twittering in church: Time Magazine Article: I love it!

I think we need to get in on this tool in our SNL services.

Send me your thoughts.

Ronnie

Click here for the full article: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1895463,00.html?xid=newsletter-weekly

There’s a time and place for technology, and most houses of worship still say it’s not at morning Mass. But instead of reminding worshippers to silence their cell phones, a small but growing number of churches across the country are following Voelz’s lead and encouraging people to integrate text-messaging into their relationship with God.

In Seattle, Mars Hill churchgoers regularly tweet throughout the service. In New York City, Trinity Church marked Good Friday by tweeting the Passion play, detailing the stages of Jesus’ crucifixion in short bursts. At Next Level Church, outside Charlotte, N.C., it’s not only O.K. to fuse social-networking technology with prayer; it’s desirable.

On Easter Sunday, pastor Todd Hahn prefaced his sermon by saying, “I hope many of you are tweeting this morning about your experience with God.”

“It’s a huge responsibility of a church to leverage whatever’s going on in the broader culture, to connect people to God and to each other,” says Hahn.

If worship is about creating community, Twitter is an undeniably useful tool. The trick is to not let the chatter overshadow the need for quiet reflection that spirituality requires. At Westwinds, people can ask questions about the sermon that the pastors will answer later, or they can tweet in real time and hope another congregant offers insight. Some use Twitter as a note-taking tool. Often, it’s pastor-directed, with McDonald preaching while Voelz taps out, “In what way do you feel the spirit of God moving within you?” Discuss.

There have been at least a dozen “Twitter Sundays” at Westwinds, but the 150 or so Twitterers of Westwind’s 900 adult members are free to tweet at any time, at any service, whenever the spirit moves them.

e-mail worms and hackers

As most of you already know, my e-mail was hacked on Sunday. There was evidently a worm that went through my online e-mail service at yahoo.com

I am including for you the response that came to me from yahoo help. My only copmplaint in all this is that Yahoo has no live help for problems with their e-mail. Everything has to be done by e-mail correspondence and I really dislike the fact that so many people have gone to that system. However, in today’s world even when you get a live person it is hard to get satisfaction with trouble situations. We really don’t live in a service (servant oriented) world any longer.

The best thing you can do is to back up your address book and anything that is important to you in the computer world so that you have what you need just in case. I did have the information backed up and for that I am thankful. It will take a while to have the time to restore everything. I want to also say that I have held my yahoo address for 10 plus years and this is the first problem I have ever had so I have no intention of switching. Web based e-mail is safer when dealing with viruses and they also follow you wherever you go, changing addresses, jobs or whatever. Yahoo goes with you.

Ronnie

Hello Ronnie,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.

It appears as though you have received one or more emails containing a
“worm” virus.  These types of viruses spread themselves by mass sending
an email with an infected attachment to addresses found in an infected
computers address book, local files, etc.  The virus hopes the infected
emails reach unsuspecting recipients and entice them to open the
attachment
thus infecting the recipients computer. 

If you are concerned that you might have contracted a virus and you have
anti-virus software installed, we recommend that you make sure the
softwares virus definitions are updated and then scan your computer. 
If you do not currently have anti-virus software installed on your
computer, you might want to consider obtaining this type of software.   

Please be aware that Yahoo! Mail is a web-based email system and if
you’re checking your email through Yahoo!‘s website, simply viewing
email messages does not make your computer vulnerable to viruses — even
when attachments are present.  This is because your email messages,
address book and other account information are stored on Yahoo!’s
servers rather than on your own computer.
 
However, should you choose to download an attachment by either opening
it or saving it to your computer, your computer becomes vulnerable to
computer viruses.  The same is true of all files you download to your
computer (whether email attachments or not), so it is important that you
are careful when downloading attachments from both known and unknown
sources.

Yahoo! urges caution and recommends that you always choose to scan
attachments whenever this option is available.  This will greatly reduce
your likelihood of experiencing trouble with computer viruses.  If you
are a Yahoo! user, please know that Yahoo! Mail has implemented
aggressive anti-virus measures to protect our users from spreading or
contracting these types of viruses.  Yahoo! employs virus scanning on
all inbound and outbound attachments to immediately detect viruses and
help prevent them from spreading any further.

If you have updated your anti-virus software, scanned your computer and
found that your system is clean, your computer is most likely not
infected, but rather is receiving a virus that is attempting to spread
itself through email.  There is no way to stop the virus from attempting
to spread; however, if you are receiving multiple emails they should
eventually subside.  Until these types of messages stop arriving to your
account, you may want to consider utilizing our filter feature to direct
these messages to a folder of your choosing.  You can find more
information on how to use this feature at:

   http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/manage/manage-06.html

If you use another email program, you may want to check to see if your
email program also has a filter feature you can use. 

If you are interested in obtaining any information regarding the latest
viruses, please visit the virus encyclopedia at:

   http://securityresponse.symantec.com/

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Mail.

Regards,

Gerry

Yahoo! Customer Care

60226531

For assistance with all Yahoo! services please visit:

   http://help.yahoo.com/

My Yahoo e-mail has been hacked: Beware

I was doing a funeral in Atlanta yesterday for a good friend and after the burial I turned my phone back on and I started getting all these odd messages. It appears that someone was successful at hacking into my yahoo.com address book and they sent a message to everyone there asking them to open a file, something about shopping @ 30% off. If you received that please don’t open the file.

I also found out tonight that all of my addresses are wiped out. I am going to be on the phone with tech support tomorrow and see what we can do. I have had this yahoo address for at least 10 years without any problems. I am sure that more people than me have been affected.

Beware

Ronnie

I finally gave in to the myspace craze!

I finally did it, I gave in to the myspace craze. I have fought it for a long time now and just didn’t see the lure but a few days ago the Youth at Hillsville challenged me to start a page, so I did.

What is myspace? MySpace is a free online community composed of personal profiles. It is “MY Space”, I didn’t understand it for the longest time but it is the place where people hang out. We use to hang out at the Mall or on the strip but now people hang out virtually on the World Wide Web.

It is aplace where people post pictures of their friends and family and the people that you allow on your site can freely view them.  MySpace policy requires users be at least 14 years of age to join. Members routinely send each other messages and “network” or socialize within the MySpace community.

The format of MySpace makes it easy for anyone to submit profile information, even if they have little online experience. Though the domain has proved incredibly popular, reportedly hosting over 60 million profiles, it has also come under fire. The concern is that the vast majority of MySpace members may be too inexperienced to realize the potential danger of posting personal information online. Youth, be very careful and always keep your page private, that way only those you allow to visit can see your information.

Myspace is very popular; it is the World in which we live. Things are changing rapidly. Well, I have tried and I actually like it. I am connecting with friends I haven’t been able to talk to in a long time and it is great chatting with those in the Youth Group who are online.

Give it a try, just be careful. There is always a good and bad side and the bad potential is there.

Check it out www.myspace.com/ronniegcollins

Ronnie