GodsArmor.com

So, you’ve set up that fancy new computer lab where your youth group can hang out, have LAN parties, do their homework, etc. You’ve imaged every machine for easy backup and you’re ready to roll. However, in the first two weeks you find yourself reimaging every machine multiple times because of spyware, malware, etc. What do you do next.

http://www.sandboxie.com/

Sandboxie is basically a wrapper around any application (used mostly for web browsers) that allows the wrapped application to read from the hard drive, but when it writes to the hard drive it actually writes to a file maintained by the sandboxie application. When you close the browser, any data that was “written” to the hard drive (the sandboxie maintained file) is actually deleted. This keeps you from accidentally getting spyware, malware and other uglies on your computer.

It makes browsing slightly more difficult because for example if you wanted to actually save a file (video, mp3, etc) you have to jump through a couple of hoops to tell sandboxie to save the file, but I think the effort is worth the added security.

Read the getting started guide for more information.

Reading through one of my many RSS feeds regarding The Church (which shouldn’t be confused with The Church), their websites and their relevancy in today’s world I came across this post from Church Marketing Sucks (which leads me to another thought about the word sucks that I’ll leave for later).

Anyway, the gist of the post is that your church website should not be about glitz, glamor and the latest and greatest in website technology, but instead should be about content. The people who visit your site on a daily basis should be greeted with new and compelling content about the happenings at your church.

I agree with about 90% of the article. Content is king. If your website has not been updated in 6 months, nobody is going to come back. Potential visitors will think nothing is going on at your church and also not visit.

However, depending on the type of audience your website is trying to reach (and if you have a website, you are probably trying to reach a younger crowd, not always, but probably) sometimes a little glitz and glamor are what your website needs to reach those people. I’m not talking about Jesus Junk but a well designed, “pretty” website with a vibrant social community and relevant content is going to draw more people than a FrontPage template with up-to-date information any day. We have to keep up with the times in order to reach or even pique the interest of potential seekers.

Read the article and tell me what you think.

Is it just me or does wiki based documentation suck? I haven’t found one piece of software that uses a wiki as its documentation that isn’t just plain useless. Maybe I’m old skool, but I like to have my documentation in front of me in a sweet little pdf file, not 8000 clicks away. It harkens back to the old HTML documentation days and is just plain not cool.

I completely get the whole wiki documentation thing, but all in all, it doesn’t work. People (especially developers) don’t want to and won’t update documentation in a community fashion the way wiki based documentation requires. I know I wouldn’t.

So, what’s wrong with wiki based software documentation:

1. They are generally not well organized
2. There are too many button clicks to get where you want to go
3. Search functionality is lacking
4. There’s no way to look at the documentation offline in a simple way
5. It is not well maintained

Maybe what we really need is specialized wiki software that is publishable to pdf format. And just think, the documentation for it could be written in itself.

Anyone want to write that for me?

Over at churchrelevance.com, there’s an interesting overview from Kevin Kelly of Wired Magazine as to what Christianity may look like 1000 years from now based on history and trends.

http://churchrelevance.com/kevin-kelly-on-the-next-1000-years-of-christianity/

I found it especially interesting how Christianity ebbs and flows around the world. I think that says that people are always searching. Some find what they are looking for, others keep searching. I also like the thought of Purple Christians, neither left nor right in their political viewpoints. Wouldn’t it be refreshing in this day and age of constant bickering between the parties if Christians were to remain the voice of logic and reason? I do.

It’s obvious from the lack of comments that my little chunk of cyberspace is not all that well read, so I was flabbergasted when I logged in to my blog and saw that I had been hacked! Basically my entire blog had been replaced by some very dis-enlightened comments written in red text with a black background. It kind of ticked me off. I mean, what did I do to him (or her)? All I want is a place to put a few ideas here or there. Generally I’m pretty trusting which in this case bit me in the behind.

Anyway, I got things fixed. What else are you going to do? Get back up, dust yourself off, hopefully make your self a little better and wiser, and go on your way.

It is making me rethink my blogging software though.