Brigada

If you’re looking for a place to create and share documents with the team you love, you owe it to yourself to give Feng Office a try. It’s open-source (which means… you might need an I.T. guy to help you set it up on your web hosting machine, but once you get it set up, [...]

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Yup… maybe it’s a silly name, but it’s a great service. For our March 6th eco-missions event (a Creation Care workshop), we’re using Wild Apricot to register the participants. Want to check it out? (Want to come? :-) ) See…
http://eh.wildapricot.org/
Need an online event-manager for your own church or agency? Find out more about their offerings… [...]

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UK’s Redcliffe College Encounters Magazine focuses on Technology and Mission in their December issue. There are six main articles and the opportunity to discuss issues raised.
http://www.redcliffe.org/technologyandmission

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Check it out. Just browse to…
http://www.greatercalling.org/
Basically, at the end of a presentation, you could ask listeners to take out their cell phones and send a text to a certain number. That action would then prompt a $5 add-on charge to their next cell phone bill. Similarly, your account with Greater Calling would show all their [...]

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Long-time Brigada friend, Barb, is asking us for our take on email etiquette… or, one might say, “netiquette.” Where are your best sources? What are your pet peeves? What are your best ideas? I found a really helpful list at…
http://email.about.com/od/emailnetiquette/tp/core_netiquette.htm
The guy gives 26 important rules… like… “Don’t default to Reply All”, “Keep emails short,” (oops) [...]

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Our corporate Organizational Advancement guy shared this link with me last week on the eve of our annual planning retreat. Thanks a lot, Bob. Blow me away with this futuristic video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY
But he was right to do so. His point? Those who fail to innovate will likely fail — period. He makes a good point. How [...]

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If you’re considering developing or switching your web presence, take a look at…
http://www.cloversites.com/f/friendsofbrigada
See their feature list at…
http://www.cloversites.com/promo/Clover%20Features.pdf
I completed my first webpages there in a matter of *minutes*. Honest. And the tech support people have been stellar. I actually got a call from a real human (who knew how to use the tools on the site [...]

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Lately I’ve been thinking about tryout out DropBox. Brigada User Bill originally tipped me on it. He pointed out that if we have more than one PC/Mac, we are always moving files from one system to another. Usually we email them to ourselves, “sneakernet” them with a USB drive, or manually leave them at a [...]

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All you need to know is…
http://livestream.com
They’ll take care of everything else. OK — you have to get a webcam working with your laptop. But beyond that, the rest is easy. Think about it: Your next class, church service, organization-wide meeting, training session, etc., streamed live to the web for your entire organization/church/set of supporters to [...]

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Just visit
http://www.carbonite.com
You won’t have to buy any cartridges, memory devices or tape drives. Just kick things off with Carbonite.com and, bam, you’re backin’ up like never before. What’s more, you’ll be able to restore from anywhere in the world, any time you want.

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I’m not talking about a person. It’s software.
http://www.dklevine.com/general/software/tc1000/jarnal.htm
If you have a tablet computer or a computer with a touch-sensitive screen, this program will truly shine. But either way, Jarnal will be fun, especially if you’re the least bit graphically inclined. What’s more, you can always pick up a slate input device to make it even [...]

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Just pick up a password manager. Try Keepass…
http://keepass.info/features.html
or Roboform
http://www.roboform.com/
They’re a couple of the best… and both have free versions. Both encrypt all your passwords into a secure database, and — shazam — all you have to remember is one *single* password to get access to all your others. Both can even help you dream up [...]

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If so, we’d love your feedback. Find Cobian Backup at…
http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/index.htm
We received the tip about this backup software from long-time Brigada reader, Greg, who is also Team Expansion’s I.T. guy. (Thanks Greg!) It’s totally free, and all but the latest version would be open source. It supports FTP backup (both downloads and uploads), both scheduled and [...]

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[ Here's an item that explains how to upgrade or replace an internal hard drive on a laptop, then draws a lesson & an observation about the determination that the process required.]
You know… I was thinking this past week… It really shouldn’t be this hard. I honestly think it’s easier to buy a *house* and [...]

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There’s no doubt about it: I detest emailed trojans, viruses and phishing. There’s the one from Facebook asking you to log on to set your security preferences, or the similar message from PayPal. Then there’s the DHL message, “We couldn’t deliver your package.” And don’t forget the person in UK that has to send $1.7 [...]

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OK… I’m joking in the title, but this iPhone app does look interesting. Here’s an app featured at lifehacker.com that snaps a picture, then does a translation. WinMobile won’t be far behind, I bet. My winMobile phone already scans business cards, imports the picture into a OCR program, scans and lets you make any corrections [...]

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Hats off to our I.T. guy, Greg, for asking me if I had tried
http://www.livemocha.com/
It’s a new one to me. Any experience with it? Did it work? Looks like  an online version of a Starbucks, with a language-learning specialization. If you have experience there, please drop us a comment below the online version of this item.

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Look no more. Check out PeaZip at…
http://peazip.sourceforge.net/
It’s open source . . . and free as can be… and lets you create and unwrap files in formats with lots of initials, including 7Z, ARC, BZ2, GZ, PAQ/ZPAQ, PEA, QUAD/BALZ, TAR, UPX, ZIP, ACE, ARJ, CAB, DMG, ISO, LHA, RAR, UDF and about 80 others. The installer [...]

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Cloversites makes it so easy. Check them out at…
http://www.cloversites.com/f/friendsofbrigada
See their feature list at…
http://www.cloversites.com/promo/Clover%20Features.pdf
You can post audio or video at the drop of a hat — imagine your workshops, classes, sermons, and presentations, all instantly available to your organization or church members. You’ll be able to start editing your website in minutes. Their customer service seems [...]

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Not the Crosby kind. We’re talking about http://www.bing.com It’s fast. It seems equally effective. And some say it will save you as much as 30% of the time used by other search engines (because it takes, on average, 30% fewer letters to type its name into the box than certain other engines). :-) No but [...]

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I’m curious as to whether or not anyone is trying to use UStream or a similar tool:
http://www.ustream.tv
We tried it on a recent webinar and, for our part, our bandwidth wouldn’t accommodate both the audio (from the GoToWebinar feed) and the video (from the UStream.tv feed). Our audio kept breaking up and, in the end, we [...]

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A friend recently told me, “There are two kinds of computer users out there: Those who have already lost data, and those who *will*.” I believe him. Unfortunately, backing up has, I fear, once again become a daily routine we all-too-often forsake. It takes *daily* attention… and it might be *months* before you need it… [...]

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