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.
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.
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…)
Facebook Fasting
Here is a meditation that I will be giving on our next show of In Between Sundays. It started as a blog post but it ended up sounding great for a broadcast:
Recently, I wrote a few blog posts about my intention to limit my exposure to social media. I wondered, out loud and on Facebook, what would happen if I cut my friends list to 100 and really spent the time socializing with those 100 people online.
I haven’t taken any action to limit my friends on Facebook. In fact, what I thought would be a fairly outspoken response was, in fact, more of a murmur among about five friends online. I have, however, realized that at the time, I was pretty much on overload with my use of Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, Ping.fm and a whole host of other services.
In fact, I think that the proliferation of services is making social websites into a commodity. It’s almost a daunting task to try to find a Twitter client these days or a decent facebook application. What was once really fun and exclusive has turned into a commodity. Unfortunately, when things like this happen, people start getting lost in the noise, much like I did. There is so much information rushing at us that it’s really hard for us to process one site, let alone a number of them. (more…)