I see many posts out there that are lists of the “top this” or “top that” and all of them purport to be the top list for that category.

The question I always ask myself is what makes this list the top and by what criteria has the list been achieved. For example, Kent’s list of the Top 100 Church Blogs is one such listing. At the bottom he does attempt to explain the criteria for the listings but phrases like “200 well-known blogs are selected” leave me wondering by who’s measurement or criteria.

This is not to bash Kent’s post, but of those top 130 (there’s a bonus 30 there) I read maybe 5 of them. Not that I think my opinion matters in this… but what I really dislike about the whole idea of lists is the very subjective nature of them.

So, with that firmly in mind here is my listing (no top anything) of Church Tech Blogs that I read and find have value to me.

Hopefully one or more will for you too:

1. ChurchTechMatters.com – CTM has gone from being a one man show by Jim Walton to a place that has a group of christian tech bloggers aged from 15 upwards. CTM’s breadth and depth of content has taken the site to a new dimension and whilst articles aren’t regular, they are all of top quality (NB In the interests of full disclosure I am one of those writers).
2. 8Bit Network – like CTM, 8bit is a group of church tech bloggers but unlike CTM they update frequently and are targeted across 5 specific areas from Web to IT to Media. The inspiration behind 8Bit is John Saddington (aka human3rror) and if you can cope with high traffic, high volume sites then these are a must add.
3. Tech, No Babel – in their own words, “TNB is your weekly source for church video, graphics, and tech news, perspectives tips and tricks“. Paul has an interesting blog and like myself will post on any subject close to his heart at the time; be it personal or a tech tip. He used to do a weekly podcast but hasn’t done so for a number of years now – though the archives are still available.
4. ChurchIT Help is run by Barry Buchannan and was one of the first christian tech blogs I ever read. Since then Barry and I have struck up an online friendship. Like most personal blogs his topics are widespread but alas he hasn’t been active for some time on the tech blog. These days he puts his time into his daily tech toon but does occasionally post an article.
5. ChurchTechToday is written by Lauren Hunter and is a must read for myself. Lauren writes on her desire to “help churches do ministry better through internet-related technological advancements, whether it’s through using church management software, online newsletters, or cutting-edge social communities to spread the Gospel“.
6. Jason Powell – Jason’s site is written from the perspective of a full time Church IT Director. Being a self titled blog it can cover every aspect under the sun but mostly good tech stuff and other bits that relate to the CITRT.
7. The Beta Version – Greg is, like me, an IT professional and whilst this blog isn’t purely about tech, it is very much about the Church, his role within in it and how he works that out.

There you have it, just some of the many I read.

Enjoy.

Do you have any you care to recommend I add to my regular reading list?

In the days of old when the O/S of choice for most day to day stuff was XP the only real challenge (for me at least) was twofold.  How to reduce the initial install size and how to automate as much of the mundane tasks as possible.

Then nlite appeared on the market and this allowed for taking an original XP install CD and integrating service packs, security patches, tweaks, etc and effectively automated the process of (re)installing XP. And as most know, this was a semi-regular event in the owner of a windows based PC.

Whilst nlite went on to release vlite for Vista this tool doesn’t work flawlessly with Windows 7 and there are only vague rumours of a proper Win7, it still leaves a gap in the market. That gap has now been, ably so it would appear, taken up by RTSe7enLite.

In their words:

You can add wallpapers, Icons, themes, integrate updates, drivers, remove components, unattended installation settings, tweaks, bootable ISO creator, etc.

I can see a usage – maybe you can too?

The church I attend has two websites.

One a full blown ecommerce site which has been up and running for the past year or more to support the christian book import business we run and the second which is nearing completion, is for the church itself.

Last night I had the pleasure to introduce the backend of the new site (it’s WordPress) to two of our church members who will be doing the updates, postings, etc for the site. It was a humbling experience (more…)

I recall a day, not too long ago, that there used to be a fair number of “rescue” tools out and about on the market.

My preferred go to tool of the day was FProt.

These days I didn’t know of one until AVG (yes, them of the free Anti Virus) released their latest product – the AVG Rescue CD.

But what does a ‘rescue CD’ do? In simple terms it is a stand alone, self-booting CD (or USB stick) that contains Anti Virus, Anti Malware and more besides. AVG have gone a step further though and added a few extra tools into it to make a truly versatile product.

In their words:

The AVG Rescue CD is essentially a portable version of AVG Anti-Virus supplied through Linux distribution. It can be used in the form of a bootable CD or bootable USB flash drive to recover your computer when the system cannot be loaded normally, such as after an extensive or deep-rooted virus infection. In short, the AVG Rescue CD enables you to fully remove infections from an otherwise inoperable PC and render the system bootable again.

Apart from the usual AVG functions (malware detection and removal, updates from internet or external device, etc.), the AVG Rescue CD also contains the following set of administration tools:

• Midnight Commander – a two-panel file manager
• Windows Registry Editor– simple registry editor for more experienced users
• TestDisk – powerful hard drive recovery tool
• Ping – to test the availability of network resources (servers, domains, IP addresses)
• Common Linux programs and services– vi text editor, OpenSSH daemon, ntfsprogs etc

I’ll certainly be adding it to my repertoire of tools to take when I visit friends and relations that have infected machines.

What tools do you use?

One of the most annoying aspects of Windows 7 (I find) is that lots of software doesn’t autostart or autorun properly. Let me explain with an example … do you use Piriform’s excellent ccleaner?

Do you use it the same way as I do – by right-clicking on my recycle bin?

If so, are you fed up with Windows 7 asking you for permission to run it?

This is the UAC in action.

Then the answer is that you need to run the item as an administrator and Windows 7 gives us have five options to do that – though not all would necessarily work for all situations and some will still ask you to confirm you are the admin or want to run as admin. (more…)

So in part one of this mini-epic I responded to a comment author on another blog. In it, I addressed the, as I see it, flawed thinking in their approach to the use of filtering software or appliances.

In this second post I want to put forward some of the benefits, again as I see it, of why we should spy.

So, without further ado: (more…)

John over at Church IT has put up a short post about “Monitoring Your Church Staff’s Internet Usage“.

Those of you who read this blog regularly will know that I’m a wee bit passionate about protecting your own equipment and in helping guide your children down the path of healthy surfing and computer use. So you won’t be surprised to know that I’ve added a comment or two.

Today, the following comment was added:

I just don’t know about actively monitoring staff or employee computers. It seems like spying. I’ve always found that having everyone sign a computer and internet agreement policy and then locking down everything that wasn’t email or internet browsing through the router was plenty. There’s no reason to spend any amount of money or time installing monitoring software. It makes people feel like you don’t trust them and they don’t really work anyway. If you just have to see what your staff has been doing on the web most routers keep a log of every site visited and with what computer and at what time.

Well I was going to type up my reply on John’s blog but it started getting a little long, so instead I’m answering it here. (more…)

I’ve long been an advocate of people not needing ‘formal qualifications’ to get into the computer industry. And by formal I mean university degrees or 48 GCSE’s (or whatever your age 16 school exams are called).

However, that’s a subject matter for another time and another post. What one can’t avoid, so it seems, is the need to have a technical certification. Companies seem to turn a blind eye to experience and especially recruiting agencies. I know for a fact that certain agencies in the UK use an automated scanner looking for keywords for certain roles – so your CV arrives and is never seen by a human until after it’s been vetted by a machine. This is life now and so if you’re wanting to get into the network field, then as  bare minimum you’d need to start with a Cisco Certified Network Associate (or CCNA) certification.

This one exam (or two depending on route taken) certification is seen as the ultimate (more…)