Hey friends, Batterson’s book “Primal” was finally released today, which you of course can’t get before Christmas (Kindle Edition!), but I really recommend grabbing it by the new year.

Batterson goes through the four ways that we love God: Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength. He really digs into each of them, using the metaphor of stairs descending down into the catacombs of our hearts. My favorite line is that we ought to be “great at the Great Commission,” a stirring statement for sure.

At first I thought, “He always writes about animals and ‘animalistic’ themes” but really, that’s what we need a lot of times! I’m pretty sure I *know* enough, probably more than many generations of Christians who took a stand and went for it. Perhaps we just need a forceful, primal reminder to get back to the basics and not make it terrifically complicated.

Well grab this book, it’s in stores now or from the Publisher

(Legally speaking, I have to mention that this book was given to me to be reviewed…)

I follow a very specific philosophy of connecting with people on the internet. That means I want to connect, but not everyone does. As far as I can tell, my breaking point is following 300 people. Beyond that, Twitter is *only* a tool for publicity and random narcissism for me.

But not everyone agrees. Some people follow 16000, 25000, or even 100,000 twitterers. To me, it’s like this: we’re on the phone, but instead of a conversation, I just sit and listen to you talk. It’s one-way communication in a two-way age. “follow *everyone* who follows you.” The problem is, they don’t want to know me, and I don’t want to know them. So it’s mutually assisted narcissism.

Not only that, *my* tweets go from valuable to them, to spam as well! Can you see how good content becomes spam so quickly? Spam is quietly threatening Facebook, Twitter, and basically all of social media. But unlike email, you can actually fix it!

Ok, that’s the end of my three post rant on spam. I really just think it’s valuable to clean up your digital life.

Digital Spam is like a disease. It’s the “Signal/Noise” principle. as the noise increases, it gets much more difficult to even detect the signal you were hoping for in the first place! I want to hit some quick areas spam has killed me, and hear from ya’ll.

• Twitter: I like Twitter. A little bit. I want to go through all the tweets on my front page, and rank them, scale of 1-5(high) based on how much I like the tweeter, and the content of the tweet:
  3, 5, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2, 2, 5, 1, 2, 5, 1, 3, 3, 5, 2, 3, 1. Averaging a 2.3. My hope is to get it to a 3.6, I’m not sure how that’s going to happen. For an idea, see my last post
• Facebook: Now I love Facebook, but let’s do the same thing, except this time I’m *just* ranking how well I know these people.
  2, 4, 3, 3, 2, 4, 0, 2, 5, 0, 2, 0, 0, 5, 2, 3. Averaging a 2.1. I simply don’t know a lot of these users.
  and Notifications as well! a bunch of them have *nothing* to do with what I care about.
• Google Reader: No ratings now, just the simple fact that about 1/3 of the posts I read (and write probably) are recycled, or simply dull.

Now the solution. Whenever you sign up for a new service, your first question is always: “how do I maximize the information I take in.” The answer is: Unsubscribe, Unfollow, and Unfriend. Do what’s necessary to connect with the people you take information from, and if they’re not interested, hit the button.

This morning I was sitting down to some pancakes and oatmeal, and had this thought:

Twitter is nice. I like it a lot, and use it all the time. They’ve made it very easy to follow someone, but not so easy to unfollow them. Good luck trying to unfollow a bunch of people. The thing is, the cost to follow one useless aggravating spammer is low, but following hundreds of them makes Twitter useless for anything but publicity. Connecting becomes impossible.

So what if a tool was built called “the Chopping Block.” Here’s how it would work.

• You set a cap for most people you intend to follow. Say 250.
• Once you follow the 251st person, the Chopping Block automatically kicks out the twitterer of lowest value to you.
• This is decided by their spam-value, if you’ve ever @ed them, their follower/followed ratio, length of time on twitter & following you etc.

So using all these factors, you slowly bump off the annoying tweets, while adding high value people that you enjoy. At the same time, it’s painless, and makes for a better experience.

Ok, this doesn’t exist yet…as far as I can tell…let’s make it happen.

Maybe you’ve known about this forever, but I just discovered it, and I’m super excited.

BibleGateway offers a daily reading plan. You can pick your version, and the style of reading: Chronological, OT/NT, Historical, 90 Day Bible, or Beginning. But the exciting part is, if you use a blog reader, you can subscribe to the feed to get it with your blogs. Or a daily email, but I greatly dislike daily emails.

So yes, if you have trouble “making time” (me too), to read scripture, and get off track or whatever, this tool is for you!

This is a review of the Wibiya Toolbar, used here on Churchosphere. I think it’s worth using wherever you want to increase user engagement (everywhere). And also, not many people use it, so it’s kind of unique. Check out the video.

Wibiya Toolbar Review
(more…)

If you use a mac, as I hope you do, you should know about the Grab tool. It’s a screencapturing tool that even supports selecting portions of your screen, which is great. Except…It saves it in .tiff (no one knows why!?)

The problem is, of course, that your screen grab is *probably* going to the internet, which largely doesn’t support .tiff. So your stuck opening up photoshop/gimp right? No more!

Instead,

1. open up Preview > File > Take Screenshot and pick your favorite method of screen capture: Screen, Window or Selection.
2. Take your screenshot and click Save.
3. When Save pops up, you magically have all kinds of formatting options, (click the picture).
4. Time Saved.

• Justhost.com is offering free web hosting for a year. Use the code TEMPLATEMONSTER when signing up and it should say 12 months free. This has worked for two of my friends, let me know if it works for you. (Marcus, this means you…no more excuses haha). I use them to host this site, and as far as I can tell, it really is free.
• Christianbook.com is offering the ESV Study Bible for 50% off the normal $50 price! I’ve held these things in my hands, and they’re beautiful. I just ordered a copy, so excited!
• P.S. today is free sandwich day at Chick-Fil-A. wear your team logo, free sandwich. do it.

Is it lame to start a post by apologizing that you aren’t posting enough? yes. For real though, classes starting requires lots of time and energy, which will normalize next week. So there it is, lame and all. But now for a quick Wordpress tip. I’ve noticed on several blogs some awkward author usernames. Something like SteveB90 appears as the Author, simply because Wordpress defaults to your Wordpress username.
(more…)

Dropbox is a simple Mac [Edit: and PC] utility that brings file sharing to a whole new level. With the free account, you’re allowed 2gb of online storage, and the software integrates with the Finder to make a perfect solution for bloggers, business or simple online backup.

(more…)