Tall Skinny Kiwi

5 Web 2.0 Spring Cleaning Projects. Done!

Spring is upon us. Here are a few small Web 2.0 projects that I have managed to get done in the past week.

1. Set up Flock as my default browser. (done). Goodbye Firefox and Safari. Flock has been one of the favourite browsers in my harem but now will become my preferred browser-dashboard, Flickr gallery, RSS reader as well as being another blog editing platform, working alongside Ecto.

2. Collate my many web 2.0 life streams into a single multi-streamed gush. (done).

3 Storm into Google, gather the bots and train them all to search my blog responsively, regularly, respectfully, and await my every command to either find, hide, dismiss or prioritize my thousands of blog posts. The last one is a doozy. This is all possible through Google Webmaster Tools (done) and submitting to Google a site map of my blog (done).

4. Add a new and improved web 2.0 friendly template for the blog (done), including a small dashboard for my web 2.0 addictions.(done)

5. Web 2.0 linked signature for Apple Mail (done)

Technorati Tags: blog, web 2.0

Google Webmaster Tools: Search Results from each country

Google webmaster tools now has a feature that lets you see what google searches people did to find your site FROM EACH COUNTRY! I had no idea they were so different. Its really worth a look. Here are my number one search queries in which my site appeared:

USA - "andrew jones"
UK - "habbohotel uk"
New Zealand - "kiwi nudes"
Germany - "Horst Schafrenek"
France - "sex house"
Turkey - "i dress"
Netherlands - "andrew jones"
No results yet from China, Australia and a few other straggling countries.

And if you don't have Google webmaster tools, then do it. And set up a site map so you can control those Google bots, wild beasts all of them, and point them to the blog posts they need to see.

Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, google webmaster

HTML Email Signature in Apple Mail

Thanks to Josh Brown and the excellent instructions by C. Wess Daniels, I now have an html email signature that works inside Apple Mail. Not as straight forward as it sounds but very rewarding to see my Web 2.0 addictions on display for the world to see. Next step is to add a dashboard with the same addictions to my blog. When i get time . . .

Online Communities and Church 2.0

The sandbox for iGoogle opened yesterday. Should be exciting to see new apps for Google's Open Social. I am really interested in the idea of spiritual communities launched natively through phone and web apps and I think this one could be a part of the scheme of things.

Are you also thinking about online spiritual communities? And the potential of Web 2.0 for Church 2.0? Love to hear what you are thinking. Send me an email. I may want to ask you some questions.

Also, any readers out there who are considering attending the Graphing Social Patterns Conference next June or attended the GSP West Coast conference last month?
What about Google's Developer Event in San Francisco in May?
Are you at Web 2.0 Expo right now???? [Lucky sod!]

Come forward please. Come on up to the front. Yes . . . I see that hand . . .

Technorati Tags: web 2.0

Websites and golf clubs

Tony Whittaker of Internet Evangelism Day has a great parable called A Tale of Two Golf Clubs which explains why you cant drag an old media mind into the new media world without some serious rethinking. They are also offering to help make your church website more effective with some diagnostic tools like this self-assessment questionaire. And in case you have forgotten, Internet Evangelism Day is April 27.

I met Tony in person last year in Berlin at the Global Christian Internet Alliance meeting. Nice guy!

Speaking of golf clubs, Scot McKnight uses a golf club analogy in this book A Community Called Atonement to explain the various atonement theories. The right club (view of atonement) for the right situation. Works for me. OK - thats a totally different use of golf clubs. Sorry.

Happy Hour: Virtual Monastery, House Churches, Emerging Church UK and USA, and Emerging Church Bloggers/Christianity 2.0

My Happy Hour is this coming Monday, 12th November at 5pm GMT (London time) on Shapevine.com. That's midday in New York. Come with questions for my very special guests who are turning up through video cam. They include:

Bob Beltz, an author of numerous books and creator of the world's first virtual monastery. He is also the guy behind Walden Media which is releasing the DVD of Amazing Grace the following day with a 5 week course for churches and small groups. I want to ask him about what happened with the blogger/Hollywood partnership that we experienced earlier in the year and if it is a good way forward.

Wolfgang Simson is author of Houses that Change the World (download PDF here) and a new book on the global house church movement that is awaiting release. Wolfgang, in my opinion, is the most knowlegable guy anywhere regarding whats going on with house churches globally. Actually, he will be in my house for a few days so his video cast will be coming from another room in our house. I want him to talk about web, cyberchurch and how it ties in to house church.

Becky Garrison, Senior Editor for The Wittenburg Door, is releasing a book a few days later called "Rising From the Ashes: Rethinking Church". Becky has just done some research looking at emerging church in both UK and USA and is able to draw some interesting comparisons. And she is NEVER lost for words. Believe me! See Becky on Wikipeida. She is also putting out a book on new atheism.

And a special guest to talk about cyberchurch and Church 2.0. I have just asked Paul Teusner from Australia but am awaiting his response. His PhD work on emerging bloggers and cyberspace (read some of it here - "Emerging church bloggers in Australia: Prophets, priests and rulers in God’s virtual world") is really fascinating.

And I will make some special announcements about some changes in our ministry and plans for 2008. You might even meet my wife, Debbie, who is starting an artists cooperative called The Sorting Room, which is paving the way for a new kind of social enterprise in UK

.

Technorati Tags: christian, emergent, emerging church, web 2.0

BlogRush Phase 2

BlogRush roll out phase 2 of their system today - the one I told you about in September. Its a nice system and they are doing a great job. I really like the fact that i can view exactly how many people read each post of mine, as well as how many came through BlogRush (very little actually). I am sticking with them to see where it all goes, despite giving prime pixelage to them instead of to Google Ads or something else that could earn me money. All part of the 'attention economy" I guess. Anyway, in phase 2 BlogRush promise . . .

- 42% Increase In Free Traffic
- Widget Performance Monitoring
- All Members Must Be Displaying The Widget
- Closing In On ONE BILLION Blog Headlines
- TrafficJam.com Is Coming

Technorati Tags: blogrush

Dean Peters and Blog Jordan

Mean Dean Peters, of the infamous HealYourChurch and Blogs4God, arrives in Jordan today and starts 'histoblogging' [my word] his way around. He has created a WIKI called the BlogJordan Wiki for images and thoughts and whatever related to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Dean says in an email this morning that I might be interested to know about . . .

* the fact I return 100 lbs lighter (perhaps to find them?-)
* the fact that I'll be YouTube-ing about the Hashemite Kingdom
* the fact that there's alot of Bible history I'll be covering
* the fact that that this time around, I'm also covering culture & cuisine

Technorati Tags: jordan

Prayer Feeder - New 2.0 App for emerging churches

New application for churches and groups by developer Stephen Dominy who is beta testing it right now. It offers more privacy than a Facebook app. You may have read what Stephen said about it earlier this month on Emergingchurch.info I have started a test group called Missional Communities. If you want to be a part of roadtesting a new group, go to Prayerfeeder.com and ask for an invite. I just might even let you join. And thanks Stephen for letting me know about it.

Technorati Tags: emerging church, prayer feeder, web 2.0

Facebook and new churches

LifeChurch.tv are attempting to start a church through the Facebook platform, or at least help create new aggregations through leveraging the Facebook API. More about it here from Bobby Gruenewald.

As for me, I find Facebook annoying, especially the zillion friend requests I get each day. However, I should really ask:
1. Anyone else doing this?
2. Pros and cons?

Technorati Tags: church, church planting, facebook, web 2.0

Social networking sites

We are talking about Web 2.0 and social networking. TCWNeighborhood.com is a new social networking site for Christianity Today that utilizes the new platform from American Tract Society. EO in Netherlands added social networking last month that was developed by women for women called Eva.

Technorati Tags: social networking, web 2.0

Zpeech: New web app

Tim Rohrer tells me that he and some friends just created a killer Web 2.0 app called Zpeech (beta) and is wondering if we can experiment with it here. Zpeech means you can comment on my actual site right here at www.zpeech.com/tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/tallskinnykiwi or use the address for commenting on any other website in the same way. This is early days but the app. has a lot of potential. As I said to Tim, this might be the best Web 2.0 innovation this year or . . . it might be the most EVIL! Lets wait and see.
No tools yet for your blog nor decent spam protection but those things are in the pipeline.

Technorati Tags: web 2.0, zpeech

Oct 26: Orkney Island's Firefox 2.0 Party

Firefox 2.0 release party. 4pm, Oct 26th. My place. Bring your notebook. WIFI provided and tea or coffee. We will dedicate this new browser to the Creator to be used for creativity, justice and happiness. Get invited here.

Technorati Tags: blog, web 2.0

A World Without Walls

“The walls of a classroom become redundant because students are able to access real-time, any-time learning.”
Greg Whitby on SMH comments on a new 24-hour Catholic school proposed for Australia.

I was thinking this morning about churches without walls and this article grabbed my attention. I would say much of what we are doing now or attempting to do - church without walls, monastery without walls, seminary without walls, is similar. One day, we will be able to describe all this without so much fumbling around.
HT: Ardent Student

Technorati Tags: emerging church, web 2.0

Contribute 4 has blog capabilities

Adobe's Contribute 4 sounds impressive with the blogging capability . . . but i am leaning towards online solutions like Flock browser. And i still cant beat ecto for blogging control and offline writing.

Technorati Tags: blog, web 2.0

More Church 2.0 Resources

- Mark Glasser (MediaShift) finds examples of Church 2.0 for PBS, although they appear to be more traditional-structured churches using media. Would have expected to see some cyberchurch or e-church varities there but . . worth a read.
- Cory Miller of Church Communications Pro has 6 PR resources for your church

Also:
- Good news article about emerging church in NorthWest USA
- WhatsRemarkable.com is a new user submitted site from Emergent Village.

More coming . . . but my Aunty Olwen has arrived from DownUnder and I am showing her the sights of Orkney. L8R

Technorati Tags: church, emerging church, church 2.0, web 2.0

The Web 2.0 List You Were Looking For

This Web 2.0 companies list might be a a tongue-in-cheek look at the hype of Web 2.0 but still, its worth a read. There are web solutions on his list that took me weeks and even months to track down - this list would have saved me a lot of time.

A number of these have helped me recently: cocomment, 30boxes, ourmedia. Librarything looks good too. Skype of course.

Which ones have helped you? And has anyone tried Ekklesia for churches?

Technorati Tags: web 2.0

Church 2.0 and not 3.0

I hear talk of "Church 3.0" as if its the next thing. This is a different scale. Church 2.0 is a contextual response to a cyber-culture defined, at this moment, as Web 2.0. There is NO Web 3.0 so please don't anyone be in a hurry to get there and dont confuse the blogosphere with another number.

Overheard in the Web 2.0/Church 2.0 world:

- Surowiecki's speech at SXSW on Web 2.0 and the Wisdom of Crowds is blogged.
- Like a Fire looks at Web 2.0 and Youth Ministry
- E-Church added to Museum of Modern Betas
Related: Church 2.0 and The Ajax Love of God

Technorati Tags: church 2.0, web 2.0

Re-imagining Cyberchurch

An article i wrote for Relevant mag just came out.It was originally called "Reimagining Cyberchurch" as a nod to Doug Pagitt. But the editors have called it "Linking to Cyberchurch" and thats fine with me. Relevant Magazine holds very high standards in both content and graphics so I am just happy to have them publish something of mine.

"Will it be a simple upgrade of the same cheesy graphics, spinning GIFs, heavy flash intros and online tithing options that we experienced in the nineties? Or will the church online take on a new identity and shape, sharing life in fresh genres that are native to the Internet?" More

Key Ideas:
- Cyberchurch is people, not institutions.
- Cyberchurch is not a department store for consumers.
- Cyberchurch is neither democratic nor non-hierarchical.
- Cyberchurch does not replace the physical and it does a poor job reproducing it.

Technorati Tags: cyberchurch, new media, web 2.0

XFN for Social Networking

I am tired of joining silly social software systems and I don't want to answer any more dumb questions about myself. If the web is so smart, why are we always repeating ourselves? On the other hand, I am excited about the possibilities for social networking through the media I already maintain. Like my blog.

Give me some time and my blog will be .
XFN (XHTML Friends Network) seems to be a good system of adding meta tags to our existing links of friends or blogrolls. If I had the time, I could go through my lists of friends and add these tags. The XFN site shows how to add the code to our personal hyperlinks.

Even better - it appears that the impending release of WordPress 2.0 has in-built support for XFN. John Loppnow gives  "10 Things You Should Know About WordPress 2.0" including:
6. Use WordPress for Social Networking -
There are probably a thousand social networking tools out there - many of which have plugins for WordPress available to them. Someof these are Flickr , del.icio.us or Digg. However, WordPress has built-in integration with such a tool in that allows search engines understand your relationships with other bloggers. It is called the XFN (XHTML Friends Network). XFN allows bloggers to establish links in their link manager (blogroll) as “friend”, “co-worker” or “crush” among others. It even allows you to designate whether you’ve physically met the person.

Technorati Tags: blog, tags

Tagging Your Blogs Over The Break

Its a holiday break for your blog - and for you to get it sorted out - new design, tidied up (thats me), listed with search engines (like Jonny) and my big recommendation this season . . . to start tagging your posts and even go back through your blog and tag the important posts.

Can you imagine how much hassle it would have been for Noah to collect and count all the animals if Adam had not tagged them all in the first place? Adam was closer to the creative process than Noah in both time and location, so it makes sense that Adam was the Tagger and Noah the Aggregator.

Tagging your posts allows your data to be easily found by people who need it, and allows your posts to ride the long tail of the blogosphere. If you tag your posts well, people will be finding and reading them in years to come, even if they don't read them now.

I use Technorati tags for my posts. Its easy for me because my blog editor (Ecto) allows me to ascribe technorati tags before publishing. Today is the last day of their 20% off sale. Its totally worth buying! Trust me. Its 11 pounds or $US 17 and worth every penny or cent.
If you dont have a blog editor, Technorati tells you how to add tags manually to your posts.

- My photos are not tagged. I started off with Flickr almost a year ago but have lapsed. I just took a look and i have 47 new messages, most of them "New Contacts" I need to take Flickr more seriously. I will start using it again and tag my photos.
- I have also neglected Del.icio.us but hope to rectify that in the New Year.
- BlogFresh has more advice on tagging.

GeoTagging
I wish I had been geotagging my posts for the past 5 years - especially since i have blogged from so many countries. I have tried to add the country or city names to a few posts and images, but I about to add the right code with longitude and latitude (as well as attitude). Ravi says WordPress users can download a Geopress plug in that will work with Yahoo Maps geocoder.
UPDATE: I found a way to add geotags to my feed using FeedBurner
MakeZine tells you how to geotag your del.icio.us bookmarks.
Geourl.org will help you find your co-ordinates.

And for other ideas on sorting out your blog, Problogger Darren has some good ideas on how to use this quiet patch:
" 1. Some take advantage of the quiet news patch and low traffic and go on vacation
2. Others use the next few weeks to do redesigns
3. Experience bloggers often use the end of the year to do reviews, look at stats and set direction and goals for the year ahead
4. Quite a few bloggers use the time to launch new blogs
5. Some bloggers use this time to start up other projects like writing books, recording podcasts etc
6. Others use the time to write posts and series that they’ll use later in the year
7. A few bloggers I know spend January going through their current blogs with a fine tooth comb to do SEO, delete dead links and basically get everything in ship shape order"

Now . . . how shall i tag this post?

Technorati Tags: andrew-says-tag-your-bloody-blog, blog, tags, web 2.0

A Little Help on my Church 2.0 Article?

Help save my Christmas! I am really struggling with this article. And i need to write it before Christmas for Next-Wave because I SAID I WOULD.

I want to locate the parallels between Web 2.0 and the emerging church (Church 2.0) because there is a lot that both conversations can learn from each other. I want to explore what we are getting from and adding to the conversation. The similarities are startling. I wrote a little on Church 2.0 and went a little further with The Ajax Love of God. But I haven't nailed it yet. The geeks trying to explain Web 2.0 are also struggling to define it (sounds like the same emerging church definition struggle of 2004) and the criticisms that "Web 2.0 is what the web was supposed to be about in the first place" also ring a bell.

Image (click to enlarge) is from Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 blog which is a good place to start.

Here are some parallels:
- participation, interactivity, pre-emptiveness, emergent behavior, importance of macro and large scale, lightweight teams operating with small budgets, distrust of wikipedia and other self-correcting systems, power of the many, power of the long tail, importance of modularity . . . what else?

Technorati Tags: church, Emergent, emerging church, web 2.0

All I Want For Christmas is AJAX

All I want for Christmas is Ajax
I don't want a tall skinny tree
or lots of presents under it.
All I ask for are some Web 2.0 goodies
that are zipped and not wrapped.
I want PHP and not PAJAMAS.
Give me widgets and not gadgets.
Give me a torrent of flashy de.licio.us gifts that flickr brightly under MySQL clouds.
I want Wiki and not wassel.
I want Christmas feeds and not Christmas food.
I want shareware and freeware and not underwear.
I want my OPML Christmas list to be meta-tagged and checked twice by automated folksonomy-based aggregators exhibiting an emergent Christmas cheer that can be mapped visually and dynamically on my poor and miserable blog that limps along like Tiny Tim on the pathetic crutches of Web 1.0 architecture.
All I want for Christmas is Ajax.
And may God bless us . . everyone.

Related: Check your site on the Web 2.0 validator to see what your blog might need for a happy Christmas (don't take it too seriously)
HT: Damon Snyder who has just posted a very cool Emerging Church vs. Web 2.0 cloud based on blogs that link to tallskinnykiwi.
Further: Dion Hinchcliffe has compiled The best Web 2.0 software of 2005 and More Great Web 2.0 software

Technorati Tags: ajax, christmas, web 2.0

Emerging Church TagCloud

Emerging Church TagCloud created by Damon Snyder who mashed the Tallskinnykiwi blog feed with 20 emerging church blog feeds.

I gave it a shot myself but havent seen much sucess. Below is my first attempt - a simple Tallskinnykiwi Cloud based on recent posts. I am not sure how to get it to aggregate my entire blog. Needs some more work, I guess. And BTW - I only used the word "orgy" once and that was in relation to a consumer "spending orgy" after Thanksgiving.
[gosh . . . how embarrassing!!!!!]

Technorati Tags: blog, Emergent, emerging church, web 2.0

Tim Berners-Lee Gets a Blog

Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the Web, gets a blog and posts some thoughts about blogging and creative space:

"In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space for sharing information. It seemed evident that it should be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute. The first browser was actually a browser/editor, which allowed one to edit any page, and save it back to the web if one had access rights.

Strangely enough, the web took off very much as a publishing medium, in which people edited offline. Bizarely, they were prepared to edit the funny angle brackets of HTML source, and didn't demand a what you see is what you get editor. WWW was soon full of lots of interesting stuff, but not a space for communal design, for discource through communal authorship.

Now in 2005, we have blogs and wikis, and the fact that they are so popular makes me feel I wasn't crazy to think people needed a creative space." Read more on Tim's blog

Technorati Tags: blog, web 2.0

Church 2.0

much talk about Web 2.0.
much hype about Bubble 2.0
much skepticism about Burst 2.0
more thought needed about Emerging Church 2.0

As I type these words into my blog editor, the term "Web 2.0" is currently the most searched phrase or key word on Technorati's blog search. There is a lot of discussion and dreaming and criticism. Last months Web 2.0 Conference (the second one) made a huge splash. The 2004 conference had people like Tim O'Reilly throwing some bones about how Web 2.0 might look and feel . . .

O'Reilly said: "Web 2.0" stands for the idea that the Internet is evolving from a collection of static pages into a vehicle for software services, especially those that foster self-publishing, participation, and collaboration. . . "
"User-centered Web phenomena such as blogging, community photo-sharing (exemplified by Flickr), collective editing (Wikipedia), and social bookmarking (Delicious), they argue, are disrupting traditional ideas about how software is built and how information is generated, shared, and distributed on the Internet."

The idea behind Web 2.0 is not new at all, although much of the tech now available to pull off Web2.0-sized dreams is recent. Web 2.0 is how some of us initially viewed the internet in the 90's when we chose to start journalling our lives rather than creating static vanity sites or commercial storefronts. By 1999, the word blogging was adopted and the idea of casual self-publishing and hypertext linking is now not only acceptable, but in many cases, preferable. This is what Douglas Rushkoff was referring to in his "Open Source Democracy" [PDF] where he outlined the initial flavor of the simple, collaborative web, and how it was captured by commercial interests and mystified beyond the reach of ordinary people. But now we are returning to demystification and empowerment of the masses for self-expression and connectivity. Or . . Web 2.0

Anyway, the ideas of collaboration, participation, distributed power etc, are all very similar to what we are seeing in the newer crop of churches started by media savvy, web-native people and bloggers. That makes me want to suggest . . .

Church 2.0 . . . a missional ecclesiastic response to a culture influenced by the values of Web 2.0

Emerging Church 2.0 might be those emerging churches that are shaped by new media values rather than old media. They write blog posts rather than articles, PDFs rather than books, start churches without buildings, and lack a vertically hierarchical leadership structure. Hierarchy is modular and dynamic, rather than vertical and static. I am not talking about cyberchurches that migrate to the web. I am talking about alternative faith communities that emerge online and then seek physical meetings, new aggregations of believers that connect with each other and the world through the complex networks that make up their World 2.0

Jesus 2.0? No . . . SILLY . . . He's the same yesterday, today and forever
Gospel 2.0? No . . same timeless message but the message has always been delivered and distributed in a particular context. And I am talking about . . . . yes . . . Context 2.0
Church 2.0? You bet.

Any thoughts out there on this subject? [Apart from the large amount of criticism I will receive about this post]

Related:
- Christian Blogging and Web 2.0 on Blogs4God
- Blog Ministry notes that most churches are still Web 1.0 and suggests 5 Christian Web 2.0 services you could do.
- Coop links to a Web 2.0 Checklist
- Forward Slash, EmergAnt: New Media Fluency, Generation Text, by tsk
- Jim's Church 2.0 project and wiki
- We Know More Than Our Pastors, by Tim Bednar
- Fred Peatross is writing his Mod-Church Manifesto, with hat tipping towards Cluetrain.
"15) To the conventional church, our networked conversations may appear disorganized and confused. But the conversation is gathering; movement will soon follow. We have the tools, more ideas, and no rules to slow us down."

- Andrew Careaga (of e-ministry) highlights a piece on digital storytelling from Digitial Think.
[quote]"This is the dawn of the connected epoch in human civilization. We are living, you and I, in the first seconds of a society reshaped by empowered individuals connected by digital networks, of lives shaped by unprecedented volumes of information and shifting notions of knowledge and trust."

Technorati Tags: church, emerging church, house church, new media, spirituality, web 2.0

Being Casual and Other Start-Up Rules

EvHead, of Blogger fame and speaker at the recent Web 2.0 Conference, gives ten or eleven tips for web start ups. Heres the best one.

"#3: Be Casual
We're moving into what I call the era of the "Casual Web" (and casual content creation). This is much bigger than the hobbyist web or the professional web. Why? Because people have lives. And now, people with lives also have broadband. If you want to hit the really big home runs, create services that fit in with—and, indeed, help—people's everyday lives without requiring lots of commitment or identity change. Flickr enables personal publishing among millions of folks who would never consider themselves personal publishers—they're just sharing pictures with friends and family, a casual activity. Casual games are huge. Skype enables casual conversations".

I find that blog conversations that stay in casual mode can host some profitable conversation. But when blog posts are too formal (like my "Open Blog Post for Carson" which resembled an open letter) then tension levels rise and people get defensive. I feel the flavor of Web 2.0 is casual, not formal.

Technorati Tags: blog, new media