In case you missed the amazing lights of the fast-burning web-fire, Elliot Jay Stocks did it.

What did he do? He tweeted this (drum roll please) . . .

"Honestly, I'm shocked that in 2010 I'm still coming across 'web designers' who can't code their own designs. No excuse."

Phew, did he light that match?

He explains beyond the tweet, that in his opinion, all web designers should know html and css. (He did not mean to say that all web designers should know php, javascript, etc.)

 My question(s): Is there no room in the web design world for pure art? Have we become so "context oriented" that we won't allow artists to push us beyond where we are now? Isn't it an advantage having someone who doesn't know all of the limitations of web coding, imagine more? How do we go beyond the proverbial box?

IMHO, designers/artists know just as much as coders - on the other half of the world. But they don't expect, although maybe they should, that coders and software designers know what they know?

Mostly, I just love playing the other side of the argument and having a bit of fun with this! See Elliot's trench digging on his site: http://elliotjaystocks.com/blog/web-designers-who-cant-code/.

Next Post: Do you have to know code (xhtml, css, some PHP) to design in Joomla?

Can't wait to try this out with Joomla! Anybody working with this on Joomla yet? I can see Bible studies ... Board meetings ... 

 

 Did you know you have a news room? And, why would you care if you did?

Why? Because you want people to know about your church and you want your church to invite people into their ministries.

What is a newsroom? Any place where "news" or "information" about your church comes out is your news room. It may be your office or it may be volunteers. Why not get some education on how to use your news room for maximum exposure outside of your church? It's called Public Relations and what I learned from the webinar: "Writing for the Web 2010 - New Search Strategies" offered by Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing is pretty cool stuff. Listen in as I describe some strategies that will help you.

Where's my newsroom? Every church has a newsroom, and it's potentially powerful! It's everything you put out there for public consumption. Do you produce audio tapes of your services? Do you write booklets with descriptions of your church and her programs? Do you produce a bulletin for worship? Do you have a website? Do you ever think about creating press releases for upcoming events or important news about your church? (You should, by the way.) That's your news room.

Why not coordinate your volunteers and office staff to produce effective wording from the newsroom to the public? Why not be effective with what you are already doing?

Lee's main point: choose about 12-15 keywords that describe who you are, and then use those words "church-wide" in everything you produce. Those keywords need to be thought out carefully and then used effectively.

You've heard the terrible stories coming out of Haiti. 7.0 for this earthquake on the richter scale brought buildings down killing thousands or tens of thousands. And people are asking, "How can I help?"

But WOW! Technology, cloud computing, and viral campaigns are new to this disaster relief effort! This is truly life-altering for people in the disaster recovery business. It is nothing other than miraculous. $3 Million has been raised by a simple texting campaign alone - in 3 days. There's some fine print however. It will take 90 days for that $3 million to be released to aid efforst.

Imagine ... improvements we can make and how this viral social technology can be well worth the effort - if we only counted the disaster of Haiti into the equation. The world can be mobilized for good.

mgiving . . . 

"The Red Cross, whose campaign is being publicized by the White House and the U.S. State Department, is accepting $10 donations via texting “Haiti” to 90999 in a program powered by Mobile Accord’s mGive. As of this morning, that campaign alone had raised $3 million (see the map image below for a distribution of donations). The State Department had actually been responsible for initiating the Red Cross campaign with a call to Mobile Accord chairman James Eberhard (who had met Secretary Clinton at a dinner earlier this month, but got the call while traveling in Pakistan this week). It was activated at 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday and had raised $800,000 by 3 p.m. Wednesday." ------- http://gigaom.com/

 online conference giving . . .

CloudCamp Haiti is a virtual unconference held as a public webinar. CloudCamp-in-the-Cloud builds upon the popular CloudCamp format by providing a free and open place for the introduction and advancement of cloud computing. For this event, we are raising funds to donate to the aid effort in Haiti. -----http://www.cloudcamp.org/haiti

online missing persons registry . . .

 Within 24 hours, this website was up for people to check for their loved ones - or to register someone missing. Amazing. --- http://www.haitianquake.com

 social networks . . . 

 There's a Facebook application for giving to your favorite charity. You add it to your page and people can click on it to give. ----- http://apps.facebook.com/mgiving/

geo tools . . .

Google earth has a plug-in already where you can see the before and after.  ----- kml plugin download here

the United Methodist Committee on Relief online . . . 

The United Methodist Church lands on ground 0 in disaster zones within 24 hours -- all year long, and they have an online way to give to disasters, including this new one in Haiti. ---- http://secure.gbgm-umc.org/

 Give with your heart and your head. Make sure it's not a hoax by giving to reputable agencies, who also work together. See one way to check out that group through Charity Navigator.

Take a look at this blog by Beth Kanter if you are trying to figure out how social media helps nonprofits like churches.

Her "Working in a Networked Way" blog is about how the process of working and getting things done is different in a social network environment than in an institutional environment. In an institutional environment everything is meetings, whereas a social networking way is non-linear and snippets of time.

Some of us are "social network immigrants" - i.e. we are "come heres" rather than "born heres." Immigrants - those moving over to the new country of social networking - didn't grow up with this culture and there is a learning curve involved. Church institutions, in general, are immigrants to the scene and we have a lot of cultural learning to do.

But learning itself can't be linear! We have to be fully immersed in the culture - a cultural immersion - to effectively "get it" and switch processes in our brain. Thus, the sand box principle. See what Beth suggests. 

CNN jumped into the middle of a battle - Is the online church a good thing or a bad thing? How do they come down? Neither side. Oh come on - they're just reporting guys!

But they didn't report on this. Jim Griffith recently stated that "multi-site" churches are a "bad idea"! He says they are started for the wrong reason - space. (@ the New Church Leadership Institute in Richmond, Nov. 11, 2009)

Why would anything built to make room for the current congregation last beyond a few years? Answer: They probably won't.

Now, what about the Internet Church?

This year our Christmas theme is about wrapped up - truly amazing, but very close to our "go" moment in getting promotional stuff done. Yikes! I'm excited about the "big idea" this year because it scratches that itch for getting close to God. I've decided to call the 5 week series, "Christmas: Sacred Steps." Knowing that the feel needs to give that "peaceful, centered" kind of pull, I've been thinking.

Oh, and this will be our "Advent" series, but since a lot of people don't know what "advent" means I'll use the word "Christmas" instead.

I look at other graphic sites for spunnky fodder in the old fun tank of type and graphic combos. I want to share with you some great, free sites if you don't have them in your bookmarks.

Here's where I went for my Christmas idea: openresources.org. The guy who keeps this up is out of Fellowship Community Church, Fairfax, VA and his heart is big to share multiple formats of resources for free! I'm taking one of his ideas, called him up and asked for permission to tweak it some and I'll share it when it's done. This is the idea I'm using.

The other great place to get ideas: open.lifechurch.tv/. Now they also have ideas on content, not just graphics.

May God bless your Christmas/Advent ideas.

I noticed a comment on one article and I thought: "Nah, it couldn't be that easy!"

It is THAT easy.

Here's the comment:

5. jimbabwe says January 15th, 2008 at 5:19 pm

A far easier solution is to use fireworks.

Open your image with a transparency in fireworks. In the top right corner with the color wheel choose PNG 8. Then choose alpha transparency(as opposed to no transparency). Then file->export the image as a png file.

What will happen is browsers that don’t support that alpha transparency will operate like index transparency while browsers that do will render the image with the alpha transparency giving you a nice soft edge.

Two of the sites i’ve done it for work are santashotline.com and santaclaus.net. In both examples check out the logos on ie6 or older and on an alpha mask supporting browser.

Enjoy! -- From Cross Browser Transparency

It's what I used to get the transparency on images at timboone.com.