Fork In The Road Music » Media and Technology

Iphone Background #1- Water and Melon

Russell Martin — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 03:56:15 +0000

This past week I attended our 4th of July picnic. Here are two iPhone background wall papers I grabbed while there.

Top Ten Iphone Apps I Use for Ministry

Russell Martin — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 19:22:22 +0000

The other day my friend who is a pastor emailed me, “Hey I just got an iphone. Got any good ministry apps?”

I sat and thought about it. Which apps do I use most in my day to day ministry? Here is what I came up with. What would you add?

Pocket Informant- Keep personal, work, and multiple google calendars organized with this app. Also handles tasks, projects and more.

Facebook- Manage your personal facebook and church facebook page from this app. Add photos, status updates and send messages while sitting in line or waiting for your next meeting to start.

Pandora- Create your own radio station to listen to while you prepare that sermon, or play music while you wait for a service to begin.

Hootsuite- Manage multiple twitter and facebook accounts and pages. Post status updates to one or more. Create search columns to see what others are saying about your church or ministry. Track retweets and clicks on your posts and see what’s being repeated.

Planning Center Online- Manage your Planning Center orders of worship, schedule participants, send reminder emails, manage song library and more from this app. (Subscription to Planning Center Online required)

Google- Google search, voice search, plus one stop access to documents, gmail, tasks, Buzz, Calendar and other google services.

Foursquare- Let others know where you are. Check in and become the mayor of your church. Put up tips about your church including service times and upcoming events.

You Version Bible- Bible search, several different bible versions, notes and bible reading plans. Great bible resource.

Animoto- Create videos of ministry events, children’s programs, and youth nights by uploading photos and videos straight from your iphone and have them put into a great video with background music, and transitions.

Flickr- Got flickr? Access your photos, add tags, and search flickr photos

Ustream Broadcaster- Show live video on your church website from wherever you are using this cool app. Also adds video capability to your iphone 3G.

Dropbox- Use Dropbox as an online flash drive. The Iphone app gives access to all your files. Listen to music, browse documents and more. Click here to find out more and get 2.25 gig of space free!

A Few Extra Favorites-

Words with Friends- Relax, keep in contact with friends, and stretch your vocabulary with this tile based word game.

Google Reader – It’s not an app but an iphone optimized version of google reader. Great to read your RSS feeds on the go.

Snow Snow Snow.. LIVE!

Russell Martin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:25:10 +0000

We don’t get much of this very often so we are kind of excited.
Online video chat by Ustream

Instrumental Reflections Live #1 Haunting Melody

What I Am Reading-Freebies, Printing Press and Questions

Russell Martin — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 20:48:16 +0000

Thought I would let you in on a few different blogs and articles I have been reading lately-

1. The Internet is Not Your Delivery Boy- From Church Marketing Sucks I learned that the internet is not just the 20th century printing press, but should be so much more. It’s not about informing but connecting…

2. Freebie Friday- Tim Schmoyer from Life In Student Ministry shares different freebies each week. Last weeks was #152: Dallas Theological Seminary Courses on Itunes-

3. Finally David Risley in a guest post from ProBlogger asks the question, “Are You Talking At or To Your Readers” in a recent post. I wonder how many of the questions, and lessons learned, in this post could be applied to churches too?

What I’m Reading-Revolution, Connection and Forgiveness.

Russell Martin — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:50:04 +0000

Revolution, Connection and Forgiveness. This is what I learned from reading blogs over the past few days.

First Kem Meyer posted a video called Social Media Revolution. If you thought social media was a here today, gone tomorrow venture then think again. I have seen this video before but it is definately worth reviewing.

Second, you can tell from my change in layout that I hit a wall with my blog and needed a change. Darren Rowse talks about the Getting Over the 6th Month Blogger Itch. Its a bit of encouragement for those of you needing a little push to keep going.

Finally, a new blog I have begun reading recently is Withoutwax.tv by Pete Wilson. In this one he talks about being Fast to Forgive. When we hold on to grudges and hurts usually we are only hurting ourselves. This is a great reminder to just let go and forgive.

My Shared Items 11/02/09

Russell Martin — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:56:43 +0000

Each week I receive posts from over fifty different blogs. I collect and read them on Google Reader and thought you might benefit from some of the things I am reading. So here are some of my favorites from this week.

In Happy Hallow…. Harvest Festival, Michael Buckingham talks about ways to use Halloween as an opportunity, not a stumbling block. Yes I know it’s a little late, but file it for next year.

One of my favorite new blogs to follow is Michael Hyatt’s Blog. On 10/30 he shared a guest post from Margaret McSweeny on 12 Strategies for Leadership Success.

And finally TechCrunch, Pandora now offers integration with Twitter and Facebook

If you like, you can subscribe directly to my shared items on google reader.

Also if you have a blog to suggest, please put it in the comments below.

Worship Planning with Google Wave

Russell Martin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 05:21:34 +0000

I was invited to a google wave “post” or “blip” or whatever it is called, where my friend was writing a blog post, and wanted some fresh eyes to read over it. He posted his thoughts and what happened next was amazing. About ten other people started sharing thoughts, finding spelling mistakes and making corrections, giving alternate ideas and collaborating on the post.

After watching this for a few minutes I wondered if it could be used for planning worship services? What would happen if someone could start a wave with the sermon and scripture, then let people from all over comment, make song suggestions, give links to videos or tell about a skit they wrote that would fit the topic?

Well let’s find out. First let me say that I know not everyone has Google Wave, and I know this process won’t fully work until it is available everywhere, so hurry up Google! But I think there are enough to give this experiment a try.

I have created a wave for a service we are doing on November 8th. If you have wave add me to your contact list and I will invite you to the wave.

My contact is rgmmusic@googlewave.com

Video Tips- One Way to Capture Audio

Russell Martin — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:08:37 +0000

Video is something I have just started doing at our church. Even though it is new to us as a way to communicate, we are already seeing some awesome results. We started out doing all of our youth updates as a video and have had some fun with that.

To start off with though, all the videos have been kind of funny and light. That changed this past week when our pastor wanted me to video the testimony of one of our members. When doing the funny, light videos it was good to hear what was being said, but with background music and other elements in the video sound quality could be compromised a bit. With the testimony, however, I knew that we had to get the best sound possible.

First you should know we are using two Everio Hard Disk cameras, set up in two locations with different angles. Its a good consumer level camera with a decent microphone. We have not invested in higher quality equipment, extra microphones or any thing else up to this point because we are just getting started and want to build slowly. But I did need to find a way to capture good audio. When telling a testimony, we really need to hear the story.

This is when I got the idea to just use the church sound system. We used the wireless lapel mic as our input. I then captured the audio three different ways. First it was captured by one of the two cameras I had set up; Second it was captured by sending it from the board, to a wireless earphone pack, to the second camera’s microphone input; and third it was captured by a CD recorder running on the sound board. We recorded the interview and I used my computer later to sync up the video, and audio from the different sources.

The best thing would be to purchase a good microphone for the video camera, and I hope that is in our future. However, this way gave great results and did not cost us anything.

Do you use video in your church? If so how? Is it effective? What is your setup?

Your Favorite Blackberry and Iphone Music Apps

Russell Martin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:27:08 +0000

For about a year the most searched for and viewed posts on my blog had to do with worship backgrounds. That was until I posted a list of my most useful iphone applications for musicians, along with a link to a friend’s post on iphone audio applications.

Since I wrote the apps for musicians post I know that many more applications have come out for the iphone, and you may have different favorites than me. I also know that there are a lot of you out there who use Blackberrys and use apps for them in your ministry.

So here is my question. What applications, for Blackberry and Iphone, do you use in your worship ministry and would recommend to others? List the name of the app and what platform it’s for in the comments below. If you have a link that would be great too.