Catholic Tech Talk

One of my favorite Catholic rituals is the candle lighting at the Easter Vigil.  A few years ago I witnessed this event in a somewhat large parish from a balcony.  The whole worship space was pitch black.  In comes the newly lit Pascal Candle down the main aisle.  Candles of those in the pews on [...]

I truly have become a big fan of social networks such as Facebook and Google+ for parishes.  These systems allow for our faith communities to become connected and a part of everyday lives like never before.  One of the things I love about them is event sharing and keeping photos of events for everyone to [...]

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 [...]

Ever since I was a kid I have loved music.  I remember spending hours sifting through and listening to 45′s (yes, I’m that old).  Later on, like many people, I amassed the large number albums, then cassettes, and then CD’s.  There was always a few problems I ran into with these: Storage Finding the music [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The biggest story this week was probably the release of IOS5 and the iPhone4S. So, here are a few more delicious Mac morsels to munch on.

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 . . . [...]

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 [...]

Yup, it’s that time of year again . . . Back To School.  Parents are gathering supplies and getting ready for that first day (if it hasn’t already come like here in Florida).  And this year, students may have something different in the backpacks . . . a tablet or ereader.  Many are still trying [...]

One of the great things about the iPad has been to truly bring print media such as magazines into the digital world without losing all of the great formatting we enjoy with them.  Now you can get great Catholic magazines this way on your iPad.  As a Florida resident and parishioner in the Diocese of [...]

You may have been seeing these wacky-looking little images popping up everywhere.  If you don’t know what they are, they are called QR Codes.  Simply put, a QR Code is an image one can scan with their smartphone that directs the phone for a number of different purposes.  Some of these directions can be: – [...]

I was an avid user of Microsoft Outlook Express and then Outlook for many years.  I liked the organization features (I despise paper planners) and having my calendar, contacts, and messaging all in one place that linked them together.  There were two things that I never liked: Having access to the information away from my [...]

First of all, I would like to introduce the newest convert To the Catholic Faith, my iPad! I have over the last week successfully transformed it into the “cathPad”. I will give an overview of the apps I have installed as well as tips and tricks that you can use when that Protestant is trying [...]

Ok.  First, I know, there’s 4G also.  This will be about whatever number ‘G’ is available at this particular minute in the tech world since by the time you read this we may in fact be at 10G. Anyway, signal type for the delivery of data over the air is becoming more and more confusing [...]

There is a lot of talk among legislators, educators, and parents about ebooks in schools (both public and private such as our Catholic Schools)at the k-12 level.  I agree that there are potentially great benefits for improving education as well as huge long-term cost savings.  This is not an easy move either, and in many [...]

In modern society, we have undergone several eras of technology. With the advent of computers, we experienced the ability to program this “machine” to perform mundane tasks of the everyday work experience. The advancement of the archaic computers made them not only faster and “smarter”, but more and more mobile. Think back when we got [...]