Contagious Media

What is the best way to spread an idea or trend? I was talking a friend about communications tools which would be useful to home church community and how to get the message out.

I'm looking for web sites on tools on spreading a message or communcations tools which would be useful for home churches.

http://www.contagiousmedia.org/

Site which brags about serveral projects they've started which have received national attention.

Tipping Point Book How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Book about the spread of absolutely anything. I read this book around Christmas I'll need to do a book summary here.

forwardtrack

From the site ...

ForwardTrack is a new system created by Eyebeam R&D (redeveloped with the assist from Stamen Design) designed to promote on-line activism. The system tracks and maps the diffusion of email forwards, political calls-to-action, and online petitions. It can trace email forwards, map the impact of blogs, and facilitate web-based sign-ups and social networking. Our goal is to help people understand decentralized networks and see the power of "6 degrees of separation." ForwardTrack technology helps prove that one person can make a difference.

Book Review/Summary: Blink

Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
http://www.gladwell.com/blink/index.html

This is a book about the relatively new field of psychology called rapid cognition. The psychology of first impressions, or what happens in the first few seconds you are experience someone or something new. It is a very interesting and well written book. It teaches that first impression often can be trusted and often under certain circumstance make for BETTER decisions than long drawn out decision with more information. How can that be true? This book describes an event where an art collector buys a statue for millions after months of examination by scientists, and is told by an art expert who looks at it for a few seconds that it is a fake. How did he know it was a fake? He didn't know at the time it just looked too "fresh". Its true under these circumstances

1. Only relevant data is used - consciously or unconsciously you know what to look for
2. Additional information ignored - You don't allow extra, related but irrelevant information to bias your decision no matter how much that information seems to point in a certain direction. Example the quickest and most accurate formula for diagnosing whether someone is having a heart attack in triage situation does not involve weight, age, or sex.
3. Don't fall back on stereo types - warren Harding became president because he looked like he would make a good president, tall, dark. According to historians was one of the worse presidents in American history.
   
4. Correct circumstances- The Pepsi Challenge - Pepsi wins a Sip Test, Coke wins if a whole can is drank. Which is more relevant to what consumers continue to purchase?
   
5. Not under too much stress- At high heart rates cognitive abilities break down. Training can reduce stress.
6. Not Rushed

Other interesting tidbits

• How a doctor treats his patients is the best predictor of malpractice law suits, how good a doctor is almost irrelevant.
• People with Autism can't do mind reading, i.e. reading faces and body language
• IAT Tests which test how fast you make associations. The most interesting is race https://implicit.harvard.edu/. Most blacks and whites test to being able to more easily associate whites with positive things than blacks. Unless the person is primed first with thoughts of positive black role models such as Martin Luther King.
• People will pay more for ice cream in round containers because they believe it "tastes" better.
• People will pay 10 cents more for a can because a picture of parsley on the label makes it "taste" fresher.
  
• Taking surveys - Asking questions in areas where consumers don't usually think will "lead the witness" into second guessing their first impressions and often invalidate the results.
• Putting a map and store hours on a flyer may help a person figure out their schedule and when and where they will be during the event. This can increase attendance.
  
• People confuse something completely new and different as something they do not like
• The music industry because of its market testing methods is inherently biased against anything new and different
  
• The Pepsi Challenge - Pepsi wins in sip tests, Coke when a person drinks a whole can
  
• During WW II radio operators could recognize and track troop movements by German troops by recognizing the "fingerprint" or style of particular German Morse code operators.
• Improv comedy uses the rule of agreement. If you start a story and a person poses the question always answer yes, to keep the story going

reblogging

From my earlier post ultimate small group collaboration

Blog aggregator - A one page view of the latest blog entry of every member of the group (or just leadership)Ability to add approvals to blog aggregator. Did someone write an interesting blog you think everyone would be interested in? Approve the blog entry for publication onto the main site. Allow comments on the blog entries.

I knew someone must have developed this. From the site http://www.reblog.org/

What is a reBlog?
A reBlog facilitates the process of filtering and republishing relevant content from many RSS feeds. reBloggers subscribe to their favorite feeds, preview the content, and select their favorite posts. These posts are automatically published through their favorite blogging software.

Why should you reBlog?
reBlogs are useful to individuals who want to maintain a weblog but prefer curating content to writing original posts. They can also enable organizations to tap the contributions of their employees, members, and communities-at-large in order to easily redistribute relevant content.

Book Review: Delivered from Distraction

Book Review/Summary I'm reading lots of books so you don't have to.

I'm going to start writing more book reviews as I finish books and touch on the highlights and hopefully point out some interesting books for others to read. As my friends will quickly point out reading for me = audio books ;-)

Delivered from Distraction: Getting the most out of life with Attention Deficit Disorder by Edward M. Hallowell, M.D. and John J. Ratey, M.D.

WARNING: I am not a doctor so never take my advice on anything, ever. Even when I claim to be quoting or summarizing someone else.

It is a very interesting book about living with ADD as a child or adult. I'm writing this summary to note the highlights and show some of the helpful tips in the book if you have trouble being distracted on a regular basis. I would recommend it for anyone interested in learning about ADD to help yourself or others in your life. It touches on lots of differences between ADD and related disorders/personality traits. It also touches on the importance of diet/exercise and feeling connected to others and society.

Foods to help treat ADD

• Vitamin C
• Vitamin B12/Folic Acid
• Vitamin E/Selenium
• Blue Berries/Grape Seed Extract - anti-oxidants
• Super Blue Green Algae
• Lots of water
• Omega 3 Fatty Acids

Vitamin's A,D,E,K are fat soluable, build up in the body and can become toxic if you take too much.

Life Tips for the ADD'er

• Marry the right the person - someone who loves you for who you are
  
• Find the right job
• Keep a basket near the door for keeping car keys
  
• Don't expect perfection
• Attack piles of clutter slowly if needed
  
• Buy lots of waste baskets and trash cans
• Do what you are good at
• Pay attention to diet
• Find someone to encourage (coach) you to finish tasks/jobs
• Delegate
• Don't stop doing what worked before
• Don't repeat the same failed strategy
• Listen to others you trust - often
• Don't trust everyone
• Progressive Alarm Clock to slowly wakeup
  
• Watch a little mindless TV
• Get Exercise
• Learn to listen to books on tape while driving
• celebrate victories
• set up reminders, notes, calendars
• Put positive reminders where where you will see them
• get a figit toy
• know yourself

Other helpful tips

• Physical exercise
• Cerabeller stimulation - special exercises which stimulate the cerebellum
• Juggling
• Balancing on a balance board
• others ...

Additional book recommended by the author - Art of Living Book by an ancient Greek philosopher on being happy

Google's Toys

I thought I would show what tools Google has in the works for each of the items listed in my previous post.

• Mailing Lists - Google Groups
• Blogs - blogger.com
• Calendar - CL2 - Secret Beta Project at Google Document Leaks
• Wiki - No known google project but a google web page editor for personal web pages
• Document Repository - No known Google project exactly but possibly gdrive.
• Collaborative Editing of Documents - Google recently purchased writely
• Portal - Google has personal portal, but no public ones, and a web page editor in the future but nothing like this.

Ultimate Small Group Collaboration Site

I've been reading a lot about Googles upcoming projects and it started me thinking. What would be the ultimate small group web site? What tools would it have for communication with its membership?

Goals:

• Communication of up coming events
• Christian Fellowship though out the week
• Keep in touch with members of the group no longer living in the vicinity
• Encourage Christian's over the web who don't have similar Christian groups in their own communities.
• Ease of administration of the site
• collaborative editing by the membership
  

Tools:

• Mailing Lists
• Announce List
• Discussion List(s)

• Blogs of all interested members or friends of the membership
• Purpose: Make friends, Live by example, & Give encouragement
  
• publicly viewable Calendar
• Access Control which allows any member of leadership to alter
• Ability for non-leadership to create a calendar entry on the page and have it sent to leadership for approval
• Auto publish on approval
  
• CalDav feed of the calendar so members can subscribe to calendar and import into their own calendars.
• Import/overlay of other CALDAV feeds. For example an overlay of the whole church calendar.
• Changes to the calendar can provide emails to one of the mailing lists mentioned above or to email of addresses of individual subscribers
  
• Wiki - group editable web pages with built in workflow to allow any member to edit but approvals must come from leadership before the page is actually changed
• Purpose: Project pages/sub ministries for example a Evangelism guide page, or a Ministries leaders guide which anyone can propose editing or adding to
  
• Document Repository
• What form did we use for last years ski trip? What did the flyers look like?
  
• Version Tracking - What did last years mission statement look like? What was our old Logo
• Ability to display as HTML or PDF no matter what the original document type
• Collaborative Editing of Documents
  
• Change tracking - for example a person writes a new ministry statement for the group. All of the leaders see it, one person makes a change, then the original author has the right to accept the change or reject it.
• Publish to Document Repository on acceptance
  
• Portal - Bring all of the above together under a few master pages (could be a wiki itself)
  
• Blog aggregator - A one page view of the latest blog entry of every member of the group (or just leadership)
• Ability to add approvals to blog aggregator. Did someone write an interesting blog you think everyone would be interested in? Approve the blog entry for publication onto the main site.
  
• Allow comments on the blog entries
  
• Display current document from the from the document repository for certain areas of the template. For example if the mission statement was changed in the document repository and marked as "released" then it would appear changed on the main web page.
  
• Links to various wiki pages
  
• Links section for outside pages
  
• Links into the document repository. For word document approval forms or other documents which don't lead themselves to publishing as HTML. (like Ski trip approval forms).
  
• Aggregate other RSS feeds - For example Church news, Answers in Genesis Articles, etc.
• Provide the page itself as an RSS Feed so people can subscribe to it.
• View of upcoming events which automatically updates itself with information from the calendar.
  

ahh ... sleep or how to be an early riser

How to be an Early Riser and How to be an Early Riser II
both by Steve Pavlina

Articles on how to get up early and not feel tired.

Summary

1. Go to bed when you are tired not a set schedule (but the writer claims it will happen within a 1-3 hour span every day anyway.)
2. Get up the same time every day 7 days a week
3. Don't use the snooze alarm - get up!
   
4. Don't use caffeine
5. Prepare for bed by reading or doing something relaxing rather than something active
   
6. Some people suggest not getting into bed until you you are tired enough to sleep within a couple of minutes
7. Try it for 30 days to make it a habit.
   

Extra suggestions from article comments

1. Drink special teas which help you sleep
2. There may be an optimal time for eating before sleeping - not sure what time that is or if it depends on whether you eat meat or are a vegan like the author

The articles suggest that letting your body choose how much sleep it gets, may actually reduce the amount of time you sleep, giving you more free time.

Time Management

I've been looking for a way to track of projects at work and home. Traditional paper todo lists get too long and then it gets easy to miss things or the long list itself just appears overwhelming. Additionally, when I become stressed its tough to figure out the best thing for me to be working on "right now" when so many tasks need done and I end up switching back and forth between multiple tasks without accomplishing much.

I started reading this book:

Getting Things Done by David Allen

Its an interesting book about lists and organization but I've put off finishing it for about 3-4 months now. It is as expected very slow and dull and requires a fair amount of concentration to figure out how it applies to me and what I have going on.

I'm going to try out a software program called life balance. It sounds what I've been looking for. It has a windows and palm OS version which sync up. Additionally, it syncs with the PalmOS calendar so it should indirectly sync with MS outlook. It's description suggests it should give me what I was asking for a todo list which shows what I should be doing "right now". You create projects and their associated tasks. If tasks must be done in order then it only shows you the tasks which you need to work on first. Additionally, it has the concept of places. Meaning you can have todo lists which only apply to Home, work, work trips, grocery store, vacations, shopping, church etc. Then you change the view of the todo list to match where you are. I'm going to play with the free trial and then write a review of it here.

Name Calling

Nothing worse has been said of you then has been said by God -- He has called you a sinner, and nothing better has been said of you then has been said by God -- He has called you his child.

-Some guy (Dr. Terry Mortenson) on a video I just watched (Millions of years: Where did the idea come from?) quoting an unnamed guy he heard once

Small Group Leadership Resources

I'm researching small group leadership. Here are a few resources which I'm examining

Willow Creek Small Group Leadership Site what a leader is and tools for being a leader.

Making Small Groups Work by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend

Really interesting book. I'm about 1/2 way through. It takes about small groups in a way I'd never heard of before. As a type of Christian support group, which encourages and keeps people accountable to their faith. I didn't believe the small group I was in was ready (or would even desire) to do anything like this but I was really surprised. We had one Bible lesson similar in philosophy to this book and people really responded positively. The leaders of the group said that they interested and willing to provide more opportunities for spiritual growth within the group.

One sided arguments

Rarely, do I ever hear a non-one sided argument, That's why I've started to believe the only way you can get the "truth" is to listen to both sides and then make up my own mind. After all when is the last time you saw an article which wants to "prove" something ever touch on points that it can't explain? Also, when is the last time you read a article on a topic you where new to where you didn't come out convinced the author was correct? Now, read an article from an author with the complete opposite view, or a critique of the original view. What do you believe now? Usually I just end up confused and realize I don't know enough about the topic from reading just two articles and start researching further.

The other reason I believe this study method is so important is evangelism. I don't believe I can defend my position on any thing without understanding the arguments of those with opposing views. Not, just superficially studying what others I agree with have to say about the views of the other party, but actually listening to those who disagree explain their views in their own words. I found it really hurts my arguments when I find myself arguing against a simplified version of the argument of my opponent is using and it turns out to not be what they actually believe. Or sometimes my simplification of their argument may be correct, but since I'd never heard their actual side before I can't explain adequately why it is correct.

If any one in my (currently almost non-existent audience) knows of a good book on critical thinking, arguments and debate I'd be interested, especially if its an audio book.

Fasting

I've been speaking with (W) about fasting. He has been doing it off and on and is very exiting about explaining the benefits. He sent me this link http://www.freedomyou.com/fasting_book/juice%20fasting.htm about juice fasting. It's an interesting site explaining some of the religious and physical benefits of fasting. The part I find strange about this site and all alternative medicine/health information is that it they have their own vocabulary like removing "toxins" from the body? What exactly is a toxin any way? Do MD's ever use that word? Or are their medical articles on the benefits of fasting or is it all hearsay and the placebo effect? Even if it is just the placebo effect, does it matter?

Also, not this site specifically but other health books hate normal medicine, saying its just in the business of issuing prescription drugs and not regularly prescribing a special diet or exercise which is what often causes or allows illnesses to happen. From experience this characterization appears true, but health/home remedies often appears to be at the other end of the spectrum not requiring studies, or any statistically significant evidence to its claims. Not that it isn't helping people, and it may have even found several natural remedies which traditional science has not yet studied, I just take much of it with a grain of salt.

I'm interesting in fasting from a spiritual perspective, but as yet unconvinced of the health benefits. I'm going to do some more research on the topic.

Where was that email from?

I helped a friend (you know who you are ;-) track down a fraudelent email to an IP address in Nigeria. I always knew this was possible but never had the need to figure out how to do it before.

I found the gory details about reading email headers here.

http://www.stopspam.org/email/headers.html

But the short answer is to enable your email client to show all of the email headers. Start at the bottom of the headers and work your way upward. Email providers like yahoo and gmail and others include the ip address of the sender of the mail i.e. the address of the machine the user was located at when they sent the email.

X-Gmail-Received: 47a9d23e3cc0c5720f2a4f0291794d59cff5c209
Received: by 12.39.223.18 with HTTP; Thu, 2 Mar 2006 21:29:58 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2005 21:29:58 -0500
From: "John Doe"
To: John.Doe@gmail.com
Subject: testing
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline
Delivered-To: john.doe@gmail.com

Look for the last Received: by listing

Received: by 12.39.223.18 with HTTP; Thu, 2 Mar 2006 21:29:58 -0800 (PST)

In the example above the ip address of the sender is 12.39.223.18. (Note I made the IP address up for this example).

Now go to this site http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm?GetLocation and type in the ipaddress into the form.

Results in the right hand corner

Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Easy right?

TIP: If you have multiple emails where you are trying to track the sender get their ip address from each of the emails. If it differs you'll find that while the lookup will fail for one, it may work for one of the others.