He doesn’t mind warm up when he’s captain!

The word, policy has a “Thou Shall Not” connotation. What church organizations need are guidelines and in some instances, policy, especially regarding ministries with children.

• The majority of people are not engaged on social media sites all day long-it’s not their normal as it is for #chsocm folks. Therefore training and policy are necessary to empower them to use the tools and give them the confidence that they are doing it “right.”

• Guidelines give them things to think about that might not have otherwise occurred to them such as using a generic email to set up account, privacy settings, branding standards etc.

 True story: 

I found a ministry that took a crooked, black and white photograph of our logo taped to a wall and used it as their profile picture.

• Guidelines should provide more do’s than don’ts and provide practical advice to protect the employee, volunteer, content consumers and the church or organization.

Here is my first guest post on her blog on introducing new tech in the office:

http://churchsocmed.blogspot.com/2011/07/strategy-for-introducing-qr-codes.html

Have you ever wished you could hit the refresh button on Faceook and start over? You friended one work friend and now you feel obligated to friend them all? You put them in a group, limited their access, but feel bad about it because it is so obvious? Everyone has hesitated to be their authentic self for fear of offended mom or losing a job. Google+, Google’s new social network removes the fear and adds the ability to post updates, images and video to certain people by way of circles. Google+ lets you hit the re-fresh button on your social networks and so much more.

Imagine posting your runs only to people who care about running! Non-runners will do the happy dance! With Circles, you name your own circles and drag and drop your friends into a circle. If you’re a gmail, gchat, picassa, android user, you will love the integration, even at this early stage and it will get even better quickly IMO.

There are a lot of great features, many I haven’t even explored yet, but Google+ had me at circles and no ads or games…yet.

Google+ is open to everyone with a gmail account. If you don’t have one, and want to give + a run, leave me your email address and I’ll send you an invite.

This CNN article inspired this post.

My ears perked when I heard about the daily special:  Amazon is offering one paid app for free every day. I believe people want something in return for for liking, checking in and downloading so I’m intrigued.

Today the free app is Angry Birds Rio. My kids love to play Angry Birds if they can get their hands on my phone which is rare but I’ll take Amazon’s offer of a free app for their pleasure.

It wasn’t easy getting the Amazon App to my phone. I had to jump through a few hoops. They could have made it as simple as clicking on a QR Code like REI.

Instead you have to go here and click on:

1. Get started
2. Enter your email or phone number to receive download link.
3. Retrieve email on your Android phone and download.

You might be prompted to change your application settings to “Allow installation of non-Market applications”

Menu>Settings>Applications>Enable the option “Unknown Sources”.  The “Unknown” being Amazon.

I can see myself using Amazon to purchase apps. I have never bought an app and I’ve had my phone for 8 months. Since I already had an Amazon account, this will be the way I purchase apps in the future if all goes well. Will you use it?

Special Note: ATT Wireless does not support the Amazon App Store for Android.

My Crush

I have kids and they click on stupid stuff and play lots of computer games. I was hoping the Xbox and Wii would provide enough gaming and they would leave my computer alone but no such luck.

I logged on to facebook and was greeted with T & A. Heather had a crush on me and wanted to chat!

What am I paying Norton for? I ran the Norton scan, Heather was still interested. I ran Spybot, Heather still wanted to chat. With the help of Google, I finally had to turn Heather’s aggressive advances down.

If you are getting Crush Alerts in your facebook news feed, here is how to get rid of it:

On Firefox:

Tools>Add Ons>Extensions

Look for Game Play Labs and/or Facicons and delete.

Also look in your Control Panel>Programs for anything Game Labs or Facicons and delete or uninstall.

to Google Picasa

Forgotten and Found on my Phone

I learned how to do this from Read Write Web, you should follow them for great content on all things internet @rww.

I have a Droid 2, so your steps might differ slightly:

1. click on Gallery
2. click on folder you want to move to Picassa
3. click on menu>select items>choose pictures to upload
4. click share>Picasa>select folder>add caption>upload

I had about 250 photos and it took all day to finish the upload. It was a real battery drain. I plugged the phone in and was still able to use it as normal with the upload in the background.

Once you go to your Picasa account and make sure the pictures are there, you can delete them from your phone to save space.

LOVE. And as my friend said, “I don’t care if the FDA bans it, I will travel to Brazil if I have to!”

It’s true, there are discussions on the health risks of the treatment for the stylist and consumer. There are risks to EVERYTHING and so I will take my chances for smooth, straight hair.

I had my first treatment last July at  Tanas Hair Designs with Ashley. There are rules you must take seriously if you are going to invest in the Brazilian:

1. No pony tails, headbands etc.
2. No washing your hair for 4 solid days. Translation:

• You cannot exercise unless you don’t sweat. And if you don’t sweat, what’s the point?
• You must have an umbrella with you at all time.
• You must invest $1 into a shower cap.
• Empty your social calendar by day 2 because the hairs are nasty.

After my first treatment, I was willing to follow the rules and then company showed up with kids who want to swim at the pool. Trying not to sweat in the south, in July, is nearly impossible unless you are sitting in your refrigerator. Sweat was unavoidable for me and I think the result of my Brazilian suffered.

I planned in advance for my second treatment. I ran 20 miles in the days leading up to my appointment and was mentally prepared to take 4 days off of running. Ashley had a vacuum sucking the air in for protection.  The fumes are much less toxic smelling than perms (do people still get perms?) and they don’t bother me or Ashley. It takes 2 hours to do my hair because I have a lot of it.  Today, I ran 4 miles, dried my hair in 5 minutes and flat ironed it in about the same amount of time.

That is worth a trip to Brazil if necessary!