Church Tech
How Google Wave Helps
One of the situations that Google Wave is attempting to address is when a group of people are collaborating to solve a problem. E-mail has limitations in this front. This week, I saw a good example of these limitations.
I am part of a fantasy football league with a group of friends. This past summer we agreed to modify the format of the playoffs at the end of the season. As the playoffs approach, the architect of the new playoff system promised to give details on how it will work. Over a two day period, we had a volley of 36 e-mails involving the rules to the playoffs. In particular, there were several questions about a particular rule here or there. We also had one guy who replied to almost every attempt to answer questions with “I don’t get it.” Each of those answered quoted the entire thread that it replied to. On top of that one member of our league did not have a copy of the proposal that was voted on this summer. For some reason, he did not save a copy.
So here is where Wave works in this situation. Those 36 e-mails were all sent to all 10 members of the league, as well as to my son, who helps me. So that is a total of 396 copies of those e-mails sitting on mail servers, and for those who use a local mail client on their computers. Many of those messages are quite long as they quote the entire series of e-mails that precede them.
In addition, there are several forks in the chain of e-mails. In order to get the full picture and all of the answers to questions, you need to read most of the e-mails, because there is no one e-mail that includes every answer.
Here is where Wave excels. Rather than 396 copies of that e-mail, had we had that conversation in Wave, there would be a single Wave with all the details. Furthermore, because other users can edit the work of their colleagues, and insert text where necessary, it would be a series of commentaries on the various aspects of the rules. The group would be able to ask questions, then the answer could be filled into the appropriate part of the description and the question deleted.
This has the benefit of leaving a single Wave with all the information in a logical order, which is easier to review later. Oh yeah, and the guy who never saves e-mails would be okay, too. Because it is a Wave, it sits on a server and will always be there for him to go find. That, or someone could send him a link.
Google Wave - E-mail 2.0
I have been invited to use Google Wave. I get to be one of the early adopters to play with this new technology and explore whether it really is an improvement on e-mail.
Gina Trapani and Adam Pash, in the Complete Guide to Google Wave, explain the rationale for reconsidering e-mail:
Relative to the lifespan of most technology, email is ancient. Invented over 40 years ago, email predates the internet as we know it—and in fact was a crucial tool in the creation of the internet. Despite its age, email hasn’t evolved much since the 1960s. Electronic mail is based on the paradigm of postal mail, a system of passing messages back and forth between senders and recipients. Wave makes a bet: that surely there must be a better way to send, receive, preserve, and grow shared communiques than via email.
They go on to describe some of the limitations of e-mail, including redundant copies of messages, forked replies, and the static nature of a message.
Google’s engineers went back to the drawing board and thought about how communication might be done differently in this world of hosted applications and cloud computing. Google Wave is the initial result of that work.
I will try to put up a series of posts with my initial reactions to Google Wave, as well as information on how it might be useful.
New Church Website
Josh and I have been working to put together a new website for our church. I built the old site a couple of years ago. It was built the old fashioned way - it was all hard-coded html and css. Since then I have maintained the website by hand. Each week, I have updated the content, uploading sermons, and editing pages as required. The old site can still be visited. It was a utilitarian site, with out much color or flash.
Over the past year, I have been planning a new site for the church. I have been listening to the Geeks & God Podcast. The podcast is a great resource for web design, particularly in the area of content management systems. They have introduced me to Drupal. Drupal is an open source content management system. Its role is to be serve as a go between between the internet and a database. The database contains all of the content for the website and Drupal allows it to display the correct information when someone visits the site. It also allows users to log in to the site and update content in the database.
As a result, the church has a site that should be easier to maintain, that is more colorful and is an overall improvement. Check it out: Christ Community Church - Ocala, Florida.
Opera Web Browser
Like many people, I have moved beyond Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. I first moved away from using IE after I got a spyware infection several years ago. That led me to research the other browsers available and start using Firefox as my browser of choice. That was probably 3 or 4 years ago. It didn’t take me long to become a fan of of using tabs to have more than one site open at a time. Recently, I have run into challenges when using multiple tabs. Frequently, Firefox will choke, or shut down altogether. It has been frustrating me greatly. I recently had lunch with a friend, and we shared a gripe over Firefox’s issues.
Today, I saw that David Russell has begun using Opera for causal browsing. He still uses Firefox for web development using tools like Firebug and the Developer Toolbar. After considering trying Opera for several weeks, I have broken down and installed it on my computer for the first time. This is my first post with Opera. So far so good. I have several tabs open, and no issues yet.
After I have used it for a while, I will post on whether I still like it.
The Resurgence Greek Project
Some time ago, I posted several entries about trying to keep up with the NT Greek that I studied back in college. I haven’t done a very good job of that over the past few months. Today, I saw on Zack Hubert’s blog that he is closing down the site that I have used for a long time to practice my translation skills. Well, actually, he is transitioning the site.
Some time ago, he started to redesign the site under a new development platform, but he had to put that project off to the side. Now, he is on staff at Mars Hill Church. The Church is sponsoring a redevelopment of the project under the Re:Greek name. Check it out at ReGreek.com. The site has a great look, and a graceful interface that allows you to see the original text, along with declensions and conjugations, of the entire Greek New Testament. You can also set up parallel translations with the NASB, ESV, or KJV.
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