Tech Tips for Catholics

Today, you may have noticed that the leading, trending topic around lunchtime was “No God”.  Apparently, Christians all over Twitter tried to get the trending topic to be “No God, no peace; know God, know peace.”  Not a bad goal, except for the fact that Twitter only picked up “No God” and “Know Peace”.

But, I don’t think all has #failed.  More and more people are talking about it now than had the plan worked as intended.  It’s funny how God works.  He can take something bad and turn it into something good.

As always, feel free to comment. God Bless : )

Angela and Joshua (myself) have joined up to bring you a new micro-blog on Twitter called HolyRoadies.

Angela brings a healthy dose of Christian Rock tweets and I pretty much post stuff about Catholic/Christian Hip-Hop.

If I were asked, “Have you any Twitter tips for the Christian music community,” I’d probably answer this one of two ways:

• For the fan of Christian music, searching for #catholichiphop, #christianhiphop , #christianrock or #christianmusic on Twitter is a good way to read about the latest in the Christian music scene.
• Because we follow so many Christian artists, our Twitter stream is very wide and flows very rapidly—the chances of us seeing a general tweet from an individual band is slim-to-none.  So, for the Christian band or musician who has some news that they would like for us to share with our readers, they can either “@” HolyRoadies or direct message us by putting “d HolyRoadies” in front of their tweet (we must be following you to receive a direct message).

Follow HolyRoadies and pray for Righeous B!

Over at UniversityParent.com, there is a terrific article entitled Social Media Do’s and Don’ts for College Students.  The facts and ideas presented in this column are important to review with your children of any age who may be using Social Media.  Around our house, my kids are constantly reminded that their Facebook pages are their “online resumes” — future college choices, employers, and even their own parents will be closely watching their online activities and judging their characters as a result.

The information in this article is also pertinent to adults of any age who are active online.  Think twice before you type, post a photo or video, or hit “send”.

This post is courtesy of the Productivity @ Home Blog.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a MyChurch.org tip.  Well, they have been doing some tinkering around and one the new features that I am pretty excited about is the ability to sinc your Twitter account to your MyChurch.org update status.  It is pretty easy to setup, but just in case you need a little guidance, I am posting this little how-to.

What will this do? When you post a tweet to Twitter, it will automatically update your MyChurch.org status as well.

Step 1: Log into MyChurch.org and sinc your Twitter by clicking the icon shown below from the status update page.  Then click the “Integrate Your Twitter Account” link and allow Twitter to share information with MyChurch.org.

Step 2: Post to Twitter.

Step 3: The tweet is then automatically posted to your MyChurch.org update status.

Simple as that!

Over a year ago, I suggested they figure out a way to integrate Ping.fm with MyChurch.org and they were going to look into it.  I think with this new sinc feature, there really is no need to integrate Ping.fm, unless of course the user only wanted certain key updates to their status (rather than posting all tweets to their status update).

Hope this tutorial has been beneficial to some of you.  God Bless.

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The #fixreplies hash tag is picking up steam.  A while back, Twitter tested out its new features on noobie users, while older users were pretty much unaware.  Well, the older users have since been introduced to these new features and are not liking them.  And thus, the #fixreplies was born.

I knew of the features, because CatholicTechTip was concidered one of these noobie accounts, while my personal Twitter profile was much older.  So I was aware of the pros and cons to both the old and new systems.

The pros and cons between the old and new Twitter reply settings:

(from the perspective of each side of the argument)

The #fixreplies Tweeple:

• The old system would allow you to see the @replies of your followees directed at tweeple you do not follow.  I may want to join their conversation.
• I like to find new people to follow through my friends’ conversations with other people I don’t already follow.  With the new system, I am unable to do this without having to physically click onto my followee’s profile page.
• If you want your conversations to be private, why not use the Message button?

The #donotfixreplies Tweeple:

• The new system hides the @replies of your followees to tweeple you do not follow.
• I like to reply to my tweeple’s tweets — a lot! And I don’t think you old system people would appreciate seeing all my posts to other people you do not follow.
• The new system keeps really good tweets from being bumped down so quickly.

Which side do you come down on this debate? Tweet us with your response, followed by the #fixreplies or the #donotfixreplies.

How the new reply system works:

(as I understand it)

If you begin a tweet with @user, only the people who are following both twersons will see the tweet.  This cuts down on the clutter.  Chances are, that you would unfollow someone who takes over your browser window with tweets (I would).  But, at the same time we are encourage to have conversations on Twitter.  The new system seems to make sense to me.

So how can we take advantage of the new system? Simple.  If you want your followers to see a conversations whether they are following that person or not, put something in front of the @user.  The new system only hides tweets that begin with @user, but if something preceeds it, all will see.  You could even put the @user at the end of your tweet, which would also allow all to see.  However you decide to do it, the person involved in the conversation will still get a notification on their personal @user page.

I like the new system, and I’ve used both systems.  Some have commented that Twitter should make this an optional feature.  I think this is a good idea.  Then the debate would be, which should Twitter use as the default setting?

Hope I have shed some light on this topic.  God Bless.

Much has been made of Twitter’s having gone mainstream in the past few weeks with the Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN Smackdown and Oprah’s foray onto my favorite social networking site (for the record, I’m not one of her nearly half a million followers).  For those of us who have been tweeting for the past few years, we long ago realized the power the site has to help @ Home businesses network, to help those who work @ home feel less isolated, but also to become a major addiction and time dump if not managed productively.

Today, I ran across this great article by Dan Zarella at Mashable on “The Science of Retweeting”.  It’s worth a few moments to read this through if you use Twitter to promote your website or business and want your inforation to extend beyond your personal network.  For what it’s worth, looks as though content that adds value is key – not a surprise but an important reminder about using Twitter productively.

This post is courtesy of the Productivity @ Home Blog.

This was an interesting conversation that we had on Twitter today.  The question was posed as such, “Should folks ‘tweet’ or ‘text’ during Church? Different from note-taking?”

There has been a lot of news reports lately talking about how some non-Denominational, mega-churches are encouraging their congregation to tweet and text during their Sunday services — as a way of reaching out to non-church-goers.  Don’t get me wrong, we should be reaching out to non-Christians, but during a Worship service is not the time to do it.  I’m not alone in thinking this.  There were some Protestants who are also in agreement.

It is kind of hard to follow, but here is a screenshot of just some of the conversation:

So, what were some of the key points that Catholic Christians were making in this Twitter discussion?

• That there are distinct differences between a non-Denominational Church service and the Catholic Mass.
• Social Networking is a great tool for Evangelizing, but just not during the Sacred Liturgy.
• During the Mass, we should be focused on Christ, not on what is going on around us.
• There are mixed feelings about note-taking during the homily.  What are your thoughts on this?
• Most view cell-phones and other electronic devices as a distraction or as being disrespectful to others during Mass.

We would love to hear what you think about this topic.  Go ahead and post your comments below, Tweet at us, or continue the discussion on flockNote.

Below are some related links to this topic:

• Rant: Cell-Phones in Church : (
• 7 Books for New Catholics
• Mars Ill – “Love’s Not” song lyrics

Back in the day, and perhaps still today, video game magazines were notorious for pranking their readers between the pages of their April issues.  Printing fake game cheats, news, and all sorts of other little bits of fabricated information.  For those of us who were anticipating the April issues, knew what to expect, but I always felt sorry for those who were not prepared.  I admit that there were a few times when I forgot all about the April issue and spent countless hours implementing the gaming tips that were supposed to “grant me infinite lives”, or that would “unlock” something cool in the game.  It is never fun to be on the receiving end of an April Fool’s joke.  First you feel angered or deceived, then comes the urge to get back at the person with an even bigger prank, which I’m all for.  Just don’t get too out of hand.  Some people take it too far.

This April 1st, Twitter will be inundated with contrived lies, half-truths, and deception.  Some may even be outright malicious, but hopefully this won’t be the case.  There’s nothing wrong with good, clean fun, if done in a light-hearted manor.  I plan to avoid the internet altogether on April Fool’s Day.  I’m pretty gullible and I know for a fact that I would fall victim to at least one online April Fool’s joke.  Here is an example of one from last year.

All of this talk about April Fool’s jokes got me thinking.  What does the Bible say about fools? Actually, there is quite a bit of Scripture that talks about what it means to be foolish or to be a fool.  A fool is described as someone who is:  full of deception (Proverbs 10:9-10; Proverbs 10:18; Proverbs 14:8; Proverbs 19-9), reckless and sure of himself (Proverbs 14:16; Proverbs 17:7; Proverbs 17:27-28; Sirach 22:7; Ecclesiastes 4:13-14; Ecclesiastes 10:3), a brute (Sirach 22:9-20; Proverbs 17:20), lacking in faith or is in ignorance of God (Luke 24:13-35; Wisdom 3:1-3; Wisdom 13:1-9; Psalms 53:1-2; Jeremiah 5:21), wicked (Ecclesiastes 7:25; Ecclesiastes 4:17; Proverbs 10:21-23), quick-tempered (Proverbs 14:17), discontent (Ecclesiastes 7:9), unwise and/or unprepared (Matthew 25:1-13; Wisdom 3:11; Proverbs 17:16), and is grief to his parents (Proverbs 10:1; Proverbs 17:21; Proverbs 17:25).  These are just a few examples.

Have a fun April’s Fool’s Day, and try not to be too big of a fool!

Every Friday I normally post the top 5 favorite blogposts that I’ve come across throughout the week, however this week I have decided to post my top 5 links about Twitter API (and creating Twitter Apps)  So, What is an API you ask?  It stands for application programming interface and it controls the behavior of various functions of an operating system, library or web service.  An API protocol or language can support the building of third-party applications.

The following five links can help those whom are interested in building a Twitter App (hopefully one that will help build up God’s kingdom).

1.  Twitter API wiki.
2.  “Twitter API: Up and Running” by Kevin Makice (Book)
3.  50 Twitter Tools and Tutorials For Designers and Developers
4.  Twitter API for Dummies
5.  Send message from a PHP page using Twitter API

You can see what others are doing with the Twitter API for some inspiration.  Perhaps you have some ideas of your own!  If you build a Christian App, let us know about it and we’ll feature it on our blog.

Have a great weekend!

Joshua

TweetChannel is an easy way to using hash tags on Twitter. You can create channels or contribute to channels that have already been created. I noticed that a lot of Catholics use the hash tag #Catholic, however there was no channel created for this, so I created one. Another channel that I created was the #Prayer channel. Feel free to tweet to either of these!

Stay-tuned, because instead of doing a Favorite Five Friday this week, I have decided to post my top 5 links about Twitter API (and creating Twitter Apps)