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 .

The last few weeks have been crazy with our church’s spiritual campaign called Imagine getting ready to kick-off.  It’s going to be an awesome 9 weeks as we look at what it’s like to have a fully devoted life. One of our intro videos tells it best.

This weekend it all starts, if you’re anywhere near the Bradenton/Sarasota, Florida area you’ll want to check this out and get involved.  As part of Imagine, we’ll learn what could happen if we share our Testimony of what God’s done in our lives, gave God the Time he deserves, used our Talents to glorify Him, and invested our Treasures to share His love. Some teasers of things to come during Imagine, HUGE tailgate party, an American Idol singer, and….an amazing night with Shane and Shane in concert!

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.

Fresh from the Google Mail Blog yesterday is a post on a new security feature, Remote Sign-out.  You can see the other locations are you signed in on and activity history with IP addresses.  This worked on both my personal gmail account as well as my Google Apps email address.  It’s not much but I love to know that security is always being looked at and improved.

As the number 1 pick for Tampa Bay in 1999, I had heard of Josh Hamilton.  I had even heard that there was some sort of story that went along with him.  So as the sportscasters started mentioning more of Hamilton I decided to look him to see what it was all about.  Wow, what a story, I really enjoyed this one so you can check it out here.  Here a small quote to give you a glimpse of this story:

This devil seemed unbeatable; I couldn’t knock him out. But just when I felt like giving up, I felt a presence by my side. I turned my head and saw Jesus, battling alongside me. We kept fighting, and I was filled with strength. The devil didn’t stand a chance.

You can doubt me, but I swear to you I dreamed it. When I woke up, I felt at peace. I wasn’t scared. To me, the lesson was obvious: Alone, I couldn’t win this battle. With Jesus, I couldn’t lose.

Oh yeah, this was all while watching the Home Run Derby.  Josh Hamilton set a record hitting 28 HRs in the first round, and gave all the credit to God in the interview afterwards.  I also found this interview he did on mlb.com, nothing like using your platform to glorify God.

Oh, by the way, he ended up losing in the 3rd round, but does that really matter to anyone? No I didn’t think so.

Hello fellow Floridians,

I posted back in January trying to meet and greet with as many of the Florida church ITs as possible. As I’ve seen many more Florida guys in the IRC chat and elsewhere. If nothing else to be able to get some names, emails, phone numbers. I would love to get a Roundtable set-up, I could host at my church in Bradenton/Sarasota or if there is something more central, I’m willing to help in any capacity. Hit me up in the IRC, twitter, or the comments.

There has been numerous times that I or others have made comment that the CITRT group should have a prayer group of some sorts. After scrolling through my blog, I came across an old post, April 18th, 2006, to be exact, on people2pray.com. So I created a group for the Church IT people, please join in as we come together to lift each other up in prayer and in knowledge.

Sign-up here