Once again, the tech guys at Lake Hart have improved and updated our email servers. For that we thank them. On the other hand the update emails that we have been receiving have been a bit short of helpful for people who aren’t very tech savvy… and for people who use Gmail. Honestly, I still don’t know how I’m supposed to sign into our work webmail site.

Updating Settings in Gmail

The primary change that you need to make is to your POP server, change it to mail.ccci.org.

Settings rundown:

• Username: Your full email address.
• Password: Leave it alone, that’s the next step.
• POP Server: mail.ccci.org
• Port: 995
• Leave copy: I’d suggest leaving it unchecked, but you can do what you want.
• SSL: CHECK
• Label & Archive: This depends on your preferences and use of labels.

Hit Save Changes and you’ll see something like this:

Re enter your password and submit. The window should disappear and you’re all set.

Comment here for any more questions.

For those of you who have done everything to set up your work email to come to you through Gmail, you’ll want to take a look at this:

How to Set Up a Mail Merge in Gmail for Personalized Mass Emails (Lifehacker)

This looks really easy. And amazing.

THIS IS OUT OF DATE. PLEASE VISIT THE UP-TO-DATE INSTRUCTIONS.

Edited 6/15/2010

Go to your settings and then accounts/import. For your USCM email settings you’ll have to make some changes.

Your settings should look thus:

The specific things to note

• Username: Your full email address.
• POP Server: mymail.uscm.org
• Port: 995
• SSL: CHECK!

Make sure your check boxes look like mine, you can label them however you want.

I haven’t been posting here in a while, but I will again when we’re back to full support, but I wanted to share this:

Bam!

Today, I’m going to step back from the usual platter of praises for Firefox and Google stuff and talk about technology that can help encourage you in your walk with the Lord. In ministry, it’s is always important to make sure that you’re taking time away to learn lessons from the Lord and from others who are in a relationship with this same God that we’re following and serving.

I have found that listening to sermons and podcasts from different pastors, ministries and speakers has been one of the biggest encouragements to my ministry and my personal walk with Christ.

Like is says in the defenition podcasts are delivered via RSS which Rob Williams taught us about last spring in a 3 article series (1, 2, 3) which means they come to you when there are new ones, you don’t have to go out and get them – convenient!

So, the question now: How do you get them?

First you’ll need an audio player that is set up for to receive and deal with podcasts. If you are new to podcasts, I’ll reccomend Apple iTunes (don’t worry, it works with a Windows computer; you already have it if you have a Mac). You can get it from iTunes.com.

At the iTunes.com page, click the Download Now button at the top right of the page. On the next page, you don’t need to give your email address (so don’t) just pick your current operating system and download away. Don’t forget to install it.

After you download it and install it, open up iTunes and click on the “iTunes Store” link.

After the page loads you’ll have a lot of options in front of you, let’s start by searching for Cru’s podcast on reaching out to your friends, called the “Overflow Show”. To do that, go to the top right and type in “Campus Crusade for Christ” in the Search iTunes Store box and hit Enter.

It should bring up a page with a number of different options, including “Campus Crusade Today” as well as the “Overflow Show”, click the subscribe button next to the Overflow Show (or you can click on the logo for more information).

When you click the button it may or may not take you to your “Podcast” screen, if it does not click on Podcasts on the main menu underneath Music. It should now look something like this:

If it’s just showing the title Overflow Show click the gray arrow next to it to show all of the episodes. If you want to download all of them, click the Get All button. Notice the orange circling arrow, that means that it’s already downloading the newest episode! It should be ready listen to pretty soon (depending on your internet connection speed)! If you notice, there’s now also something on the menu to the right that says Downloads and has a similar spinning arrow from now on when you start iTunes up it will check to see if there are new episodes of your podcast and try to download them, this will let you know how many new episodes of podcasts it is currently downloading.

Now, if you want to try other podcasts that are listed in the iTunes program click on the iTunes Store button again and it will take you back to the last page you were at. You have a few options…

You can click the See All button and see other podcasts that were found under the “Campus Crusade for Christ” category (or you could look at the list on the bottom – for those of you in Central PA area, there are even some of the talks from Penn State’s Cru movement).

You could go back to the main page and browse through the podcasts and look for other ones you might like.

Sometimes you might run across a link for a podcast on a webpage, often when you click on it your iTunes will start up automatically and it will subscribe you to the podcast. Such was the case with the talks from RADIATE07, I took the audio from the talks and uploaded them as a podcast. With that site down and RADIATE08 just around the corner, let me suggest checking out RADIATE08.com in January for those!

If you have an iPod or another MP3 player you can now load them onto it (follow the instructions that came with your MP3 player) and listen to them wherever you go. You can also listen to them on your computer or burn them onto CDs to take with you in the car. Have fun with your new podcasts, and let me suggest some of the ones that encourage me (just for the record, I don’t necessarily agree with everything in the podcasts, but I find myself encouraged to seek God’s face because of them often); search for them in iTunes:

Campus Crusade Today
Desiring God Sermon Audio
Grove City Alliance Church
Mars Hill Church: Mark Driscoll Audio
McLane Church – Edinboro
National Community Church Audio Podcast
Overflow Show
SermonIndex.net Classics Podcast
Veritas Media

One note: another great site for Podcasts is Odeo.com, search by topic or speaker to find some great stuff there. Search for “Resonate Audio” and listen to anything from Mike Frost!

Another note, some seminaries (most notably Reformed Theological Seminary) have started offering audio recordings of some of their courses complete and completely free as podcasts. Last summer my wife and I listened to much of the “History of Philosophy and Christian Thought” class on the drive back from CSU.

Backward/Forward Compatibility

For anyone who uses Microsoft Office regularly to share information with other staff or students (both on PCs and Macs) you may have started to notice difficulties since Office 2007 came out. With the new Office release comes new standard file formats that are not backwards-compatible with older versions.

In Word .doc has become .docx, in Excel .xls has become .xlsx, etc., and this has caused quite a few difficulties. In reality these changes are a step forward for Microsoft as these document formats are becoming the standard for these types of documents and are readable by more programs that are not specific to Microsoft.

Fellow staff Kendall passed on a message from Todd Johnson to make me aware of a patch that is available for those of you who have older versions of Office so that you can open, read and edit these newer formats. I poked around on the Microsoft site a bit and came across it here (unfortunately the problem is for both Macs and PCs, but the solution is Windows only):

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466

Follow the instructions on the page to get it for yourself, make sure you read the system requirements (basically if you have an older version of MS Office or even just PowerPoint viewer it will work).

Note to Mac Users: I did look for a similar update for the Mac versions of MS Office, I couldn’t find anything. If any of you know where this would be comment below and I will make sure I update you all on it.

Saving as a PDF from Office 2007

If you’re one of the up-to-date few that already have Office 2007 running on your machine there is now another (and better) option for getting your files into PDF format. Dave commented on the last PDF post and shared the link there. It is also an update from Microsoft itself:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4d951911-3e7e-4ae6-b059-a2e79ed87041

This update is only for Microsoft Office 2007, it will not work with older versions or with other programs. If you still want to be able to “print to PDF” from other programs besides MS Office (or if you are running and older version) head back to the post on PDF-ing your documents and download CutePDF from there.

WHY? Focus on the web updates you really want to digest while skipping or saving others for later makes you more effective.

Now that you are motivated to receive updates from your favorite websites and you know how to get updates all in one place, let’s talk about how to make streamline your online experience even more by using Google Reader well.

Viewing Options

There are a few ways to have your web updates displayed in Google Reader. One option is deciding how the items are to be displayed. One is called “List View” and the other is “Expanded View”. You’ll find the tabs to change the view on the right side of the site.

List View allows you to see the items in one line. It’s like only seeing the subject of an email. Unread items are in bold and are typically unbolded to show you read items. Expanded View allows you to see some or all of the content.

The other option is to decide if you want all of the items from a website listed (read and unread) or if you only want to see what you have not read. You make this choice by clicking on one of the options on the left side of the site.

Organizing Your Updates

If you are only subscribed to a few updates then organizing them may not be of great concern to you. But if you are like me and subscribe to many (over 200 for me!) updates, it will be more effective to get some control over them!

You can add a tag (or folders) each update feed with as many tags as you like. I use several like “friends”, “business”, and “fun”. I have several others I use as well.

One trick I use is to double-tag my favorite updates as “top”. This way when I’m running short on time or I just want to read the “best of the best” as determined by me, I can just click on the “top” tag or the + button beside it to show which ones are updated. When I read one in the “top” tag and it’s also tagged “friend”, for example, that update will be marked as read in both.

You can also drag and drop the entire tagged set of items so it doesn’t have to be in alphabetical order as you can see in my example. This also works for individual feeds as well.

One last bit of customization in how new items are displayed is by choosing to show only the feeds that have an update or show them all even if there are no new updates. I like to have Google Reader only show me what is updated. This keeps the list a lot cleaner.

Save and Share Your Favorites

At the bottom of every update item are several options you can do with that particular update. Let’s look at each

Adding a star will save that particular update in Google Reader. I use this all the time if I want to save an item or come back and read it later. You are able to access all starred items at once using the top-right menu (see below).

Pressing the Share button creates a blog of just those items you choose. People can then visit that site (or subscribe) to see what you are finding interesting.

If you want to send that item to a friend, you can use the email button to do so.

You have the option to keep an item marked as “read” or “unread”.

You can also edit the tags for that item.

In the top-left corner of Google Reader you will find several choices you can make. Though it’s first on the page, I saved it for last because some of these choices make more sense while you are reading your updates.

One interesting link is the “Trends” link that lets you see some basic statistics about what feeds you are reading, who’s updating frequently or infrequently, etc.

And to round out the options, Google Reader will collect your friend’s shared items in one place. To configure how that works, click on the “manage friends” link.

If you’d like to watch a video about how a guy named Robert Scoble can sift through over 600 web updates, check this video out!

You can also learn some new tips (like keyboard shortcuts) and basics from the Google Reader FAQ page.

What experiences have you had using Google Reader more effectively?

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Editor’s Note: This post is the final part of our “RSS Awareness Week” Festivities. It was originally written by Rob Williams for his website 170spoons.com and is copied here with his permission. Thank you very much Rob!

WHY? You know there is a way to get your website updates in one place, you just need that place!

Earlier this week we talked about why it’s not such a bad idea to subscribe to RSS way of life. Now that you’ve tasted the Kool-aid, let’s get into how you can actually do this!

We Need a Reader

Each item of RSS is called a feed. It’s like the websites send out a feed of information but we need something to capture the feed. That device is a feed reader (also sometimes referred to as an aggregator).

Feed readers come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Instead of going through all the options, I’m going to show you my favorite – Google Reader. It’s a free website that requires a Google account (if you have gMail then you’re set). So head over to Google Reader (aka: gReader) and sign up and/or in with your Google account.

We Need to Grant Permission

Subscribing — this model for receiving information has been around for a long time. Just like when you subscribe to a magazine, you’re giving them permission to send you the latest information. Now that we have something to read our feeds in, we need to go give some websites permission to send us the latest!

Now, remember last week I told you that the Firefox browser has all sorts of goodies built in? This is one place it pays off. To get ready for some streamlined subscribing, in the Firefox menu click on Tools and then Options. You will then see a window that has an option for Feeds. Click it and change the settings to “Subscribe to the feed using:” and select Google. Press OK.

Now, let’s head over to 170spoons.com (if you’re not already here) because you want to make sure you always get the best tools, tips, and tutorials for technology! Look up a the web address bar and you’ll see at the end of it a little orange icon which means this website has a RSS feed for you.

Editor’s Note: This will also work if you type a http://www.CruTech.org in.

Click the icon and you’ll be taken to a page that has two options. We want the one that says “Add to Google Reader”. Click that blue box to add it.

Once you have clicked that button you should be taken back to your Google Reader with 170spoons.com loaded and ready to be read! Note that the number beside the item (in this case 2) is how many unread items you have for that feed. Your number may vary.

If you want to use a different browser or a different reader, you can still go through the subscribing process. Go to your website and when you get there, look for the RSS button that on most pages looks like this.

Later in the week I’ll give you some tips on how to use Google Reader better and faster. But for now, you should be set up. Go around to different websites that offer updated content and see if they have a RSS button somewhere and load up your reader!

I know many people reading this use different readers than Google. What is your favorite and why?

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Editor’s Note: This post is a part of our “RSS Awareness Week” Festivities. It was originally written by Rob Williams for his website 170spoons.com and is copied here with his permission. Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you who have wanted to write comments on the posts, you should be able to now. I’ve been wrestling with the comments options since I started the site. I’m still not sure if it’s going to work right, but I’ll keep an eye on it.

Comment away!

We’re all familiar with PDFs, those documents that you get that you can always read but you can never edit. They have been pretty standard for a number of years now (they’ve existed since 1993), but they’re on the brink of becoming the standard for documents on the internet (there are actual standards for content on the Web).

They are convenient because you don’t have to worry about whether or not your friend has Word, Publisher or whatever other program you’ve created your document in – they can still read it. It’s also great for sending out prayer letters by email so that you’re sure that all of your supporters can read it – I mean the program to read them is even free!

For a long time I was confused about how many people seemed to be able to create PDFs yet I was completely not able to make them… then I found out how.

Now, from what I understand, the ability to save a document to a PDF is native to OS X so those of you who are Mac users have this pretty easy. We’re going to walk through how to install a PDF Converter as a printer on your system. The program that I use is CutePDF.

CutePDF allows you to create a PDF document in any program that you can print from. When I need to print off a Bible study to send to a student – “print” it as a PDF and email it. When I have a receipt online that I want to save – “print” it as PDF and save it on my hard drive. When I want to save a webpage complete with all of the content as a single file – “print” it as a PDF and I can open it quickly whenever I want.

First, go ahead and download it from here (Windows required), you’ll also need to download a converter called Ghostscript that is also linked on the page (you can get it here). On the CutePDF page they’ll look like this image to the left.

Now all you have to do is run the CuteWriter.exe and converter.exe files that you’ve just downloaded and you’ll have CutePDF installed in your options whenever you want to print something. When you “print” with it, it will give you an opportunity to save it as a PDF where ever you want.

Now you can create PDFs!