My primary Christmas gift this past year was an Apple TV, a small box that plugs into a high-definition television (HDTV) and lets you stream your own content (video, family photographs, and anything in your iTune library) from any computer on your home network or use the internet to watch YouTube, audio and video podcasts, and access downloadable movies for sale or rent through your iTunes account. Interestingly, I’ve never been much of a television-watcher, but my wife thinks I’ve become absolutely obsessed with the new HDTV and the Apple TV device. There’s just so much to watch and explore, especially podcasts and YouTube videos!

So imagine my surprise when I discovered that Amazon just announced a $99.00 digital video player from Roku that offers very similar performance and gives you wireless access to 40,000 video titles from their massive online library. This looks really cool at a price that just kills AppleTV’s $229.00 box. Since a lot of Amazon’s library is only available to U.S. residents, I’m wondering if the Roku player will be sold internationally. By the way, Apple’s iTunes claims to have “thousands of movies available for purchase,” but I seriously doubt their inflated estimates: I would put it in the hundreds, not thousands.

If anyone gets their hands on one of these units, I would love to hear what you think about it. It plays in high definition and, according to the ad copy, it works on older analog televisions, which is something Apple doesn’t offer (most people don’t realize this until they get their Apple TV home, like me).

The good people at MacUpdate have put together one of the most incredible “Back to School” bundles of software, worth $621.45 for a special price of $49.95—but you can only get this amazing offer until midnight Eastern Standard Time. That’s fifteen hours away! You can read more about it at MacUpdatePromo, but if you have a Macintosh computer I wouldn’t wait too long. Even if you don’t have a Mac or you already own some/most of the software featured in this bundle, if would also make a great Christmas gift for someone you know.

I would have purchased this bundle just to get Bookends (a great bibliographic utility) and Mellel (one of the best-rated Mac word processors) alone; however, I now have eight other really cool applications. The last two have only recently been “unlocked” or added to the line-up, so this is a really sweet deal: it works out to 92% off the current price if purchased individually.

Where are all the geniuses when you need them? Apple Computer puts enough confidence in their technical support personnel to set up a Genuis Bar in every company store, saying “Our Geniuses will answer all your technical questions, troubleshoot problems, and explain it all in language that’s easy to understand.” That’s quite a big claim and not many organizations would be willing to put something like that in writing. Read more

This past Sunday in Wales, a group of elders gathered at their church building to pray. The ancient stone chapel had been without heating since a group of construction workers shut off the gas supply to the building earlier in the week, then forgot to turn it back on for the weekend. It was judged to be too cold for the morning worship service—scheduled two hours later—so the local telephone lines began blazing with elders contacting members of the church leadership team, who contacted small group leaders, who contacted everyone within their house group. It was decided to meet at an older (and smaller, but warmer) chapel building nearby. I’m not sure if the elders got to pray or not.

Unfortunately, this change of venue caught a lot of people by surprise: especially the church’s musicians, sound engineers, computer operators and the preacher. His entire message was developed as a laptop-based, visually-oriented PowerPoint presentation. Upon arrival at the old building, it was abuzz with people frantically running wires and junction boxes and speakers and a massive sound board so that the keyboard, instruments, singers, and the preacher could be heard in a room that only measured eighteen hundred square feet.

Some of the greatest movements of God happened long before the discovery of electricity, much less the arrival of computer geniuses like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. While I certainly don’t advocate wearing camel’s hair and eating wild locusts and honey, I have to wonder how many worship gatherings this coming Sunday would fall flat if some natural disaster shut down the national grids of electric power in megawatt-hungry church buildings around the globe. Thankfully, these sorts of things don’t happen with frequency, but on those rare occasions it makes one stop and think and ask a few questions:

1. Are we more sensitive to the loss of electricity than the presence of the Holy Spirit in our meetings?
2. Have we grown so accustomed to amplified music that we find it difficult to engage in true worship without it, whether it’s a pipe organ, a keyboard, or a five-piece band?
3. What impact does technology have in a mega-church? A small, rural church? A house church? What about a contemporary church versus a more traditional church?
4. How important is technology in attracting newcomers?
5. Are there inherent dangers in such an attraction, like using music, lighting, and sound to draw people into a “church” where unhealthy or even heretical teaching is being promulgated?

Just a few points to ponder.

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A number of months ago, I invested (just in case my wife reads this) in a Samson CO1U USB Studio Condenser Microphone so that I could begin recording podcasts on my PowerBook G4 laptop. I was running Tiger (Mac OS X v10.4) at the time and, although it recognized the mic as a USB device, the input volume was so low that it was virtually impossible to use out of the box. Imagine my disappointment in light of the glowing reports I had read on numerous podcasting blogs and websites: even professional sound technicians seemed to gush over it. After a little searching on the net, I learned that others were having similar difficulties and it appeared the solution lay in an auxiliary piece of proprietary software called SoftPre for the microphone. Read more

It's official. I'm on my way to Atlanta in just seven days! Hopefully, my non-stop Delta flight from London will get me there next Saturday afternoon, where I'll pick up an Alamo rental car and drive to Birmingham that evening. My dad and two of my sisters live there, and it's been sixteen months since we have seen each other. Every time I see my father, I realize it could be our last visit on this earth and it's always a bittersweet affair, because he's getting older and more frail as time goes along. When we left home for the UK nearly four years ago, I never dreamed my mom would become critically ill with spinal meningitis only eighteen months later and die after two weeks in a coma. None of us got to say our goodbyes: it happened so suddenly and unexpectedly. So every trip gets more precious to me now. Read more