Since my friend Adam Faughn started his Legacy of Faith podcast a week or two ago, it's really brought to my attention two things: 1) There's never been a better time to become a podcast listener, and 2) there's never been a better time to start your own. 

Podcasts have actually been around for over a decade, getting their name from some of Apple's first iPods back in 2001-02. But I think we may be ushering in the golden age of podcasting, both in listening and producing. 

If you've never listened to any podcasts, it's a perfect time to start. There's some great apps (both paid and free) for iPhone and Android to get you listening today. Podcasts are great for commutes - I don't have a commute but I do take long trips and they help pass the time very well. 

The best part is that podcasts are free. All of them. Some apps to manage them can range up to five or ten dollars, but that's a small price to pay for great organization and access to content. 

And podcasts have a incredible wide variety of content. You can listen to shows about Christianity, Science, Mathematics, Star Trek, Technology, Cooking - anything you can imagine and there's probably a podcast for it. And some podcasts aren't shows at all - they're merely recordings of sermons or speeches that have a serialized format. Here at Church Street, for instance, we don't stream our sermons live but they are available in audio form or on our podcast feed. 

The best and easiest way to get your feet wet in podcasts is to download the free Podcasts app for iOS. You can discover and find a few podcasts to listen to and search them via the iTunes Podcast Directory. 

And if you want to give your hand a try at actually podcasting yourself, all you need is microphone, an audio editing program (Audacity is free and great), and an iTunes Podcast RSS feed (instructions) and you're good to go. 

So whether it's listening or producing your own, there has never been a better time to step into the podcasting world. There's a whole wealth of knowledge out there for you to discover. 

If you're curious as to some of the many podcasts and networks I listen to, check out my Favorite Things page and look under Podcasts. My long-standing favorite app is Instacast, but I've recently switched to the excellent Overcast on my iPhone. 

Below is an excellent video rundown on some of the most popular podcast-catching apps to discover, download, and listen to new podcasts. After the video go check out Robert McGinley Myer's site Anxious Machine. 

Let's face it. For the most part, the retail experience in this country is horrible. 

Save a few - Apple, Target, and a few high-end others - retail experiences are absolutely horrible for the most part.

Case(s) in point: my last few retail experiences. 

Electronic Express. Never mind the horrible name, this seems to be a relatively small chain on electronic and appliance stores in the area where I live (middle Tennessee). The store is actually not that bad - except for the staff and prices. The staff when I entered has always seemed preoccupied and misinformed. Every time I’ve been in a store they are all huddled around the front laughing and joking with one another. They seem more interested in horsing around than helping customers - which I have barely seen since I’ve been in there. They’re not experts either. I’ve heard the salespeople talk very generally about products in the store. They don’t give good reasons for purchasing that product or try to sell it to you. Unfortunately, most Electronic Expresses are in smaller towns and for some reason, I get this air of superiority when I walk in as if they’re saying, “Well, if you don’t get it from us then you just won’t get it.” Uh, yes, I can get almost anything somewhere else, thank you very much. Also, when I’ve tried to check tablets and use them and navigate around them to play with them, some of them don’t work because they’re either locked out or not charged. Oh, and they don’t match prices with competitors or the internet - at least according to the sales rep I talked to. 

Office Depot. I actually like Office Depot a lot, but I can’t understand how they’ve stuck around so long. Every single time I go into one of their stores it’s like a ghost town. I mean, literally, no one there. Sales reps are hard to find if you have a question. Products are arranged neatly, but you can’t play with some of them because they won’t turn on (not charged) or they have a password on them. 

Best Buy. Ah, the kings of American electronic stores. And probably the worst. On two separate occasions, I have heard sales reps giving false information to a customer. Once I stood up and called out the rep, who then proceeded to argue with me on the wrong point. I'm no tech expert, but what he was telling him was wrong (he basically was saying that SSDs weren't all that great and were a "fad" that would probably disappear in a few years). But all that aside, the retail experience at a Best Buy is horrid. I took a picture of what a certain tablet display looked like: a mangled mess of cords with tablets stacked messily on top of one another. Near closing time I would have expected this. Not at two o'clock in the afternoon. If you’re selling something, you need to be constantly arranging it in a nice, presentable way, no matter how many times a day you have to do it because people come in there and just play with a device and throw it down anywhere. Target understands this - they have people on staff who do nothing but arrange things on shelves all day. I’ve seen them do it, and if you look hard enough, you will too. Target understands that whether you’re selling garbage bags or high-end tablets, presentation is everything. Perception is reality to a customer, and it helps Target because their stores are always neat and clean, their shelves are always tidy, they have great prices and they have a better image than some bigger chains do. 

I have bought an astounding number of things on Amazon since signing up for Amazon Prime last year - which gives you access to Amazon Instant Video on a variety of devices AND free two-day shipping on most items. Amazon is beating retail stores primarily because of prices, but also for convenience. I live in a small town an hour away from the nearest large city. Why would I drive up to Nashville to hope that I find what I need, when I can just pull it up on Amazon and have it purchased inside 30 seconds and at my door 48 hours later? The answer is that I wouldn’t. 

Amazon has figured out the formula, while it seems that other retail chains aren’t even trying. Never before in the history of retail has a company carved so much out of the market. Amazon is the future, and sure, while you can’t shop for things like clothes and shoes on Amazon, I’m sure they’re working on a way to figure that out as we speak. 

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It's always cool to see other people's home screens - it's like peering into their living room. So I present my current home screen. What I'm using and how I'm using it. 

First of all, I don't have folders on my home screen. Why? I think a home screen should be reserved for those apps that one uses every day. I want to get to the info or app when I want to as fast as possible. 

Starting with the dock, I use a three-app setup for the apps I use the most: Silo, Calendars 5, and OneNote. 

Silo is an excellent To-Do list app and has a native iPad and Mac app as well, which is essential for me. You can make multiple lists and Silo's signature feature is sharing those lists. This app is great for task management within groups. 

I've raved about Calendars 5 from Readdle. Lots of people love Fantastical, but I prefer Calendars 5 because it just works best for what I need. I need to see a month a time in meetings and talking to people about scheduling, and I need to do it quickly. C5 offers that and a very quick entry of new events into my calendar. 

OneNote has become my default app for everything. I love the design, I love the updated iOS apps, and I love how it handles documents to and from devices (it maintains layouts and fonts across all platforms). It's a great project management tool - not just for notes. 

Back up to the top, I use the Ascend Federal Credit Union app to keep track of my bank account. It's a small local bank here in Tennessee but have just added mobile check deposits through the apps. Nice. 

I use the standard Apple Maps app because it has pretty good integration with iOS. The Weather Channel is also pretty standard, but their recent iOS 7 update made it way more like Yahoo Weather, except with the accuracy of The Weather Channel. 

Scanbot has become a new favorite of mine for scanning documents with my phone, which is surprisingly great. You would think that would be cumbersome, but it's not. 

Tweetbot is my Twitter client of choice. It is magnitudes better than the standard Twitter app. I love the user muting feature - comes in handy when you've got those people that you follow that tweeting just a little too much. 

Paper has actually made me like Facebook again. It's a real pioneering app that uses "sloppy swiping" to navigate. It works really well and I like this Facebook app a lot better. 

Reeder is my RSS reader of choice, and I sync through Feedly. I don't have a ton of feeds, but it's nice and handy when standing in the checkout line and you can quickly skim your feeds. 

Dropbox is a staple. While I don't have as much storage space on DB as I do with Google Drive or Box, I still find it more useful and less irritating than other services. 

Mailbox is my favorite email client on iOS. It's basically email triage. I talked about this app on episode 16 of Ministry Bits. I have it set to display a numbered notification badge on the app if there's messages in there, so for me it's almost like a task list, because I know if I see a badge there that I need to act on something. I hear there's also a Mac app in the works as well. 

1Password is probably my most essential app. While not cheap, I know that my passwords are secure and every one of them is unique and very difficult to break because I have this app. You have a master password to unlock the app, and then you can copy any of those password into other apps or other sites using the built-in and very capable browser. 

Pedometer++ is great for tracking your steps every day. It's simple and effective. 

Instacast is my podcast catcher of choice. It's great, and I use it on iPad as well. You can subscribe to podcasts directly within the app, and download podcasts for later viewing. 

The ESV Bible is the simplest Bible app out there, and it's the version I prefer. 

Evernote I mainly use for taking pictures and scanning business cards, all of which are searchable. Evernote can be used for lots of things, but that's what I use it for. 

Last but not least, Day One is a journaling app that I use to keep track of what I've done - as a youth minister I need accountability, and I log every event from phone calls to conversations I've had to ball games I go to. It comes in handy if I ever need to remember what I did on a particular day. 

So that's it! Let me know if you would like YOUR home screen featured on the site. We'd love to see your home screen!

I am always getting tons of questions around this time of year from parents and students who are heading off to college and they ask me what compute they should buy. My main question is to ask them, "What are you going to use it for?" And English major writing tons of papers isn't going to need the same processing power that an Engineering major might need. 

So, I decided to come up with a simple and straightforward buyers guide for college students. It's not as detailed as I would like, but it will certainly point you in the right direction when buying a computer for your soon-to-be college student. 

Click the image for a larger view or download the PDF to your computer or device. 

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The crew at AIM (Adventures in Ministry) has been hard at work getting a brand-new site ready for everyone, and they've done an outstanding job. In case you didn't already know, Adventures In Ministry is a podcast network for 5 different podcasts focused on ministers, technology, sports, and Christian living. It's also a repository for FREE downloadable resources like classes, retreats and devotionals from some of the biggest names out there. As part of the AIM team, I'll tell you that we have some big plans for the near future, so stay tuned!

Run, don't walk to the new AIM site at our new home at AdventuresInMinistry.com. You won't be sorry.