photo credit: left-hand

I’ve been thinking about this lately: what does it take to convert silent visitors to active participants? Based on the stats I’m looking at, people are definitely reading my blog. Well, they’re at least clicking on my blog. Maybe that old logo at the top is scaring them off once they get here, but we’re definitely seeing some action. If I got 2 pageviews a day, I’d understand why I get one human comment for every 500 spam bots, but that’s not the case. It’s so bad that I find myself approving some of the spam comments just to satisfy my ego.

What am I doing wrong? I feel like I leave the majority of my posts open-ended, I certainly invite comments, and I respond to comments when I receive them (that is, all three times…). I think the new plan is to just ask more questions. So what do you think I should do? Do you think I’m doing the best I can and should just pray for the best? Do you have any advice to give me? Has this happened to you? What would you do if you were me? What’s your favorite ice cream flavor? Does this dress make me look fat? Please, please, pleeeeeeeease respond in the comments section below.

I read through George Barna’s Revolution the other day, and it’s gotten me thinking. Barna basically discusses the Church in its traditional form and compares it to what he believes will be taking place in the next few years and decades. Barna finds in his research of culture and the Church a trend that is taking place. He realizes that many followers of God are leaving traditional church structure for alternative methods of worship and service. Barna discusses what he terms “Revolutionaries,” people who passionately follow God regardless of their beliefs on church structure. Throughout the book, he expounds on these Revolutionaries and explains why he believes that Christians must follow this path.

Most interesting to me in this book is Barna’s opinion on the future of the Church. He believes that in the coming decades the Church will see a definite shift from the traditional local church model to a more varied design in which many groups do many different things. Barna sees this in a positive light:

“To some, this will sound like the Great Fall of the Church. To Revolutionaries, it will be the Great Reawakening of the Church…[new scenarios] represent a new day in which the Church can truly be the Church–different from what we know today, but more responsible to and reflective of God.” (page 108)

I find this interesting, and I appreciate Barna’s further clarification of this new model of the Church. I can see how a critic might argue against this, stating that many churches are growing at a rapid pace, but at the same time disillusionment with the local church seems prevalent and parachurch organizations are too growing in popularity. I’m certainly curious to see where this goes in the upcoming years. I’d love to hear other thoughts on this in the comments.

So I’ve been pretty busy the last few weeks, and that’s why I haven’t posted much. One of these things that’s kept me busy is a Christmas gift that I had hoped to make for a friend. I intended to create a secret hollow book using a few older books, and I had hoped that this project would take about an hour. The instructions that I read seemed simple enough (and after all, how difficult could it be to cut a hole into paper?). Well, I was wrong. As you can see here (picture taken on my phone), this now-3-man project made use of several tools. We began with a simple X-acto knife, but quickly moved onto a drill, a reciprocating saw, and finally a circular saw. The cover of the book was cut (as you would imagine!) very quickly and easily, but we found that the pages were lined with steel. Eventually it worked out, but who would have thought paper would be so difficult to cut through? Do you have any similar experiences? Anyone ever done this project before, perhaps more efficiently?

I believe that the terrorist attacks on Mumbai are technically over by now. I say this in that way because the attacks went on for such a painfully long amount of time. Reports say that nearly 200 people died and over 300 people sustained injuries. The last few days have surely been horrendous for the people of India. In response, I want to focus on the events of the last few days in the only way that I am connected to them: the media’s response.

I took interest in the media’s interaction with this tragedy. I was not surprised with the amount of information that quickly spread about this event. As is evidenced even in a small way by my previous post, tons of online sources reported the entire process of the attacks. Pictures, live streaming video, Twitter updates, and mainstream news updates were just some of the ways that this information was sent out. Two aspects of this were significant (that is, aside from the huge amount of information to the general public, which is not that important in the grander picture, particularly when life and death is involved).

First, these tools (particularly Twitter, from what I saw) forwarded the cause of relief information. Requests for assistance flooded streams of text. Most noticeable to me were the constant requests for blood donors to the Mumbai hospitals to save the lives of the many who had been injured. In this way, this new method of rapid communication was extremely helpful.

Secondly, this information did not go unnoticed by the terrorists, and subsequently the government. The terrorists made use of this information DURING their attacks. Terrorists were reported as watching TV in order to learn the plans of police and armed forces before their counter-attacks. Once the TV streams were cut, terrorists reportedly resorted to the Internet, perhaps even taking into account Twitter updates. I believe this has been suggested as a result of the Indian government asking that tweeting about the event be stopped. It appeared as though this rapid spread of news was actually aiding the terrorists in their plot, although I imagine that the government acted to put a stop to this as quickly as possible.

In summary, I am pleased with the media’s response to this tragedy thus far. It is disappointing that these new methods of sharing information may have assisted the terrorists in their horrible plot, but I am encouraged that these tools were used positively, as well. I only hope that this positive response will happen in the future (truly, I hope that this kind of thing never happens again, but I cannot be so naive as to expect that). What are your thoughts?

See also:

• ‘Terrorists planned to kill 5000 people’ (Rediff) - minute-by-minute updates
• Mumbai Under Attack (Boston.com)

A few minutes ago I noticed lots of people discussing the Mumbai terror attacks on Twitter. Obviously this is an awful, awful act, and as of now 80 people have been declared dead. Terrorists are beginning to be detained, but it’s still a horrible situation. I wanted to gather together a bunch of links to make for easy access to this news.

Times of India (for tons of different articles and updates) - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

Live News Video Streams:

• CNN - http://www.cnn.com/video/flashLive/live.html?stream=stream2
• IBNLive - http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/video_streaming.php (I recommend the faint of stomach not view this one; I’ve seen some not-so-good-looking things)

Photos:

• Vinu’s Flickr Photo Set “Bombay Blast” - http://flickr.com/photos/vinu/sets/72157610144709049/

News Articles:

• ABC News - http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=6342699&page=1
• CNN - http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/26/india.attacks/index.html
• Mutiny.in - http://tinyurl.com/5ozmtp
• NY Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/world/asia/27mumbai.html?hp
• Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/26/AR2008112602472.html

Other:

• Twitter Timeline of “#Mumbai” popularity
• Twitter search for “Mumbai” (for live updates)
• Mumbai Attack Map on Google Maps (via @abhi2point0)
• Image of Mumbai Terrorist
• Wikipedia Page
• Live News via Twitter: @mumbaiattack
• Live News via Mahalo: Mahalo Liveblog

Expanding…

As you all probably know, California is having a major problem with wildfires in the last couple of days. In regard to that, I just watched a short video of a DC-10 dropping down some fire retardant on the affected area. Apparently these planes have the capacity to hold 12,000 gallons of this fire retardant stuff, although it doesn’t seem to me that all 12,000 gallons are dropped in this video. You’ve got to check it out; it’s crazy.

See also: DC-10 Drops Phos-chek over Running Springs

This is just something I found the other day. I forget where I first stumbled upon it, but I’d like to give credit where credit is due, so I apologize to whoever helped me to discover this site. Tip of My Tongue is a quick web app that aims to help its users with a problem that humans have had for all of time: remembering a word that they just can’t think of. Using short qualifiers, the app narrows down possible words as far as possible. I’ve found it pretty successful in identifying words that I tested it out with.

Useless example: For instance, if I just can’t remember what you call a book which you use to look up meanings of words, I’m quickly able to figure it out. I type in “book,” “meanings,” and “words” into the “Word Meaning” fields, and it narrows my search to “dictionary” and “wordbook,” at which point I realize I’m thinking of the word “dictionary.”

Give it a shot; I think it’s a pretty cool app.

The other day on his blog, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers Michael Hyatt announced a new project that his company has introduced, Book Review Bloggers. The idea behind this is that a blogger is given the opportunity to review a new release from Thomas Nelson on both their both and also the book’s product page on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or another book-selling website. I’ve talked about how I’ve done this before with Scot McKnight’s Blue Parakeet, and I’ve also recently posted on my excitement with the way publishers are jumping on board with some new ideas for uses of the Internet and social media. This is another great example of how they’re starting to get it right, and I’m excited about that.

I particularly like this idea because it is quick and easy for both parties. I, the blogger, get a free book, and the publisher gets a quick endorsement of their product. Once I’ve reviewed one book successfully, I can apply to receive another. Additionally, both the publisher and the blogger get lots of online press via links and social media marketing.

I’m pretty excited about this, as you can tell. I think I’m mostly glad to see this for the principle of what they’re doing by tapping into the vast resource of the blogosphere. Although this blog isn’t in any way a book blog, expect to see some reviews in the near future.

With Obama in the lead in most national election polls, voters are putting their money where their votes are. Amazon has been tracking for the last several weeks the sales of Halloween masks of both Barack Obama and John McCain. Most polls give Obama a 5-10% greater number of voters, which is interestingly similar to the lead Obama holds in Halloween mask sales. I personally have not decided who I’m going to vote for, but I’m pretty sure that no matter which way I decide I would still prefer a McCain mask, simply ’cause it’s much more funny to wear a mask of an old person.

ht TechCrunch

Twitter was abuzz a few days ago as a 14-year-old girl from South Carolina went missing. Oftentimes in the past Twitter has been used during a time of tragedy for communication about the situation, but this time things were different. Twitterers rapidly went to work getting the world out by “re-tweeting” the situation by saying something like:

“RT Twitter AMBER ALERT @genochurch’s 14 yr old daughter is missing http://tinyurl.com/5yodvb - PLEASE RETWEET”

The words in this tweet quickly began to trend as (by my calculations) about 1200 people forwarded the message to all of their followers.

I’m not exactly sure how Kenzie, the girl, was found, and I’m not really sure Twitter was directly involved, but literally thousands of people were aware of the situation. Obviously in a situation like this, the more who are able to be alert the better. Of course something like this is awful, but I’m fascinated by the practicality of Twitter and similar services in a time of personal need.