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A wise sage told me once "It doesn't matter if you know the answer as long as you know where to find it". This certainly applies to technology users. The following are links that have been useful to Tech Church on more than one occasion.
disclaimer: none of the sites are associated with Tech Church or Qube5 Labs. If you find offensive material at any of these sites, please email Tech Church so the link can be reviewed.
Church Resources
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Ginghamsburg Church (Tipp City, Ohio) No matter what your interest in contemporary worship you will find something at this site. Ginghamsburg Church offers an incredible depth of resources with their On-line Communities. These are open to anyone and provide a forum for asking questions and sharing ideas. You'll be amazed at how much you can learn by just reading the postings.
Ginghamsburg Church also sells media packages - printed, television, & computer - for groups that need something off the self. These are worth looking just to get your creative juices going.
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The Center for Applied Christianity Using technology within the church is simply a function of the natural change that will take place in the successful churches of the future. The Center for Applied Christianity is a resource for churches that want to be successful in fulfilling the Great Commission. This is a website of websites. The information is subdivided into groups for easier use. It provides a nice mix of thought provoking sites, examples of successful churches, and businesses that can help. The Center for Applied Christianity was started several years by a friend of Qube5 Labs. It has been a pleasure to watch this site go from the planning stages to the web.
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Graphic Resources
Finding the right graphic is one of the most time consuming parts of creating computer presentations. Everything on the Internet is property of someone, be sure and read the legal terms on each web site before using their images.
Some of these links are commercial sites that offer some free images. A link to a site is not an endorsement of there services.
READ THIS WARNING!
Software
These are links to software that is used by Tech Church
Unless marked otherwise, all the sites are for commercial products. Software marked "free" is just that freeware, free to download - free to use.
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- PowerArchiver 2000
- a long, long time ago in a far off system, lived compression software PKZIP. Like a foot to an overflowing garbage can, the zip utility would make a file smaller. The only problem was PKZIP was written for DOS and was not very user friendly if you tried to use it inside Windows. Along came WinZip. This nifty piece of shareware was super easy to use because of a well designed user interface (the controls and buttons). But (you knew a "but" was coming didn't ya'?) WinZip cost money if you wanted to use it. Now this caused a dilemma because more and more files were being put on the Internet in the .ZIP format. A couple of years ago a newcomer arrived with the solution. PowerArchiver does everything WinZip does only cheaper (like free dude). So why do people still pay for WinZip?
Here is the official description:
PowerArchiver 2000 - The Ultimate Freeware Archive Utility for Windows 95/98/NT/2000.
built-in compression for ZIP(including Quake III PK3, JAR - JavaARchiver, OWK and REP files), CAB, LHA (LZH), TAR, TAR.GZ, TAR.BZ2 and BH (BlakHole), ...
built-in decompression for ZIP, CAB, LHA, RAR, ACE, ARJ, TAR, GZIP, BZIP2, ARC, ZOO, BH, ...
built-in support for XXE and UUE encoded files
multi-volume ("disk spanning") archives for ZIP format
self-extracting archives ("sfx") for ZIP, RAR, ACE, ARJ, LHA and BH formats
easy-to-use interface with many customizable options, drag & drop support, full integration with Windows Explorer using Explorer Shell Extensions, ...
lot of tools like for converting archives, repairing archives, spanning archives, ...
skinnable toolbar (don't forget to visit "Toolbar Skins" selection)
and many, many more powerful and practical features ...
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- EditPad Lite
- Windows has always included a simple little program called Notepad for reading and creating text files (.TXT). Notepad is a great program but it has a few shortcomings. It cannot open large files and you cannot do a find&replace command. I've looked at a lot of replacements for Notepad and like Goldilocks they are either too big or too small. EditPad is just the right size. The author has several versions; the one I use is free, the other cost money but has more features.
Here is the official description:
EditPad Lite is very similar to EditPad Pro. Almost all of the source code used to build EditPad Lite is also used in EditPad Pro. EditPad Lite does not have all the powerful capabilities of its professional counterpart. It is available at no cost for non-commercial use, while EditPad Pro comes with a modest license fee. Some features you will certainly miss are the syntax coloring, spell check, project functionality and hexadecimal editing. It does not support regular expressions and cannot call external tools. Do check out EditPad Pro if any of these functions interest you.
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- V (as in "view")
- V is a nifty little application that will take all the images ina folder and generate HTML code to view them. Tech Church has used it generate a facsimile of a presentation for others to see. If you have a number of images from an event that you want to publish to the Internet this is a quick and easy way to do it.
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- Pic Viewer
- PicViewer is simple image viewer - no frills, no bloat. Select a folder and it list all the viewable filenames on the left, select one names and it shows the image on the right. Handles most of the usual image types (BMP, GIF, animated GIF, JPG, etc). This is very useful if you use a digital camera and have a bunch of non-descript filenames.
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- Lupas Renamer 2000
- very powerful application for renaming files. Among the many options you can add/delete prefixes and suffixes, edit character strings, sequentially number (or letter), change case, change file type. Very useful if you have a digital camera.
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Ack, This looks like the small print!
Warnings, Disclaimers, and Advice on usage:
The Internet opens a wide and dangerous hole for churches. Tech Church has no legal expertise and should not be trusted for advice on legal matters - check with a lawyer before using any graphics from the Internet to be sure it is legal.
The above sounds ridiculous doesn't it? Yet I've read stories of churches being sued for large sums ($10,000 plus) because the courts determined they had illegally used someone's pictures. I heard about one case (undocumented I should add) in particular that involved a church that bought royalty free images on CD. The images were used on their web site and they were sued because the license did not allow for "broadcasting" or some other vague term and putting work on the Internet is not the same as printing a newsletter or using in a multimedia presentation. The church had to pay for each time the image was viewed (this information was based off the webpage statistics). which means if 20 church members looked at the webpage 5 times each that equals 100 "viewings".
Now on the bright side, many (dare I say most?) image gallery type sites post you are not allowed to copy their work, yet quite a number will grant permission for noncommercial use. All you have to do is ask.
One question I can find no clear answer for (surprise, surprise) is the use of copyrighted images in a church worship service. Some sources say you can't do it, period. Others say that within a worship service you can use copyrighted images, but it would be violation of the copyright law to use the same image in a non-worship setting (for example an youth program). As Christians we have an obligation to obey the law, so follow your conscience (and your lawyer's advice).
There is one very simple way to avoid all these issues - only use your own images. With digital cameras so affordable you can take original photos for use in presentations or the Internet and your church would be the copyright owner. A consideration before doing this is to make sure you have permission to use someone's likeness. This is very important if you are taking pictures of minors.
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