[Kid Inspiration]

This was a fascinating read.

Clive Thompson on the Death of the Phone Call from Wired Magazine

My phone bills are shrinking. Not, unfortunately, in cost. I mean they’re getting shorter. I recently found an old bill from a decade ago; it was fully 15 pages long, because back then I was making a ton of calls—about 20 long-distance ones a day. Today my bills are a meager two or three pages, at most.

Odds are this has happened to you, too. According to Nielsen, the average number of mobile phone calls we make is dropping every year, after hitting a peak in 2007. And our calls are getting shorter: In 2005 they averaged three minutes in length; now they’re almost half that.

I am not a huge fan of the phone. I think it stems from a prank call that terrified me when I was about 10 or so. But apart from that, they can be hugely distrupting in your day. I agree with the article “These new forms of communication have exposed the fact that the voice call is badly designed. It deserves to die.”

The interesting thing is I do notice myself making less phone calls though as the years tick by.

Good riddance phone calls, you shall not be missed.

Here’s what I twittered today.

• The Church used to be great with technology. We nailed it with the printing press. Why are we so slow to see the potential of technology? Link
• twttr still seems lk the latest thing in the Church but old news 2 the world? Link
• So 746 Tweets about #hillsong this week. Not bad. 1,097 about #swineflu and 22,309 about @iranelection Link

(In reverse order just like twitter presents them)

Check out this great Time Mag Article: How Twitter Will Change The Way We Live

This is what I ultimately find most inspiring about the Twitter phenomenon. We are living through the worst economic crisis in generations, with apocalyptic headlines threatening the end of capitalism as we know it, and yet in the middle of this chaos, the engineers at Twitter headquarters are scrambling to keep the servers up, application developers are releasing their latest builds, and ordinary users are figuring out all the ingenious ways to put these tools to use. There’s a kind of resilience here that is worth savoring. The weather reports keep announcing that the sky is falling, but here we are — millions of us — sitting around trying to invent new ways to talk to one another.

If your question is: So do you think twitter/facebook/whatever is a useful tool? You are asking the wrong question and have completely missed the point.

It’s not about the specific tool, whether it’s Facebook/Twitter it’s about the technology and the way it changes society and the way we interact/get news/connect/etc. etc.

From New York Times

EVERYONE knows that babies crawl before they walk, and that tricycles come before two-wheelers. But at what age should children get their first cellphone, laptop or virtual persona?

Read On

A couple of years ago I had in mind a site that could have all the planning elements for a service in one place. I’m not exactly sure but it seems that it might just have happened!

I got this link from another CM blog in the UK, but can’t find which one… but definitely check it out, if not just to get inspired!

LightLive puts a wealth of Bible-based activities and ideas for your work with children and young people at your fingertips.

You can:

- plan and manage your group programme like never before!

- dive into the ‘virtual filing cabinet’ of activities and ideas

- enrich your programme with multi-media activities

- search, save and print resources – all from one website

- and so much more…

Check it out here! Light Live