Catholic Tech Talk

I had the opportunity to participate for a few days in last week’s NCCL conference.  I’m not a catechetical leader, but they were nice enough to let me in anyways!  The focus of the conference wasn’t on technology, but I was excited to see a significant technical component to conference.  Interestingly, I was both surprised [...]

I recently ran across a post on the Linkedin Group, Association of Catholics Exploring Social Media, where someone was looking for a Catholic Alternative to Google AdSense.  For those that don’t know, Google AdSense, is Google’s platform that allows you to place Google ads on your website and lets you earn (hopefully) revenue from having [...]

For years backups have always been a challenge.  For anyone else who has lost a hard drive or had a computer crash you know the importance of backing up your files and data.  The solution has often been a local external hard drive connected to the computer and or a local network.  This is ok [...]

As Catholics, we aren’t the only ones who should be striving for virtue or allowing ourselves to be defined by our Faith.  Believe it or not, our faith should also define our websites. This means more, however, than simply delivering sermons from the web mount – it means using the tools at our disposal, and [...]

When I recently asked a church how they liked their new Online Giving program, they responded with “its like getting a 5th Sunday in every month!”.  I’ll take that as a good indication they’re happy with their program.  By tradition, Catholics give to their church every week.  Actually, and unfortunately, Catholics tend to give to [...]

It’s been about 9 months since Google+ has launched, and many of us have gotten a good idea of what it’s all about and how it can best  be used.   The biggest misconception I’ve found is the tendency to try and understand the service through a simple “apples to apples” comparison with Facebook.  The [...]

When it comes to plans to create parish websites or enter into online social media I almost always hear one response when the question is asked “Why are you doing that?”.  The response is mostly, “To evangelize.”  Then the conversation goes into mind-numbing conversations about search engines and rankings.  Don’t get me wrong, evangelizing and [...]

You’ve probably heard about the potential benefits for your parish.  You’ve read about it here.  You’ve heard me say it.  Even some Bishops are tweeting.  The Facebook thing looks great.  Google+ looks interesting.  So you and the Pastor decide to give it a go.  You set up all the accounts, do your customization, you tweet, you [...]

Anyone who spends time on the Internet, ends up with a multitude of passwords, far too many to effectively manage and keep safe let alone even remember.  A few years ago I got excited about the prospect of OpenID, an open source foundation with the mission of implementing a single sign on solution across the [...]

The other day a friend of mine posted a link to an article where a Pinterest user had come to some point where she felt uncomfortable with using the service and violating copyrights.  The writer was a not only a photographer, but a lawyer.  After reading the article, my friend (who has been an artist [...]

We now have over 30 entries in our Catholic Website of the Year Contest.  Submissions have come in from as far away as New Zealand and north into Ontario, Canada.  In the US, we already have over 19 different diocese represented. Submissions are still being accepted through April 30th.  For contest rules and submission form, [...]

Like many of our readers, I’ve become slightly fascinated by the possibilities of Pinterest. Our friend and intrepid app reviewer Sarah Reinhard seems to have the iPad/iPhone beat covered, so I’ve decided to shift my weekly tech column to a look at what’s up in the world of Catholic Pinterest. From crafts to convents, from [...]

The other morning I opened up my email to a friend letting me know that Facebook Pages were changing to the new Timeline layout.  I  immediately thought,  ”Darn you Facebook! We just got it tweaked to how we wanted it.  Our visitors are going to hate it.”  Yes, I was one of those that was [...]

The Lenten season is both a special and a busy time of year.  For your church’s website Ash Wednesday may have been the busiest day of the year, but Easter isn’t far behind.  One of the websites I’m responsible for is my company’s directory site, Seek And Find.  Seek And Find is a church listing [...]

So you’ve taken the time to set up your parish Facebook Page.  You’ve got some “likes” and are posting away.  It’s been fun and exciting, and now you might be wondering what the “pay offs” are and how to actually gauge the performance.  I was thinking this myself the other night.  I’ve been very pleased with [...]

Over the past two years, I’ve used three different email marketing programs:  Constant Contact, VerticalResponse, and MailChimp.  Don’t get me wrong, they’re all good programs.  If you’re using any of them already, congrats!  You’ve have one leg up on the majority of your peers. If you’re not using any of these or not really sure [...]

I’ve seen lots of blog posts and articles advocating podcasting your church’s homilies.  Unfortunately, unless your quite geeky, this can prove to be a daunting task.  Its actually rather simple, If you know the technologies pieces and how they go together.  I ran across this article from the Catholic Diocese of Sacramento describing in technical [...]

You may already be one of the 18+ million viewers of this video: (Search “Jesus Religion” on Google and you’ll see this pop up in the #1 spot) If you’re impressed by medium level production, anti-establishment propaganda, you may also be one of the 300,000+ people who “liked” it. If you’re like me, a bit [...]