$12 (+ a Nintendo Wii) Interactive Whiteboard

This dude is ridiculous.
Hot. You could actually have some real world use with this now that Apple iPhoto is running in multi-touch (though, I don’t know if Johnny is mac-ready).

Johnny Lee

Starting a fire under kindle sales…

The Amazon Kindle© (which, I’ve previously bashed here before) is growing with potential in my mind. I’ve recently gotten into audio books. I wonder if I could get into the ebooks?

I like that it is a wifi device, so you can browse the net, look at blogs, and listen to audio through it.

So far, the problem with Amazon’s business model with the kindle is the lack of ability to get it in my hands.

Ebooks have been the promise of the future for a long time. Unlike the ipod though, I can’t take it for a test run. I can’t sit in an Apple Store or Target or Best Buy and give it a go…I’m not spending $400 on a device that I can’t get into my hands and take a test drive first.

So, as brilliant as Amazon has been at creating the online marketplace, they have missed the mark so far with this one. I just don’t think you can create a revolutionary hand-held device and not give people a way to get it in their hands…

I think LoudTwitter

is too loud for me. I’m out.

The ups and few downs of Keynote.

I hate sounding like an Apple fanboy all the time, but it’s hard when you’ve worked on both sides and can easily see the advantage of the Apple experience. I don’t usually have to do much in Power Point, but when I do, I hate it.  

Today, I had to throw together a “state of the church” slideshow for a meeting on Sunday. I decided to use Keynote instead of Power Point. 

Wow. What a better user experience. Almost everything is easier in Keynote than on PP. Apple did a great job. I’m using one of their built in templates. When it came down to making a chart, I could believe how simple they made it. It was also so easy to make it look professional, that I didn’t even try to “design” a slideshow, I just used the template.

Ups:

• Fast
• Intuitive
• Clean and Uncluttered
• Puts the polish on for me
• Nice built in templates
• Animation is a hundred times easier on Keynote than PP
• Font consistency. A dream come true. PP is always trying to resize things

Downs:

• Still not crazy about how Apple deals with the font pallet. It seems clunky for the most widely used tool in the program.
• Floating pallets are still a clutter factor when you have 5 of them open and they don’t lock into a position. 

2008 – Get ready, or eat Sanctuary’s dust.

Things that are happening at Sanctuary this year:

1.  We launched Love Minneapolis. A place for people to “just show up and serve.” There’s been two events and already we’re extending far beyond our doors. 
2. We have a series of Amazing Hip Hop Sunday’s featuring the 3 of the hottest acts in Hip Hop. Starting this weekend with The Ambassador also of Cross Movement. This guy is amazing. The real deal. Not “Christian Hip Hop,” but Hip Hop that’s Christian. We can’t advertise it, because we already know that there won’t be any open seats unless the temps drop below 0 again. Soon to come Phil Jackson and his crew from Tha House. Urban D and others from Crossover Church (#21).
3. We’re adding another service. We’ve been maxed at 1000 for a long time. It’s time to open the doors a little earlier. I’m betting we’ll double in size this year.
4. Efrem will be speaking somewhere that might shine a bit of a spotlight on what we’re doing.
5. We’re tightening the belt. We’re moving to a new office. We’ll start a capitol campaign for our first semi-permanent facility. 

Things I’m helping with to prepare:

1. IT. IT. IT. First ever server (OS X of course).  
2. Updating our database.
3. Bringing giving online
4. Bringing event registration online.
5. Helping design our video structure and bringing streaming video online.
6. Finding better communicators than me to be on my team.
7. Finding more talented designers than me to help polish the rough spots.
8. Moving towards a multi-nodal staffing structure in the areas of IT and Communications  in one grandios place called the Communications Technology Department.
9. Moving our website to Media Temple with imap mail (yeah! offsite and still imap with our domain name!)
10. Moving to a new domain…you’ll see…hopefully this is smooth.
11. A refresh
12. Taking my DAWG day every month to remember why I do what I do (Day Alone With God).

Leopard Feature Love Update: Quicklook is changing my productivity level.

On the days when I’m a designer, I’m in Adobe Illustrator all day long. Until now, finding the exact version of a file I want has been somewhat cumbersome. With this Quicklook Plugin for Illustrator, it’s a breeze.  Now I cruise along finding things more efficiently…because I can see inside all of these files without ever opening Illustrator…Sweet!  

It’s about time. Office for Mac 2008.

Ars Technica has a first look review of the new Microsoft Office for Mac 2008.

I’m oddly excited about this. Everyone knows I’m an Apple Fanboy, and I love Pages, I’m just not so keen on Numbers.  Overall though, Microsoft has done something smart with their Mac line of products for years…Office for Windows and Office for Mac are developed separately. Not that they aren’t talking and including similar features, but if you’ve been on both platforms, you would recognize that some features (Mail Merge for one) have been much easier and more robust on the Mac for years.

The not so smart thing that Microsoft did, was they didn’t talk internally about cross-platform compatibility. They released the Office for Windows update last year, with no compatibility on the Mac for the .docx file format. — Not so brilliant.  

Anywho…it really looks like this is a huge upgrade and extremely well designed from a Mac perspective.

Can’t wait to get my hands on it…should be available at Macworld next week or sometime in January…

My kids are cute.

So take a look at them,

but also notice how amazing this web gallery is that I made with iPhoto.
I didn’t even try. I just put the photos in an iPhoto album and clicked “web gallery.”

It automatically synced with my .mac account and created the webpage and gave me a link to share. You can preview the photos in multiple ways, including in “CoverFlow” style ipodesque.

You can also download the high-res version to go make your own prints.

I just pushed one button.

Leopard – Top ten tips

Guy Kawasaki posted a top ten leopard tips post from Take Control Books.

He added a few.

And i would add another.

#13 Stop opening files to see what’s in them.
Highlight just about any file, click the spacebar and let Leopard give you a preview without slowing down your computer by opening programs.

Leopard – Feature Love – To Do List and Notes in Mail

I love how Mail in Leopard now has “To Do Lists” and “Notes.”  

Special Features of Mail/iCal’s To Do Lists: 

• Synced with iCal
• Categorized by iCal Calendar (home, work, soccer schedule, etc…)
• Deadlines on to do’s (pick up milk for the cake batter by Wednesday at 4pm)
• Alarms (Little reminders through email our alarm beeps that remind you to do what you told yourself you need to do. 
• All shared over .mac or your network so they sync on multiple systems.