Google Reader

After high school, the average person reads about 1 book per year, educated people read between 4 – 8 books per year and experts read around a book per month. Now I used to read a book every two months but now I have changed up my approach since the information I need has to be more current and readily available. Now I read blogs and ebooks, usually an ebook every month or two and I read blogs daily. Google Reader is how I am able to keep up with so much information and changing trends in technology. Ranging from online business to technology to digital ministry and everything in between, Google Reader is how I keep up and read any and everything.

Google Reader is an online software that takes RSS Feeds and lets you categorize them for reading. These RSS feeds come from websites and blogs that distribute them for people to subscribe to and receive notifications when they update their sites or post new content. Therefore, when I subscribe to a site like Techcrunch.com, every time they post a new article, my Google Reader is updated and I am able to read it immediately. Everyday, I receive around 1000 or so blog updates and I take an hour or two to read through many of them and stay current on all the latest and greatest in technology, digital ministry and online business.

Here is a screenshot of my Google Reader.

To setup your Google Reader go to Google.com/reader and login with you gmail account. If you don’t have a gmail account then create one.

Once it’s setup, you can add blogs or news readers to your site by clicking the “Add Subscription” button on the left-hand side of the screen. This will open a dialog box where you can input either search terms or the actual web address of sites you want to include in your RSS reader. Or you can click on the RSS icon on a website and if you are logged into your Google Reader, it will automatically be added.

Enjoy and stay educated and updated via Google Reader.

http://ichurchmethod.com/google-reader/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=google-reader

Introducing The iChurch Method Live

I have been testing and utilizing Google Hangouts on Air over the last few months and I believe the product is a game changer. I am always looking for new ways to use the service and I realized that with a macbook, HD webcam and a built-in mic, you can live stream any event. Well for the numerous events that I speak or teach at, I always have my macbook with me since I am training from it, and then the lightbulb moment occurred…I could stream all of my events live. And with that, The iChurch Method Live was born.

I have been teaching The iChurch Method classes (Phase 1) at The Potter’s Institute, a training division of The Potter’s House of Dallas, where I work as an Internet Church Developer. Last week I conducted a test where I used Google Hangouts on Air to stream my class live and record it. I wanted to make sure that it would work and that the audio would be good on my laptop. Well after conducting a test last week via a hidden link, I saw that the audio was video was good to go. So starting Tuesday September 18, I will broadcast my classes every Tuesday for the next 4 weeks until October 9, 2012. Then we will start another session of The iChurch Method classes, Phase II, from October 30, 2012 – December 11, 2012. Each session is five courses where I will teach from The iChurch Method book.

I will also live stream my speaking/training event, October 19, 2012 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Social Media and various dates of Google Hangouts in between. Tune in to http://www.ichurchmethod.com/live for dates on upcoming events and I look forward to your comments and participation. We are very excited about this new venture.

http://ichurchmethod.com/introducing-the-ichurch-method-live/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=introducing-the-ichurch-method-live

Make sure to use Google Alerts

Google Alerts is by far one of the best google services available. I have been using it for about a year now and believe that all businesses, companies, ministries and churches should use it to monitor their brands. There’s no reason to continue Googling yourself, your business or your ministry, you can now just setup a Google alert and anytime your brand is mentioned online, you will receive an alert/email.

Here’s how it works:

Go go http://www.google.com/alerts
For Search query: Type in the name of your business or church or the phrase that you want to monitor
For Result Type: Choose Everything
For How often: Choose how often you want to be alerted (once a day is good)
For How many: Choose only the best results
Deliver to: Input your email address

Finally, click on the red “Create Alert” button and you will be taken to your alerts page where you can see and manage all your alerts. I currently manage all my brands, my name and my books and find this tool to be extremely useful.

For example, I just found out that a college was using The iChurch Method in their 2013 curriculum. Thanks Google Alerts!!

http://ichurchmethod.com/google-alerts/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=google-alerts