Posts tagged: Technology

Proclaim Church Presentation Software

October 11, 2011, by No comments yet

I came across a new piece of software this morning when checking my email. Proclaim software from Logos (Greek for The Word, aka The Bible), the same company that make Bible software. It was actually a Twitter follow notification. (Note: blind Twitter follows do work, I followed them afterward.) It sent me to their website which has a well designed video. While the description of the software was well done, there were precious few screen grabs of the software. I assume they want folks to sign up for the beta in order to try it out. Since my church does not use software like this during our services any longer, I don’t think I will sign up for the beta. However, I thought the community might want to know about it.

The main benefits of Proclaim are:

  • Software that lives in the cloud. Updates are automatically saved and offered to other users.
  • Runs on both Mac and PC.
  • Does not require seat licenses, but based upon total users/month.
  • Looks snazzy!

That’s about all I could glean from the video. Check it out for yourself and maybe even give Proclaim a whirl.

[Updated] Setting Up Google Apps Contacts in iPhone/iPad & Mac OS X

February 25, 2011, by 2 comments

As mentioned previously, you can setup Google Apps Mail to sync your Contacts as well. You can do this on your iPhone/iPad and your Mac.

iPhone/iPad

  1. Open the Settings application on your iPhone/iPad.
  2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
  3. Tap the account being synced.
  4. Make sure Contacts is ON

Your Contacts will now begin to sync with Google and will eventually show up online. Remember, they will only show up under My Contacts. If you create another group, it will not appear on your iOS device.

Mac OS X

You can also sync your Contacts with a Mac running OS X 10.6 with your Google Apps account. OSXDaily.com has a handy posting that I have recapped below.

  1. On your Mac, launch the Address Book application.
  2. Select Address Book>>Preferences.
  3. Click on the Accounts tab.
  4. From the left side listing, select On My Mac.
  5. Check the Synchronize with Google checkbox.
  6. Click the Configure… button next to it.
  7. Enter your Google Apps username/password.
  8. Click Sync Now from your menu bar. (This is very important as nothing will happen with you manually syncing.)

This is where it might get a little tricky. The process of syncing your Contacts with Google apparently requires iSync, which Apple no longer uses in favor of MobileMe syncing. However, even with MobileMe syncing turned off, you can manually run the sync process. In this case, you will sync with Google and not MobileMe. What is unclear is whether Google sync will continue automatically or require manual intervention from this point moving forward.

At least one response to the OSXDaily.com post mentions that also setting up Yahoo syncing at the same time will result in automatic syncing. According to them, the automated process requires at least two syncing events at the same time as one along (i.e., Google) will not work.

UPDATE – March 10, 2011
I came across another software tool that purports to help manage your Google Contacts better than the default Apple method described above. They mention duplicate entries as a problem with Apple’s Address Book sync and I have in fact experienced some duplicate entries. However, it is unclear since not all my entries have be duplicated. Spurious problem or not, it might be worth your time to check out Spanning Sync as mentioned on TUAW.com. It currently costs $25/year or $65/lifetime. But, you have the option of getting a free copy if you can convince enough of your friends to also purchase it.

Setting up Google Apps Mail for iPhone & iPad

February 24, 2011, by No comments yet

Once you have signed up for Google Apps, the next things most folks are looking to accomplish is setup their email account. As with many things, Google has the information posted on their site, but it may take some quick searching. If you are as fortunate as me, you were sent to a page describing just how to set up Google Mail during your Google Apps registration process. If were not so fortunate, here is a link to that page.

As you can see, the process is rather straight forward and consists of the following steps:

  1. Open the Settings application on your device’s home screen.
  2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
  3. Tap Add Account….
  4. Select Microsoft Exchange. OS 4.0+ now allows multiple Exchange accounts.
  5. In the Email field, enter your full Google Account email address, i.e. me@mydomain.com. If you use an @googlemail.com address, you may see an “Unable to verify certificate” warning when you proceed to the next step.
  6. Leave the Domain field blank. (Important.)
  7. Enter your full Google Account email address as the Username, i.e. me@mydomain.com.
  8. Enter your Google Account password as the Password.
  9. Tap Next at the top of your screen.
  10. Choose Cancel if the Unable to Verify Certificate dialog appears. (I never say this dialog.)
  11. When the new Server field appears, enter m.google.com.
  12. Press Next at the top of your screen again.
  13. Select the Google services (Mail, Calendar, and Contacts) you want to sync. (I selected them all since I wanted to replace MobileMe.)
  14. Unless you want to delete all the existing Contacts and Calendars on your phone, select the Keep on my iPhone option when prompted. This will also allow you to keep syncing with your computer via iTunes. (I selected it as you can always choose to only view these items from Google later and ignore your local copy.)
  15. If you want to sync only the My Contacts group, you must choose to Delete Existing Contacts during the Google Sync install when prompted. If you choose to keep existing contacts, it will sync the contents of the “All Contacts” group instead. If there are no contacts on your phone, the latter will happen — the contents of your All Contacts group will be synced.

Of course, I copied this from the above linked Google help page, but these are the essential bits. I followed this to the letter on both my iPhone and iPad with absolutely no problems. The only thing is you will have to be patient and wait for the Contacts to sync up over time. It is not instantaneous but should be done within a short time. Mine took all of ten (10) minutes to complete.

In addition, you will begin to see another list of Contacts on your iPhone/iPad. This will be under the Groups listing and named after the email address you entered, i.e. me@mydomain.com. If you are looking on your Google Mail account, look for the contacts listed under My Contacts. Any other contacts you create on Google will not be matched up, so make sure you only use those when creating/editing them online.

Google Apps (for Ministry)

February 23, 2011, by No comments yet

As a follow-up to my previous post, this post and next few will explain how I moved from using Apple’s MobileMe service to Google Sync Services and how they relate to using technology in ministry. In my case, I took my family’s personal domain and transferred all email services to Google. In order to do that, I signed up for Google Apps for free.

The setup is fairly straight forward with plenty of hand holding from Google. Just remember, you must have at least one email address that is not related to your domain in order to set up the new addresses. For example, if you are setting up me@mydomain.com, you will need to have something like me@gmail.com. This is necessary because if there are any problems during setup, you can still get into the domain management tools. In fact, Google requires it and you can not complete the registration process without one.

Once you have set up your new domain, you should have the following services: email, calendar, documents and groups. This will come with calendar sharing and the ability to sync with your smart phone and desktop. Not bad for free.

Now, if you are setting up a domain for your ministry, you might try using Google Apps for Non-Profits. While I have not used this yes, I will when I transfer our church email over from our current hosting provider.

Just make sure that before you finish, you enable Google Sync for Mobile Devices.

Google Sync Services for Ministry

February 23, 2011, by No comments yet

GMailIf you read this blog, you are likely someone I know personally (and I thank you for reading it) or are interested in technology and its application to ministry. If you are like me, you have several email addresses and groups of people you interact with on a given day or week. Work, home, family, friends, church, each of those groups come with their own questions and requests for help as it relates to computers and technology. In my case, I have my wife, family, co-workers (it’s actually my job), personal clients, church and diocese to consider. It’s often hard to keep track of all the people and what they are asking you to do.

Because of this, I have found invaluable the syncing ability of MobileMe over the last few years. Keeping track of people and their contact information is one of the hardest things to do if you have a smart phone, work computer, personal laptop and an iPad. You make a change on one device and then you have to keep all the others updated. Enter MobileMe. I have been a subscriber to this service since it was called iTools (technically, they are not the same, but it is the predecessor).

The best thing about MobileMe, in my estimation, is its ability to keep all your contact information synced across a myriad of devices. It works best on OS X and iOS devices, but you can use it on a PC as well. I have two computers at work (Mac and PC) and have used MobileMe on both. With few problems, it just works. I make a change on my iPhone and it propagates to my MacBook Pro, iMac, and iPad with no problem. If I login and make a change via the MobileMe website, it will filter down to all my devices as well. While MobileMe did have some rather large hiccups when Apple first rolled it out, I have found it to be a stable offering since.

So, it’s a big thing that I have decided to move away from MobileMe to Google’s Sync Services. Now, I have thought about this for quite a while. MobileMe is largely built around this particular feature while Google offers it only as an add-on to their myriad services. I am also well aware that Google will not entirely replace MobileMe’s offering or linked resources. For example, MobileMe will also sync your email accounts and rules. This is helpful when setting up a new computer and keeping your rules copied from one machine to another. Third party vendors also use MobileMe to sync their product across machines, for example Transmit and iBank. As I mentioned, I have not made this decision without considering what I am losing. But, the cost of MobileMe, $99/year, is untenable when you consider it really only does one thing well that you can get somewhere else for free. Sure, MobileMe also offers email, calendaring, back to your Mac, find my iPhone/iPad and free disk space as part of the package. But, I can use GMail, Google Calendaring, LogMeIn, find my iPhone/iPad and Dropbox for free. Why pay $99 when all I really gain is syncing capabilities?

My next few posts will explain how I have gone from MobileMe to Google Sync Services and what experience it offers.