Catholic Tech Talk

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

It’s nice to see so many parishes embracing social media and establishing accounts on services like Twitter and building Facebook Pages.  As I look at various parish websites that have staff email addresses posted I have noticed that many are obviously personal addresses (i.e. @Yahoo.com, @Live.com, etc.) I wonder how many parishes have a technology, [...]

The past two weekends my wife and I traveled to visit family.  I’m a fan of traveling, but I’ve never been a fan of packing.  In addition to clothes and toiletries, now we have to be concerned with access to business stuff plus you want stuff to do.  So here’s what we took in addition to our [...]

So Google+ Pages went live this past week.  Someone in your parish office or a parishioner might even suggested that your parish set one up.  Then the thought comes to your mind, “Well, we have that Facebook page they told us we should get; why do we need another one somewhere else?”  Good question, and [...]

Facebook pages can have great uses for our parishes, and any Facebook user has probably ‘Liked’ a page or two.  As ‘Admins’ of those pages we know we need to get those ‘Likes’ right?  And building the number of those ‘Likes’ is paramount often times for us too.  But have you ever wondered why someone [...]

Yes, I’m an Android user.  One of the first things I looked for was Catholic Apps for Android and found several, but we’ll focus on two here. The first is Catholic One by Aycka Soft.  This free app provides users with: Daily readings Prayers Rosary Access to the NAB Bible (when online only) Aycka Soft has been [...]

If you weren’t aware, October has been National Anti-Bullying Month.   When I hear the word “bully”, it sometimes seems harmless.  I picture that kid on the movie A Christmas Story.  The truth is that it’s not harmless.  In recent years it’s even been taken to another level with technology to what is now called [...]

This past year I read a great book by Jennifer Haigh called “Faith”.   The story begins in Boston in the 50′s and I remember this one little part standing out to me.  The Mother in the story gets her rosary, sits next to an open window in her apartment, and participates in a group [...]

I’m spending the weekend at the Catholic New Media Conference and quite frankly, I’m impressed. The quality of the speakers, the content, and the questions are on par with any secular social media conference I’ve seen. There’s about 120 people here from a broad spectrum of parishes and dioceses and they’re all excited and engaged. [...]

As the conversation continues about technology and the Church, those advocating it’s uses encounter a lot of objections.  The objections interestingly seem to be pretty consistent.  It came up again last night in a phone conversation and today online, and a question has been going through my mind for a while now . . . [...]

Tomorrow, I begin my trek to Kansas City and the 2011 Catholic New Media Conference. Considering the level of tech-geekdom in attendance, I expect many will have their smartphones and taking pictures. The question is – what’s the best way to share all of them?

I’m sure there are Pastors out there getting the constant barrage of “we gotta be on Facebook”, “we gotta be on Twitter”, “we gotta get a better website”, so forth and so on.  I’m also sure that many Pastors are also similarly asking “Why?” which is where the conversation is often taking a “nose-dive”.  I [...]

If you’ve stopped into Facebook within the past week or turned on the news, you’ve probably seen and heard about big changes to the service format and features.  You’ve probably seen opinions that range from extreme displeasure to not knowing what to think.  It seems strange that a free internet service causes such huge stirs [...]

This morning I checked in and read Joe Luedtke’s post “Why This Blog Is Important” and one thing (plus others) really stood out to me, “I pay all my bills online except for the check I write each week to the Church. ”  It’s one of those things I’ve been suggesting at my own parish [...]

Last April, we upgraded the Community Forum software to IP. Board 3. We enabled all the bells-and-whistles you could possibly imagine, but it never caught on.

I just went on a walk, played Tumbling Tower, and Blind Man’s Bluff with my wife and daughters. We made silly jokes and laughed hard enough to make our bodies ache. It was totally unplugged and it was a blast! The rest of my day was spent building a website, setting up a client’s Facebook [...]