Catholic Tech Talk

When I first started seeing hashtags I was probably like most in thinking they were just kind of silly.  I was wondering what could possibly be the benefit.  But once you click one or two you should immediately see some great possibilities as you are jettisoned into a whole new world of conversations taking place. [...]

The ashes we’ll wear tomorrow will be an outward sign of penance and contrition. As an outward sign during Lent online, I created a graphic to replace my Facebook and Google+ profile pictures with. I’d love to see other people use this as well—let’s create awareness online and remind ourselves and our Christian brothers and [...]

What kind of people would it be filled with? Would they be kind? In a previous blog post of mine, Dr. Caroline Cerveny, SSJ-TOSF, wrote a comment that resonated with me, “We are in a new day and age where we all need to be good Digital Citizens. We need to be clearer with one [...]

Unfortunately we live in a society where making fun of Christians, and specifically Catholics, is widely accepted. It’s common to turn on TV or go online just to hear or read some snide remark about Christians. So what do we do? We grow thick skin, we turn the other cheek, and we love them anyway. [...]

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 was recently interviewed by KARE11 (local NBC affiliate) for a story on how churches are using social media to connect with church-goers.

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 [...]

I screwed up on Twitter, but thankfully, I was able to ‘start over’.

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 [...]

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 [...]

Jimmy, tweets don’t die, but they don’t go to heaven either.  They actually live forever out on the Internet. If you use Twitter, you tend to live in the moment.  Everything about Twitter is geared toward recency.  What’s ‘trending’ on Twitter is a familiar term for Twitter users.  As a microblog tool, you may think [...]

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. [...]

I checked in at Google+ this morning and was surprised to see a user post that he just deactivated his Facebook account.  The question that immediately came up for me, “Why would he do that?”  As online social networking is evolving many are left wondering which one to use or use multiple services.  The other [...]

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 . . . [...]

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 past weekend me and my wife went away to help our daughter with her move.  I’ve been using Four Square for her for her business for some time now, but she hasn’t played with it  all that much.  She decided to check it out more in depth and found out she could obtain points, stickers, [...]