I recently ran across a pretty incredible site: Wing Clips. The site focuses on providing clips for download from top movies that you can use as an illustration in your talks/sermons.  What’s amazing, is that they have clips available from first-run movies that are still in the theatres!  Right now they even have clips for a couple of films that have not even been released.

The clips are categorized by title, theme, and some even have full sermon outlines available for download (premium only).  What is interesting, and convenient, is that they have worked out a deal with the studios to allow you to not need a CVLI license to display them.   They provide 320×240 versions for free, and offer a subscription for unlimited 640×480 resolution for $15.95 a month or $139.00 a year (which works out to $11.59 a month).

YouVersion announced an interesting new feature called Live.  Though it will not be “live” until October, the product is supposed to be focused on letting you interact with live events on your mobile phone.

According to their promotional material, it will allow you to follow along with message outlines and take notes, read related Bible verses and click through to the expanded passage, vote on a poll and see the results live, respond to questions anonymously, request prayer, and take it all home with you on your phone.

This promises to be an incredible tool if they deliver on all these feature.  Be sure that we will have a full review once the product launches.  Until then, you can click here to check out their site for all the information.

Ever have a long document and wish you could simply turn your macbook on its side and use it like a kindle to read the book/document? All you need is to download the Display Rotation Menu from Mage Software.  It adds a menu bar item that allows you to rotate your Mac Laptop and use it as if it were an ebook reader only without the several hundred dollars to Amazon or Sony.  It doesn’t work on all mac laptops because of graphics card limitations, but they have the short list of which somewhat current models are omitted.

I don’t know what my problem is, but I have WAY too many e-mail addresses to deal with. Many of them I have forwarded to/checked by gmail, but that still doesnt solve the problem fully because, for one reason or another, I still have multiple gmail accounts. I have used plugins for firefox over the years, but am irritated at having to constantly have a browser open sucking up resources I’d rather have being used somewhere else.

Finally, an easy app has been released to help monitoring multiple gmail accounts easy.  The app is called Notify, and is produced by a company called Vibealicious.  They describe it best when they say it’s “like a menu bar app, but better.”  Like a menubar app, it lives in the menu bar and changes slightly by adding color and a number when new messages arrive, but once you click, TADA!  It pops open a tabbed window showing your accounts with new messages and previews.

It is not without its issues like the fact that it opens some odd google error page when you double click on a message, and it doesn’t automatically log you into the appropriate account when opening up gmail, but it is 1.0.  The developers have already slated a .1 release for mid September to include support for google apps and possibly imap which shows a thriving development.  It boils down to this: Notify is an amazing tool that seems to be a pretty good answer to my (and your?) multi-account email dilemma.

I recently bought a new computer on which I did not install the normal pro apps I use.  That meant that I did not have quicktime pro, and I quickly realized what an incredible deal it is!  For a whole lot of common tasks, you do not need to buy or open up a huge, expensive program.  If you need to trim a bit of the beginning, rearrange the order of events in a clip, or quickly change a file’s size or format to upload to the web, all you need is the $29 upgrade to quicktime pro (on the mac).

My favorite feature has nothing to do with editing video files.  One of the handiest little preferences that shows up is the ability to play a movie on your secondary monitor or projector.  Instead of having to do some wonky dragging of the window to the other screen (which doesn’t work in many players), or use a presentation program like keynote or pro presenter, you can simply plug in your laptop, switch the display preference over to the secondary monitor, and voila!  Like I said, the $29 is totally worth it.  Click here for a link to it in the apple store.

UPDATE: Thanks to Luke for the comment about Quicktime X.  Apparently, with the release of Snow Leopard, many of the pro features will be included.  Which means it’s time to preorder Snow Leopard for $29 instead!

Earlier I posted about what was at the time my favorite site creation tool for ministry.  And that remained my favorite until I tried Squarespace.  It is quite simply the next generation in web design and management tools.  The highlight of the platform for me is the interface.  Instead of having to navigate away from a page to edit, post, or change the color of the menubar items, every action brings up a simply HUD (heads up display) that hovers over, just translucent enough to be pretty, and allows you to edit instantly.

By instantly I mean just that.  If you are editing the background color, they change immediately without having to click update and return to the page.  Want a column wider?  Move a slider and BAM!  Done!  This site is so amazing it makes the little Emeril inside me come out.

I have been waiting for a while to develop a site where a group youth pastors from my denomination could post resources available for download for free, and within a couple hours of my free trial umyouthpastor.com was born.  Depending on the level of service you purchase (ranging from $8 to $50 per month) you can go from a basic site with one editor to a full ecommerce mogul.  There’s incredible server scaling in case you get dugg, social network intergration, and the list goes on an on.

There is far too much to detail it all here, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention their incredible support.  There have been many 1am support tickets filed by yours truly that have been answered before 1:30, and that is above and beyond.  Like I said, amazing.  Check it out: www.squarespace.com.  If you want to see what a non-programmer can accomplish in a couple of hours with the tool, and with content from a bunch of talented youth pastors, check out umyouthpastor.com and tell me how it could be better!

Mac Bundle Box released another incredible bundle deal.  This time they are selling 12 apps that, if purchased separately, would cost $458.59 for $49.

The no-brainer of the group for me is the Keynote Themes.  I use keynote almost every week, and get tired of the stock themes. These themes by Jumsoft are beautiful.  From there I only need one more program to make it worth my while, but to be honest, I didn’t find it.  I already have programs that do the video compression, web design, and disk management offered by some of the other programs.  It is definately worth looking at, but be careful not to buy it just because it’s a deal.

I finally received my invite from Google for the Google Voice service, and like a huge retreat coming down to the wire, it is getting me excited and frustrated all at the same time.

The exciting part revolves around the concept that you can have one local phone number that forwards to other numbers based on who is calling and will text message you a “preview” of the content of the voicemail that is left if no one answers.

I think that the texting feature is by far the most interesting. When I tested it, it did not do perfectly, but got the job done. I left the message: “Hi, this is a test message testing the text feature on the google voice service. I received back via text message, “hi this is a test message testing the text to make sure on the google voice servers.” Pretty good, and I didn’t have to click through and listen to find out what the person wanted.

The other great feature is the one that has gotten a bit frustrating in the initial setup.  The basic idea is that you can set up several forwarding phone numbers (home, cell, office, your senior pastor’s direct line… whatever), and google will ring one or more of them depending on the assigned group of the person who is calling.  Sounds easy, and it probably is if you have already been using google contacts as your primary address book.

If you are like me and have a gmail account but use something else as your primary address book, you will have some problems.  First, if you have had a gmail account you will have a ton of contacts that have no name… just an e-mail address.  These will be everything from amazon support to some random applicant for a job you corresponded with twice two years go.  Second, if you choose to sync via an exported .csv or by checking the schnazzy box in Apple’s Address Book, you will have MANY duplicate contacts.  The real problem with all of this is that the contacts area has no advanced search feature.  You cant just find duplicates, or those people with just e-mail addresses.  What you’ll have to end up doing is manually scrolling down the list and either adding the missing informtion, deleting them, or merging them.  One word: hassle.

Once you’ve got the contacts all nice and clean setting up groups is easy and you are off to the races.  Now the sixth grader who just got their first cell phone and has two numbers, yours and their mom’s, will go to voicemail 20 times a day and you’ll get 19 preview texts of “what’s up… just bored… call me” and no interruptions in the meeting with the senior pastor about getting the thousands of flecks of neon spray paint off the gym floor. On top of that, you can have it ring your home, office and cell all at the same time (not in succession like many forwarding services) when your baby is due any day now and save your wife the tracking down of her too busy youth pastor husband.

Another interesting feature is called ListenIn.  It allows you to listen in on the message someone is leaving and jump in by pressing star as if you were screening calls on an answering machine.

This has tons more features including conference calling, recording phone calls, temporary forwarding, and much more.  for an explanation of all their features you can click here to see their help page on the subject.

Overall, I think this is a great product, and if I have gotten an invite they are sure to open it up soon to the whole world.  To request your invite, click here and fill out the form.

This is not the first time we have talked about this subject.  Brandon wrote an excellent article on it.  There are several tools, but none quite as easy as pwnyoutube.com.  It does not require you to download any software or even copy a url.  Simply add “pwn” before “youtube.com” in the url of the youtube video you are viewing and that takes you to a pwnyoutube site where you can right click and “save target as” for the .flv file and even the higher quality .mp4 file where available.

If you are looking for a good video illustration to use in an upcoming talk, try this blast from the past:

Consume Me (DC Talk)

I often have people ask me how to make good sounding recordings of their youth bands, sermons, or voice overs for videos without spending a fortune on gear. Before I found out about the Shure X2u, I’d recommend a cool mic like the blue snoflake or snowball.  The Shure X2u is called a signal adapter, but it is far more.  It’s powered totally off a standard USB port, and allows you to plug a mic cord into one end while outputting the audio to your computer through the usb.

What is most interesting about the X2u are all its additional features.  It has an integrated mic preamp which will make the audio sound much better and more full.  It will power microphones that require what’s called “phantom power” or +48v.  It has a headphone jack that you can use to monitor the input as well as three dials that control mic gain, volume, and monitor volume.

This little piece of equipment allows you to use the mics you already have, either run through a mixer into the X2u or plugged up directly into the unit, instead of having to go out and purchase a usb mic that will probably not sound nearly as good as the mics you already have, and not give you the option of plugging in a mixer and using multiple mics.

You can get the Shure X2u at Amazon by itself for $120, or bundled with tried and true SM-58 microphone for $199 (a $220 value).