I have seen a few ministry blogs out there running on free services. Some of these services, like Wordpress.com, occasionally put advertisements on these services if you are using the free services. While this might sound like a good deal, it’s not…

Don’t run contextual ads on your ministry web-sites!

The use of technology in our mission is growing. As we look at how we can best make use of technology in YWAM we all bring our own strengths and experiences. This site is one way that we can discuss and share what we have learned, but I want to try to expand this discussion ...

Ironically enough I am sitting in a coffee shop using their free open wifi to write this. Using any open wifi is not secure, but hopefully after reading this we can set ourselves up to be a bit more secure.

It’s never been secure to connect to the Internet over open wifi access points. Hacking open wifi sessions is easy for people to do, if they know how, but this week it was made way easier for people to do with a simple plugin for the popular browser Firefox.

I just got an e-mail from someone who is heading to one of our YWAM Africa locations in Arua, Uganda in December to help with their IT needs. He asked me what input we would have as part of the YWAM IT community as to how he can best help out the centre.

The person who will be heading over to help has a background in MCSE, ITIL and Prince 2. He was there four years ago to help, but hasn't heard much from them since so isn't too sure of what their needs are.

When I started in YWAM we used the old venerable OHP to present songs for worship. Obviously technology has changed, and so has how some centres present their songs for worship.

I was contacted by someone working with the YWAM Marine Reach Ship the M/V Pacific Link asking for some help. They will be travelling to remote Papua New Guinea (PNG) later this year, but want to maintain an Internet Connection while there. In remote PNG there is no infrastructure for it, so they were wanting to know what suggestions we might have ...

Here is the original e-mail:

Recently Google stopped allowing users to run Windows on their computers at Google. They stated that they were doing it as a safety measure due to the hack by the Chinese in January of some of their system's. That leads to the question, should we consider dropping Windows as well on our systems?

Recently a service called Ning decided to shut down their free service. Ning hosts social networks for people and groups. Up until recently they offered a free service and a few different premium services, ranging from $3.00 per month to $50.00 per month. People and groups who have previously been operating networks on the free service are now in a position of either shutting down their network or paying for the service.

Some of the changes that Facebook has made lately to their site has got me thinking a lot about how I use my Facebook account.If you look deeply at the changes made to the privacy settings and terms of service you will see that there is far less actual privacy on Facebook than I think many of us believe.

Recently I was talking with the guys at YWAM Harpenden about options available for digital asset management (DAM). None of the YWAM Centres that I have been at have had a system in place for this, it was pretty much always handled by the media guys just "knowing" what they had, and where it might be. Here's a fun parody video of what it's like to look for this content (I've been there and done that).