We were on the road for a couple of weeks so I wanted to make sure we had our bases covered when it came to tech gear. Some of the churches we visited are savvy and have everything we could need, others not so much. This is what I ended up taking along:

• Canon VIXIA HF100 HD Camcorder w/directional mic - for recording our adventure.
• Bogen 785 Tripod
• Fender P-10 Passport Portable Sound System - We use the mic for larger meetings and hook it up to the laptop for showing videos.
• Our trusty Canon SD300 Camera
• Olympus WAS-331M Digital Voice Recorder
• Toshiba TDP-S25U SVGA 1800 Lumen DLP Projector
• Canopus ADVC110 Converter - Analog audio/video conversion to FireWire.
• HP 8510W w/Pinnacle Studio Ultimate installed for video editing.
• IBM ThinkPad T42 - For general group use.
• WD Passport HD - for offloading pictures, audio and video.
• HTC Touch with USB Tether for mobile (EVDO) Internet.
• APC Power Inverter - for 110v power on the road.
• Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 - for live streaming and video conferencing.
• IPEVO Skype Phone - Easy to use, portable, high quality alternative to the earphones/mic option.
• Apple Airport Express - portable wireless access point for sharing that single wired connection in hotels. Also handy for transporting audio to a distant sound system.
• Various Ethernet switches and cat5e cables.
• Magellan Crossover GPS - Navigation for both the US & Canada. Wanted the Dash Express GPS but it wasn’t in the budget (we already owned the Magellan) and it doesn’t support Canada yet.
• E-ZPass - Electronic tolls are a huge time saver.
• Google Video and a WordPress.com Blog

Lots of great stuff this week…

Clover - websites for growing churches and ministries - via the Digital Sanctuary.

Free email marketing for non-profits from VerticalResponse, up to 10k/month, via Idealware.

Signal vs. Noise - “You have to treat your employees like customers”

Spiceworks 3.0 released, details here.

Tony Morgan - 25 Web Apps That Make My Life Easier

If you missed it somehow, make sure to download Firefox 3.
Follow me on Twitter or catch my Google Reader Shared Items.

Our favorite card for video encoding is the ViewCast Osprey-100, we have been using it with Windows Media Encoder for years.  Recently, we began testing live streaming with Ustream.TV which uses Adobe’s Flash technology for streaming.  Their simple encoding client does not allow you to select which input on the Osprey-100 to use.  To get around this, fire up the free Windows Media Encoder  or the free Flash Media Encoder 2.5 and use it to select the input you want.  Once selected, Ustream’s app will see the same input.

With high speed Internet connections and relatively cheap webcams, multi user video conferencing is now a reality for almost any group or organization.  Several companies have hopped on to this bandwagon offering free or low cost software solutions that allow you to host online meetings or classes with ease.  We recently did a quick evaluation on  the following three options (thanks to #citrt for helping out with the initial eval):

• MeBeam Video Chat - Simple, Flash based site that supports up to 16 users.  No software to install.
• ooVoo - Up to 3 simultaneous users for free, 6 with the $10/month super option.  Capability to record conference in Flash.  Runs on Windows or Mac.
• SightSpeed - Up to 4 users for $9.95/month on a personal account or $20/seat/month on a business account.  Video call recording supported on business account.

Our initial testing showed ooVoo with the best video quality and interface (no hard data, just our opinion), plus video recording and six users for $10/month it is a pretty sweet deal.  We put ooVoo into production a week ago and began using it for a clergy seminar.  Results came back overwhelmingly positive from all those who attended.  The only issue is that 6 simultaneous users may not be enough, so we’ll have to make the jump to MeBeam or just go one way (for the larger meetings) with Ustream.TV.

We are testing out live streaming our church with Ustream.TV. If it goes well, we will offer it along with the windows media stream for our main feed from the sanctuary.

David Bebawy, a techie deacon at St. George & St. Shenouda Coptic Orthodox Church in Jersey City, has started a new blog and already has a great write up on getting started with Google Checkout for Non-Profits. He also has details on Ctech (Coptic Technology) and Coptic Presentations. David also setup a Google Group for anyone interested in keeping up with Ctech.

Presentation from Ctech on May 27, 2008:

One of our volunteers, Karen Henein, a lawyer who specializes in online privacy, helped us come with a new online privacy policy.

St Mark Coptic Orthodox Church Online Privacy Policy

St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church of Washington, DC (“St. Mark Church”) is committed to protecting your privacy. This privacy policy explains data collection and use practices of the St. Mark Church Web site (www.stmarkdc.org) and applies to the suite of other St. Mark Church Web sites including but not limited to www.orthodoxsermons.org and www.orthodoxbookstore.org (the “Sites”). By accessing the Sites, you are consenting to the information collection and use practices described in this privacy policy.

What information do we collect about you?

St. Mark Church or our service providers collect personal information about you that you voluntarily provide on the Sites, including but not limited to: your name, address, phone number, email address, ministry interests, and financial information in connection with online purchases and donations. We or our service providers may also collect and store information with regard to your user logs and IP address. In addition, we or our service providers may store email and other communications delivered to or by our systems as a necessary incident to the transmission and delivery of such communications and in order to comply with international, federal, state and local laws. As described below, we also use cookies to collect and store information, including personal information, about you and your use of the Sites.

We require that children under 13 years of age not submit personal information. In accordance with the Federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), St. Mark Church does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. St. Mark Church encourages parents to participate actively in their children’s Internet experience.

How do we use this information and share it with others?

We will use the contact information you submit and other information we or our service providers collect, such as user logs, to communicate with you and to provide or enhance our service to you in the normal course of providing service. We or our service providers may also use your information to provide you with additional information about the Sites and their services, St. Mark Church, and activities and announcements related to St. Mark Church.

St. Mark Church may disclose your personal information and other information we or our service providers collect about you, if we believe in good faith that such disclosure is necessary (a) to comply with the law or in response to a subpoena, court order, government request, or other legal process; (b) to protect the interests, rights, safety, or property of St. Mark Church or others; (c) to enforce any terms of service on the Sites; (d) to provide you with the services or announcements requested by you; or (e) to operate St. Mark Church’s systems properly.

We may also share your personal information or other information we collect about you with partners, affiliates, and/or sister organizations interested in serving you or informing you about their organizations. Further use and/or disclosure of your information by such partners, affiliates, and/or sister organizations is governed by the privacy policies of those partners, affiliates, and/or sister organizations.

Use of Cookies

To enhance your experience on the Sites, St. Mark Church or its service provider uses “cookies.” Cookies are messages sent between our servers or the servers of our service providers and your browser that are saved as text files on your computer. Cookies collect information about your use of the Sites, such as the Web pages visited. Cookies, by themselves, do not tell us your email address or other personal information about you unless you choose to provide this information to us. Once you choose to furnish the Sites with personal information, this information may be stored in the cookie and/or linked to other information about you collected by the cookies or that you have provided to us.

We may contract with a third-party Web analytics service to analyze the traffic patterns on the Sites, the data for which may have been collected through the use of cookies, such as the frequency with which our users visit various parts of the Sites. These technical methods may involve the transmission of information either directly to us or to another party authorized by us to collect information on our behalf. We also may use these technical methods in HTML e-mails that we send our users to determine whether our users have opened those e-mails and/or clicked on links in those e-mails. The information generated by these technical methods may include personal information about the user.

You may customize your Web browsers to not accept cookies. If you choose to not have your browser accept cookies from the Sites, it is possible that some parts of the Sites will not function properly.

Security

We have appropriate security measures in place in our physical facilities or the facilities of our service providers to protect against the loss or misuse of your personal information that has been collected via the Sites. Only St. Mark Church personnel and authorized volunteers or authorized personnel of its service providers will have access to your personal information.

Links to Other Web Sites

The Sites may provide links to third-party Web sites. Since we do not control those sites, we encourage you to read the privacy policies on those Web sites before providing any of your personal information on such Web sites.

Changes to Privacy Policy

St. Mark Church reserves the right to change this policy at any time by posting revisions on this Web page. Changes to this privacy policy will be effective at the time they are posted.

Questions

If you have any additional questions or concerns about this privacy policy or would like to be removed from our database, please feel free to contact us any time at info@stmarkdc.org or at Website Privacy Matters, c/o St. Mark Coptic Church of Washington, D.C., 11911 Braddock Road, Fairfax, Virginia 22030.

Date: May 29, 2008

Modernity Meets Monasticism in Egypt’s Desert, by Will Rasmussen

Now that I have a new HP 8510W laptop sporting 1680×1050 resolution, I had to figure a way to get it integrated into my award winning workspace.  I ended up building a shelf to bump up the height of my two middle monitors and sliding the dock for the laptop underneath.  Syngery works great for controlling all four machines (Mac, dual monitor Ubuntu, XP desktop and XP laptop) from one keyboard/mouse.  Maybe I should run again in the next coolest workspace contest…

We have been struggling for the past couple of weeks to get Mozy to complete an off site backup of 70GB of data on our new file server.  We keep getting connection errors so I emailed Mozy support -  apparently the issue is on their end and they are working to resolve it…

Hello,

I’m sorry for the trouble you’ve experienced. We have seen errors like this recently, and our developers are aware of the problem. They are working hard to resolve it, but the solution will require certain maintenance on our servers. Unfortunately, we expect this work to last another week or so.

While we can’t make the errors go away right now, we can offer some tips.

First, try scheduling backups for off-peak hours. Right-click on the Mozy icon in your system tray, (next to your computer clock, usually in the lower right corner of the screen), and then click on the Configure button in the Mozy Status screen that appears. Click on the Schedule time and set the backup to run during the evening, night, or early morning. It may take some fine-tuning, but it should at least reduce the frequency of the errors.

If you use windows, you can also set Mozy to attempt a backup even if a connection is not detected. Right-click on the Mozy icon in your system tray, (next to your computer clock, usually in the lower right corner of the screen), and then click on the Configure button in the Mozy Status screen that appears. Click on the Options tab and check the following option: "Attempt automatic backups even if no network connection is detected."

…