I’m sure some of you have been seeing my tweets and Facebook posts about Spend Local SC. In essence, it’s an idea I got from some friends out in Oklahoma who run Keep It Local OK. I want to try and promote local businesses here in South Carolina, which are a big part of our economy. Here’s the run-down on how it will work.

For Consumers:

Consumers will be able to purchase Spend Local SC cards for $10 at participating businesses, which will afford them certain discounts or special offers at all of Spend Local SC’s member businesses. Through the savings offered from the various businesses, customers will be able to cover the initial price of the card in savings from its discounts!

For Businesses:

Businesses can participate for only $500/year. This entitles them to a description page on our website, as well as promotion by all of our various social media outlets. Businesses will be occasionally featured, with the opportunity to have owner interviews or other information added to their page’s description. Businesses will be asked to offer a special discount or other promotion to Spend Local SC cardholders. In addition, participating businesses will be able to purchase Spend Local SC cards at a discounted rate, and then resell them for the full retail price of $10, retaining all of the profit. Essentially, a business could cover their entire membership fee with profits from the cards, and possibly even begin to make money off of them!

So, what do you think? If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me!

The UnCollege movement started by Dale Stephens has created quite a stir lately. The movement encourages students to consider self-education rather than formal higher education. I had the privilege to ask Dale a few questions about the organization, as well as some of his advice for students considering seeking a college degree.

1. What is the biggest thing you’ve learned since starting UnCollege?

I have learned that no matter what you say you are always wrong. I can have the best intentions, but no matter what I do someone will always disagree. That disagreement is the best part of the process because you learn from it.

2. How do you respond to people or organizations who criticize your ideas and plans?

I empathize with them to understand their viewpoint. By doing this, I often learn more about myself and my ideas in the process.

3. What steps would you recommend a soon-to-graduate high school student take before deciding whether or not to go to college?

I suggest that students take some time out of the system. Spend a year abroad, doing manual labor, or working an internship. If nothing else, you’ll learn what you don’t want to do for the rest of your life and hopefully get a better picture of what you do want to do in life.

4. Any suggestions for colleges or universities looking to become more relevant?

There are many, but I frankly don’t think this is where my time is best spent. I think it is more important to build alternatives to the current system than try to improve a broken institution.

5. What is your favorite part about running UnCollege?

The best part about running UnCollege is getting emails from people all over the world who have been inspired by the work I’m doing. This morning it was Chile and China. Who knows what emails I’ll get tomorrow — but it doesn’t matter. Those emails are extremely validating.

Thanks to Dale for spending a little time with these questions and giving his honest opinion. I highly recommend taking a look at some of UnCollege’s resources and following the great work that’s going on there.

[Image via Lefty Parent]

I wanted to take a second to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! I hope you’re able to spend time with your family and enjoy this great day. Also, I hope Santa was good to you. If you found a new gadget under the tree, check out the great post over at ChurchMag for the apps we recommend. Have a great day, and I’ll get back to regularly scheduled programming next week!

Yesterday I talked a bit about distraction and how I’ve tried to deal with it in the past. There’s another method that I’ve heard really helps that I didn’t mention yesterday, and that I wanted to get some thoughts on. Many people suggest that using good old-fashioned pen and paper helps them to work through ideas and problems much easier than using a digital counterpart. Let’s explore that a little more.

I must admit I haven’t spent a ton of time with this method, but it is something I want to try and implement in my life more. Nearly everything I do involves a computer or at least my smartphone. My to-do list, calendar, blog posts, and many more things are all digitized. I even use Evernote to digitize syllabi from my professors or other important documents I receive. While it may work for things like that, I’m becoming more and more convinced that the digital realm isn’t the best place for simply ideating and thinking. My goal is to begin carrying a notebook with me at all times and just jotting down ideas I have or anything that seems important or relevant at the time. I hope to be able to blog about my success in a few months, but we’ll see how it goes.

Do you use pen and paper for things like this? What is your take on it? Let me know in the comments.

[Image via  ZeRo`SKiLL]

Distraction is something we all deal with from time to time. I’m dealing with it now trying to write this post. The constant chirp of my phone, a new email notification from Sparrow (and on my phone), and the myriad of other things that happen in any given period of time. Distraction is one of the biggest things that gets in the way of my writing. Many times I look at a blank page, get discouraged, and then give into the distractions around me.

I’ve read many articles and blog posts about overcoming distraction, and while I may be able to do it for a while, at times I like the distraction of a new tweet or email. I think the key for me is learning to manage when I allow the distractions to interrupt my work. As of yet, I haven’t done a very good job at it.

Other times, it’s a stray thought or idea that catches my attention. How do you handle those? Do you act on them immediately, or save them somewhere for later? I find myself acting on them immediately more often than not.

I would love to hear your thoughts on how you manage the distractions that are all around us. Let me know in the comments.

[Image via Rennett Stowe]

With everyone and their grandma (literally) using some type of social media these days, it’s important to make sure your church has a good presence there. It’s one of the easiest, quickest ways to connect with current members as well as prospective visitors. So, where do you start?

1. Set some ground rules

This is an extremely important step to insure that a church’s social media presence is always kept in line with the vision and mission of the church. Before going any further, you need to decide who is going to have access to the church’s various accounts, and make sure they understand what is and isn’t acceptable to publish to those accounts. Include your pastor or other church leaders on this discussion and get their input.

2. Start with one or two accounts

Don’t try to go all out from the beginning. Start by setting up a Facebook or Twitter account, and learn to manage those effectively for a while before branching out into other places. Find out the best ways to engage people on those sites, and get the discussion going. Then, when you do decide to branch out to other mediums, you won’t neglect the sites you began with since they’ve become the most active.

3. Learn from others

Probably the easiest thing to do is find other churches who you think are using social media effectively and try to learn from what they’re doing. Usually they’ll be more than willing to offer up some advice on how they got started, and how they manage their presence. You can then take their advice and apply it to your own situation.

So, does your church already have a social media presence? If not, are you planning on building one?

[Image via living os]

First let me begin by saying that I’m a huge iOS/Apple fan, so that’s my device of choice. I have owned an iPhone 3G, 4, and currently a 4S. That being said, I think Android is a great platform with a lot of potential. Let me explain what I mean.

From the extremely informal testing and experience I’ve had with Android, it seems more suited towards an “average” (whatever that means) smartphone user. It seems that more and more what were once just dumb feature phones are being replaced by low end Android devices. This is how I think they can exist together. I see Android becoming the platform for lower end devices for users who may not want to spend the money on an iPhone or other iOS device, but still want the capabilities of a smartphone with apps. Since Android is open source, phone manufacturers can easily skin it to make it their own, something that is already done quite often. Obviously there are some high end Android devices, but they just don’t seem to be doing nearly as well as their iOS competitors. If I were an Android user, I think the crazy update schedule would annoy me the most, since having an update released doesn’t necessarily mean you can download and install it immediately.

I think one of the main things iOS has going for it is its developers. It’s been shown that iOS developers make as much as 3 to 4 times as much money than their Android counterparts, even with the same app! There are several theories as to why this is the case, but I believe it may be due in part to the fact that most iOS users are willing to pay for a great app. On Android, that doesn’t seem to be the case for whatever reason.

So, in short, yes I think the two platforms can exist together, but not so much as competitors, more as two separate markets. I’m sure many people will disagree, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[Image via Android Guys]

Twitter’s latest redesign has caused quite a stir. The consensus on the web interface seems to be relatively positive, but the iOS app hasn’t received quite same reaction. Those that have used the app for a while know that it began as Tweetie, and was the de facto Twitter app for a long time. This redesign, however, has taken a very different direction.

It seems that Twitter is trying to make itself more approachable and easier to navigate for new users, which is definitely understandable. Many new users I’ve talked to are quite confused over what the @ and # symbols are used for. Twitter can’t really change or eliminate those, because they’re integral to the service itself, and have been there since day one. So, they’ve opted to rename their uses, in hopes that they will engage more users.

As I said previously, the website redesign looks great, and I think they’ve captured the essence of what they’re trying to do. The iOS app, on the other hand, has taken a huge departure from its original form. Navigating to direct messages or other accounts requires some nonstandard gestures. Unless you do a little bit of research, or happen on them by accident, I don’t think you’d find them. I know I didn’t at first. I feel that Twitter may have sacrificed some of their power users in order to cater to the new users they’re trying to reach. I’m not sure how the UI could be changed, but I think they could find a happy medium between simplicity and usability.

In my case, I manage multiple Twitter accounts, and also regularly use DMs, so the new app isn’t really feasible for me. I’ve also talked with many other people who are in the same position I am. They don’t want to have to navigate deep into the app just to use those simple features.

I’ll stop ranting now, but I would love your opinion on the new app. Let me know in the comments!

I’m sure many of you are familiar with John Saddington, aka the TentBlogger. He’s been a great inspiration to me in revamping this blog and publishing new content regularly. His site offers a ton of great advice for every blogger from the novice to the advanced. I had a few questions that I’d always wanted to ask him, so what better way to publish the answers than right here on my blog! Here we go:

1. How did you get started blogging?

I got started blogging more than a decade ago thanks to my girlfriend at the time who encouraged me to take a look at “real” blogging – before that I was updating .html files with some content which was nothing more than what I ate for breakfast and how I really didn’t like my classes.

I started with Xanga and then became absolutely obsessed with the idea of sharing my thoughts and getting real-time feedback. The rest, as they say, is history.

2. Why did you start blogging?

I started blogging because I felt like I had something to say. It’s not that I felt that I had something necessarily valuable to say but that I did have something to say. The amount of feedback that I got very quickly was helpful and certainly created a lot of momentum and incentive to keep on writing!

3.What do you enjoy most about it?

At this point in my career the most satisfying thing is simply pushing pen to paper (or at least digital paper). I don’t feel like I have much to prove and so I simply enjoy sharing my thoughts and getting them out there for people to read as they wish. I have a lot to export and I want to make a difference but I do it because I like it. It’s very selfishly-motivated but it does great good for others. What a nice bonus!

4. What made you decide to pursue it as a full time career?

I would say that the career pursued me – I never had any large incentive to go “pro” but it became apparent that I was spending a lot of time in the backend of my blogs, writing content for myself and for others. I needed to make sure that my limited amount of time that I have per day is converting time into cash (paying the bills, so to speak) and so it made logical sense that I try to make blogging work financially for me. It appears that it has worked out pretty well.

5. If you could give one piece of advice to a new blogger, what would it be?

Just go. Just start. Just write. Don’t worry about the rest of the technical or strategic challenges. Just write and see how you like it. You’ll learn more about yourself and blogging by simply writing and “doing” instead of “planning” and waiting. you have nothing to lose by trying, so go try it and see how it fits! You can always quit later if you don’t like it!

As I’m sure you’ve gathered by now if you’ve read this blog for any length of time, I really like Evernote. There are so many uses for their app, and today, they’ve added two new apps to their selection that add even more usefulness. The apps are called Hello and Food. I’ve had the chance to experiment with both of them a bit, and I think they have some great potential.

Let’s start with Hello. The premise is simple. Meet someone new? Want to have some context and information about that meeting? Enter Hello. You can either enter the information yourself, or hand your phone to that person and let them enter it. Along with their basic information, they’ll be asked to take a picture of themselves so you can remember their face. If they enter their email address, your contact information will be automatically emailed to them. All of this data is also tagged with the location where the meeting happened. And best of all, the information is synced to your main Evernote account so you can parse it later.

Food is a way to remember your favorite meals. You can title the meal, add a location, notes, and even snap photos of who you’re with, the meal itself, or even just the restaurant. There have been many times I’ve returned to a restaurant and can’t remember what dish I ordered the last time that was so good. Food tries to alleviate that problem.

I highly recommend checking these apps out, and I’m sure Evernote will add even more functionality in later releases.

[Image via Slash Gear]