Geeks and God Podcast

When it comes to bible software Logos is considered by many to be the choice. For two decades their software only ran on Windows and that was enough to keep many people from switching to a Mac. Last year they released a Mac version of their popular software and this week we review it. The fun with Logos doesn't stop there. Rob talks about speaking and attending the BibleTech09 conference, put on by Logos, and we have an interview with Logos founder and President Bob Pritchett.

Listener feedback is one of the elements to the Geeks and God community we love the most. The podcasts listeners have so many great things of their own to share. We had so much good listener feedback we decided to turn it into this special edition episode. If you have something to share with us please give us a call at (206) 984-3694 or send us a email at geeksandgod at gmail dot com.

On this week's podcast which was recorded at the Bibletech 2009 Conference, Rob is joined by Gabe Taviano from the God's Mac podcast. We start by talking all about the work that Gabe is doing in the realm of Christian tech, including a focus on his new meetups called Digital Disciples. After that we talk about the role of technology in our lives as believers. read more

Web services are powering the next generation of popular and useful Internet tools. When you think of twitter in an Adobe AIR app, Facebook on an iPhone, or reading blogs though Google Reader you're thinking of API's in action. This week we dive into the world of web service APIs, what they are, and how developers can take advantage of them. This is where they web is going, are you on board?

Facebook is all the rage in our culture. Facebook usage seems to be jumping in leaps and bounds. With its popularity is it a place your church should be active? If you church decides to setup a presence on Facebook how should it do that? In this weeks episode we try to help you answer these questions while talking about statistics, culture, and the technology powering these solutions.

For the past few weeks we have been on the Geeks World Tour. Well, it didn't really cover the world but, we did rack up thousands of airline miles. In this tour we covered 2 conferences that each had a unique vibe and atmosphere. The first was the Interactive Church Conference where we focused on talking to church leaders about technology. The second was drupalcon dc which is the drupal developer conference. This week we talked about what we learned, the importance of Christians being at secular conferences, and where we are taking the Geeks and God Conferences from here.

Let's face it, the world is going mobile. While there are hundreds of millions of people with broadband internet there are billions of people with mobile phones. As mobile phones get high speed internet and people start to use it more the number of people who access high speed internet on mobile phones is expected to pass the number of people who access it from a desktop. The world is going mobile. This means mobile phones are really important to churches. In this episode we start the conversation about mobile devices and church websites.

Have you ever wondered what makes a good website theme? Ever wondered what makes a module or plugin good? How about what makes a good site architecture? In the episode we attempt to describe what makes these good solid designs. The things we talk about are things anyone can do. They aren't some special technique or secret knowledge that only the elite of web development know.

Are you ready to learn some of our drupal building secrets? In this episode we dive into the drupal 6 modules we use and provide some recipes for how we combine and configure them to create the features we build into sites. Or, you can think of this as Rob giving away a bunch of his drupaly secrets. Before we dive into this fun topic we talk about Free Mission Websites, a new Geeks and God community initiative to help missionaries with their web presence. This isn't just the Rob and Matt working on another project. This is something that every member of the community can get involved with. Curious how you can help? Head on over to ##########.com and find out. Edit 12-Apr-2011 by micah: Link removed because the Free Missionary Website Project mentioned in this post no longer exists, and the domain name was taken by people with less than honorable intentions. read more

This week on the podcast we hack your iPod and force you to listen to an episode about Security. After seeing way too many websites and web servers become compromised this year, Rob and Matt decide to tackle the basics of what you can do to keep your site and server secure. We talk about generating, storing, and remembering passwords, locking down your server environment, keeping your website up on it's security releases and finally what to do if you get hacked. read more

Communication is a cornerstone to a successful ministry. No where is this more apparent than in tech related ministry where geeks and leadership staff have to communicate well to be successful. In this weeks episode we look at communication between tech teams and leadership staff, talk about some of the pitfalls, and dive into how we can do it well.

Have you ever wondered what pieces of technology you can't live without? We were recently asked this question and decided to dive into the topic. In this episode we talk about the tech we can't live without, what tech we wish we could live without but can't, and more. We want to know what technology you can't live without and what technology you wish you could live without. We shared ours and now we would love to know what you think. Please let us know in the comments to this episode.

Have you ever seen a tech project go up in flames? I'm not talking about an exploding server but when a whole project simply fails. We've experienced failure and watched train wrecks happen on projects over the years. In this episode we dig into different causes we've seen for tech projects to fail. Our intention isn't share train wreck stories to but share the failures we know of so you can learn from them. Oh, and did we mention, there are two free drupal theme training seminars coming up? One in New York and one in Metro Detroit? Details in this episode.

Ever wondered how DNS works? If you don't know what DNS is you're not alone. It's one of the important keys to making the Internet work. Without it you wouldn't be able to type geeksandgod.com into your browser and get here. In this weeks episode we talk about what DNS is and some different ways it touches churches and ministries.

Are you ready for a controversial topic? One you could possibly disagree with. If so, fasten your seat belts and prepare to dive into the Whiz-Bang factor. In this episode we dive into the topic of church marketing, how it compares to communication, and where that hits on technology. Marketing and technology seem to be two of the hot topics of the day and have a rather large intersection church. In this episode we dissect that intersection. read more