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Well that was fast. 

I am privileged and honored to announce today that Ministry Bits, my new audio podcast, is going to be a part of the AIM Network. The AIM Network, or Adventures in Ministry, is a network run by Paul Spurlin in Montgomery, Alabama. They offer lots of free materials through their AIM Project website, as well as Podcasts, Devotional Songs, links, articles, and many other things. They work in close conjunction with Faulkner University and the Southern Evangelism Conference. 

It's a huge, wonderful step for Ministry Bits. We hope that even more people can become part of the network of ministers helping each other use the tools of technology for the betterment of the Kingdom of God. 

Nothing will change on the podcast - you'll still see and be able to listen to the shows here on the site or through iTunes. The shows will shortly be available on the AIM site as well as the AIM app. 

In addition to joining AIM's complement of podcasts, Paul and his gang are bringing me on in a design capacity as well. I hope that I can help them out and get these great materials and resources to the most ministers and youth ministers possible. 

The AIM Network is growing and expanding. I'm glad to be aboard. 

 

• Be sure to check out Ministry Bits on iTunes
• Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ministrybits
• Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/ministrybits
• And soon on the AIM Network!

One of the things God has blessed me with was the ability to know stuff about technology that most other people don't know. I don't say this because I'm an expert (because I'm not), I say this because every day I come across someone who surprises me with either their knowledge or lack thereof about technology.

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Youth Ministry Workshop at the Freed-Hardeman Lectureships this past week - and I was on the other side of the table. I know a lot of stuff about technology - maybe too much. But I learned about new ways of doing things, new apps, new ways to create apps - stuff I had literally never heard before. 

So my new podcast I (re)started about 2 weeks ago is just that. It's about technology - both the tools we can use and the lessons we can learn from it in ministry. It's called Ministry Bits, and you don't have to go too far to listen. 

There are lots of people in the ministry that you and I know that are good at a lot of different things. Some are good at graphics. Some are good at using technology to preach and teach. So how can we use their knowledge to make our ministries better? We can see how they did it. 

If we want to be like Christ, we need to do the things he did. If we want to use technology effectively in our ministries, then we need to do the things that effective people do. 

Ministry Bits is an attempt to cobble together all this knowledge into one weekly podcast, so that everyone can listen and benefit. We will have guests in the coming weeks talk about perspectives on technology in ministry, reading, writing, and teaching and preaching in ministry. I hope that you the listener will benefit greatly from their knowledge and experience. We'll have shows on apps, workflows, and gadgets to use in ministry. 

Thank you in advance for supporting the new podcast. It's going to be a great ride. 

You can check out Ministry Bits right here on the website, or you can subscribe with iTunes in your favorite podcast client for easy listening. Shows run 25-30 minutes, no more. Your time is valuable. If you have a request, a comment, or would even like to be on the show, give me a shout at chad.landman@gmail.com. 

Ten or fifteen years ago, you could have gotten away with not backing up your computer. Digital photos and great smartphone cameras we're quite common yet, we still used paper for things, and with the exception of a few things, our lives weren't yet totally on our computers. Fast-forward 15 years, and here we are with portable computers in our pockets. We have thousands upon thousands of digital photos and videos. We communicate through email and messaging. We live on social networks. 

And very few of us back all that data up. 

One out of every two computer users (which is pretty much everyone) will have a negative computer event in their lives every year. That could mean a computer crashing, a hard drive failing, or some natural disaster like flood or fire taking out your digital devices. 

The cardinal rule with backups is three backups on every machine - two on-site and one off. That means you need to have a backup, a backup for your backup, and an off-site backup (either on another HD at another physical location or through a service online like Crashplan). 

But most of us won't do it, because we're too busy to do it and too lazy to figure it out. And one day, it will cost you. 

Don't let 2014 be the year that you lost everything. 

With the cheapness of hard drives these days (even ultra-fast Solid State Drives are coming way down in price) you can get a lot of storage for not a lot of money. 

First, identify your needs. If you're a grandparent and have a bunch of documents to keep up with, but not a lot of photos or videos, then you probably don't need a Drobo storage array with 10 terabytes of storage. If, on the other hand, you're like me and you have small children and a wife that documents their every move, then you may need a 2 terabyte drive to backup all those photos and videos. Those are things you can't get back. 

Determine the size of your computer and devices. If you have a 500 gigabyte HD on your main laptop or desktop at home, using an external hard drive to store your photos isn't considered a backup. You need those files somewhere else. Make copies of all your important stuff (documents, photos, videos) and have them on a separate HD that you update on a regular basis, like every week. Keep that HD in a waterproof and fireproof safe for extra security. 

Utilize off-site services. All of my documents are stored in Dropbox because I have referred enough people to the service that I have ample storage space for project files, Photoshop documents, Word and Excel files, and other things. I know that my computer could be absolutely destroyed and I could fire up Dropbox on another computer and my files would be there. But I don't ever trust services fully either - I make a copy of my Dropbox folder to an external HD every month on top of my weekly backups. As far as photos and videos, you need a copy of those on an external HD, but you can also utilize services like Flickr and Shutterfly as an off-site backup for your photos and YouTube and Vimeo for videos. One bit of advice on that: don't use new services. Only use services that have been established. You don't want to put all your eggs into one basket and have that service go bankrupt or fail. Just ask users of Everpix what I'm talking about. 

Make it happen. Write it on the calendar, put a note on the fridge - do whatever you have to do to make a regular backup of your computers and devices. Most devices will back up to your computer and then you can, in turn, restore them from that backup. Most HDs offer plug-and-play features to where you can just plug the HD in and it does its thing to make a full backup. And if you can't figure it out, find someone who can or watch a YouTube video about it. 

Again, don't let 2014 be "that year we lost all our family photos." 

Back up. Today. 

Just stop it. 

Everyone does it, so don't pretend that you don't. Even if your password is really good (like 7 letters and 7 random numbers like my go-to password), STOP USING THE SAME PASSWORD FOR EVERYTHING. Here's why. 

If someone were to break into one of your accounts - say, your email - they would literally have access to everything. Bank accounts, credit cards, Amazon, eBay, and then even more stuff like your iCloud or Google Play account, where they could wipe your phone or even your computer. There are two things that you can do today to make it exponentially harder for someone to compromise your digital life. 

1. Use two-factor (or two-step) authentication. Google and Apple both now offer 2FA as a way for you to add an extra layer of security to your accounts. Basically, it works like this: you must have a a device on an account that you physically have access to and when someone unauthorized requests access, you must approve it. Google Authenticator is the app for this (iOS, Google Play) and Apple will let you enable this over Apple.com in your iCloud account. 

2. Use an app. This may be the better and easier solution of the two, and you may not even want to fiddle with 2FA. There are a few apps that allow you to generate and save unique passwords for all your accounts, and keeps them safely encyrpted either on their own servers or on your own Dropbox. The app I love for this is 1Password. Their apps are a little pricey, but so worth it when you think about what you could lose if your accounts are compromised. Right now, for my four main accounts (Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook) I have four 16-digit random passwords. And 1Password keeps track of all of them with a really great app. All I need to remember is my 1Password Master password and I'm set. LastPass is very good too and does a lot of the same things. Both apps have Safari and Chrome extentions. 

So, in 2014, resolved to NOT use the same passwords for everything. Because if you do, you're asking for lots of trouble. 

For the last year, I have been looking, searching, researching, trying out, and tweaking what I thought might have been the one solution to my workflow woes. You see, what I want isn't hard - a simple synching solution for me to be able to compose classes and sermons on my computer (or iPad mini) and have them sync to my two other devices. I had some criteria when I began this mission:

1. It must sync to my iPad mini, because I do all my teaching and preaching from it. Additionally, it must look great and I must be able to format it in a way that I can easily glance at my notes when presenting. 

2. It must be on iOS. A companion Mac app would be helpful, but not essential. iPhone app is also not optional as I do a lot of tweaking on the go. 

3. It must be simple. No crazy layouts or unnecessary button on the app - just...simple. 

So, I narrowed my list down to three applications for my workflow: Evernote, Simplenote, and Plain Text. 

 

Evernote

Evernote seems like it's been around a long time, and that's because it has. It is a service that has never been accused of standing still. Evernote continually pushes new designs, additions, and features to its suite of apps which now include Penultimate and Skitch. 

Pros: Evernote is very well designed. The iPad app is beautiful on a retina iPad mini screen (and on the iPad Air as well). The apps are designed to easily do what you want to do: capture anything and everything. Evernote can capture text, pictures, voice memos, and even has embedded To-Do lists. It allows rich-text editing (bold, italics and such). It syncs fast across all devices, has a Mac and Windows app, and is also cross-platform on Android and Windows Phone as well. 

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The Evernote iPad app is gorgeous. 

Cons: For me, it seems a bit too much. I don't often need to capture photos and voice memos, only text. So I end up completely ignoring those features, mostly because I refuse to pay for a premium account ($5/month or $45/year). I did have a premium account for six months and didn't use the features. While it's a great app for 90% of people, a power user like myself who wants simplicity above all else isn't going to be using it very much. Still a great app though. 

Simplenote

Appropriately named, Simplenote is just what it says it is - simple note syncing across devices. I was just about ready to declare this platform dead when Simplenote relaunched with a new web design and app design as well as an introduction of a dedicated Mac app. I really thought this was going to be my solution. 

Pros: Extremely simple and well designed. Fonts and text look great and a retina MacBook Pro and retina iPad mini. The app is active in development and syncs well with other devices. There is no clutter to deal with in these apps - they simply allow you to compose notes, title them, tag them, export them, and pin them to the top of your list. Composing and writing in these apps (as well as the Mac app) is a joy. 

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Simplenote for Mac. 

Cons: It's almost too simple. Simplenote allows no formatting of any type and does not support Markdown editing, so if you want to style your text at all, you are limited to bullet points, numbering, and capitalizations. This sounded great in theory but I've noticed if I can't bold some text or make section headings bigger in my notes then I frequently lose my place while teaching and preaching because all the text looks the same. Tagging is great, and if tagging is your thing, you're going to love this app. If it's not, stay away, because that's the only amount of organization you get from Simplenote. All you have is a long running list of your notes, in order of what was last edited first. There's the option to 'Pin to Top' which comes in very handy.

I've run into some sync issues (as late as Oct-Nov 2013), but most of those seem to have been ironed out. The apps still crash on me frequently (once to twice a week) - I don't think a day or two goes by that the Mac app hasn't quit for no apparent reason and once the iPad app crashed on me while scrolling and preaching in front of hundreds of people (ack!). The iPhone app has a bad bug where it will crash when trying to sort changes in a note. I know developers are active on this app and I love Simplenote, I just cannot afford to use something that's unreliable. If the apps were stable enough, I might have this as my go-to platform. 

Plain Text

And here we are, talking about the joys of plain text once again. I really don't know why I migrated away from plain text, but it seems that my search has brought me full circle, back to where I started. 

You may read this and discount the plain text preference as an uber-nerd thing, but, in fact, it's really not. It just works. 

Pros: You can use a variety of text editors on all devices and plain text formats, including regular ol' .txt, Markdown, or Multi-Markdown. Markdown allows you to style your text how you want without changing to rich-text format. It uses simple symbols like asterisks to indicate bold and italics and hashtags to indicate headlines. Comes in handy when you get it down. The app I love to use on the iPad is Editorial, and on the Mac it's Byword. You can usually sync these apps to Dropbox and keep them in nested folders, easily categorizing what you need where you need it. Apps like Editorial, Nebulous Notes, and Byword are minimalistic and usually offer inline Markdown support, so you can see your bold and italics and headlines while writing. Best of all, plain text is future proof and my files are not tied to any platform, so I can move them around as I please. 

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Editorial for iPad. 

Cons: No simple "Compose it and forget it" syncing. Syncing is pretty painless, but requires a little bit of file management as well. Syncing isn't instantaneous unless you save your files in the app you're using. So unlike Simplenote and Evernote, you can't just sync and go. Plain text may not appeal to many people because it's not as simple to set up as other services. There's an extra added step when syncing to Dropbox, and you must know where your text repository folder is located. 

So looking at these three platforms, jumping back and forth between using them for the last year, I realized that there really is no "one solution" for capturing all my thoughts, pictures, and text (long or short). One solution is finding a small, precise suite of apps that fit your purposes. I'll use Editorial and Byword for all my writing (70% of the time), Simplenote for lists and occasional text capture (20% of the time), and Evernote for pics and logs (10% of the time). 

For me at least, one solution ends up being three solutions.