Where have I Been?

I just noticed that I haven’t posted an update to this site since August of last year! I thought it would be time to post another update and let you know what special projects that I have been working on.

In the last five months, I’ve been doing a lot of work around the web, most notably in the podcasting arena. I’ve started two podcasts, In Between Sundays and Secrets of Flashforward. I’ve been devoting a lot of time to these two shows, and hope to continue to use my time for them.

(more…)

NC Seventeen

Ryan and I just finished making this year’s promotional video for Nature’s Call. Check out our handiwork below:

Devotion to the Saints

One thing that I have really found useful is a program called Romcal. It is a website that has the liturgical calendar that you can download to your computer, which includes all of the memorials and feast days of the church year. It’s pretty neat to have the ability to look at your calendar and know which saint has that feast day.

I also find it useful to learn the name of different saints and a little about their lives. There are a number of resources for doing that, including the ones mentioned in the video below. I have two particular websites that I use to learn about the lives of the saints:

First, LOL Saints, which has a weekly podcast featuring a two minute highlight about the life of a saint. Additionally, the website provides some pretty good pictures that make me laugh when I read it. We recently interviewed Jeff, the site’s owner for the In Between Sundays podcast. Check him out on Episode #9, I Can Has Podcast.

Second, there is a fantastic podcast put together by Paul Camarata, called the SaintCast. Paul produces a weekly show that is about 30 minutes long and does some amazing in-depth research to describe the lives of the saints. As of this writing, he has 126 shows up, each about a different saint! Listening to his podcast really has helped me develop a great knowledge of the saints and has helped me to find some devotions to new saints.

Recently, Paul put together a video about the different faith-based applications available for your iPhone and put it up on YouTube. If you’re looking for a way to grow your devotion to the saints, I highly recommend checking out LOL Saints and the SaintCast as well as the other applications mentioned in Paul’s video.

Internet on the Road

Usually I don’t get into speculating about what Apple might be adding to its latest products or hardware, but there has been a feature that I’ve been thinking would be a great addition.

I tend to work from a number of locations and, most of the time, there is wireless available at all the locations. However, I recently ran into a situation last week where the wireless access at my favorite coffee shop was down. This caused a bit of a problem since we had decided to record a podcast episode there and were planning on streaming the show. Luckily, I had remembered an aircard that I had access to and we were able to do the show without too much technical trouble.

This all got me thinking about wireless access through cell phone signals. Right now, I’m led to believe that at some point before the apocalypse AT&T will be enabling tethering on my iPhone. At that point, I will be able to connect my iPhone to my laptop and use it for my connection. While this will all be nice and fun, I’ve been wondering why we need to have the extra hardware just to get an Internet connection. Currently, laptops come with built in wireless and bluetooth, both of which used to be add-on products to computers.

So, why not build in some hardware that allows me to access the Internet using a cell signal straight from my computer? I think that this would be a great selling point for the machine.

Of course, I think that it goes deeper than just hardware: we need to have cell providers who offer more reasonable prices for Internet connections. Currently, the price per megabyte of sending data over a cell signal is exorbitantly expensive. What I would like to see would be cell providers who allow for this connection feature to be tacked on to an existing phone line that will allow a user to only pay $20 or $30 max for an unlimited connection. At the very least, the price should not be any higher than the price of a Cable or DSL connection to the house.

So, what do you think will be the future of wireless Internet access in the US? Would you find this a useful feature on your laptop? Let me know in the comments!

Being a Valued Customer

Yesterday afternoon, I went out to check the mail and was greeted by some junk mail from AT&T. Usually, I just take junk mail and enjoy some high-tech stress relief. However, for some reason, I actually looked at who the letter was addressed to: Valued Customer.

This got me thinking about junk mail and marketing and how you can potentially turn anonymous people into customers. I don’t think that AT&T really went about things the right way.

If the company who is sending me the materials pays money to buy a list with my address on it, I think that they should spend the time or pay the money to at least find out who I am. They are printing all these form letters telling me that I am a “valued customer” and all, but haven’t even spent the time to learn my name. How is that showing me that I am valued? If they had put my name in the address line, I probably would have opened the letter before deciding it was junk mail. Perhaps I may have even taken action on it, since it would have appeared more personalized. Instead, it just went into the trash with everything else.

Take some time to think about how your interactions with customers make them feel valued and whether you have spent the time to learn more about those you serve. Have some suggestions on how to do just that? Leave them in the comments.

Facebook and Messaging

I’ve been thinking a lot about Facebook and its messaging features. In talking with a lot of people, they are all really surprised how the site has such lackluster features in their messaging application. I would also like to add my own voice to that mix. It seems that the messaging feature on Facebook really hasn’t had to many new features added over the past few years.

Just to clarify, I’m talking about the Facebook Inbox messaging, not their chat application or status messages. Those have all gotten some pretty big upgrades in order to make them more integrated into their service.

What I’m really surprised at is how much I actually send direct messages to friends on Facebook as well as how often we use it to contact one another. In a sense, it’s almost like another inbox that I have to monitor—which gets to the crux of my problem, that I have to monitor yet another inbox. (more…)