I’ve had the pleasure of writing a few posts over at ChurchMag recently. You may have read my first one about using the iPhone earphones to improve audio quality in video recordings. Now I’ve had two more published, both about countdowns.

I’ve always loved using video countdowns in ministry. From youth groups to youth camps to Uni events, they’ve been great. And only a few months ago, I started my own countdown website, FreeHDCountdowns.com, which you’ve probably checked out by now. So I’ve developed a real passion for video countdowns.

Below are the two posts that I wrote for ChurchMag.

3 Compelling Reasons To Use Video Countdowns

I think that video countdowns, besides looking cool, actually can serve a lot of function when used properly. I wrote this post with three of those reasons in mind.

1. A video countdown gets people to sit down.
2. A video countdown commits you to a start time.
3. A video countdown builds anticipation.

I didn’t write a number 4, but if I were to give a fourth reason, I’d say because they look cool.

Check out the post at ChurchMag for explanations of the reasons.

3 Quality Sources For Free Video Countdowns

I’ll be the first to admit that this post was quite self promotional, as I did mention my site as the 3rd quality source. But besides my site, there are other great sources of quality free video countdowns. I reckon you could get about 20-30 good quality, free video countdowns from the three sites below.

1. freeCOUNTDOWNS.net
2. OpenResources.org
3. FreeHDCountdowns.com
4. Update: Check out historyofmotion.com for some more countdowns

So go over to ChurchMag and read my very short reviews of each of these site.

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Google+ finally jumped out of beta this week and became public, thus becoming the 3rd major social network along with Twitter and Facebook. I hadn’t hopped on Google+ before it went public, so I only got my account up and running last week. But even after a short period of time using it, I struggle to see how it will flourish in a market that is already dominated by two players. Admittedly Google already has a huge base of users, but I think they’re going to struggle to convince people to jump from using their existing social networks. Anyway, for discussions sake, I’ve decided to have a look at each social network, and see how they stack up against each other.Have a read and see if what I say is valid.

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Today I had the awesome privilege of writing my first guest post for ChurchMag. The piece is all about using the mic on your iPhone earphones to give better audio quality in videos, it’s titled “How-To Improve the Audio on iPhone Video Recordings“.

“How many times have you seen a video where you can barely hear what the person is saying because of the wind? Thankfully, the solution to your audio problem can be found in another device that you probably carry around with you, your earphones.”

Besides trying to convince you that the earphones are worth using as a mic, the post also has a video with an example of using the mic on the earphones, as well as 3 steps to help you do it youself.

I’ve really enjoyed having the opportunity to write for ChurchMag, and I’ve got some more posts for them hopefully coming up soon, so stay tuned for those. But for now I hope you’ll find these tips helpful.

So head over to ChurchMag now and check it out, and if you’re feeling special, post a comment and share it too.

This year I’ve been involved in organising the Sydney Uni Evangelical Union’s public meetings, specifically with deciding on the content of public meetings. This includes organising what happens before and after the talk, but not the talk itself. Such things as advertising and singing.

Each week during public meetings, we give everyone an opportunity to fill out “connect cards”, which are little cards that let us know if any newcomers want more information, or if anyone has a question. One issue with this time is that it often goes for longer than we wish it to, and when you only have 40-45 minutes for the whole meeting, every minute is important.

In order to solve this problem, I created a quick animation to play while people are filling in their connect cards, which will hopefully help people come back to the speaker more quickly. Check it out below.

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Recently Alice and I had a nice holiday, and on the plane I wanted to get some more work done on some youth talks for the weekend. This is how I set myself up.

I had my iPad with a bluetooth keyboard for writing, and my iPhone for browsing the Bible.

I took my iPad on the holiday mainly incase we wanted to watch some Big Bang Theory on a rainy day, but it was great to be able to do some writing so easily.

I love technology.

Hype, if you haven’t heard of it before, is a program for Macs that allows you to easily create HTML5 animations and embed them on your site (or create a whole site from scratch).

When I initially used Hype, it took me quite a while to learn how to embed my animation on my WordPress blog. I had to search through the Hype forums and look for the answers that would work for me. Since it didn’t seem too easy, I thought I would try to make an easy to watch tutorial on how to add a Hype animation to a WordPress site. Hope it’s helpful for you.

For those of you who want to read instead of watch, a written version of this tutorial is below.

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I am very excited today!

I really love countdowns, I think they’re a great way to build anticipation at the start of an event. This could be before a church service, before youth group starts, or best of all, at conferences.

There are a few websites from which you can download countdowns. But there aren’t many (besides this one) from which you can download high quality video countdowns for free. That’s where FreeHDCountdowns.com comes in.

FreeHDCountdowns.com is going to be a growing library of HD video countdowns that are completely free to use! Seriously. You can even head over there now to download some countdowns. And each week for the first 10 weeks, there will be a new countdown added! After that, there’ll be around 1 new countdown every month. So you should definitely subscribe to get each one sent directly to you.

I designed this website myself from scratch using the Standard Theme (affiliate link) as a base. I’m pretty proud of the site, and I’m excited to see where it goes.

If you would like to keep up to date with FreeHDCountdowns.com, then you can follow on Twitter @freehdcountdown.

I’m hoping that this website will be a great resource for many people for years to come.