macs@church

The Ultimate Bible Tool

2008-09-30T18:33:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I was down in Corbin, KY doing some house searching and had a conversation with a Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS) grad who noticed the Accordance Bible program on my computer.

He said that anecdotally that the majority of profs at DTS use Macs because of this advanced scholarly Bible tool. In describing it to someone else, he didn't say it was the Bible program for Macs, he said it was the Bible program period.

And it's fast.

He then proceeded to show me a couple of the searches that you can do that I never would have imagined. I'm not an academic theologian and besides my 6 credits in classical Greek over 20 years ago, this was still all Greek to me. But it gave me a window into the power of the tool and how a serious student can use some of the language tools.

And did I say it was fast?

The introductory package along with a couple of purchased Bible versions will suit the average student and the additional tools will scale up to the most advanced theologian. With so many modules and packages, you get what you pay for and you only pay for what you need.

With version 8, it's now a Universal program which means it's optimized for new Macs that use the Intel processor as well as older Macs.

There are several other Bible programs for the Mac. I used to use Online Bible back in the old days running my black and white Mac Classic. There is a new version for the Mac and it's cost effective but I haven't tried it since the early beta. Logos is in beta for their Mac version but there isn't any support. There are even free tools and a whole bunch of online tools that work great too.

Check out these links below to some popular and some obscure Bible on Mac programs.

www.accordancebible.com

www.logos.com/mac

www.macsword.com

www.online-bible.com/maconlinebible.html

www.quickverse.com

Allowing Mac Change

2008-09-06T21:49:00.000-07:00

Having worked with several Bible camps over the years, I've noticed in years past that they are moving from being a PC based ministry to Mac based. One big reason for this is that more and more of the youth volunteers are Mac users themselves. This doesn't mean that PC's are kicked to the curb but it does mean that for many ministries, you will have to learn how to operate in a dual environment.

Being draconian in only allowing one platform or sticking resolutely to the same software that you purchased five years ago that hasn't kept with the times will discourage rather than encourage younger volunteers. Or, if you have focused on the PC side, you will likely limit the artistically minded who can really add to your visual or aural dimension as they tend to be Mac users. Budget limitations and your ministry demographic notwithstanding.

One Bible camp purchased several PC based systems to develop DVD's for the campers several years ago. Fast forward this past summer and most of the editing were done on Macs that volunteers brought to camp while the PC's sat gathering dust. Now anytime you work with huge video files, you're going to have a program crash on you. With the PC's, the crashes would sometimes require a complete system rebuild as the hard drive became corrupt beyond repair. With the Macs, a simple restart of the the program usually was all that was required, although in a couple of cases, some re-editing had to be redone.

Now I understand that the director wants to move this part of the ministry to Macs next year as soon as donations or budget allows. The still useful PC's will be repurposed in a different role.

Instead of swimming upstream, you might want to ride the tide of growing Mac usage.

Tiny Church on Budget #3 - MobileMe

2008-06-23T17:23:00.000-07:00

MobileMe is a huge gift to churches. Really it is.

Most churches cannot afford the thousands (or possibly tens of thousands) it costs to put in an email server that can synchronize your contacts, email and calendar and provide the means so that you can access it via your Mac or PC, your smartphone, or online.

Usually the standard is to put in a Microsoft Exchange solution but with the cost of seat licenses for all your users, the cost in hardware and maintenance, not to mention the security measures, switches, etc. it can eat up a budget.

And be impossible to attain for all except the larger churches.

Or the alternative is to manually synchronize that information finding ad hoc ways to keep all your information the same so that you have the information you need to respond to your ministry's needs.

Now enter MobileMe which is the next evolution of Apple's .Mac service which they are now branding as "Exchange for the rest of us."

What that means is that without buying any hardware or software, you now have a solution that can synchronize your email, calendar, and contacts across your devices, whether it is a Mac, a PC, an iPhone, or accessing this information online.

You're at a coffee shop and an email comes in with a request for a meeting. You reply and confirm a meeting time, enter the event in your iPhone. Your Mac or PC back at the office that is on updates its calendar with the same meeting moments later.

Or you're at the in laws on the computer and want to check your schedule for the next day, you log onto www.me.com and check your calendar to see what the day looks like. Because you want to spend an extra day with your family, you drag the next day's scheduled events to other days to clear out your schedule. And your church secretary or administrative assistant can check your updated calendar in seconds.

You also have up to 20 GB of online storage so you can store your critical documents online and securely access them from any Mac or PC with an up-to-date browser. You can even use it to share files with others that are too big to email without giving away access to the rest of your documents.

MobileMe also has a photo component so that you can share your photo albums

What makes MobileMe so great to use is that the online applications for email, calendars, and contacts are so good you might prefer using them than your desktop application. And you get "push" technology as well - which means that changes are pushed out to devices that are to be synchronized rather than the device polling a server on a periodic schedule.

And all this for $99/year (or less if you can purchase discounted MobileMe memberships like you could with .Mac).

At the time of this writing, I believe that MobileMe requires you to have an @me.com email address.

Check it out at www.apple.com.

Tiny Church Budget #2

2008-06-23T16:44:00.001-07:00

In my first post, Tiny Church Budget, I wrote about how the entry-level MacBook with Apple's iWork software can provide high quality output for your foundational media needs. I also promised to discuss some of the additional bonuses that you get for that small investment and how they can help you in your ministry.

In one word - iLife.

In that standard suite of media applications you get a rich and impressive collection of tools. iPhoto. iDVD. iMovie. Garageband. iWeb.

Have a bunch of digital photos that you want to create a photo montage with music? Connect your digital camera to your MacBook, download the photos seamlessly. Highlight the new album, pick your song and hit play. Wow! High quality photo montage with top quality, seamless transitions. In seconds.

Just shot some video and want to put together a polished video story? iMovie makes it easy and has standard high quality themes that a professional studio would use.

Want to record your sermons and create podcasts? Or want to augment your inner musician by adding a variety of instruments, styles, beats, riffs? Garageband is the perfect tool for the auteur on a shoe string.

Now, need a polished looking website that hosts your podcasted sermons, your video creations, photo albums, and blog of things happening around your church? iWeb makes putting together great looking sites and content easily and quickly with professionally designed themes and what-you-see-is-what-you-get layout capability. You don't have to have a cheesy-looking website and pay thousands for your sermons online.

Duplicating this functionality in stand alone applications would cost much more than a few hundred dollars. And none of those applications are integrated like the iLife applications are at any price. In fact, your iWork applications (including Keynote) can also access your content that you created in iLife in a seamless way.

Next in this series I'm going to talk about MobileMe and the impact that it can have on church operations.

iLife. Standard with all new Macs.

Tiny Church Media Budget

2008-06-23T15:25:00.000-07:00

If you're a small church looking to make an investment into technology to help with handling media, song presentation, and some form of PowerPoint, you may be wondering which way to go. After all, you have been through the using the old cantankerous PC that someone donated and you're tired of the clumsiness and technology hiccups that occurs, yet you feel that unless you have a big budget, you can't have something of high quality.

Not true!

There are some very cost effective solutions for your church to put some quality in what you do without requiring a technological genius running the equivalent of a Houston space operation center.

Your foundational media needs will typically comprise four areas:

Lyric presentation

Music/audio playback

DVD play

Speaker slides

For a church starting out, one of the best options to address these four foundational areas is a MacBook notebook computer with the iWork suite ($79). That's it. You can even get by with the basic MacBook for $1099 US and do all these things fairly well.

Now, could you do this with a PC? Yes. But you would have to purchase additional software and perhaps go with additional options that in the end, may end up being a hodge-podge of software and hardware that can work, but probably won't work as smoothly as you would like it to in the end. And probably only save you a couple of dollars up front in trade for a lot of headaches in the end.

So let's talk about this solution.

While many churches start out with PowerPoint for lyric presentation, you can use Keynote (Apple's equivalent to PowerPoint) that comes with the iWork suite. One advantage of Keynote is that the Hollywood quality transitions are very smooth so you can gently fade from one slide to the next. Keynote can also easily use nested slides so that when arranging a song list, you only have to move the first slide and all the other slides of the song come with it.

There is also an open source, free lyric presentation called OpenSong, which gives you not only lyric presentation, but also the ability to download lyrics from CCLI, and can print out guitar chords, etc. OpenSong runs on Macs as well as PC's. I don't know if OpenSong can handle video and I didn't find it intuitive but you might find it useful.

After either of these two solutions, I would jump to ProPresenter by Renewed Vision. One cool thing with ProPresenter is that you can take an audio track and match the words to the audio track so people can sing along. You can assign backgrounds as well so all the user has to do is press the play button and you get a full visual/audio presentation that can rival larger churches (if done right).

For audio and music playback, you have iTunes and QuickTime on a Mac which are amongst the easiest to use. I've used Windows Media Player on a PC and just found it to be messy and sometimes couldn't get it to do what I wanted it to do. With a $29 QuickTime Pro license, you can import and convert many types of media, both video and audio. I use Handbrake to rip a chapter from a DVD and then use QuickTime to crop the video to exactly what I want. Then I can drop the movie file on a Keynote or ProPresenter slide and you can smoothly launch it.

DVD playback is excellent on a Mac. It comes with high quality DVD player software that allows you to quickly sort through chapters. It handles playback gracefully, especially when connecting to an external projector. Most PC's come with a low-end, generic DVD player from a company that paid to have their software come pre-installed. Apple designed their DVD player to be an integrated component of the overall system and to provide a high quality user experience that has an intuitive controller, not some hokey looking interface that was designed by an offshore electronics company.

For speaker slides, I prefer Keynote. Again, smooth transitions for one. But even more importantly, Keynote discourages putting tons of text on a slide, which inexperienced presenters so love to do. Keynote is designed by people who understand visuals and presentations wasn't designed for engineering presentations as PowerPoint was originally. Keynote seems to want you to do things in a classy way whereas PowerPoint allows you to be as garish as you want.

Okay, so here is your tab:

MacBook - $1099

Video Adapter - $19 (for projector connectivity)

Apple remote - $19 (for Keynote and also Front Row media software_

iWork - $79

Total - $1,216 retail price.

Not bad for a media station that can run the top media software when you're ready as well as provide you with some additional tools that I'll cover in a another post that can really assist with your church's media needs.

Staging Backgrounds

2008-06-18T13:48:00.001-07:00

At our church, we don't usually have a single background slide for all slides. At times, we will change up the backgrounds to match the songs.

When I first started with ProPresenter, I would assign a background to a particular slide so all I had to do was cycle through the slides as the worship progressed. But this turned into a painful exercise because after the service, I would have to remove the backgrounds for the song because we didn't want the backgrounds to be stale always playing the same ones.

So now what I do is I create a new Library folder where I will drag the different types of pictures and moving clips that I want to use for that service and keep that media folder available. This is really useful now that when you click on a background slide, the arrow keys still advance the lyrics.

(In older versions of ProPresenter, when you clicked on a background slide, the arrow keys would then advance the backgrounds instead of the lyrics.)

Now, after a service, I no longer have to delete the backgrounds slides - only the new library folder I created.

And just for fun, sometimes I will change a background while on the same slide for lyrics so that the background matches the words. If done right, it can really help with the visual of what is being sung. If I do this, it is usually at the end of a song where the same words are being sung again.

But remember the golden rule - less is more!

Transitioning from Song to Keynote/PowerPoint

2008-03-16T22:29:00.001-07:00

I was recently asked how do I transition between using ProPresenter (or whatever music tool you're using) and Keynote or PowerPoint for the speaker's slides so there isn't a hard transition?

(I don't advocate importing PowerPoint slides into other programs - I've seen too many problems with that although some may have found a working model. I find it's better to let those speaker presentation programs do their jobs and let the song presentation software do it's job. The philosophical approach to song presentation is usually quite different than screen support for a speaker.)

What I usually do is to create a theme graphic that I use as the desktop screen image as well as in ProPresenter and Keynote/PowerPoint. That way, as I switch from one application to the next, or just have nothing displayed, the theme graphic appears on screen. The theme graphic should follow the theme of the message or series for continuity. Even with that theme background, I may still use certain pictures and backgrounds during the worship singing but only for punctuated effect and return to the theme graphic so that connection is never lost.

The DVD Spin Down Problem

2008-03-16T21:36:00.000-07:00

If you ever had the problem of having to play a clip off a DVD during a service but when you get to that moment, the DVD player has passed out and needs time to wake up, don't be ashamed, you're not the first nor are the last. The problem with this is DVD spin down.

In many cases, it can be 20-30 minutes between the time you cue up a DVD to play a segment and the time in the service when you need to play it. Unfortunately, most DVD players will have gone into some form of sleep mode that can require an uncomfortable pause before it spins back up, loads the buffer, and begins to play. Or if you have it in a PC, sometimes you can't recover at all if the PC went to sleep or it takes an eternity to spin up, causing the audience to get restless and the murmur of congregational talk rises . If you have a Mac, it still can take a few seconds before the DVD spins up again and is ready to play. But at least with a Mac, you get a decent DVD player that is designed to work with the system, not a cheap third-party add-on commonly found in PC's that I haven't found to be as stable in a dynamic environment.

In the past, what I have often done is used Handbrake (a free download) to rip a chapter off a DVD into a QuickTime file and then use QuickTime's Pro features to trip off what I don't need. I would then drop this QuickTime file into ProPresenter onto a slide so I could flow right into it right after a song or announcement, making a very smooth transition. The problem with this is that not all DVD's can be ripped, you need time to do this (I figure 2.5 minutes of ripping for every minute of video), and there is some quality loss, although most people would probably never notice it.

With the newest version of ProPresenter, there is an option to prevent DVD spin down. So you can cue up a DVD in ProPresenter's DVD player, play your songs and smoothly transition in and out of the DVD clip.

So why not use a standard DVD player? Well, to make sure your DVD player is ready to go, you need a separate monitor and a multiple input/output switch so that you can preview it offline and then bring it up on the main screen. Hopefully, in the rush to keep things moving, you don't mess up the switch. Second, it adds another layer of devices, cables, etc.

The other issue is one of using multiple screens. Some PC's have trouble keeping the dual screen settings when it loses the video output. So when you switch to another device and return to the PC, it has to re-initialize the dual screen setting.

In larger churches, this may not be an issue but in small churches where you have a lone ranger at the media station, this is much more critical. The Mac operating system has the ability to recognize most projectors by name and keep those settings if you use a switchbox between sources. And if there is a reason that you need to turn on/off dual screen support, that can be done with a single mouse click. No jumping into menus three levels deep and a bunch of mouse clicks to set resolution and dual monitor support as on a PC.

With a tool such as ProPresenter, you can deliver a seamless approach to moving between service elements.

iPhone Sacrifice

2008-02-03T06:44:00.000-08:00

In my continual effort to support those in ministry, I purchased an iPhone so that you could have the skinny on this device before taking the dive. (Actually, it was a semi-complex transaction between my employer and I but those are just details).

First of all, the iPhone is a great device. The thing works as advertised. Having used two other smartphones in the last couple of years, it clearly is the best when it comes to interfacing with the device. It seems to have an uncanny way of just knowing what you want to do.

The Mac philosophy is clearly in play here. Whereas Windows often makes people cower into corners because it presents a "press this button and every thing will go wrong" interface, the iPhone invites touching. See a button, go ahead and press it. It's there for you to use. Come out of your shelters people, it's safe to compute again!

Although the EDGE network that AT&T uses is not the quickest for browsing, having just come back from a business trip in Ft. Lauderdale, I was impressed with how many places I could use the available Wi-Fi (and free at that) and speed things up. Call quality was excellent. And the ability to dynamically enlarge text in emails and in the browser was phenomenal. This feature alone bypasses the typical compromises that other handset makers have when you have a system wide font setting with only 3 sizes, too small, small, and cyclop-sized.

If your church uses Microsoft Exchange as your email server, you will have to turn on the IMAP email protocol and open up a port in your firewall to allow the email traffic through. Some administrators may not like that because of security concerns but I hope to see a resolution to that soon.

Otherwise, most email setups should work just fine for your iPhone. The ability to stay connected when you're physically disconnected is an awesome and liberating feeling. No need to carry a laptop everywhere you go just because you need email and browser connectivity. Not to mention that it feels not much bigger or heavier than my previous Motorola RAZR V3 so I carry it often just in my pants pocket, leaving the belt clip behind.

The iPhone isn't perfect but it's better than all the other devices I have worked with and with the impending software development kit (SDK) that Apple will release shortly, a lot of that will be alleviated when third party developers can create applications for it.

If you have a Mac, the setup should be fairly seamless. If you have a recent PC running iTunes, it should work too but I haven't tried it.

If you're not a Mac convert after using the iPhone, you probably will be after using it. Might be a great conversation starter and entry way into the gospel too because strangers will ask you about it.

MacBook Air - One Less Burden in Ministry

2008-01-18T10:56:00.001-08:00

If you haven't already seen it, jump down to www.apple.com and check out the MacBook Air. It is a cool new, ultra-lightweight, ultra-thin MacBook with a shiny, taut aluminum skin.

If you're tempted to bite into this wicked looking fruit, you might want to think of your ministry needs and concerns before doing so. Part of the reason is that you are paying a premium for looks so you can gauge your flock's response to a computer in designer duds.

This beauty is designed for people who love the look, can live in a wireless world, and have minimal need for optical media. There are a few things that you can do to overcome those moments when an all-wireless situation is not possible, such as networking (you gotta buy an affordable adapter), or when you need multiple USB devices (use a portable hub, they're cheap too).

But if you need Firewire, such as connecting up to a so-equipped digital video camera, you will have to look elsewhere.

Otherwise, the MacBook Air would be a great travel companion that doesn't conspire to make us all one-armed neanderthals like most notebooks. Ministry has enough burdens as it is already.

ProPresenter Rocks!

2008-01-06T22:50:00.000-08:00

I just did two back to back youth conferences using ProPresenter for the first time and the software really rocked! As the main guy to switch between Keynote, DVD, and ProPresenter, everything worked smoothly as it should have. The only glitches were operator error and experience will fix some of those. But both venues reported a much improved lyric presentation and asked me back for next year.

One of those conferences involved over 3,000 students with By the Tree, who led them in a weekend of worship. The band often just followed the Spirit in the songs that they often sung and at one point, I was switching between the choruses of two different songs that they were singing in an amazing mashup! And it was cool because the video guys used a luma key so I could present the lyrics in the bottom third of the screen over live IMAG video.

One funny story is that I had a DVD cued up in ProPresenter to play halfway into a service. The video started to play just fine along with the audio but after a minute, my wakeup software that automatically launches and plays iTunes came on and took over the audio. I had incorrectly set my alarm time so it was my fault completely. It's one of those caveats of using a computer that isn't totally dedicated for presentations.

Microsoft Office for mac:2008

2007-11-22T07:18:00.001-08:00

For those who have to work in a mixed environment or share complex Office files frequently, this next release of Microsoft's Office for Mac (January 2008) is hotly anticipated.

When Apple switched to Intel processors in 2006, Microsoft had a huge task to change their software code so that it would run natively on the Intel-based Macs. Instead of upgrading the current version, Microsoft decided to focus on the next version. The current version of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) works on the new generation of Macs using Apple's built-in emulation technology called Rosetta.

As a user, you never see this emulator but you can feel it at times with sluggish responses. And if you only have 1 gig of RAM, you may notice other programs running sluggishly as well. In fact, I have noticed that PowerPoint runs at turtle-speed when it has graphics inserted from the PC version. So slow in fact that many times, I run the PC version of PowerPoint in a virtual machine which is so much faster.

However, the next version of Office for the Mac promises to run natively on Intel-based Macs which should mean increased speed and performance.

But it also promises better compatibility with PC originated files. In most cases, the current version works with the majority of documents just fine but once in a while, some formatting or graphic would trip the mac version up. For instance, if someone put a 4 color picture (CMYK) instead of a 3 color (RGB) picture, the image would show up as a black box on the Mac.

PowerPoint is the worst transgressor cross-platform as Flash and Windows Media files would work in the PC version but would not work on the Mac. And then if you inserted a QuickTime video into a Mac version of PowerPoint, a PC user couldn't play it. Managing cross-platform issues sometimes posed an ugly challenge and as a minority Mac user, I hated to ask my PC associates to make compromises. My short term solution was to run the PC version of PowerPoint inside a virtual machine running Windows which ran faster. Go figure.

So we'll see what the next version holds. Microsoft said that cross platform compatibility was a top priority during development of this new version coming in January. Time will tell but from what I've seen so far, it is a must-have upgrade for someone like me that spends most of the day using Office.

Death by PowerPoint

2007-11-21T06:48:00.001-08:00

I use PowerPoint all the time at work but when I'm in ministry and I see PowerPoint, it usually is a boredom enhancing tool.

The reasons?

Most speakers use PowerPoint as a way to keep their thoughts organized. And they want to share those notes with the rest of the world.

Uggh. Just talk to me.

Also, people put way too much text on the screens, use low grade graphics, and cheesy looking animations to get people's attention.

The best communicators today use very little PowerPoint at all except for putting up Scripture, showing a video clip or photo, or using it as a visual backdrop.

And if you use PowerPoint, or my personal preference for ministry, Keynote, using it in that fashion makes your points much more, well, poignant.

When you have to prepare a message, ask yourself this question "If there was one thing you wanted your audience to walk away with and apply to their life, what would it be?"

When you have that question answered, focus on that. Use PowerPoint or Keynote as a visual backdrop or to highlight one key thought or asking one question that you're spending time on answering.

Everything else you might talk about, although interesting and likely very important, may be a distraction from your message. Save it for another time.

For the really bold who want to dramatically improve their delivery, I highly suggest that you read "Communicating for a Change" by Andy Stanley and Lane Jones.

Still in doubt? Go to Northpoint Church and watch or listen to Andy Stanley speak. He is one of the most gripping speakers I know and he doesn't use PowerPoint.

PS. Some of you may read this and question my Simple Church presentation in another post. The difference is that in a sermon, message, devotional, you're goal is life change, not information transmission. In my Simple Church presentation, the goal was information transmission.

iChat Screen Sharing

2007-11-21T05:45:00.001-08:00

Last week I was able to check out iChat's new Screen Saving feature that allows me to see and even take over someone else's desktop (who also must be running Leopard).

This was really helpful in troubleshooting an error in seconds and explaining it while it was being fixed, instead of trying to explain everything over the phone.

One cool feature is that it scales the other person's screen so it fits nicely on your own. This allowed me to work with a 24" iMac on my 15.4" MacBook Pro.

There are just a couple of caveats - you have to have good upload speeds for smooth operation otherwise the response can be a little choppy. Setting your background to black instead of your favorite abtract rainbow spectrum might help with that too.

The other caveat is that if you're controlling someone else's screen, the moment he or she touches the mouse, you lose control until the mouse on the other end stops moving. So tell the person to sit on their hands or pick up that Rubik's cube that they have never solved.

Simple Church

2007-11-10T12:36:00.000-08:00

I have become a big fan of the Simple Church concept because it helps churches to focus on the process of discipleship and not on creating or maintaining programs as a shotgun, hope something happens approach to discipleship. I'm not talking about the house church movement but what Rainer and Geiger talked about in their book, The Simple Church. You can read much of the book online here

What I did is use Keynote to create a QuickTime that you can click through to watch a presentation. The version on this website converted to flash so it doesn't allow for manual control that the QuickTime version does. There is no audio but it was all done without any special tools, plug-ins, etc. Just goes to show some of the cool things you can do with Apple technologies to get your point across in a high quality way.

Spaces in church

2007-11-09T16:30:00.001-08:00

No, this isn't about running out of room for your Sunday School classes, this is about a new feature in Mac OS X Leopard (10.5).

Spaces is like having 2, 4, 6, however many desktops. I didn't think much of it when I saw the previews but after using it, it really is a productivity improver.

Unless you have a really big monitor, Spaces can really help you to manage all those open windows that you like to have but not sure what to do with.

Imagine that on one screen you can be running your email program, another you can be running iTunes listening to music or the latest podcast on accelerating snail growth, and on the third screen, you have your church management program and browser open.

With a simple key combination, you can switch to these various screens to maintain a clean, uncluttered look.

Sure, you can use Expose to navigate your application windows but if you have more than four or five open, even that can get unwieldy, especially on a laptop monitor.

Spaces is like Expose on steroids - now you're seeing desktops in scaled windows, not just applications.

Now before you go bragging to everyone, having multiple desktops has been around for a while, Apple's made it accessible, usable, and intuitive.

How Leopard (OS X 10.5) Works For Your Church

2007-11-08T18:16:00.000-08:00

Apple's shiny new operating system, Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) has a bunch of new tools that a small church office can use to work in ways that the Windows world can only dream about.

Sharing documents
Okay, you can email back and forth, and then schedule a meeting to go over the latest board presentation or you can start a real time video messaging session using iChat and click to share your presentation or document and go over each page in real time. You can do this in between your offices or between states without having to pay for expensive web presentation sessions or trying to do it all by phone. All you need is a network connection or high speed Internet to make this work. No other subscription fees or batteries required.

Sharing desktops
Not sure of how to do something or need some help? With iChat, you can share your desktop with your favorite Mac support guy or gal, and while you watch, they can control your Mac, showing you how to accomplish a needed task or fix something that you thought was broken, but really wasn't.

Calendar
With the standard iCal calendaring software, you can setup meetings, invite participants and keep your life organized. Larger organizations may want to get the affordable Leopard Server which comes with the ability to manage calendars centrally, or with the server version of OS X, centrally manage calendars, resources, and meeting rooms in a snap. Check when others are available or with a single click, have it pick the meeting time for you.

Address Book
Want to go and see someone but not sure of where they live. Find the contact in your Address Book and with one click, bring a Google map of where they live.

Keep your machine running fast.
Nothing slows a computer down like the number of installed, active fonts. With the built in Font Book application, you can turn off all your fonts that you don't commonly use. And if you use a fun or crazy font in a document, whenever you open that document, the font will automatically load and stay active until you close your document, and then the font goes dormant again. No more font fog that slows you down.

Mail
This isn't just any email program. You can create To-do's and notes right from within an email. Most other programs force you to use another program or change interfaces within your email client to do that. Ever go back and forth between an email to put something on your task list? Well, no longer is that required. And when you create a task, it automatically enters that into iCal to keep your calendar up to date.

And if someone sends you their address in your email, it is smart enough to recognize that so you can add it to your contact without having to retype it.

Coverflow
Have a folder full of documents that you are always opening and searching through to find the right one? Well, you can use the blazingly fast Spotlight feature that will search for words inside your documents and emails. Or, use the Coverflow feature to flip through your documents just like a jukebox. And if you see one you want to look at, you can flip through the pages of that document or presentation without having to open the software to do it. How about that for finding that presentation on why your 200 member church needs that million dollar pipe organ?

Print preview.
Ever print something only to realize that it doesn't look the same as it did on screen? Well, that doesn't happen often on the Mac but there is an integrated print preview feature when you go to print so you can see what your documents will look like when your trusty inkjet lovingly lays down layers of ink. And more than 2000 printers are supported allowing you to plug and play with most of today's popular printers without having to install software drivers and all that messy stuff.

There is more than that and you can go to www.apple.com to find out all about Leopard. And FYI, if you're new to the Mac world, since the first version of OS X (pronounced "ten"), each one has had an internal code name after a big cat. Well, the internal code names became popular with Mac fans so now Apple uses the names in their marketing.

Song Presentation Software

2007-11-08T17:34:00.000-08:00

I've been looking at some song presentation software to use at different events and I decided to invest in ProPresenter by Renewed Vision. I like it because it's focused on song presentation and doing that one thing very well. Some of the other programs I tried seemed to be trying to do too much and as a result, don't do any one thing well.

The other reason is stability. ProPresenter just seemed to be rock solid whereas some of the other ones crashed on me when I tried to push them. That is my anecdotal evidence, not the final word.

But I'm very happy with it, particularly being able to tie slide timings along with an audio track and the way it just smoothly handles video. I found it easy to use even though the help files were quite short. I never got comfortable with some of the other options.

But ProPresenter is Mac only. And for good reason. It's easy to support. Apple inserts some of the best tools for visual presentations. Macs have supported multiple monitors for years (compared to the problems that Windows has suffered with video drivers for a single monitor) and has the most experience with video playback. It also seamlessly integrates with the iLife programs so you can drag and drop in pictures, movies, and audio clips from QuickTime, iTunes, and iPhoto.

And if your church is growing in complexity is using media in services, you might find that switching to the Mac platform, while initially requires work, will turn out to be a great thing. You can do a lot of the same things on a PC but the workflow will likely be more cumbersome. And when the heat is on in the middle of a service when a change needs to be made, that can mean all the difference between something that goes off smoothly and something that becomes a distraction.

Top 5 Reasons to Go Mac

2007-11-08T15:30:00.000-08:00

Here are my top 5 reasons why ministries at a technology crossroad or beginning a path of replacement should consider going Macs instead of PC's.

Reason #1 Ease of use.
Most ministries can only afford volunteer help and then, only at the whim of the volunteers. The ease of use of Macs and friendly messages encourages people to learn new ways to use their computers and maintain them on their own. I work in a technology environment and without the expertise of our full time IT staff and subscribing to multiple protection schemes, many of our users would be in a lot of trouble and would require a rebuild every six months. While it might not be true in your case in particular, it is true in general.

Reason #2 Great software - standard.
Macs come with a standard complement of tools that encourages staff and even lay people to generate great looking results. The iLife package, for instance, gives you video editing, DVD burning, photo management, website and blogging creation tools that are easy to learn, and are integrated across the applications for a seamless approach to working with media.

In addition, the email, calendar, and instant messenger programs are all great tools that can be used to collaborate and communicate easily. iWork gives the small church office a low cost, high quality way to create documents and spreadsheets while still maintaining compatibility with the rest of the Office-using world. And that Keynote presentation software that comes with iWork can easily spice up any message with high quality visuals and wake up a sleepy congregation. At a fraction of the cost. But if you really want Office with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, it's available too. I use it everyday at my all-PC work and most don't realize that I'm even using a Mac.

Reason #3 Viruses. Malware. Adware.
There are hundreds of thousands of viruses, malware, and adware stuff out there that installs easily onto PC's, even with protection. Macs on the other hand have no viruses in the wild (at the time of this writing) and there is only one trojan known trojan type. However, to install the trojan requires the prompt to download an application and the successful entry of an administrative password. And it can't self-propagate to other computers.

There are over 25 million Macs running OS X worldwide and the number is rapidly growing. OS X has been out since 2001 while some phones with far fewer numbers and shorter lifespans have already experienced viruses. What gives? The nod goes to the UNIX underpinnings of Mac OS X that was designed from the ground up to operate in a networked environment, something which the leading operating system was not originally designed to do.

Less viruses and adware means less problems, downtime, and potential security risks.

Reason #4 Long lifecycles. Low cost.
Because most churches can't afford to replace their computers every three years to keep up with technology, Macs are often the lowest cost option because they typically last longer while still running modern versions of software. My 2000 iMac is still running the widely used release of OS X (2005) and is very usable. It may not run the latest 3D games or push pixels in Photoshop, but as a tool for the Internet, email, listening to music, and creating Word documents, it hums along adequately for most end users.

Most people wouldn't even want to run a four year old PC on XP, let alone seven. And while a 7 year old PC is nothing much more than landfill for most, people still pay money for an old iMac or Mac laptop. And at today's prices, Macs compare favorably with

Reason #5 Macs can run windows. In a sandbox.
If you do have that one application or software that you must run and it's Windows only, you can run Windows in a virtual environment on your Intel-based Macintosh with excellent performance providing you have enough RAM memory. And if you keep it to that one program and stay off the Internet in the virtual environment, you can probably expect years of problem free running. If I need to download a file, I do it using my Mac and then drag and drop the file into the virtual environment and run it there.

Funny thing is, I run a heavy duty virtual environment on my Mac laptop better than my counterparts running a PC laptop with the same processor and memory.

There are other great solutions too for running or accessing Windows applications such that for most, it has become a small hurdle rather than an insurmountable obstacle to move to a Mac.

Reason #6 Compatibility
Okay, I said Top 5 but I thought of this one towards the end. Most media, document, and imaging file types from a PC can be opened, edited, and used on a Macintosh. Whether it is Word, Excel, a movie file, an MP3 song, or picture, most of these files can move seamlessly between both platforms. There are some limitations but I've seen PC's suffer just as much incompatibility with files from other PC's. On one occasion, two PC's, the same model, running the same version of PowerPoint, couldn't share the same presentation, but it opened just fine on my Mac. Go figure.

So there you have it. My reasons why a ministry should consider. There are more, which I will cover in other posts. But that is enough to digest so far.