow it to able to handle 64 bit operating systesm.  It has to have Intel VT and also have EMT64.  You may have to update the bios to enable the Intel Vt before VMware will allow you to install the 64 bit OS. VMware has a free utility that will check your hardware to see if it can handle the 64 big guest, this is the easiest way versus looking up processor specs and such, there is a utility for both windows and linux.

After everything is setup the installation was quite straight forward, nothing came up out of the ordinary.

After a few posts on the topic and limited connections, I’m excited as that as the National Church IT group has gotten bigger and gained more members and exposure that those that I’ve been able to meet and get connected with those a bit closer to home. As I’m sure all that have been to the in-person roundtable events whether regional or national there is nothing like sitting down and being able to talk and think together. Jason Reynolds has taken the big leap and tentatively set some dates and through out the invitation in a blog post yesterday. For day-to-day connections you can’t beat the IRC chat room and twitter. Stop by and say hi, we won’t byte.

I’ve used YouVersion.com on the computer and a few times have even used the mobile version, m.youversion.com. So I’m very excited to see that lifechurch.tv has released their YouVersion Bible App for the Blackberry. While in it’s infancy at version .1, you just know more and great things will come down the road. If you have an iPhone check out the free iPhone app, of if you just have mobile web access use m.youversion.com. From their site:

* Use the reader to study any part of Scripture—the entire Bible is at your fingertips.
* Take your pick from 35 different translations available in 19 different languages.
* Search the entire Bible for a word, phrase, or verse, and you’ll get your results in seconds.
* The One-Year Reading Plan provides daily selections to keep you on track when you’re on the go.
* Learn from others by checking out recent contribs.

As is pretty obvious by this blog I love God and technology and love finding new ways that technology can help share God with people.  Following the Google blog and some of the cool things they have coming out always seems to be cutting edge.  Today I noticed the Google Audio Indexing which from their own description is:

a tool that transcribes and indexes the spoken content on YouTube’s Politicians channels

Now I know currently it’s only for the political videos but I hope that at some time this will be available for any videos that you choose to have it index.  Think about having your weekly sermons uploaded to Google video, transcribed and indexed.  This can become an amazing teaching tool.

Combine this with the fact that Google Video is becoming part of Google Apps Premier Edition as well as Google Apps Education Edition which is free for non-profits with a 501c3 and this will be another huge score for churches and other non-profits to get more of their content searchable and useable on the web.

Was excited to see while looking around the other day that there will be a DVD study that will go along with Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love.  This is one of my favorite books and can’t wait to lead our small group through this study!

As is with most things recently the best way to find out about great offers and promotions for churches is through the CITRT IRC chatroom.  The latest was as I was searching for a Email marketing program such as Constant Contact, iContact, or similar.  As I found who others we’re using, Vertical Response was mentioned, and then that was followed up with the fact that they are free for non-profits.  This is almost completely true, they give 10,000 free emails a month to non-profits, and then 15% discount on everything else. I’ve sent about 2,500 emails with them since Friday with no problems, they are easy to use, have open, bounce, and click-through tracking.  I love free things and think you will too, try Vertical Response .

Had some fun last night playing some MarioKart Wii with Trace. Actually a few shots off the ol’ BB to show Trace in action. If you have a Wii and play any of the online games leave me a comment or send me a tweet, I’d love to “Meet Up” with you and play. Now check out this shot and this one.

My wife shared this one with me, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25668181/.  Just goes to prove that everyone can has an audience, so don’t think you can’t blog because no one will read it. From the article:

Olive Riley, of Woy Woy about 50 miles north of Sydney, began blogging in February last year, sharing stories from her life during the two world wars, raising three children on her own, and working as a station cook in the outback.