After a discussion yesterday, I thought I'd publish a list of the podcasts I subscribe to.

I actually use a Zune rather than an iPod, and the new Zune software does a great job of managing content on the device.

So - here is the list :-).  Click the orange feed icon to get to the feed (the Grace To You feed requires a free account).

• Christ Fellowship Baptist Church (Steve Lawson)
• Mars Hill Church Sermons (Mark Driscoll)
• Grace to You (John MacArthur)
• Desiring God (John Piper)

There are not many there. But I do mostly listen to them.  I use my time traveling in the day to and from work to listen to sermons.  I also like to try and run on occasion, and I also use this time to listen to sermons.  This way, I've always got something going into my head and it is generally of value.

If anyone has other quality speakers who have a podcast, I'd be interested in hearing about them.

John Wilke wrote in to tell us about the free dramatized audio Bible presentations available for free download in MP3 and WAV formats.

The site publishing these is www.faithcomesbyhearing.com which is publishing these in a series of podcasts that are around 12 minutes each.

Subscribe to the series here.

They also have the entire Bible in audio format in several translations available free of charge as a download, or on CD from here. 

Looks like a great resource!

iTouch competitor? Or will they be sued by Apple?

Telecom has launched an own-brand range of mobile devices dubbed OKTA, and the first one off the rank is the very cool Touch (how long before Steve Jobs is on the phone threatening a lawsuit?).
The Touch is, you guessed it, a 3G multimedia touchscreen device running Windows Mobile 6. But what makes it cool is the TouchFLO navigation based on hand gestures that gives you access to the phone's many functions. This interface works very well and allows the slim and compact Touch to do without a keypad.

Source: http://blogs.pcworld.co.nz.......

Centuries ago only the liturgy had scripture, and the scripture they had was Latin - often poorly translated Latin, and they did a poor job of bringing any understanding of God and the Lord Jesus to the people in the pews.  Church tradition ruled and knowledge of the word of God and the Lord was extremely restricted.  These days are often referred to as the dark ages.

Then over many years we had men like Luther, Tyndale and many others who challenged the status quo and over many, many years and through much bloodshed and tears brought the word of God to the people, and along with it a better understanding of the meaning of scripture, and knowledge of the Lord. 

Inventions such as Gutenburg's printing press, made it easy to create volumes of scripture quickly and get it into the hands of the people.  This technological breakthrough is probably the most important in the history of the church.  With the invention of the printing press, knowledge was able to be documented and shared en-masse like never before.  It allowed many of the great church leaders of the time to get their knowledge and understanding out to anyone who could read - and it changed the social class of those who could read from the elite to almost anyone.  These changes revolutionized not only the church but the world. In England the increased availability (and acceptance) of the word of God was one of the key drivers behind the "right of every man" to read, and the institution of free public schools.

Since these days the church has been slowly taking all the knowledge of the smartest men in the world and building up the understanding of scripture amongst the church broadly.  This process started with the likes of Luther who challenged the traditions of the Roman Catholic church and declared that scripture alone was the authority - not the church. 

Since then the church has worked through the doctrines of salvation, the church, creation, the trinity, and more recently eschatology and have nailed down many of these doctrines reasonably thoroughly and with a degree of consistency.  Of course there are still many things that many believers don't agree on, but technology has enabled these discussions to be recorded and thought through by many people over many years, so that the basics are widely agreed on and the details are also becoming more widely accepted.

I was reading Ephesians 4 this morning and this passage jumped out at me:

And He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

If you think about this passage in the context of the global church, technology is a key enabler to helping believers grow together.  The printing press allowed the thoughts of many pastors, teachers, evangelists and the apostles to be collated and published for many to consume and understand, and build on, growing the body of Christ as a whole.  Today too, the understanding of the word of God is being propagated by mechanisms such as podcasts, RSS and similar technologies.  However we are only at the beginning of what is possible.

The goal is to unite the church so that "we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God".  Technology, and the Internet have much more to offer through centralizing the understanding of godly pastors and teachers into a repository that allows the examination of scripture and the interrogation of thought in a collective where all the understanding of the church is stored, scrutinized and drawn upon by believers in order to build up their knowledge and understanding of Christ.

Of course this is not all.  Believers must open their hearts to one another and allow each other to have a part in each others lives for accountability and growth - this too can be done with technology, but the offline world has a lot to offer that technology cannot do as well in this role at this stage.  Perhaps in the future this will change, but in the meantime, we can concentrate on growing individually, and helping each other globally using technology to reach out with our understanding and the lessons we learn as we live for Christ.

The internet is a great source of study material. But here's one for when you're in your car, or exercising. Max Lucado publishes a one-minute message every day, and they can be great for getting your mind back to God. Why not download them, put them on your MP3 player, and then interrupt your music occasionally with a short devotional. Max Lucado is a great teacher, as anyone who has one of his books or videos will know - and here's a chance to have him interrupt your day with a short message. It's available as a podcast through an RSS feed too, so syncing it up should be no problem.

Tonight I had cause to modify an annotation file from inside Logos. 

The story was that I'd given a friend one of my annotation (note) files and he'd then updated it and given it back to me with his annotations in it.  When I opened Logos with the annotation file in the right location (<My Documents>\Libronix LDS\Annotations) Logos knew nothing about the file - it was the same name as one I already had there and the one I had was more recent so Logos didn't recognize it.

So I opened the annotation file using EditPlus (a favourite text editor of mine from the old days) and found (happily) that the file is simply XML with a custom schema.

It turns out that each annotation is encapsulated by <annotation></annotation> tags.  So - to drop an annotation into an existing file all you need to do is copy the tags and everything in between them at the end of the existing annotation file just before the </lbx-annotations> tag.

Simple.

Typically you wont need to do this, but in case you do  - now you know how to do it.

The Ecumen website's About Us page says:

Ecumen provides mobile content with a reassurance that we will not act in any way that is unethical. We aim to enable Christians to express and develop their faith, whilst giving our customers the confidence that the material we provide is family friendly and free from offensive content.

We provide such items as ringtones (many of which are derived from popular or contemporary Christian music or worship songs), wallpapers, screensavers and other graphics with Christian themes or motifs, family friendly games and daily Bible readings.

To ensure our customers have confidence in our products and services, we operate according to our SAFE criteria.

Ecumen is a service provided by Teimlo Ltd., a company based in South Wales, UK. We supply Christian Mobile Content both directly and through our partners. We conform to the standards of behaviour set out by the Mobile Marketing Association.

Like it says on the page, they provide Christian content to your mobile - assuming you live in the UK. For 25p a day, they will SMS you a Bible Reading. Obviously this is nothing like the iPocketBible in the range of functionality, but this doesn't rely on having an iPhone.

I will be really curious to find out if this service catches on, and whether they'll expand it to other countries.

There has been much criticism of the original Microsoft Zune players, so when I first met one, I was greatly surprised to see how cool the device actually is.

Now MS have released new models with a distinctly iPod-like look -- well, old iPod-look anyway. And why not, since the iPod has been such a raving success.

Check this link here 4 more.

I'm sure many of us IT guys get stung by this sort of thing. Enjoy.

I know - it sounds a bit corny... but I guess it depends on your take. If you have a problem with the 'corny' aspect of the efforts of the church, then I think you're probably one of those secret Christians, who never tells anyone about their faith, and who misses out on all kinds of blessings.

On the other hand, if you can look past that, then you might find the occasional gem in GodTube. As you might expect, it's an internet video site, where users upload content to share. This being about God, instead of You, the uploaded material is generally about Christian stuff.

I'm not sure how they vet the material - I'm not about to start suggesting that everything there is going to be theologically sound, or even safe for kids. But I'm sure it's going to be a safer bet than that other, non-Christian, site.

I've only looked at a few videos so far. Ben Walters sent me the link to this skit, which reminds me of one that a US group of teenagers (can't remember the name of the group they were from...) performed in the early 90s on a missions trip to Australia. I've also checked out an interview with my good friend Vicky Beeching, and a guy who's trying out some comedy (I assume). Like in this comedian's seventh tip, this site must be good - it's got "God' in title. ;)

I got to play on one of these little iPhone beauties recently -- one that had been bought in the USA for $600USD before the price apparently dropped to $400USD. (The price drop btw seemed to correlate with and increase in sales from about 8,500 per day to around 15,000 per day in the USA.)

So, what are they like? Well, they have a very solid feel and are really thin. The camera is tiny and the camera software really cool. The screen is excellent and the touch screen amazing. I typed a couple of sentences on the virtual keyboard and I didn't get a single letter wrong, even with my semi-fat fingers! Google Earth works great, including zooming in and out and moving around, and this was running over one of several available wifi connections, of which the owner had configurations for about 8.

Much more could be said, however I will stop with this: compared to an older iPaq I owned a couple of years ago, this device is leagues ahead. The interface is simple, fast, brilliant and just works. But don't go rushing off to TradeMe to buy one as they have been banned from there for now :-)

There are times when it could be good to have an iPhone. It seems that Laridian, the creators of PocketBible (which I use on my PocketPC) have released iPocketBible, which runs on the iPhone and iPod Touch. And what's more - it's a subscription you pay for, rather than buying the product outright.

You do still have to buy the Bibles that have copyright associated with them. The free ones are the standard lot, including the KJV and American Standard Version. In most churches I've been to over the years there's a preference for the NIV, NKJV, Amplified, and more recently a growing trend towards the NLT and Message. NASB is good too, but all of these will cost you extra on top of the $1.99 per month subscription to iPocketBible. But $1.99 for a Bible is nothing, right? You can't buy much for $1.99 these days, but having access to a Bible on your phone could be a good (in more ways than one) option.

Unfortunately I can't write a proper review of it, as I don't have an iPhone to test it on. But Laridian have made sure that this is designed especially for the iPhone browser, and knowing (and loving) PocketBible for the PocketPC, I can assure you that this will be a good product. And it will improve with time as well! Already Laridian have a list of features they plan to add soon, including being able to highlight verses in different colours, personal notes, and being able to synchronise personal data (such as notes and highlights) with PocketBible for Windows if you have it.

I have heard that iPhone support for Bibles in general is fairly weak. But this product should change that, and in particular, the number of people that use their iPhone in church. If you're one, just make sure you turn off your ring tone!

You can read all about it (and buy a subscription) at http://www.ipocketbible.com/ - I might use the 'subscribe' link when I get an iPhone.

Growing up, I went to a mixture of Churches of England and Pentecostal churches. Since moving to Australia as a teenager, I've always been a part of Pentecostal churches, even during the stint that my wife and I had in London. Obviously there are many differences between the two, but one of the more subtle ones is regarding the hymnals and bibles that accompany the Book of Common Prayer in the pews in the mainline churches. Pentecostal churches (in my experience at least) don't tend to do this.

Perhaps it's because the Pentecostal churches I've been to over the years don't tend to have pews as such. I think of the old cinema seats, and the individual plastic chairs, and the easily moveable bench rows - none of which lended themselves to the idea of having bibles put in the back of them. But perhaps it's also that many Pentecostal churches are remarkably 'new', meeting in buildings that are less than four hundred years old, singing songs that were written either in this century or the  last, and certainly not sticking to a formula for church that was found in a book (unless that book is written by the pastor of a mega-church, suggesting that singing, notices and sermon, possibly with communion thrown in somewhere is a good format).

Doing things 'by the book' is just not the Pentecostal way. Of course, if that book is the Holy Bible, then the argument falls flat, but that's not what this article is about. What I'm talking about is the provision of paper to each congregation member. And actually Pentecostal churches have often been very good at this, sometimes handing out wads of paper to each person who arrives at the door, so that they have an A5 notice about the upcoming women's conference to stick on their fridge - presumably next to the same notice that they received the previous week. But even this is starting to fade, as churches discover PowerPoint for their notices.

Song words have long been displayed using overhead projectors - with the move to computer projectors being still relatively new. Some preachers are even using them for their sermon notes, and this is perhaps where I see a danger appearing.

When preachers display their sermon notes on the screen, people no longer need to look up the relevant Scriptures in their Bibles, and soon stop bringing Bibles to church with them at all.

Clearly there's value in the Pentecostal churches encouraging the congregation to bring their own bibles along with them. It means they can stick a bookmark (perhaps one of the adverts for the women's conference) into the particular page which stirred something in them, so that when they next pull their Bible out, they can turn to it and be reminded of the message they heard. If you're using the Bible that is provided for you, then you may not have this advantage. But you can't bookmark something that just appears on the screen above the preacher's head.

So if you're a preacher and you use PowerPoint for your sermons (which I do encourage - as people are often more likely to pay attention if your main points are on the screen for them to read), please try different ways of encouraging your listeners to actually turn in their own Bibles to the verses. If nothing else, they'll get practised at opening their Bibles and finding particular Scriptures. That entertaining moment of explaining to someone that the book of Amos is really easy to find (because it's just before Obadiah) may not be a good idea for the fact that newer Christians may feel a little alienated by the laughter of the people who know the order of the minor prophets, but the benefit of actually getting people to get their Bibles out is very useful.

When I'm training, I encourage my students to try things out while I'm talking to them. If I've explained how to write a database query, I get them to try it out, not only during lab times, but also while I'm explaining it, so that they can get a feel for the concepts. Preachers don't tend to give much time for the congregation to do their own research, but it's not a bad thing. But if your church is paperless, it's almost impossible.

(NB: I rate electronic bibles to be the same as having a paper bible with you - the point is whether your people have come armed or not)

I just noticed that tickets to BibleTech08 -the Bible Technology conference in January have gone on sale at Logos with 25% off.  This puts the price at US$149.95.

My understanding is that this covers meals which isn't bad :-)

I also noticed that I'm listed on the speakers list.  My only concern at this stage is that all the sessions appear to be only 45 minutes long - which is not very long... Its going to take some hard prep to make this work well.

Hopefully I'll meet you there!