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Monthly archive: April, 2010

Church Publishing’s rite series

April 30, 2010, by esilvas No comments yet

Like make technology buffs, I get asked about all manner of things related to electricity, I mean, technology. As I mentioned in a previous post, one of those questions was about how we could:

  1. Keep track of people scheduled for service each week, i.e. LEM, Prayers, Lector, etc.
  2. How can we make this electronic instead of the monthly calendar we receive via snail mail

If you’ve read this blog, you know I have looked over several packages in the past here and here. However, I just came across another product that offers the same functionality and is distributed by Church Publishing. Their product is called “rite time” and is part of their “rite series”.

While looking over the website, I tried to find screen shots or some other description beside the front page. Unfortunately, they do not offer anything else to give the visitor an indication of the product’s capabilities and relative use. However, they have a series of professional videos that walk you through the product’s high points. You can view it below.

Since I was asked about scheduling people, the video’s main description of buildings and room scheduling is not relevant. However, their listed capabilities does mention it. I have yet to do so, but I think signing up for the thirty (30) day trial is in my future. The pricing is reasonable, and offers churchwide, personal and public calendars. I will post my thoughts once I sign up and take a test drive.

OpenX Ad Server

April 30, 2010, by esilvas 5 comments

My employer recently asked me to research some possible additions to our member service offerings, specifically website ads and targeted email. Having some experience with both, I offered up my thoughts as well as some potential options. Specifically Lyris (email marketing) and phpAds (web ads). After doing some quick digging and a phone call, I ended up with Constant Contact (instead of Lyris) and OpenX (successor to phpAds).

I will discuss what brought me to choose Constant Contact over Lyris in another post.

As for OpenX, I was more than pleased to find out that:

  • It’s open sourced and free
  • You can get a free hosted account with OpenX
  • They are partnered with Rackspace, with whom I have copious professional experience and is my employer’s hosting company

All those facts made the choice of OpenX very easy.

Now, after installing OpenX, I still had to get it up and running. While they offer plenty of help in this area, I remained true to myself and my XY chromosomes and went in blindly. “I can figure this out”, right? Well, maybe, but not without going back and looking over those quick start guides. It turns out when I created my banner listing, I also chose the web server option for serving up the image. Fairly simple right? Sure, except I could not get a single ad to show up. After looking at the quick start guide (linking again, in case your are also chromosomally challenged), it turns out OpenX uses a SQL stored ad in their example. I didn’t choose this one at first, because I was afraid it would actually store the image in my database. I am unsure if it does this, but when this option is selected, it works great. Thanks OpenX, you’re my hero.

After the initial setup, it took me a little longer to insert the javascript and get not one, but two, two ads running on the same page. Tip: don’t invoke all the javascript offered in the “Invocation Code” tab. Just reuse the section that loads the new ad. Otherwise, only the first ad will appear. Read more about this “Single Page Call” here.

The other things I learned:

  • You can change the amount of time between statistics updates
  • You can filter out traffic from a specific IP, e.g. your employer or customer, to get a truer sense of traffic patterns

That’s it. We will be using OpenX right away to start serving our own ads and will offer it to our members very soon. Great tool, it should work well for anyone.

Antivirus problems are hard to combat

April 27, 2010, by esilvas No comments yet

As someone who manages machines for the church, antivirus and spam are hot button issues. The recent travails of antivirus vendor McAfee serve to remind me how hard it is for even the largest companies to provide a safe environment for computing.

From ArsTechnica: No end in sight for anti-virus software problems

From WebdesignerDepot: 60+ Awsome New WordPress Themes

April 20, 2010, by esilvas No comments yet

WebdesignerDepot.com posted some new WordPress themes. Many of them look very good. Take a look here.

Updated: Self Publishing and the iBook(store)

April 16, 2010, by esilvas No comments yet

In her former life, my wife was a state champion news writer. She prepared her high school and college careers for an eventual life as a reporter. Along the way, she took a detour, obtained a Master’s in Urban Administration and now does economic development. However, she is still a good writer. With that in mind, I asked if she ever planned on leaving her day job for the life and adventure of a starving writer. She replied that while it was enticing, it did not pay the bills. It seems as though real life intruded on her girlhood dreams.

As her husband, I could not let this come to pass. So, this is my first entry into getting my wife’s dreams come true. I hope to encourage, edit and eventually self-publish her writing. Even if I weren’t her husband, I still think this is a worthwhile effort. You only have to meet my wife one time to know this woman is wonderful.

So far, this is what I know.

  • Apple only accepts books published in the ePub format.
  • It’s not clear if a single person can submit their own works, but it may be possible, see here
  • You can sign on with one of two companies that offer iBook distribution: LuLu.com or SmashWords.com
  • If you created your own ePub file, it can be installed on the iPad via iTunes. In theory, this means you can sell DRM-free ePub files from your own website.

I hope it will be possible to create your own ePub file and offer it via the iBookstore. Those trials and tribulations will be chronicled here in the time to come. Until then, here are some observations from others intrepid enough to try the same thing:

iBooks and ePub
iBooks on the iPad, a first glance

Update: I received more information from a knowledgeable person via my Twitter feed:

  • Apple keeps 30% of the sales off the top
  • An ISBN is required for each eBook published
  • Your ebook must be in at least ePub v. 1.0.5
  • Apple will have a contract with the Aggregator, not with the publisher

Current aggregators:

  1. http://www.bibliocore.com
  2. http://books.cdbaby.com
  3. http://www.pseudodigital.com/constellation/ipad
  4. http://www.ingramcontent.com/Apple/default.aspx
  5. http://apple.libredigital.com/
  6. http://www.lulu.com/apple-ipad-publishing/?cid=eng_ebk_epub_041410
  7. http://www.smashwords.com/about/how_to_publish_ipad_ebooks

Read the original posting on Spannet.

Follow on Twitter

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