by Bret Capranica | May 25, 2009 | Featured Articles, Ordinary Pastor, Pastoral Ministry, Technology
Here’s the last installment on the technology series: An area where I will be sticking with the paid versions is Groove. What, you don”™t know what Groove is? You need to. Groove is a collaboration software tool that comes in the new Office 07 suite. I can create multiple workspaces, invite who I want to them, assign permissions and begin sharing any sort of document with whomever I want (of course, they must also own and install Groove). If they make changes to the document, it synchronizes the doc for any who are a part of the workspace. You can even create files on your desktop to be “Grooved” and share those files with those you want so that you don”™t have to recreate or upload files to a separate workspace. The only problem with this is that the 64 bit version of Groove does not work with Vista and Microsoft has no plans to make it work. Go figure. This was a major bummer for me. For pastoral ministry this has become invaluable. Our pastoral team collaborates with one of our members who actually puts up a copy of the bulletin each week and we all add our two cents. I do this also with our Sunday School bulletin, PowerPoint presentations, and a vast array of documents I want to share with others. I looked into Zoho”™s Sharepoint-like site, but it simply was not as easy to use or set up. Groove has been a pleasure to use. What about note taking? When Office 07 came out I became hooked to One Note. However, I think the free...
by Bret Capranica | May 23, 2009 | Featured Articles, Ordinary Pastor, Pastoral Ministry, Technology
More on my wrap up of Cheap Technology and the Ordinary Pastor Excel is a tool I regularly use, especially since I oversee our church”™s finances. The ability to quickly create charts and graphs in Word and extensively manipulate them to fit your desired look and express your information as you desire is easy. Word has vastly improved the styles of their charts and graphs, adding more 3D effects and sharper colors and backgrounds. Numbers is the Mac version, and it simply produces a better-looking product than does Excel and is very easy to use. I”™m no Excel power user, but what I do with it was not as easy to accomplish in the OpenOffice platform. Let me say a word about PowerPoint. I used to despise PowerPoint. They have the WORST looking templates. Another area Microsoft just simply does not do well in ““ really professional, modern, crisp, clean, sharp presentations. PowerPoint 07 is a great improvement over previous versions. I do a PPT presentation almost every week that I teach my mid-week class. OpenOffice is a joke. I also extensively tried out the free (and the paid versions) of Sliderocket. Sliderocket has some real potential, but was so buggy that it created some major headaches for me. I also called their customer support for help because once it was out of beta, I couldn”™t seem to get anyone to respond via e-mail. The guy was awesome on the phone and assured me that someone would follow up with my problems ““ I have yet to hear from them. While it still irks me that PowerPoint is so...
by Bret Capranica | May 22, 2009 | Featured Articles, Ordinary Pastor, Pastoral Ministry, Technology
I”™m going to wrap up (belatedly) my little series on pastoral ministry and the quest for inexpensive technology. Honestly, this is not really an issue for some pastors (or others). Some are in the position where expense is not really an issue. Or they are willing to forgo something else in order to have the better technology. After evaluating the free side of life, I think it is worth spending some money in order to have the better technology and thus a more productive time accomplishing what you do and yet there are a few apps. Let me start with productivity suites. Word Processing, Number Crunching and Presentations. Hands down, MS Office: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are your best bets (all of these in the world of PC). For a basic suite, of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote (more on this one later), you”™ll pay about $150.00. If you are a student, you can get the Ultimate Office suite for about $60.00. That”™s really the way to go for the power and ease of use you will gain over the zero-priced material like OpenOffice.org. Why pay the money for these? Word is the universal powerhouse of word processing. Other programs, including WordPerfect and Pages with the Mac, have to adjust to it. It is the standard platform. Office has become much more user friendly. Though it did take me awhile to adjust to the new ribbon format, the UI is much cleaner, easier to use, faster to navigate, and even pleasing to the eyes. As said before, OpenOffice reminds me of Windows 98. In Word (Excel, PowerPoint) you can...
by Bret Capranica | Apr 20, 2009 | Featured Articles, Ordinary Pastor, Pastoral Ministry, Technology
In my quest to live off of the world of free applications for a month, I’ve shed my addiction to Microsoft’s Outlook and have completely moved to Google. I’m not sure I’ll ever go back to Outlook. Some of this I have reported on in my previous post regarding Gmail. But to be more specific in regard to Outlook: First, here’s many of the ways I used MS Outlook: Grabbing mail from multiple e-mail addresses Rules that pulled mail into particular folders. I.e., my inbox was restricted to only priority mail from church members, pastors, my wife, and a few others I needed to hear from quickly. All other mail went into the “Other” folder. MS Exchange Server. Through a tech company we have been using, they set us up with Exchange, which has allowed instant synchronizing of calendars, tasks, e-mail, and contacts. Organizing mail into folders for quick reference. I had only four folders: Inbox, Kel (my wife), Pastors, Members, Other. I could search a folder for finding an e-mail. I relied on search folders to keep up with mail that I needed to respond to but did not have the time to handle in two minutes or less. Calendar. I used a personal and a church/public folder. My public folder was available to staff and our receptionist. Tasks. I heavily used the Franklin Covey overlay for Outlook. If you know anything about the Covey system, this overlay organized Outlook to look like the Covey paper planner, and also brought e-mail in. I actually loathed to use Outlook without this overlay ““ Outlook, without this element is a...
by Bret Capranica | Apr 7, 2009 | Ordinary Pastor, Pastoral Ministry, Technology
10 Reasons why an ordinary pastor (or anyone) should consider using Gmail. 1. It’s free. Gmail is a part of the free world of Google. All that is required is an internet connection (not free). Sure several other e-mail services are free. Your workplace gives you a free account, but this one is yours and no paid hosting service is necessary. 2. It’s simple. Anyone can quickly be up to speed with Gmail. No desktop mail software necessary. No account set ups for desktop clients. Just sign up with Google and mail is yours. The learning curve is easy to get up to speed. Even using some of its more advanced features is relatively simple to grasp. The help sections of Google are simple to navigate. Learning to use labels, stars, search, etc., requires little time and effort. 3. Search. This is Google’s bread and butter ““ and in Gmail as well. If your file is large, Outlook is cumbersome and lags when trying to search. I often cannot quickly find what I’m looking for. Gmail search has been simple, accurate, and fast. 4. Spam. I seem to get a lot of spam through Gmail, but I rarely have any of it hit my inbox. Gmail does an outstanding job at catching the spam-far better than Outlook or Yahoo. 5. Accessibility. Since it is browser based, Gmail works with any operating system (PC or Mac). Gmail works on mobile platforms, so that no matter where you are, you have access to your mail and it is always in sync with the multiple platforms you may use (desktop, laptop, mobile,...
