These are great. I’m inspired to play with my food. And eat Oreos.
Images from IsleofIdeas.com and Ibelieveinadv.com.
Category: Communication
Cookietastic advert: Oreo snapshots of world history
Something about not working with animals springs to mind…
For some reason Robyn and I just spend too much time watching Karl Stefanovic clips on YouTube. The enfant terrible of Australian breakfast TV has a special sort of charm. Both of these made us laugh.
How to get more dropbox space in a slightly tricky fashion
So my recent Dropbox ad giveaway was pretty popular, and while I was scrounging around to see if I could get more free advertising dollars I came across this offer from Google. Because I work as a web and social media consultant (and I do), I could sign up to become a Google Engage Partner.
They give me a bunch of $75 vouchers. You set up a google adwords account (using a gmail address, and registering at google.com/adwords). I send you a voucher code. You build your own $75 ad campaign with your dropbox referral link.
We all win. Except me. But I get to give something away. First ten people who meet these criteria can have a code:
- Vouchers can only be used on new accounts opened in the last 14 days with a new billing address located in Australia or New Zealand.
- An AdWords account can use only one voucher.
PS email me to get the code, my address is floating around on the site somewhere. If you want to hire me as a consultant you can use that email address too. Though I’m currently fairly flat out.
Calvin on giving and taking offence
We’re reading Calvin in two subjects this year – which is nice and efficient. Anyway. I’ve been thinking about the nature of offending people online, and how it behoves a reader to be charitable in one’s interpretation of other’s words. While I understand that communication is a two way street, and the speaker (or writer) has some responsibility for how a hearer (or reader) will understand their words – I think you can only cater so much for this, and the reader has a responsibility to think about context, and other interpretive principles. Anyway. Here’s Calvin distinguishing between the types of readers (or hearers) one should care about offending.
“I will here make some observations on offenses, what distinctions are to be made between them, what kind are to be avoided and what disregarded. This will afterwards enable us to determine what scope there is for our liberty among men. We are pleased with the common division into offense given and offense taken, since it has the plain sanction of Scripture, and not improperly expresses what is meant. If from unseasonable levity or wantonness, or rashness, you do any thing out of order or not in its own place, by which the weak or unskillful are offended, it may be said that offense has been given by you, since the ground of offense is owing to your fault. And in general, offense is said to be given in any matter where the person from whom it has proceeded is in fault. Offense is said to be taken when a thing otherwise done, not wickedly or unseasonably, is made an occasion of offense from malevolence or some sinister feeling. For here offense was not given, but sinister interpreters ceaselessly take offense. By the former kind, the weak only, by the latter, the ill-tempered and Pharisaical are offended. Wherefore, we shall call the one the offense of the weak, the other the offense of Pharisees, and we will so temper the use of our liberty as to make it yield to the ignorance of weak brethren, but not to the austerity of Pharisees.”
From Book 3, Chapter 19.
Critical thinking for dummies
These introductions to critical thinking are, I think, an essential primer that all Christians seeking to engage in apologetics online, or in the real world, should watch – or at least be aware of…
I found them at Brain Pickings (my dad also emailed me the link – don’t know what he was trying to tell me…).
The sustainability of the word sustainable
Once upon a time, when I wrote media releases for a living, media releases about economic development projects in regional Queensland, I banned myself from using the word sustainable (it’s even in my blacklist). Words like sustainable function on a law of diminishing returns – and as XKCD points out – the use of the word sustainable is unsustainable.
Via XKCD.
How to get good media coverage for your ministry: Be alarmingly loving, for the purpose of being alarmingly loving
As I continue to think through the place of PR in Christian ministry I keep trying to find a balance between Matthew 6:1-4:
” 1 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
And 1 Peter 2:12…
“12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”
… John 13:34-35…
” 34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
… Philippians 2:1-4, 12-15
“1 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others… 12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.
14 Do everything without grumbling or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky “
I’m wary of prooftexting to justify a particular behaviour – but it seems to me that there’s a balance in the New Testament, which in some sense follows the model of “mission” I think operates in the Old, where the way Christians live, and particularly, the way they love others, is the basis of our testimony, or at least our being noticed as different, and getting a hearing for the gospel.
I think the tension in Matthew 6 is there, but as I think I’ve said elsewhere, what seems to be the focus in that passage is when you’re doing loving things just to be noticed. Just when the spotlight is on. Just for the goodwill. And just for your own reputation. It seems to me that if we’re doing loving things that are consistent with our character, and more importantly, consistent with the gospel, and consistent with considering others better than ourselves, then some sort of interaction with the media may be part of participating in the modern “public sphere.”
Part of my understanding of both the media, and the internet, is that it has in a sense supplanted the marketplace of Acts 17, where Paul took his preaching of the gospel. And participating in the media, or the marketplace, means having a story, and good public relations means this story should be something that is closely tied to the gospel.
There’s nothing more closely tied to the gospel than selfless sacrifice for the sake of others in response to the love of Jesus. It’s also very hard to criticise that sort of behaviour. This is a pretty long preamble to draw your attention to this incredible story published in the SMH’s weekend magazine, and reproduced online.
This is the kind of story that gets noticed.
It’s a fair bet that if Jesus Christ were around today, he’d be doing what the Owens are doing in Mount Druitt. They feed the poor and house the homeless. They lead the lost and counsel the conflicted.
Experts at unconditional love
They’re experts at unconditional love: alcoholic mums, runaway kids, petty thieves, everyone’s welcome at the Owens’ home, a four-bedroom brick house that for the past five years has been equal parts street kitchen and safe house, as well as a home for their daughters Kshama, 8, and Kiera, 7.
“The most we’ve had here is 13 people,” Jon says, showing me around the cramped, single-storey home, the floors of which are strewn with sheets and sleeping bags. “They crash on the couches, on the floor. It’s busy, but it’s fun, too, especially at dinner time.”
To make space, Kiera sleeps in Jon and Lisa’s room. Kshama is in an adjoining space, which is really just her parents’ walk-in wardrobe. Jaz, an 18-year-old girl whom the Owens unofficially adopted last year, recently got her own room, so she could study for the HSC.
Wow.
“I grew up in a family where following God was just another part of the Aussie dream, where you have a house in the suburbs, make enough money to relax, mow your lawn and cook your roast on Sunday.” As part of the theology course, however, Jon studied a section of the Bible called The Prophets, with one book, Amos, striking a chord. “At one point God says, ‘Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps.’ I remember thinking, ‘That’s all I do; I go to church and sing songs.’ ”…
His father had always stressed career and professional success. “But Jesus was not about material wealth,” Jon says. “The guy was all about intentional downward mobility! And I realised that what I really wanted was to do something significant in this world, not just piss around at the edges.”These days, however, they live without all that, without fancy food or flash cars or overseas holidays. They relax by watching TV, by listening to Leonard Cohen – Jon is also partial to Sarah Blasko – by cooking or going to the park with their kids. (Monday is “family day”, when Kshama and Kiera get their undivided attention. “Monday is sacred,” Jon says. “That and eating together as a family.”)
Jon allows himself one cigarette on the back porch at night. Neither of them drinks, because they don’t want to support an industry they believe causes so much damage. And yet they are ridiculously, implausibly happy. “Life’s good,” Jon likes to say.
“We’re driven by our faith,” Lisa explains. “I believe that as I respond to people I’m responding to Jesus, because I believe that Jesus is in all of us.”
The full story is heaps bigger. I’m not sure I completely agree with some of the stuff they say, or do. But it’s pretty radical. Noticable. And incredibly hard to criticise.
Will you bring social media to the real world with a “Facebook Card”?
These are interesting. I thought social media and online profiles were meant to kill the business card. Not reinvigorate them.
They appear to be officially endorsed by Facebook. You order them via your Facebook account. Once you’ve got Timeline turned on.
“To make your own Facebook cards just go to your http://www.facebook.com/yourfacebookusername/info and hover over the little Business Card in your Contact Info.”
Once Facebook figures out how timelines are going to work with business pages I might get some of these for a few of my pages, and some social media clients. They look a bit schmick.
Sadly they’re being released in small batches, and are sold out today.
How the Reformation went viral
The 95 Theses were the beginning of a social media campaign which went viral. This is an interesting take on the Reformation – but hear it out.
Image Credit: Art.com (you can buy this as a print)
Does social media cause change?
The Reformation, like the revolution in a famous Malcolm Gladwell piece, may or may not have been fuelled by social media. Or Luther’s equivalent. Propaganda 1.0.
Here’s Gladwell’s summary of the argument he doesn’t agree with.
“The world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. The new tools of social media have reinvented social activism. With Facebook and Twitter and the like, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coördinate, and give voice to their concerns.”
Gladwell thinks it is high risk activism that brings change – rather than “social media” – but this is a bit of a category error. He thinks people are trying to argue that social media is the basis of activism rather than a channel for communication, and he’s dismissive of “one-click” activism (as am I – especially in the form of awareness raising).
“Boycotts and sit-ins and nonviolent confrontations—which were the weapons of choice for the civil-rights movement—are high-risk strategies. They leave little room for conflict and error. The moment even one protester deviates from the script and responds to provocation, the moral legitimacy of the entire protest is compromised. Enthusiasts for social media would no doubt have us believe that King’s task in Birmingham would have been made infinitely easier had he been able to communicate with his followers through Facebook, and contented himself with tweets from a Birmingham jail. But networks are messy: think of the ceaseless pattern of correction and revision, amendment and debate, that characterizes Wikipedia. If Martin Luther King, Jr., had tried to do a wiki-boycott in Montgomery, he would have been steamrollered by the white power structure. And of what use would a digital communication tool be in a town where ninety-eight per cent of the black community could be reached every Sunday morning at church? The things that King needed in Birmingham—discipline and strategy—were things that online social media cannot provide.”
Activism, be it Martin Luther King’s rallies, or Martin Luther’s nailing of 95 theses to the Wittenburg Door as a highly symbolic and evocative PR stunt, requires both a medium and a message. Further, this package requires channels and connections by which it is transmitted. Which is where social media comes in now, and where the virality of the reformation and its use of social media gets interesting. This is where Gladwell’s piece is perhaps too dismissive of the technology.
The Reformation went viral
The Reformation was another grassroots protest movement, which according to this fascinating history published in the Economist, which is wonderfully rendered and somewhat persuasive, was aided by the social media of its time.
“It is a familiar-sounding tale: after decades of simmering discontent a new form of media gives opponents of an authoritarian regime a way to express their views, register their solidarity and co-ordinate their actions. The protesters’ message spreads virally through social networks, making it impossible to suppress and highlighting the extent of public support for revolution. The combination of improved publishing technology and social networks is a catalyst for social change where previous efforts had failed.
That’s what happened in the Arab spring. It’s also what happened during the Reformation, nearly 500 years ago, when Martin Luther and his allies took the new media of their day—pamphlets, ballads and woodcuts—and circulated them through social networks to promote their message of religious reform.”
Luther understood something of the way to spread his message via the media of his day. The response to his initial PR stunt was a bit of a “tipping point” to borrow another Gladwellian phrase.
“The unintentional but rapid spread of the “95 Theses” alerted Luther to the way in which media passed from one person to another could quickly reach a wide audience. “They are printed and circulated far beyond my expectation,” he wrote in March 1518 to a publisher in Nuremberg who had published a German translation of the theses. But writing in scholarly Latin and then translating it into German was not the best way to address the wider public. Luther wrote that he “should have spoken far differently and more distinctly had I known what was going to happen.” For the publication later that month of his “Sermon on Indulgences and Grace”, he switched to German, avoiding regional vocabulary to ensure that his words were intelligible from the Rhineland to Saxony. The pamphlet, an instant hit, is regarded by many as the true starting point of the Reformation.”
Luther’s message went viral, between 6 and 7 million pamphlets were circulating in German speaking nations…
“Unlike larger books, which took weeks or months to produce, a pamphlet could be printed in a day or two. Copies of the initial edition, which cost about the same as a chicken, would first spread throughout the town where it was printed. Luther’s sympathisers recommended it to their friends. Booksellers promoted it and itinerant colporteurs hawked it. Travelling merchants, traders and preachers would then carry copies to other towns, and if they sparked sufficient interest, local printers would quickly produce their own editions, in batches of 1,000 or so, in the hope of cashing in on the buzz. A popular pamphlet would thus spread quickly without its author’s involvement.
As with “Likes” and retweets today, the number of reprints serves as an indicator of a given item’s popularity. Luther’s pamphlets were the most sought after; a contemporary remarked that they “were not so much sold as seized”. His first pamphlet written in German, the “Sermon on Indulgences and Grace”, was reprinted 14 times in 1518 alone, in print runs of at least 1,000 copies each time. Of the 6,000 different pamphlets that were published in German-speaking lands between 1520 and 1526, some 1,700 were editions of a few dozen works by Luther. In all, some 6m-7m pamphlets were printed in the first decade of the Reformation, more than a quarter of them Luther’s.”
50 Apps for your Christmas iPad
Did you get an iPad for Christmas? I’ve had my iPad for a while now, and I’ve started to sort out the dross from the gold. Here are my favourites from a range of categories to get you going.
It really is a sensational device.
Reading Stuff
1. Reeder – best RSS reader, hands down.
2. GoodReader – great for PDF reading and annotating – terrific for essay writing.
3. Instapaper – curate your own longform articles from around the web to build your own magazine.
4. Zite – is an automated magazine service that finds articles based on your interests.
5. Flipboard – turns your social media channels (including google reader) into a magazine.
6. Kindle – Get Amazon’s range of e-books on your iPad.
7. Stumbleupon – click your way around interesting links in areas you’re interested in.
8. Google Currents – See what’s hot in Google.
9. Pinterest – another app for finding fun stuff on the interwebs. Populated mostly by crafty mums.
Photo Stuff
1. Instagram – I’d rather shoot photos with my iPhone camera, but the iPad app is great for checking out the social photostream (you can follow me, my username is nmcampbell, my feed is mainly photos of coffee and my daughter).
2. Phoster – makes cool posters.
3. Diptic – Stitch photos together in artistic ways.
4. Process – apply filters to your photos (not quite the same as Instagram) with the tap of a button.
5. Poly – Uses the power of maths to make polygon styled pictures. Kind of fun.
6. Photoshop Express – a nice lightweight photo editor from Adobe.
7. Grid Lens – is kind of fun, makes an instant diptic style collage (as in you take a bunch of shots at once, or with a slight delay. Clever.
8. Snapseed – I just bought this, and haven’t had a chance to play with it much yet.
9. ColorSplash – edit black and white photos with a splash of colour.
Social
1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Path – a journal type thing where you can keep track of your movements, meals, and meetings, in a social way.
4. Beanhunter – find and review cafes everywhere.
5. Foursquare – let people know where you are and if you like it.
6. UrbanSpoon – find a restaurant and review it.
7. Stamped – review anything. Places. Books. Movies.
Utilities
1. Dropbox
2. Evernote
3. Bump – share files between iOS devices with a physical shake or “bump”…
4. Bluetooth Photo Share – great for giving gran some photos on her iPad.
5. Blogsy – nice multi-featured blogging software.
6. Google App
7. Remote – control your apple gear
Games
1. Angry Birds – But you already know this…
2. Stick Wars – Tower defence with stick figures.
3. Fruit Ninja – Slice and dice flying fruit.
4. Words with Friends
5. Scrabble – for the traditionalists
5. The Sims – I just downloaded this.
6. Wolfenstein 3D – A dose of nostalgia
7. NBA Jam – another dash of nostalgia. Great port from the SNES.
Music
1. Shazam – hear a new song, Shazam will tell you what it is.
2. Garageband – mix and mash your own music.
3. I am T-Pain – Autotune everything
4. Songify – speak music
Bible/College stuff
1. ESV
2. YouVersion – multiple translations at the tap of a finger
3. Logos – get your Logos library on the go
4. Vyrso – the book reader from Logos
5. Complete Class Organiser – Take notes, keep track of your timetable, and record lectures in one app
6. Greek Reader’s Lexicon – nice Greek app by Sam Freney
7. QuickCite – scan book barcodes get bibliography details by email.
That’s a bunch of apps – have I missed any?
Join the Internet: let google show you how…
Well. That last post seems pretty hard to top. But things must keep moving here lest you think I’m a completely lame and inane father incapable of speaking other than to mention the bowel movements of my child.
Alas and alack. The Internet goes on. So. Here is an advert for being on the internet, from Google India. I like it.
Tipping Nudge: Behavioural economics at work
I love the idea of the “nudge” – it’s pretty much the key to successful Facebook marketing. By the by.
Here’s a little picture of a nudge at work.
Image Credit: Tumblr
I read a fascinating book, not surprisingly titled Nudge
If only I could be bothered nudging people into commenting…