Greg Atkinson

Igniter Media Group is offering a FREE download everyday until July 21st. You’d be crazy to not hit this up.

I received a couple of video request sheets from 2 of you, but would still like to receive more. Please send me what you use at your church.

BONUS:

Check out the latest from FortyOneTwenty. 5 new stills and 1 new min-movie have just been posted to the site. Recently, they have focused on creating some backgrounds that really help your words pop off the screen – their new Brown collection does just that.

Also, be sure to check out “Enthroned”, a powerful new mini-movie illustrating the process of preparing our souls for God to take His rightful place. By the way, they’d love to get some feedback on them! Email them at support@fortyonetwenty.com.

EXTRA:

Have you heard of Virb? I think it’s a really cool site, worth checking out!

I’ve mentioned Jake Ludington’s newsletter before. I always learn of some cool new media resources through his newsletter. Here are a few things that he mentioned and I’m going to give a try:

• Spin It Again: Transfer your old 45′s and 33′s to CD or to your new MP3 player or iPod. This dedicated record and tape conversion software makes it child’s play to record and edit your old albums. The wizard driven process guides you through connecting your hardware, getting the correct recording level, and splitting your recording into multiple tracks. The software automatically removes clicks and pops and that unwanted tape hum and hiss. Convert your recordings to MP3s or burn them on to an audio CD.
• Eyejot: I’m doing a little video experiment with an online video tool. Eyejot is a FREE video app that lets you record video messages in your browser and send them to a recipient via email or RSS. This would fall under Web 2.0 tools for ministry. Check it out!
• JPG Video: Time lapse video is something I’ve always found fascinating. Take a series of images from the same place over the course of a day, week, month, etc., and then build them into a video to express the time change in a matter of minutes or seconds. JPGVideo is a simple app designed to make a time lapse video from a series of stills. JPGVideo is billed as a tool for Webcam images, but JPG files from any camera source will work.
  
• Windows Media Player Plug-in for Firefox: This plug-in allows you to use Windows Media Player inside of Firefox. It is designed to support the following Windows platforms: Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista.
• Registry Booster: They claim to be the safest and most trusted solution to clean and optimise your system, free it from registry errors and fragmented entries. Through Advanced Error Detection Technology, Register Booster automatically identifies missing, corrupt or invalid items in your Windows registry and dramatically enhances performance and general stability. * This I actually downloaded and used to clean up my computer. So far, I’m very pleased with it. *
  

NEW PRODUCER:

Check out Erwin Brothers Pictures, a new producer, available at their website or at WorshipHouse Media.

I had a great time in Indy, but as I mentioned: I overdid it. My back is now out and giving me some serious trouble. I’ve had back surgery in the past, so I’m no stranger to back pain. I believe the wearing of “the boot” on my bad foot has aggravated my back (the boot makes one leg taller than the other). So, I’m at home with my laptop, rotating heat and ice on my back. I’d appreciate your prayers.

NEW:

My new backgrounds, called “Fresh Backs Vol. 1“, are available at the Shoutable Store. Look for “Recent Additions”, then “Downloadable” or click HERE and scroll down to “Fresh Backs”.

FREE STUFF:

• A video with a point called “What’s Your Price?” – FREE from SermonSpice
• “Numb“, FREE from WorshipHouse Media, includes 1 Short film, a leaders guide and teaching outline, along with handout questions.

EXTRA:

LifeChurch.tv just updated their website. Job well done to Terry Storch and crew.

A couple of months ago, Bill Seaver of MicroExplosion told me about Twitter – it was about the time he told me of MySliceOfPi. Bill is the man with Web 2.0 stuff.

Bobby Gruenewald of LifeChurch.tv recently blogged about Twitter. I’ll post what he wrote, as he has more experience using Twitter for ministry purposes…

Twitter is a free online “micro-blogging” service that allows you to post short updates (text based and limited to 140 characters) via SMS, instant messaging, the twitter.com website or several applications designed for the service. –wiki–

We used the service a few weeks ago in conjunction with a three day fast that we did as a church. Over the three days…Chris Spadlin who taught a message about fasting the previous weekend sent out “updates” about the fast via the twitter service throughout the day. People could subscribe using SMS (text messaging) on their cell phones, via instant messaging or by visiting the LifeChurch.tv website where we could pull in an RSS feed of the updates. It is currently completely free…except for the charges that a person might normally have for receiving SMS messages.

Twitter is a platform for SMS applications and it doesn’t cost the thousands of dollars it typically takes just to get started.
Here are some possible uses for your churches/ministries:

• Have users subscribe to your twitter feed via SMS and send out a weekly thought/prayer/mico devotional
• Use twitter to allow people to signup for activities/events (this definitely require some programming on your end, but will work)
• Have people subscribe to a special twitter feed to be reminded of an event or church experience/service via SMS
• Create an interactive element where people can SMS during a worship experience/service and incorporate the feed of all of the responses into the experience in real-time
• Allow people to subscribe to the feed of a mission trip leader as he/she sends out updates throughout the day of what God is doing through the trip