Coming soon to a BlackBerry near you (in the US, Canada and UK): BlackBerry App World. Wanting to capitalize on the popularity of Apple’s iPhone App Store, Blackberry has decided to finally roll out a store of their own that runs on the device itself.
Currently, RIM is seeking developers to submit their applications to their store. The submission process looks fairly standard and I’m sure they’ll follow some of the same content rules that Apple does with the iPhone; so don’t expect any jiggling body parts to appear on your BB any time soon (at least not through RIM’s official channels).
Theme designers are left out for now but I’m sure they’ll be able to jump on the bandwagon as well.
Pricing seems very standard. Currently there are nine pricing tiers ranging from free to $9.99 and up. These are just proposed right now and may change. USD, CDN, GBP & EUR are all accepted. Monies will be handled through PayPal so you’ll need an account to complete the transaction as a purchaser or seller.
To begin with, only English will be supported but there are plans to support French, Spanish, Italian and German.
System requirements are as follows:
- BlackBerry smartphone operating system 4.2
or higher
- BlackBerry smartphones with trackballs or SurePress™ touch screen
All of you folks out there with the old scroll-wheel Blackberries, it might be time to upgrade anyway.
This week I talk a little bit about whether or not a church or ministry should allow comments on their website. I also give a brief “state of the podcast” announcement regarding some programming changes. I also played a comment from Taylor Kent, The Snarky Avenger.
Twitterbacks.com offers some really nice, free Twitter backgrounds. If you’d rather create your own you can use this nifty template that utilizes PowerPoint.
Promo played was for Nobody’s Listening.
Feel free to leave comments or send feedback to geek{at}jesusgeek{dot}info. Don’t forget that the comment line is back! Call 518-290-0228 to leave a comment.
Jesus Geek is a weekly Christian technology podcast with news, how-tos and a little bit of spiritual know-how hosted by John Wilkerson. Jesus Geek is a member of the My Life Ministries Network: a community of ministries that views the everyday Christian life as a ministry and seeks to encourage Christians in their daily walk with Christ.
Jesus Geek is a member of the Tech Podcast Network; if it’s tech, it’s here. Jesus Geek is also a member of the Christian New Media Group and is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Sponsor: Try GotoAssist Express free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit www.GotoAssist.com/techpodcasts
Podcast: Play in new window
| Download (Duration: 23:08 — 21.2MB)
Designing websites for the iPhone can be difficult if you don’t own one and want to view how your website will look on the device. It gets even more difficult if you’re running Windows. That’s where Blackbaud Labs‘ iBBDemo comes in.
iBBDemo allows you to browse websites in a simulated iPhone environment on your desktop. You do have to have Apple’s Safari browser installed but with this excellent little tool you can check out how your website will look to iPhone users.
Another good use of this simulator is for presentations. Screen shots are nice, but if you can actually show someone what a website looks like on the iPhone and navigate through it, you’ll make a much better impact.
So how is all of this done? I’ll let Shaun tell you:
iBBDemo correctly renders Webkit targeted html including the custom -webkit CSS extenstions, effectively giving us a compelling demo/test platform for iPhone Web content from the comfort of a Windows desktop (Note, I have only tested on Vista).
Shaun has also provided a nifty screencast for those of you who’d like to see how this works before downloading it.
I’m impressed. Shaun has done a great job here and saved me from having to ask my friends on Twitter to have a look at my site and send me a screen shot.
This week I interview Micah Webner of Free Mission Websites about the great work they’re doing to get some awesome websites in the hands of missionaries.
FreeMissionWebsites.com is a group of technology-loving, mission-passionate, highly-skilled, followers of Christ who donate their time, energy, and talents to get people just to get your mission online with a modern website.
Feel free to leave comments or send feedback to geek{at}jesusgeek{dot}info. Don’t forget that the comment line is back! Call 518-290-0228 to leave a comment.
Jesus Geek is a weekly Christian technology podcast with news, how-tos and a little bit of spiritual know-how hosted by John Wilkerson. Jesus Geek is a member of the My Life Ministries Network: a community of ministries that views the everyday Christian life as a ministry and seeks to encourage Christians in their daily walk with Christ.
Jesus Geek is a member of the Tech Podcast Network; if it’s tech, it’s here. Jesus Geek is also a member of the Christian New Media Group and is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Sponsor: Try GotoAssist Express free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit www.GotoAssist.com/techpodcasts
Podcast: Play in new window
| Download (Duration: 36:45 — 33.7MB)
I’m straying a little from the WordPress theme to talk about social media. What is social media? Wikipedia defines social media as “information content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies that is intended to facilitate communications, influence and interaction with peers and with public audiences, typically via the Internet and mobile communications networks.” All that to say it’s a way to build community and interact with people through your website.
Blogs, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, podcasts, Twitter; these are all forms of social media. Knowing which ones to utilize are important to getting out the message of your church or ministry.
NOTE: Additional show notes will be added here later.
Feel free to leave comments or send feedback to geek{at}jesusgeek{dot}info. Don’t forget that the comment line is back! Call 518-290-0228 to leave a comment.
Jesus Geek is a weekly Christian technology podcast with news, how-tos and a little bit of spiritual know-how hosted by John Wilkerson. Jesus Geek is a member of the My Life Ministries Network: a community of ministries that views the everyday Christian life as a ministry and seeks to encourage Christians in their daily walk with Christ.
Jesus Geek is a member of the Tech Podcast Network; if it’s tech, it’s here. Jesus Geek is also a member of the Christian New Media Group and is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Sponsor: Try GotoAssist Express free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit www.GotoAssist.com/techpodcasts
Podcast: Play in new window
| Download (Duration: 20:06 — 18.4MB)
My good buddies over at Geeks & God were recently mentioned on NPR’s All Things Considered in a story about churches using technology and social media.
While they weren’t feature for very long, Bob Christenson (Rob Feature) revealed that their podcast was chosen because of their audio quality. This goes to show you that audio quality is important and as “new media” goes mainstream (we really do want that to happen, folks) production quality is becoming more important.
On the blog entry for the show, Omar Gallaga indicated that their podcast was “well produced and slick” emphasizing that we as podcasters need to step it up if we want the rest of the world to take notice.
What are you and your church doing to improve the quality of your work? Want the world to take notice? Step up and put out a great product.
Categories: Blog Post Tags: all, considered, geeks, god, media, nation, npr, public, radio, social, tech, things
