August 9th, 2008 — blogging
Last night my daughter and I played Disney’s Pirates Online for fun. It’s a chaperone only activity. A little edgy, but you can see from these pictures that ONE of us was having too much fun.
My daughter sailing while I dance a jig:
My daughter sailing while I wave at the “camera”:
My daughter looking too cool for her dad (who is flexing his muscles):
August 7th, 2008 — blogging
Chris Cree just posted one of the most thought-provoking posts about blog networks that I’ve read in a long time. In addition to providing some pretty incredible links, he asks some pertinent questions for the people participating in HighCallingBlogs.com. Chris says,
I am curious to hear your opinions on advertising in general, and internet advertising in particular.
How do you feel when you see ads on faith-oriented web sites?
Do you feel faith based non-profits should look at ways to be self supporting or should they rely on donation support?
Even if you’re not interested in all the details of Chris’ post, I’d love to hear your responses over at HighCallingBlogs.com. In fact, I’m turning the comments off here, so you have to go there to comment. Please do. Your input on this issue is really important to me–especially if you’re part of HighCallingBlogs.com.
July 15th, 2008 — blogging
I don’t know the answer to that question. I really don’t.
Normally, I stay out of politics stuff. I don’t know where you stand on Obama. I don’t know where I stand, either. I’d rather talk about my daughter’s response to the second Harry Potter. Or my son’s poisonous frogs. (He’s four. Am I a bad father?)
But I had to share what I read in The Atlantic this morning. It’s a little political. It’s a little social media. The implications are pretty interesting.
Marc Ambinder wrote this in HisSPACE:
What Obama seems to promise is, at its outer limits, a participatory democracy in which the opportunities for participation have been radically expanded. He proposes creating a public, Google-like database of every federal dollar spent. He aims to post every piece of non-emergency legislation online for five days before he signs it so that Americans can comment. A White House blog—also with comments—would be a near certainty. Overseeing this new apparatus would be a chief technology officer.
I don’t know about you, but that paragraph stunned me. Weekly YouTube updates from the President of the United States? A White House blog–with comments turned on (and presumably moderated at least)? Social Media peer review of government legislation? Funding transparency that uses google algorithms?
I can’t decide what to think of this.
Is the office of the president going to start getting distracted by Twitter? Is this what good leaders do? If leaders should engage the web 2.0 crowd–and that argument seems more and more plausible–how in the world can the leader of the free world stay on top of basic time management without creating a Twitter ghost, an Obama comments ghost, maybe even a Wag the Dog Obama Youtube ghost?
It’s a crazy time, folks.
July 11th, 2008 — blogging, inspiring
I met Andre Yee about two years ago when I was just getting into blogging. He still blogs over at Every Square Inch about “Conversations on the Glory of Christ in Business and Culture,” and he’s really good.
Andre was one of the first bloggers we hired to write for TheHighCalling.org. (You can read his two articles here.) But lately I think he’s been too busy with his nonprofit start up to write for us!
Andre Yee is like some kind of Social Media Prophet. I’m not joking here. He’s a wiki Moses. The church has has been captive for too long, and he’s leading us into the wilderness of the net. I’m not talking about a series of brochure ware nonsense. Or clumsy facebook groups. Or even webzines.
Andre knows where the wind is blowing–and he’s raised the sail.
Marshall McLuhen warned that the medium is the message. A lot of folks have used McLuhen’s cliche to warn us about how easily computers dehumanize us. Take that thinking to its logical end and we all become obese spacemen in floating chairs waiting for Wall-E to wake us up.
But Andre understands the gospel message is more powerful than any medium.
That’s my interpretation of his Open Source Mission at any rate. Their first major project is the gospel translations.
Andre says that nearly 60% of all evangelicals worldwide are in the areas of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. “But they suffer from a lack of biblically sound teaching material.” He goes on to explain that the current model of translation is expensive and limited in its reach. “Few books ever reach worldwide audiences, and some language groups never qualify for any translations at all.”
But you don’t need to read what Andre says. You can see it yourself. He’s been on me for months now to catch this vision with him. Sorry, Andre, I just didn’t get it. My faith is weak, I guess.
But this video helped me see what he’s talking about. It literally opened my eyes. Now I get it.
If you’re like me, you need to watch the video. Watch it. Then think about how you can help.
If you’re like me, you can’t be one of the translators. But you can help promote Andre’s vision. The Wiki Moses needs us! We can help “proclaim the gospel to all peoples in all languages to the glory of God.”
I’m not talking about a big investment here. I’m talking about simple word of mouth.
Tell others. Do it. I’ll make a social media press release here in a minute that has all of the tools in one spot to make this easy. (Update: here’s a link to the social media press release.)
And if you still haven’t watched that video, here it is:
July 9th, 2008 — blogging, writing
I’m pretty excited about GodBlogCon.com 2008. You never know what’s going to happen there. I went to GodBlogCon.com 2007 with Mark D. Roberts and ended up on a Hugh Hewitt’s radio show.
Here’s what’s even better. Laity Lodge and TheHighCalling.org are sponsoring this year’s event. That means 10% of the proceeds from registrations through our affiliate link will be donated back to our programs. What’s not to love?
July 4th, 2008 — blogging
It’s the day we celebrate our country–and frankly, I feel a bit like dancing with the world today. This guy named Matt beat me to it. (And 4,000,000 other people beat me to the youtube clip, but I’m sharing it here anyway; hat tip to Karl Edwards for sharing this with me on Facebook.)
(Go to Youtube and click under the video to watch in high quality.)
Or if Matt dancing is too not American enough for you, try the muppets. Can’t go wrong with that. (Hat tip to Steve McCoy and Slashfilm.)
July 1st, 2008 — blogging
Sam Van Eman and Tina Howard got me wondering about the high calling of advertising and media with some recent posts of theirs. I elaborated more on this over at HighCallingBlogs.com.
Specifically, I asked readers this:
Have you seen any ads that glorified God lately? I’m not talking about ads for church or black billboards with God asking if you can come over before the game. I mean, have you seen any business ads, doing what ads do normally, and still glorifying God at the same time?
(As way of example, consider this ad for Honda that concludes, “Isn’t it nice when things work?” It is nice. And it’s by the grace of God and a tremendous amount of good design and diligence when things work. That’s an edifying thought, isn’t it?)
I’m turning the comments off here, so as not to divide the discussion between that post and this one. But I do want to know what you think. So go comment.
June 24th, 2008 — blogging
A bestiary is an encyclopedia of beasts. This morning in my Schott’s Almanac calendar (one of my favorite desktop calendars in the past few years), I read the “bestiary of a good host.” That and a little browsing around the British Library’s Illuminated Manuscript collection inspired me to some fun Tuesday weirdness.
The Bestiary of a Good Blogger
The good blogger must have
the forehead of a BILLY GOAT
the ears of a JACK RABBIT
the hard shell of an ARMADILLO
the belly of a BLACK BEAR
the subtlety of a SNAKE
buzz around omnipresent like a FLY
and fawn and lie like a DOG.
What beast would you add?
June 17th, 2008 — uncategorized
Just got back from a little mini-vacation to visit my wife’s grandparents in notoriously flat Lubbock, Texas. It was an odd trip, but not a horrible way to spend two vacation days with my family. Also, I learned some good travelling tips for enjoying the monotony of the Texas panhandle–or any other less than scenic drive that lasts more than seven hours.
May 28th, 2008 — highcallingblogs.com, podcast, speculative fiction, writing
That’s what Mike Dellosso’s doing these days. His new book The Hunted is about to come out from Realms, but you can already read the first chapter online at his site. In fact, Mike is so on top of the social media thing that he deserves a bulleted list of items to just to set everyone straight.
A few weeks ago, Mike and I had a great conversation about writing, writing suspense, writing Christian suspense, and of course dealing with cancer. He’s a great guy. I really hope you’ll give this one a listen. It’s a lot more fun than the, um, rather self indulgent Whitman recitation I did earlier.
And I think the sound editing is better, but I’m still new at this.
If you don’t have time to sit at your computer and listen to this whole 20 minute interview (carefully edited, so all of the boring parts are GONE GONE GONE), no problem. You can download it itunes easily on my new blogomatic podcast page.
Blogomatic = My new friend.
Mike Dellosso = A super cool suspense writer
Your Next Step = Listen to the podcast
New from HighCallingBlogs.com
