It’s been really great getting people to create profiles, share their testimonies and post photos of church events.   We also use it to mass communicate with our members.   Many members have created their own small groups and have organized some really cool things on the network.  Most churches try to identify small group needs and invent small groups.  This social network is a great place for them to happen organically.  It definitely has been a tool to help people come together and get to know one another.

The tool we used to create our network is Ning.  For premium features like a custom domain and no ads, you need to pay a small monthly fee.  Ning has some cool features for sure, but if you’re looking for a free service, you should try Grou.ps.  I just stumbled across this awesome platform that is totally free.  It’s completely ad-free, and you can even map a custom domain for easy access and ownership.   If you already have a website, you can create a subdomain like:  http://community.mychurch.com and map it for free to your Grou.ps network.  Here are some of the cool features from Grou.ps.

Use your own branding.  Grou.ps doesn’t bug you with their logo.

Unlimited media uploads.

Free domain masking - (Ning charges almost $10.00/month for this feature!)

Integrate popular social sites to bring your members back!

Forum and mailing lists.

Personal blogs.

Real-time chat.

User sub-groups: Members can organize their own small groups!

Crowd Sourcing Wikis: Share documents and collaborate.

Calendaring.

Share files.

Share links.

Map important locations.

Customizable member profiles.

For those more technically inclined, you can even host Grou.ps on your own server because it’s open source!  You can customize it and add your own functionality to it.  Also, Grou.ps comes in over 35 languages, so if your user base needs localization, it’s already built in.

Grou.ps is completely free for the taking.  Start a social network for your church or youth group today!

Here’s a quick look at the admin panel:

Go to Grou.ps

[invite]

What’s slick is that you can import from almost any well known communication software so grabbing your current digital information is painless.  You can also share contacts over multiple Keepm accounts.  The thing I like the most is that you can add dated notes that keep track of all of your communication with a contact.  This could help minus out some headaches!  For instance, a guest speaker will be arriving next month.  The point person who speaks to them can notate their flight information, their food preferences, etc.  Then, when other team members need this information, they simply log in and view his contact profile instead of tracking down the person who made the original contact.

Lastly, it’s FREE!

Go to Keepm

• Logmein FREE version LogMeIn.com offers a free service that gives you access to your remote computer as if you are sitting in front of it. It’s a great way to work remotely from home or on the road.  Some of the beefy features of their paid versions include printer sharing, and easy file transferring.  However, LogMeIn FREE is all you need to get you started.  This is also a great way to work on other computers at the office without ever leaving your desk.  Seriously, stop paying for these bloated web services that make you pay for what is FREE.
• DropBox DropBox has been one of my favorite and most productive tools I’ve ever used.  Basically, DropBox sets up a folder one multiple computers of your choice, and whatever you place in that folder, it syncs it to all computers.  If you are working on a file at the office, simply save it to your DropBox and then pick up where you left off at home.  You can also grab your files from the website.  It’s so simple and hassle-free.  And it’s free!
• Lacie Big Disk Network I’m a huge fan of Lacie network drives.  You can now get a 2 Terabyte drive for under $400.00.  It plugs into your network and withing a few configuration steps, you have a pretty complex file server.  It allows you to create users and share folders for each user/department.  Users can be restricted to viewing only certain file.  The great thing about this new Lacie is that you can backup your files to an external hard drive with built-in backup features.  It also comes with an FTP (file transfer protocol) server for you to access your files remotely from any FTP client.  Alternatively, it comes with it’s own web interface that can be access from any browser that takes zero configuration.   I highly recommend you getting one of these immediately to centralize your data and give you access to your important documents on the fly.
• Filezilla This is a great free FTP server that can be installed on any of your computers.  This is a software for the more advanced tech.  It requires opening up ports on your firewall, port-forwarding on your router and configuring your passive-mode settings.  The cool thing is you can create users to access certain folders.  This is great if you have a dedicated server on-site.  You can use it locally to share files with others while in the office or remotely (if you choose) to access files from anywhere.  Take a look at the instructions for installation.
• Abyss Web Server Setting up a web server is as easy as installing some software and making a couple changes on your router.  This is a great way to create an intranet site for your church employees.  Aprelium has great documentation to get you started.  By setting up port-forwarding, you can access your Intranet site remotely.  (Forward port 80 to the static Local IP of the computer where your web server is installed  — Example: 192.168.1.200).  You can even mask it with a domain from DynDNS.org with their dynamic ip service.  This part is not for the faint-hearted.  You need to dig in and learn about IPs and how they work.  Basically, if you have a simple internet service, your IP changes every week, or every other week.  This is called a dynamic IP.   This means to find your network from an external browser can become a nightmare.  DynDNS tracks your IP via a little program that runs on your computer.  It then gives you a domain that’s easy to remember and takes care of the hard part.   If you have a service that gives you a static IP (one that never changes), then all you have to do is update the DynDNS.org website one time and you’re set.

We’re living in the digital age.  There’s no reason your frequently-used files have to stay locked away on your church computers.  Figure out a good solution to help your staff be more productive in and out of the office.  You’ll be a tech hero!

Let me give a quick refresher.  Basically how TC works is as follows:

1. Record your sermon (no singing) on a DVD.
2. Insert the DVD into your “TruthCasting Media Slingshot” AKA “Your Computer”
3. Their awesome software rips the video and the audio and then uploads it to the TC servers.
4. Within a couple of hours, your sermon is ready to view on your internet channel!

Once you’ve completed your upload, you can embed your sermon on your website.  You don’t have to purchase a new Mac Mini  all you need are the following system requirements for the free download.

• Mac OSX 10.5 - Intel or PPC
• Windows XP/Vista - Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz or Athlon XP 2500+
• 512 MB of RAM (1 GB recommended)
• 40 MB for Application and 6 GB for video transfer

Go to TruthCasting.com and sign up for a channel.  It’s the easiest way I know of to get your content on the web and get your message to the world!  Don’t you love free?

TruthCasting.com

The beauty of it is that people outside of your organization are not able to join your private network. This keeps communication free from external distractions and allows tracking of important conversations. Another feature I really like about Yammer is the ability to create groups. For instance, during our leadership retreat, I created a group for ideas and the minutes of our meetings. I had several people with laptops join the group and begin documenting the meeting with short posts. All posts were saved in that group and are easy to find when I need them. You can create private groups for more sensitive conversations as well.

You also can use hash tags which help you search for posts later with keywords. For example, one of my posts looked similar to this: “#todo09 Increase the soda machine price to $.75 from $.50.” Yammer then gives you a link to all the hash tags you create and with one click of a button, you have a list of every post where you used that tag. By the way, I haven’t changed the price yet, so come by for a cheap soda.

Last, but not least is the portability of this app.  They have a desktop software that is simple to use as well as the basic web interface.  You can post just like using Twitter or an IM service.  They also have an iPhone and Blackberry app that allows you to submit posts on the go.  Receive SMS updates on your phone or right in your IM client.  This is a free service for companies and organizations. There are a few paid features that you might want to check out. If you need to centralize your team’s communication, sign up for an account and check it out. You have nothing to lose.

Here are a few ideas for using Yammer in churches:

• Creative meetings
• Event planning and coordination
• Weekly staff check-in with posts about what’s going on in their ministry this week
• Corporate to-do lists of things needing completed around the church
• Personal prayer requests group for staff members
• Microblog about missions trips
• Traveling pastors can update staff with minimal effort.

Yammer.com

Download EasySMS here

Features:

*   Owner Verification of cell phones with unsubscribe feature
*   AJAX sidebar widget form with custom title and terms of agreement.
*   Subscriber groups
*   Track how many SMS message have been sent to each subscriber.
*   Auto-notification of new posts to subscribers (optional)
*   Custom text messages from admins only
*   Message preview before sending SMS
*   80 default carriers
*   Delete/Add/Edit and Carriers
*   Edit/Delete Subscribers
*   WP Administration compatible interface.
*   Stats snapshot on dashboard.
*   New subscriber notification. (optional)

Screenshots

Sidebar Form

Send SMS

Carrier Table

Groups Table

Subscriber Groups

Settings

Check out Freelance Switch where Dickie Adams is a contributing editor:  http://www.freelanceswitch.com

Check out Goa Observer’s Flickr page at: http://flickr.com/photos/goaobserverstream/

For Christmas this year I am giving two blessed Mister Nifty readers a free Flickr Pro account.  This means unlimited uploads and intense photo sharing awesomeness.  Flickr is a great way to centralize and host your church event photos, building tours, and much more.  To enter, simply post a comment with your name, email (kept private) and either your church or personal website and your favorite web application combos you use at your church (Gmail, Toodledo, Twitter, etc…).  On December 25th, my highly complex, personally programmed algorithm will choose two names.  Just kidding, my lovely wife will draw two names out of a recycled paper bag and viola, someone will have happy Flickr goodness for Christmas.

In short, GA uses your domain.  You can map it to a subdomain like:  http://email.yourdomain.com   When you send email from GA, it sends like this:  yourname@yourdomain.com.  It allows you to easily create new email boxes for your team members with just a few clicks on the administration panel.  You can create mailing lists and assign others to help administer the accounts.

With their calendar application, you can create calendars that can only be shared within domain.  This is a great way to keep up-to-date with what your team members are doing throughout the weeks and months.  It also centralizes main team event/schedule data as well.

Google Docs is just pure productivity for your team. You can create docs (text documents, spreadsheets, presentations) online.  The best part is you can share them with team members.  Two team members can be working on the same file and chat about it at the same time.   There is a great setting that does not allow documents to be shared outside of your domain.  So, if you are working on sensitive information, there isn’t a chance of someone without an account getting their hands on it.

Google Sites allows teams to create simple websites that contain embedded documents, lists, presentations, videos, shared calendars, and much more.  Each page of information contains a discussion forum (if enabled) that allows a digital conversation about the subject or event.  This is a great way to plan and post team information for events.  This could easily be created to be your church intranet.

Now, installing Google Apps is a bit of a techie process, but I hope to explain it in simple terms.  First of all you have to have access to your domain from the hosting company where you purchased it.   The most important thing is to have access to the DNS settings.

Once you get to your DNS settings, find where it says CNAME record.  We need to map our sub-domains to send them to the proper Google services.  If you use GoDaddy I’ve included some screenshots of their back-end system.  Don’t worry, Google also provides instructions for most of the major hosts. Add the following CNAME records:

email  (points to)  ghs.google.com
calendar (points to) ghs.google.com
docs (points to) ghs.google.com
sites (points to) ghs.google.com
home (points to) ghs.google.com

Next we need to map our email servers to the Google servers. Find where your MX records are stored.  Write down your current MX records just in case you want to revert to that server one day.  Next delete all your MX records.  GA will only work if you point to their servers.  Add the following MX records.

Priority     Mail Server (You must include the trailing period)
10     ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
20     ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
30     ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
40     ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
50     ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.

Great!  Now you’ve prepared yourself to open a Google Apps account.  The reason you should do this first is sometimes servers take a while to propagate your settings to the internet.  This means you will be sitting, twittling your thumbs and waiting until GA recognizes your settings.

Now, go to http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new and enter your domain.  Make sure you click that you are the administrator/owner of this domain.

Once your sign up is complete you will have to verify your domain ownership.

It will give you two options to verify your domain ownership.  The easiest is to add another CNAME record as follows.

It will usually take about 20-30 minutes before your domain is verified.  Just be patient.  In the meantime, customize the URLs of each service to match the sub-domains you entered at your hosting site. (docs, email, calendar, sites, home)

Make sure you active the services, and it will take about an hour before your email is set up on the google servers.  From here, everything is pretty self explanatory.  If you can set this up, you can figure out the rest. While you wait, try adding users and mailing lists.

After all services have activates, your domain is verified, and your DNS settings propagate on your hosting server, you should technically be all set.

To access your GA go to:

http://email.yourdomain.com
http://calendar.yourdomain.com
http://docs.yourdomain.com
http://sites.yourdomain.com
http://home.yourdomain.com

Enjoy this wonderful free service from Google!  If you have any questions, leave a comment and I’ll answer so everyone else can see.

This web app is revolutionary for small, medium and large churches in that it will allow them to see the trends within their local congregation.  Trend charts bring a deeper understanding of the routines of the church, the behavioral aspect of the congregants, and exposes areas of need in the local body of Christ.

The best part is that it is a free service!  You can access it on your mobile device as well for convenient data entry.  Here are a few ideas to use this web app within your church leadership.  During your monthly meeting provide charts to your leaders to show past progress compared to current successes.   Use giving charts to help with your financial projections.  Keep good attendance/giving records each month and year, file them away for the time your church needs to apply for a loan.  This is solid data banks and lenders want to see.

When you sign up for CM you will be assigned a subdomain with your church name.  Thousands of churches will be signing up this week.  Make sure you get your church name before it is taken.   Head on over to ChurchMetrics.com to sign up for your free account.  Thanks to LifeChurch.tv for providing this great service to other churches at no cost.

This is a simple tutorial, but yet worthy of a look for those who don’t know how to embed a Google map of their church onto their website.  Thanks to the techs from Uniting Church.