One of my current projects is redesigning Parkstreet Brethren's website.  This will be an interesting project, because I am also becoming more involved in this church's ministry.  In an effort to make everyone's life easier, I will be attempting to integrate some handy technology into their site.

Cell phones are even used by church-goers during the service, so I am working on an idea to allow texting of prayer requests during the service.  Maybe this will make all their playing worth while, and it will also serve as a new way to continually keep people connected.  The prayer requests will be accessible as an XML news feed, which will be useful not only during the service, but also on the site and on any potential prayer screens we may have located around the church campus.

In addition to receiving text messages, I also hope to make information and announcements on the website more accessible through RSS news feeds of all updates and enhanced mass mailers/texters.

Also, I thought I would throw in "Fuel" in the title.  One of my coworkers and I are thinking about ways to take the 710 house off the electric grid and make it run on alternative energy.  For starters, we will be playing with pedal bikes that will run or monitors.  We hope to make them from old bikes and other junk that people have.  After that we hope to implement methods by which to actually power the whole house, including Veggie oil.  Yes, we both have been watching Invention Nation on the Science channel.

... so says a recent press release sent out by Ashland University...

"This year’s card featuring an interactive tour of ornaments adorning a Christmas tree was designed by Red Red Design’s Steve Knowlton, a 2007 AU graduate. “He’s a very bright, talented designer,” Box said."

Read the whole article here:
Ashland University Ecard Press Release

I was finishing a site today for a client, and questions arose regarding the impending year change.  I was asked how to update the copyright to have the current year.  It really wasn't too hard once I dug into it a little... I'm not sure why it isn't just included in the WEC typo3 install that I was using.  I also threw in some fun newsfeed stuff:

## This shows how to automatically update the copyright year
lib.copyright = TEXT
lib.copyright.data = date:U
lib.copyright.strftime = %Y
lib.copyright.wrap = © | {$constant.siteName}

####################################

### Put the Latest News in the left column on certain pages
[PIDinRootline = 100,102]
lib.latestNews < plugin.tt_news
lib.latestNews {        

code >        
code = LATEST        
pid_list >        
pid_list = 31 # the folder where news are stored        
catImageMode = 0        
catTextMode = 0 

}
lib.leftSide < lib.latestNews
[else] # Put something else in the lib.leftSide
temp.leftSide = TEXT
temp.leftSide.value = Hello
lib.leftSide < temp.leftSide

This year Christmas cards are huge for us.  After having to turn so many people away last year, we got on the ball this year and started making cards this summer.  Honestly, I am having a great time with all of this.  All of the cards are published out of Macromedia Flash CS3, but are published back a few versions so that the maximum amount of people are able to get ahold of these cards and view them.

We did two options this year, allowing people to purchase either the custom cards or the "personalizable" cards. The custom ones are built from the ground up, such as the 2007 Ashland University card, the 2007 EMI Music Publishing card, and the 2007 Student Loans Express card. Over previous years, we have also made the 2004 Ashland University card, which has over 7 MILLION VIEWS, and is getting about 500,000 hits a day right now.  Last year we sent out our 2006 Red Red Design card, and that is still going crazy on the hits.

The personalizable cards allow users to submit a message, greeting, logo and links that we incorporate into the card.  No, this is better than a Hallmark eCard, and we have put many hours in here to make them look very good.  Check them out here:

2007 - Bermuda Hospital

2007 - Allegany College

2007 - Nyack College of NYC

I find it rather foolish that with today's level of technology and automation, people are busier than ever.  So, in an effort to battle the burden of busyness, I have begun to look into ways to make things easier.

For example, I am soon going to be taking on a media position within Park Street Brethren Church, as I have concluded that my involvement in their website at work could compliment the slides and media within the church.  In an effort to make things much easier, I am scheming up methods by which church staff will only need update the events and notifications on the main website, and during the service we will simply feed that information onto the projector.

Stay tuned to see if I come up with any useful ways to make technology our friend instead of another burden.