Your church website viewed on a Wii

Last week we acquired a Nintendo Wii and connected to our wireless home network (it was surprisingly easy to do). And since then we have been using to the Internet Channel (powered by Opera) for ‘incidental surfing’. Such as checking the cricket score, tv-guide etc. rather than booting up the PC. It works fantastically (here is a press release and more info from Opera).

Then we looked at the church website to see if that worked and it looked fine. However there were two problems;

• PDF files: PDF files cannot be viewed at present, so the weekly bulletins can only be viewed as HTML (if available). This follows the suggestion in the comments to a previous post that having an HTML version is essential, not optional.
• eBible plugin: this plugin does not work, the ‘pop-up’ is permanently open, making other text unreadable. (The comments to the plugin post on eBible.com are closed however, so I’ll have to find another way to report the problem).

It might be hard to imagine someone sitting on their settee on a Saturday afternoon looking for a church, but just in case, it is worth checking that your church’s website is accessible and readable on a Wii.

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Previously: Changing your web viewing glasses

Bible verse plugin for wordpress

A WordPress plugin has been released to bring bible verses in blog posts to life, by linking them to eBible.com and also showing the verse as a ‘tooltip’ via the title tag.

There is a demo blog which shows the plugin in action.

Like other plugins, you drop it into the wordpress plugin folder, but before it works you need to complete the options screen. Most importantly is the eBible.com API key that you need. You can get a free one here.

Google maps on your church website

I have finally got round to embedding a google map of the location of the church on our church website. This is a much better solution than just scanning a map from a roadatlas and uploading it (which breaks copyright law) or linking visitors to external sites, which may mean you lose those visitors.

I used the wordpress plugin called GeoPress. It is simple to set up once you have signed into Google and obtained an API key (Google Maps API registration). (Note: enter your blog url as the GoogleMaps URL).

Then you can add maps to any posts or pages, but most importantly for church website, to the map and directions page.

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Related: Easy Google maps embeded on your church website, without the need to use a WordPress plugin.

User stats for your church website

The WordPress.com state package is now available for all wordpress blogs as a plugin. And the stats that are collected are displayed in the same place as the WordPress.com blog(s) that you have. You can get the plugin from WordPress.org

WordPress.com statistics are certainly not as sophisticated as some packages (such as Google Analytics), but they are easy and quick to understand. Also, it will not interfere with other statistics packages, such as Mint, Google Analytics, and Statcounter.

And for people like me with a church website on WordPress.org and another blog (this blog) on WordPress.com, it is very convenient to have the statistics in the same place.

Tax justice and poverty

Several Christian organisations have called on the government to reform the tax system, to ensure the so-called ’super-rich’ pay a fair amount of tax.

Non-dom status allows the wealthy to legally escape paying tax on earnings abroad. It is thought Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is concerned at how tax breaks enjoyed by an elite group run contrary to a social justice agenda.

I whole-heartedly support this and I don’t think enough Christians in positions of power and influence are speaking up on this issue.

Found via: Ekklesia

Cigarettes or Bibles?

It might not seem like a usual choice, but apparently because of the similarity between cigarette papers and the pages of bibles, the same machines produce both. Therefore machines originally produced to make pages for bibles are being switched to meet demand for cigarettes.

There are at least two good reasons to stop smoking. Number one: It may [sic] damage your health. Number two: It raises the production costs for bibles, ASSIST News Service reports. The Chinese craving for cigarettes is responsible for rising paper costs in bible printing, according to the business manager of the German Bible Society, Felix Breidenstein. Because of the rising demand for cigarette paper in China the special thin paper used in bible printing is getting more expensive, as Breidenstein told the German news magazine Der Spiegel. The German Bible Society sells approximately 400,000 bibles per year.

Found via: ESV Bible Blog

Loans to third world entrepreneurs

Kiva.org is organisation set up to facilitate micro financing of in the developing world as in general it is too expensive for banks to lend such small amounts. Anyone, using a credit card can choose a businessperson listed on their site to lend money to. Then updates are given regularly as to how they are getting on and loans are usually refunded in 6-12 months.

Of course, that leads to many questions, such as ‘what is the risk, and will I get my money back?’ And ‘how can I be sure a middleman won’t take advantage?’ Fortunately there is a detailed FAQ, and these questions are answered:

• Will I get my money back?
• Do I get interest on my loan?
• How are entrepreneurs chosen?

Basically, you don’t get interest and from this year Kiva will charge a 2% fee to the field partners and the field partners charge interest to the business person (something more that 2%, but we are assured it won’t be exorbitant). And they do at least list out the field partners. Also the feedback is through the field partners, rather than the entrepreneurs.

One question that is not answered relates to exchange rates. Some of the countries will have a fixed exchange rate to USD, but that isn’t the case for all the places money can be lent to. Inflation could impact the chance of repayment, no matter how successful the enterprise has been.

They say 100% of all monies lent has been returned to date, and suggest that instead of giving all the money you are lending to on entrepreneur, you could spread it out to many (in different countries) to diversify the risk.

I think it is a fascinating idea, and with the field partners they have the network in place to make it work. I think I will look into this further.

Found via: Sally’s journey