Kaweem, a good buddy of mine and extreme gadget aficionado has recorded an awesome 3-part video review of Google’s Nexus One.

Google announced support for push email for Gmail and Google Apps User today via ActiveSync. The feature is already active and works well. Google now offers a somewhat complete mobile sync solution supporting contacts, calendar and email. Syncing is supported on Windows Mobile, iPhone and S60 platforms, Google Android already supported push Gmail.

Push mail for iPhone and Windows Mobile: the choice is yours

I know I am long overdue for an update on what’s been going on with OrthodoxSermons.org, we launched the new site on July 12th.  The team at Mustardseed Media did a wonderful job and we are continuing to work with them for additional features on the site.

One of the features I am most excited about on the new site is the ability for other Orthodox Churches to easily upload their sermons, once uploaded those sermons can be embedded back on the church site.

For the techies who may be interested, we are currently hosting the site on a Virtual Private Server at Slicehost and and all the media is stored on Amazon S3.

Last May we started thinking about the next version of OrthodoxSermons.org, we took comments from our users, studied the market, did some of our own brainstorming and put together a wish list.  We spent six months getting quotes from vendors and evaluating “out of the box” solutions.  We narrowed all the possible options from a list of 20 to 3 and then with some intense comparison and prayer we were able to select Mustardseed Media as a ministry partner for the development of OrthodoxSermons.org 2.0. There are a few things that stick out about Mustardseed:

• 99% of their work is done for Christian Churches & Ministries
• They support the online Christian technology community via their podcast community Geeks & God.
• They are a Drupal shop and are active contributors to the Drupal Community.

You are probably wondering, what did make the final cut on that wish list for OrthodoxSermons.org 2.0?  Here is some of what you can look forward to:

• Improved navigation and search.  Sermons will be categorized and tagged.  Transcripts (if available) will be searchable.
• Ability for churches and organization to upload their own content and feed their content back to their own sites via RSS.
• Support for attaching transcripts of sermons, users can volunteer to transcribe sermons.
• Full audio and video podcast support, compatible with iTunes/iPhone/iPod as well as site wide RSS feeds and RSS feeds on all tags.
• iPhone based site for browsing from mobile Safari.
• Audio and video of sermons can be embedded on your own site, also can be shared by emailing to a friend.

We started the development process a couple weeks ago and are making good headway, we are hoping for launch around the beginning of 3rd quarter, 2009.  If you want minute by minute updates on the development process, I suggest you follow us on Twitter: @amitry, @mustardseedinc, @rob_feature, @suydam.

A few of the early mockups:

Home

Sermon with video and audio

Sermon with only audio

Yesterday, I made a few mistakes and learned a few lessons.  I was at a client site helping them move to VMware.  We decided to switch one of their virtual machines from one VMware ESXi host to another.  They have shared iSCSI storage (EqualLogic SAN), so it should have been a relatively simple procedure.  I made the mistake of not taking a snapshot of the volume before the switch.  While making the switch, something happened to the volume (not sure if it was accidentally removed or if it was some kind of corruption).  We could detect the iSCSI target but it wasn’t showing in the storage list.  When we went to add storage it showed the volume as blank.  The web interface on the SAN still showed the data there, so we knew (hoped) it wasn’t gone.  After a bit of searching I found this forum thread that hints at a possible fix but lists the solution as a call to VMware support.  We called VMware and successfully used this process to restore the volume.

Via console or SSH access:

login as: root
root@XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX’s password:

Tech Support Mode successfully accessed.
The time and date of this access have been sent to the system logs.

WARNING – Tech Support Mode is not supported unless used in
consultation with VMware Tech Support.

~ # cd /tmp
/tmp # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/disks/vmhba32:1:0:0: 549.7 GB, 549763153920 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 524295 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System

Disk /dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:0: 549.7 GB, 549763153920 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 524295 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Partition table entries are not in disk order
/tmp # dd if=/dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:0 of=/tmp/ddout bs=1M count=2
2+0 records in
2+0 records out
/tmp # hexdump -C ddout |less
/tmp # fdisk -l /dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:0

Disk /dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:0: 549.7 GB, 549763153920 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 524295 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/tmp # fdisk /dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:0

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 524295.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:0: 549.7 GB, 549763153920 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 524295 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System

Command (m for help): n
Command action
e   extended
p   primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-524295, default 1):
Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-524295, default 524295):
Using default value 524295

Command (m for help): t
Selected partition 1
Hex code (type L to list codes): fb
Changed system type of partition 1 to fb (VMFS)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:0: 549.7 GB, 549763153920 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 524295 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:1             1    524295 536878064   fb  VMFS

Command (m for help): x

Expert command (m for help): b
Partition number (1-4): 1
New beginning of data (32-1073756159, default 32): 128

Expert command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/disks/vmhba32:0:0:0: 64 heads, 32 sectors, 524295 cylinders

Nr AF  Hd Sec  Cyl  Hd Sec  Cyl    Start     Size ID
1 00   1   1    0  63  32 1023        128 1073756032 fb
2 00   0   0    0   0   0    0          0          0 00
3 00   0   0    0   0   0    0          0          0 00
4 00   0   0    0   0   0    0          0          0 00

Expert command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.
/tmp # vmkfstools -V
/tmp # esxcfg-vmhbadevs -m
vmhba32:0:0:1   /vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba32:0:0:1 42240509-d9375061-f3bd-0018fe7e542e
/tmp #

Twitter is a micro blogging platform that has taken off on the web, the short messages coupled with an easy to use system makes it a natural for techies and non-techies alike.  Here a few resources to get you started.  Make sure to follow me!

Twitter explained:

• Anthony Coppedge’s E-Book, “The Reason Your Church Must Twitter”
• Dean Lisenby on More reasons to Twitter!
• Matt Singley’s New Media Primer: Twitter
• Twitter in Plain English

Desktop Twitter Clients (listed in order of preference):

• TweetDeck
• Twhirl
• Disgby

iPhone Twitter Clients (listed in order of preference):

• Tweetie
• Twitelator Pro
• Twitterific

Full list of apps on the Twitter Fan Wiki

On Wednesday, Google announced they will be no longer allowing uploads to their Google Video service.  Google invites you to use YouTube or Picasa, but the issue for churches is that sermons often exceed the 10 minute cap on video length.  There are several competitors on the market that allow free uploads of any length video (although they still have file size limits).  They all have “premium” accounts available as well.

• blip.tv – 1GB file size limit
• Viddler – 500mb file size limit
• Vimeo – 1GB file size limit

There are also several sites that specialize in servicing the church market such as GodTube, LightCastMedia and TruthCasting.

Who do you use for your video hosting?

Microblogging with Twitter has taken off over the past year, many have moved from longer blog posts to frequent 140 character updates.  Twitter is amazing when you want reach an audience, but what if you want something to use with a certain niche?  Emad Ibrahim, a friend of mine saw the need and was inspired to startup Yonkly.  Yonkly is a hosted, white label solution for creating your own microblog network.

Creating your own microblog network is a good idea if you want something specific to your organization or community.  That way posts don’t get lost in all the noise.  A great example is Christtr, a Christian microblog running on Yonkly. where it asks “How are you living Christ’s word?” instead of  “What are you doing?”

Yonkly is still in beta, I have played around with it and it definitely has a lot better usability and polish then other niche microblogging services I’ve seen.  RSS support, Twitter integration (supports cross posting), an API and a desktop client are all in the works.  I think Yonkly is coming to market just in time and has a lot of potential.

Update: Yonkly now support integration with Twitter.

JellyTelly, a new Christian online video channel from Phil Vischer, the creator of VeggieTales, has launched. For those who are curious, they seem to be using Ooyala to for their video distribution.

I have been quiet over the past month or so because I have been feverishly working on three projects, two for ministry and one for fun/profit.  This week I am ready to unveil one of them, Drew’ Deals, a site where we research and make purchasing recommendations on the latest technology.  The site is geared mainly towards the not so tech savvy consumer who is looking for an educated opinion on what to buy.

God willing, I will be able to announce the release of the two ministry projects in the near future.

P.S. If you are interested in writing for Drew’s Deals, drop me a line.

Follow Drew’s Deals on Twitter.