Here’s one I’ve managed to miss before – so many things, so little time …

Anyway, regular readers will know that I’m a fan of keeping my children safe online and by extension all children.

I’ve long been an advocate of everything and anything that helps to promote the safety of children and not just online. Anyway, it would appear that InSafe host an annual “Safer Internet Day” and this years theme is:

Think B4 U Post!

I agree.

So what is SID? In their own words:

Safer Internet Day is organised by Insafe each year in February to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially amongst children and young people across the world. The topic for 2010 is “Think B4 U post!“.

To read more, simply click on the image above.

And by the way, it’s today!

… create a PDF.

I forget at times just how easy it is to do things and it’s usually when my wife asks “how do you…” that I realise I’ve been glib or dismissive in trying to pass on knowledge.

So today I bring you 4 ways to create a PDF.

1. Buy an application. Honest, this is probably the expected way and there are many, many options here. From the original Adobe PDF (not the reader) to CutePDF to Foxit … well, google’s your friend.
2. My preferred method is to use Adobe’s InDesign and it’s built-in export to PDF
3. For a free method create it in wordpad (it’s a free cutdown version of word included with every Windows PC) and print to it using a PDF printer driver such as the one from PrimoPDF. Once installed you treat it like any printer except it outputs to a physical file on your computer.
4. Finally, another way is to use an online convertor such as the one at FreePDFConvert.

There are pro’s and cons to each of the above methods with the first two having the major con of cost, whereas the later two have issues of security or restriction in what you can convert or create in the first place.

Why you’d want to create a PDF is an entire new set of reasons that I’ll leave to your imaginations.

On facebook, the majority of my friends are non-technical folks so in a recent status update I asked them what they most want to know about IT and I said I’ll try my best to answer them.

An old friend was second to the plate as I chose to ignore my son’s initial attempt at inciting my disdain. She asked:

If I want to get a full-time IT person for the company…what technical questions should I ask to make sure he knows his stuff

Well my first answer is don’t restrict yourself to just a him! I’ve worked with some excellent female techs down the years and wish there were many more in the industry, but enough of the aside … (more…)

Do the cheesy grins (aka Hollywood Smiles) on Church publicity annoy you? Do you think there’s a place for this type of picture? Well here’s a link to a post I wrote as a guest blogger on ChurchTechMatters.

It touches on usage of stock photos and whether or not we (as ministries) should use them or not. It then goes into a little bit of detail on my personal favourite sites for finding stock photos.

Would love to hear your opinions either as a comment here, to the post itself or on the associated forum – here.

I acquired a new follower on twitter today and they appeared just after I’d tweeted wanting to know if anybody wanted an independent review of hardware or software. Now the two may not be linked but shortly after Tim Cool (great name by the way) of Cool Solutions Group asked me to supply my ‘unbiased thoughts‘ on ministrEspace.

I was happy to oblige as anything that gives me something to write about is good for the blog and good for me as it keeps my creative juices flowing.

So just what is ministrEspace? Well in their own words it is “the low cost, web-based software solution for all your ministry space scheduling needs“. (more…)