Tech Tips for Catholics

Recently, a reader of Catholic Tech Tips sent us an email in regards to using Google’s Gmail service.  The reader was fearful of how Google might be using their private information and was wondering if it would be better to switch to another service.  Josh fielded the question to me, and I dove into research mode, trying to find out exactly what data Google gets, and how, from our private email accounts and other services.

First off, Google has a whole slew of privacy policies that you can go through at your leisure, they can be found here.

The following are what I feel to be the key points of the Gmail terms/privacy policy:

When you use Gmail, Google’s servers automatically record certain information about your use of Gmail. Similar to other web services, Google records information such as account activity (including storage usage, number of log-ins), data displayed or clicked on (including UI elements, ads, links); and other log information (including browser type, IP-address, date and time of access, cookie ID, and referrer URL).

Google maintains and processes your Gmail account and its contents to provide the Gmail service to you and to improve our services. The Gmail service includes relevant advertising and related links based on the IP address, content of messages and other information related to your use of Gmail.

We provide advertisers only aggregated non-personal information such as the number of times one of their ads was clicked. We do not sell, rent or otherwise share your personal information with any third parties except in the limited circumstances described in the Google Privacy Policy, such as when we believe we are required to do so by law.

You may organize or delete your messages through your Gmail account or terminate your account through the Google Account section of Gmail settings. Such deletions or terminations will take immediate effect in your account view.  Residual copies of deleted messages and accounts may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup systems.

Ok, now, remember that these terms of use are also coupled with Google’s Privacy Policy and are separate from the terms of service for their other products and services.

So, here is the breakdown.

When you use Gmail, Google’s servers automatically record certain information about your use of Gmail. Similar to other web services, Google records information such as account activity (including storage usage, number of log-ins), data displayed or clicked on (including UI elements, ads, links); and other log information (including browser type, IP-address, date and time of access, cookie ID, and referrer URL).

Google does log each time a user visits Gmail, what they clicked on and how long they were there, in addition to what data was displayed.  Now, from my understanding of the first point, I think that refers to what TYPE of content, not the content itself.  Basically, Google’s log servers know that a user viewed an email, but, not the email itself.  At least, in this point on the list.

Now, the next point is the one that I feel to be very important.

Google maintains and processes your Gmail account and its contents to provide the Gmail service to you and to improve our services. The Gmail service includes relevant advertising and related links based on the IP address, content of messages and other information related to your use of Gmail.

Now, at first there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with this statement.  Google will maintain and process your email for you.  Being that Gmail is an email service, this makes sense.  However, the next line in regards to how they display ads is a little less innocent.

Now, using your IP address to display ads isn’t that big of a deal.  Your IP address is a unique identifier for your computer or router on the internet.  It can be roughly linked to your location, or at least your town, which, allows ads to be tailored to where you live, again, not too bad.

After the comma, someone might notice the words content of the message. This means that in some way or fashion, most likely through an automated computerized process, Google scans the text of your emails in order to display ads.  Now, does this mean there is someone hand-reading your personal emails and saving them on file for a later date?  Probably not.  However, if a company was concerned about the privacy of internal company emails having trade secrets, I wouldn’t be using Gmail.

Now, again, keep in mind that Google’s main business is advertising.  The whole reason that they provide the public with such great, free resources is for the sake of putting ads into them.  The ads need to be tailored to the user viewing them and Google must find some way to do that tailoring.  The processes they use to do this are automated but, also secret.  So one can assume in two different directions on this.

Either:

A. Google uses a completely automated process to scan emails briefly in addition to using your IP address, to be able to display ads that appear to be relevant to you.  That process does not “know” or “understand” the content of your emails and is just scanning for key words, etc.

or

B. Google’s servers not only look for keywords in emails but, know exactly what they are about and know every detail or your private life.  They then hold onto this information to hand on to advertisers so that they can blackmail you into buying their products.

Alright, maybe not AS extreme as suggestion B but, there are people out there who claim that Google is hording their private information and selling it to advertisers, etc.

The next point brings some level of comfort though:

We provide advertisers only aggregated non-personal information such as the number of times one of their ads was clicked. We do not sell, rent or otherwise share your personal information with any third parties except in the limited circumstances described in the Google Privacy Policy, such as when we believe we are required to do so by law.

Now, if someone really looks into this, including the Google Privacy Policy, there really isn’t much to worry about.  Google does provide advertisers with what ads were clicked and displayed.  The ONLY time that Google will provide your name, address, phone number, social security number, driver’s license or anything else of that nature is if a user SPECIFICALLY allow this, such as in using Google Checkout on a website.  They are NOT sending users’ emails to advertisers.

Again, Google DOES, in an automated fashion, scan a user’s emails while being displayed in order to display relevant ads.  While this doesn’t appear to pose an issue to the everyday user, businesses should still use their internal company email systems for private emails, trade secrets or other such information.  Better safe than sorry.

You may organize or delete your messages through your Gmail account or terminate your account through the Google Account section of Gmail settings. Such deletions or terminations will take immediate effect in your account view.  Residual copies of deleted messages and accounts may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup systems.

Finally, Google does reserve the right to hold onto the data from emails, even if a user deletes them.  I am not sure why they might want to indefinitely hold on to deleted emails in their offline backup systems, but, the point is that they can.  Google has already promised not to send that information to anyone else so, the reason why they would want to hold them is completely unknown.  Maybe for diagnostic or statistical information…who knows.  The point is, Google can hold onto a user’s emails as long as they want, even after deleting them from their “active” servers.  Again, this is why Gmail is NOT good for business use.

So, overall, I think Gmail is safe for personal use.  If a user is really paranoid about what Google might be doing with their emails or what Google might be sharing with others, they can still go to other services such as AOL Mail, Yahoo, Windows Live Mail and other such services.  I doubt that they have the same amount of storage space or the search capabilities of Gmail, not to mention the other Google apps.

I am hoping to do a full treatise on internet privacy on CatholiTech.com in the near future but, it will take some time.

Hope that helps!

God Bless,
Chris

Every Friday I post the top 5 favorite blogposts that I’ve come across throughout the week. You have all weekend now to check them out : )

1. 5 Things I Learned From “LOST”
2. Southern African Bishops Conference’s World Cup Video (Now this is how it’s done!)
3. Celebrating the Holy Mass from an iPad? (Great Discussion)
4. Evangelization: In with the ‘new,’ while maintaining the old
5. 10 Types of Blog Comments: Part 2 of 2

*Bonus Tweet

If you have a blogpost that you would like to share with me feel free to contact Catholic Tech Tips and I will get it.

Have a great weekend!

Joshua

Ever been to Church and something amusing happens? Or maybe God really speaks to you during the Holy Liturgy? Now you can share it with us! Introducing the #churchmoments hashtag.
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Examples of when you might use #churchmoments:

1. Today’s Responsorial Psalm really spoke to my heart #churchmoments
2. This dude in front of me was reading along with the Scripture readings using an all-braille Roman Missal. Pretty Cool! #churchmoments
3. I attended Mass at St Luke’s in Danville, #Ohio this morning. http://twitpic.com/1qikd3 #churchmoments

Examples of when NOT to use #churchmoments:

1. I’m tweeting during Mass
2. Fr. Bill’s  Homily was so boring.
3. I’m hungry for a Wendy’s Baconator (Okay, maybe this one would be fine if you posted it after Mass, and were honestly craving a Wendy’s Baconator : )

The point of the #churchmoments hashtag is to share with others our church experiences. They might be cute, funny, honest, real, uplifting, uniting, or just something that had occurred while at church, a church function, or on the way to/from church.

Share with us your Church Moments by using the #churchmoments hashtag : )

Here is a great monologue about some of the opportunities of being a priest today. At about the 3:05 marker, Fr. Barron gives our young (and old) priests the advice of using new media technology to spread Christ’s Message! “…This is a great time to be a priest.”

Fr. Barron on The Web:

• Visit the Official Word On Fire Website
• Subscribe to e ChannFr. Barron’s YouTubel
• Follow Fr. Barron on Twitter
• Become a Facebook Fan of The Catholicism Project

As Catholics it is our duty to pay close attention to what is going on in the political sphere.   Consistently there are bills and movements being introduced into Congress that are undermining our Christian and Catholic values.  That isn’t to say that all bills are bad, just that many of them push a pro-death agenda, especially when it comes to the recent health care reform.

Face it, most Catholics in the United States choose to remain blissfully ignorant of what is going on.  The US Bishops have spoken out against several bills in recent days, which has brought more Catholics to witness what is really going on.  The fact is, if we don’t patrol the government, keep tabs on elected officials and communicate with them, we are nothing but pawns without a say.

However, it is time consuming to look up the bills that go through Congress and read through them.  Who has the time to compare what our senators and representatives voted as compared to what the everyday person would vote for?  How does one go about finding out what the general opinion is of the people representing us in Congress?

There is a great mobile/desktop app and website that allow the average person to do just that.  http://www.visiblevote.us and the corresponding app, Visible Vote, are a great resource for the everyday person to sound their voice and to find out what is going on in the government.

The app/website does require a free signup and for individuals to put their name, age, political affiliation and zip code.  This information will get shared with your congressmen/women when the site/app reports back to them.

The app gives you the current approval ratings of the congress people for your state and how they compare to the way you would have voted on a particular bill.

The app also gives you the latest news about the people representing your state.

Now, here comes the single best part of the website and app.  The Visible Vote site and app are built around a simple premise, the everyday person having access to bills in congress and having the option to vote on them.  Visible Vote gives an overview of a bill, its costs and what its main goals are, as well as a link to the bill itself so that the average person can read the entire thing!  It is also possible to vote for or against a particular bill, including bills that have already passed, and Visible Vote will then send a weekly update to your states congressmen/women with how you voted.

Basically, it lets the everyday person tell their congresspeople how they want to vote on a particular issue.  It also compares a person’s individual vote to their congresspeople.

This is just a brief look of what Visible Vote can do.  Visible Vote also has polls to participate in, the ability to write to your congresspeople and the ability to join up with different action groups, either pre-defined or ones that the individual can choose.  A user can also compare their vote on a particular bill or issue to the vote of others in their state and in the country.

Best of all, the service and the app provided by Visible Voice are 100% free!

Finally, there is an easy way to see what the members of congress are up to and to let the average American’s voice be heard.  While it is no replacement for a letter in regard to a particular issue, it is a great way to be involved.

It is important for the Catholics of the world to participate in the government in their country to ensure that moral and social justice is held to.  Again, if the average Catholic ignores what is going on in government, that person is just along for the ride, and is doing a grave injustice to themselves, to their country and to the Church.

As a final note, Catholics also have an obligation to vote according to their conscience.   There is a mid-term election coming up this November and to really make a change, everyone needs to do their part and vote.

If people don’t like what is going on in congress they should research their candidates and vote.  Everyone should be involved and be an active participant in government affairs.  Otherwise, everyone is just going with the popular vote, the popular crowd and the popular moral teaching, which is not, as everyone knows, Christ’s teaching.

God Bless,

Chris

PS There is a Facebook app as well but, I no longer endorse or use Facebook.

Every Friday I post the top 5 favorite blogposts that I’ve come across throughout the week. You have all weekend now to check them out : )

1. What good can a parish video do?
2. The Church and the Internet
3. Do you speak ‘teenager?’
4. 7 things to stop doing now on Facebook
5. 10 Types of Blog Comments: Part 1 of 2

*Bonus Tweet

If you have a blogpost that you would like to share with me feel free to contact Catholic Tech Tips and I will get it.

Have a great weekend!

Joshua

We’ve been a huge fan of flockNote over the past couple years, but changes are coming (I get nervous when my favorite social networks make “improvements” — Have you seen MyChurch.org lately?).  This week, Matthew Warner sent out an e-mail to all members of the flockNote community, giving us a peek of what’s to come.  There will be a lot of new features, a sleeker look, and an easier way to organize your groups, just to name a few.

On the downside, there will be a fee to create/administrate a Network, but on the flip-side, this will get rid of advertisement clutter, support the volume of all the new features, and improve the quality of flockNote.  And membership to the Network will always be free for your group members (parishioners/members/subscribers of a created group or “feed”).  Please read more about this fee here.  (Word on the street is that leaders already using flockNote may get a special discount for signing up ; )

Matthew has invested a ton of time to enhance the features of this already invaluable tool for the church. I don’t know how he finds the hours in a day to do everything that he does.  On top of programming wonderful applications like: TweetCatholic.com and QuoteCatholic.com, Matthew has his extremely enjoyable-to-read blogs, Fallible Blogma, and is a contributor for the National Catholic Register blogs.  Matthew is a very humble guy and someday I hope to meet him in person.

Here are the TOP 10 new features coming to flockNote:

1. Own Your Network. Each parish/diocese/organization can now create their own “Network.” This is similar to the current “parish page,” except that admins for the Network now have total control over all lists (previously called “feeds”) created for the page. Each Network can send as many notes as they like – and can also keep track of basic Network stats to monitor subscriber count, Network growth and more.

2. Easily Add Members. Admins will now have the ability to add, organize and remove people from their FlockNote lists. Subscribers will still be able to subsequently opt-out of a particular list, but leaders will be able to add new members without having to wait for them to subscribe themselves.

3. Gather Parishioner Contact Info. Admins for a list will now have access to each subscriber’s contact info. This allows parish leaders to use FlockNote as an “information gathering tool” for parishioners (for registration or otherwise) and gives parishioners an easy way to keep their contact info up-to-date. We will also be creating other helpful parish tools in the near future (like call sheets, attendance rosters, mailing labels, a parish directory, etc.)

4. Embed the FlockNote in Your Parish Website. Networks will now be able to embed the entire FlockNote experience into their own website. Parishioners will be able to register for FlockNote, subscribe to parish lists, login, edit subscriptions, view and respond to notes (including polls and event RSVPs), browse, etc. – all on their parish website, without ever having to visit FlockNote.com directly. This adds more value to the parish website, while also making it easier for parishioners to engage.

5. Expanded Subscription/Registration Options. Members can now easily subscribe to lists via email, txt message, Twitter DM, Facebook, RSS feed or the website. Also, our new “rapid registration tool” provides a quick and easy interface for group leaders to let members register and subscribe right there at a meeting in real-time.

6. Easier Import/Export. It will be even simpler to import existing mailing lists directly into FlockNote. Likewise, Networks and Lists will also be able to export all of their subscriber data to a .csv file that they can then import into their parish database to sync up with current records.

7. New “Note Types,” including Polls, Events and Scheduled Notes. In addition to creating normal notes, users can now send polls (with graphical voting and results) and event invitations (with RSVP counts and event information, similar to Evite). Users will also be able to schedule notes in advance. So instead of having to send notes immediately, admins can set their scheduled notes at the beginning of the week or month to go out at later specified times.

8. Easily Connect with Other Online Communication Tools. When sending a new note, users will have the option to also have that note update their Facebook fan page status, post it to their wall and/or update their Twitter status. You can also sync your FlockNote list with your RSS feed.

9. Easily access other Catholic resources. We will continue to offer other valuable Catholic resources through FlockNote, free for all users. This includes the Daily Readings, Daily Catholic quote, Catholic news, Catholic blogs, etc.

10. Facebook and mobile apps. Coming soon will be a fully functional Facebook application, an iPhone application and a mobile version of flockNote.com made to be easy to use in mobile browsers.

These top 10 features are just the beginning. Look for the new FlockNote early this summer and feel free to contact Matthew Warner personally with any questions.

Below are some related links to flockNote:

• What is flockNote Beta?
• Get Yourself some flockNote Flair!
• flockNote in the News

EventStart is a really cool online event registration tool that integrates with social media sites (Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Picasa, etc.)

COLUMBUS, Ohio (July 22, 2008): EventStart was born out of Startup Weekend Columbus, an intense entrepreneurial event focused on launching several new companies within a single weekend. Equipped with an all-star team the company is aiming to create the ultimate event experience for organizers, sponsors, and attendees…

I first learned about EventStart when I went to register for this year’s PodCamp Ohio. Registration was relatively easy and the community aspect of EventStart is great.

With EventStart, you have the capability to schedule recurring events (weekly, monthly, daily, yearly, or any schedule you choose). Not to mention, you can set up different ticket types and add  discount codes! For instance, PodCamp Ohio set up a “Free” ticket entry and several other levels of “Sponsor” tickets (each ticket type listed the perks of being that level of sponsor). EventStart also has built-in forums, blog, and buzz pages. It even has statistic/tracking tools built in. So as you can see, EventStart is so much more than the Event pages of Facebook and MySpace.

There is no cost to use EventStart for Free events, however there is a small fee per monitory ticket sold.

Whether you are planning a Catholic Youth Conference, a Christian Rock Festival, or a Weekly Bible Study, EventStart might be a great way to organize your event.

Below are some related links to this topic:

• FlockNote Beta
• Kindle Beta – Posting your prayers to Twitter
• If you are going to the Catholic New Media Celebration… (or not)

I finally got around to updating iTunes after ignoring the reminder(s) for a very long time. Along with so many other new features, the one that I like most (and this might not even be a “new” feature — that’s how long it’s been since I’ve updated iTunes) is the “Artists” category in the Music display.

Below are some related links to this topic:

• Editing and Creating Shortcuts in Audacity
• HolyRoadies! Christian Music from a Catholic Perspective
• Shrink the Volume Control Panel in XP

Here is a video of Greg & Jennifer, from The Catholics Next Door, testing out the new uStream iPhone App during their show.