Even if nobody got what you were trying to say, they would at least be in awe of your wizardry.

There are three iPhone Apps that can help you achieve this. All of these rely on a wireless network to connect your iPhone to your computer. Each also needs their own program installed on the computer to make the link. If you don’t have access to a network in the place you will give the presentation, then you can create an Ad-Hoc computer-iPhone network and all three apps will work with this.

So now for the Apps…

1. i-Clickr

With i-Clickr you can control your presentation from your iPhone or iPod touch with your thumb and have in front of you a preview of the slide or the notes attached. The best thing about this app is that it now supports OpenOffice as well as PowerPoint.

Using it as your note aid is fine if you have passed the vision test for astronauts, but it is a good attempt. This is probably the simplest to use of the three, but then it only controls your presentation. It is also far from perfect – room for improvement or for somebody to better it. The other Apps below also let you take control of every other app on your PC or MAC.

2. Air Mouse

If you want to control other programs like your media player or your song projection software, then i-Clickr isn’t much help, great though it is. What you need is your mouse and keyboard in the palm of your hand with a few custom shortcuts to favourite key strokes. This is what AirMouse dose and very well.

It works like your trackpad or mouse but also has a mode that uses the iPhone accelerometers to respond to movement. This takes a bit of getting used to, but it tries to turn tour iPhone into a pointing device, not unlike a WII remote. You are able to create custom profiles for your favourite PC or MAC software and so you can tailor it to work the way you want to. This app has far wider application than just presentations.

3. Hippo Remote Pro

Like AirMouse, HippoRemotePro turns your iPhone into a wireless trackpad and keyboard. Like with airMouse you can have different profiles for each of the programs you want to control and all works fine. It also throws in some other so-called social networking bits that seem to make it all just a bit too complicated. It works well, but I just think AirMouse is the slicker option.

Conclusion

If all you need to do is run PowerPoint or OpenOffice Impress, then i-Clickr is all you need. But you might as well have AirMouse too, you will find an infinite number of uses for it.

Click on an image to enlarge.

You can also browse and download other sizes of these images on my flickr page.

How to create images like this:

1. Assemble several crazy teenagers willing to work together. This exercise does require teemwork to produce the more complex images.
2. Equip them with a selection of light sources. If you can find some with different colours, that can be useful. The blues in our images come from a lightsaber!
3. Set up a camera on a tripod, as it is important the camera doesn’t move. You need a camera with manual settings control to set an exposure time of about 6 seconds.
4. Turn out most of your lights. It doesn’t need to be completely dark, and in fact it helps to be able to see your camera settings. Images can be manipulated later on your PC to darken background.
5. Get your artists to imagine they are painting with their torches on a large canvas in front of them but in reverse. Start with easy stuff, like writing their name individually, then move on to making images together. Getting one to stand still, while others give them wings or horns can be a fun way to begin. Then we worked through the nativity story and they came up with the ideas.
6. Three, two, one, go…Press the shutter and encourage your artists to fill the canvas and the six seconds with their artwork. Turn torches off when finished, otherwise you get blobs of light!
8. We also had the camera set up plugged into a TV to give the artists some instant feedback on their work. Each image takes several attempts before you get the right picture. Seeign it on a larger screen helps to work out where you are going wrong if your angels look more like clouds.
9. Then use Picassa (or similar) on your PC to make background disappear (we used the shadow slider) and then crop.

We decided to use, with some minor tweaks the fantastic series of prayer stations suggested by Erica Schemper, which are based on the words of the Lord’s Prayer.

I guess some people hoped the whole world would turn up to pray, but prayer tends not to be such a crowd puller. Each day people have come and spent time quietly praying, guided by the stations. Some of us have stood at the door of our church and asked passers-by what we should pray for. And so this week our church has been a place of prayer. Interesting how they are often anything but.

There are also lots of other great ideas for imaginative praying on the Creative Prayer web site. Many people find it hard to know where to begin with prayer and are often helped to know that all the senses can be used when drawing close to God.

2 more days to go. It has been a good week.

I enjoy dipping in and out of the lectionary, so many of these reflect that. I think one of the great blessings about following the lectionary online is the ability to join a conversation about the texts – to hear the texts explored in a thousand and one different ways and then to add your own strange thoughts, words or even pictures!

1. Working Preacher is a wonderful site with textual and audio commentary on the lectionary texts. This week for example you can join Professors Karoline Lewis, David Lose and Rolf Jacobson for their weekly podcast on preaching the lectionary texts in the brainwave feature.
2. On the GBOD Worship Site (General Board of Discipleship, The United Methodist Church) you should check out the lectionary based worship planning helps and the preaching helps.
3. The Work of the people produce lots of creative moving pictures (video). Worth a look each week, even if you can’t afford the download or the technology to use it on Sunday.
4. Sermons4Kids is for when I am desperate for some way of relating the texts to children. Though I don’t always find their slant on things all that helpful. The colouring pages come in handy quite often though.
5. Cartoon Church and We Blog Cartoons keep me sane by exploring the funny side of church.

So no need to be desperate. These sites get you thinking about the text rather than offering downloads of extremely dull sermons like other sites I could mention.

Of course I sometimes publish the odd visual or movie on this blog too when I’m feeling creative.

The Surprise

In the four years I’ve been here, no subject I’ve preached on has prompted as much response as this one. Maybe it has only been at funerals these texts have been used; maybe it’s because no one has ever preached on this; maybe it’s because we all have our own idea about the life beyond this one. Maybe it is just that my preaching is usually so uninteresting. Who knows, but it has got people thinking about their faith.

A New Song

Anyway, I had a go at a new song for our congregation to sing, which has been better received than some of my recent attempts at writing music. You can download the sheet music and a backing track below. Like most things I put here, I am releasing this under a Creative Commons license, which means you are free to use, remix and share legally.

The song is called Jesus Now lives and reflects some of the themes of resurrection and hope.

Of course if you can improve on it in anyway, feel free – it is an open source song! Just let me know so I can see what you’ve done.

Sheet Music

Available in Adobe Acrobat (pdf) format:
Download Jesus Now Lives Sheet Music

Backing Track

This is a backing track I knocked up on my keyboard. It is available in mp3 format:
Download audio file (jesus-now-lives-backing.mp3)
Download the Backing Track

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Anybody got any good hymns or songs on resurrection?

Answers on a post card – or just in the comment field below would be good!

The all new 8:30 service at Springville UMC is bluegrass style, meaning at last there is alternative to the dreary old traditional worship and the mind numbing Redman-style contemporary drivel. I think it maybe time to brush the dust of my mandolin and get myself a new posting somewhere as bluegrass worship pastor! Although it may not catch on in the UK.

Music shared

There are an increasing number of artists and even recording labels taking the Creative Commons route. Jamendo, for example is a growing community of music artists who share music for download under a Creative Commons license. The site also allows listeners to voluntarily donate to artists, so you don’t just have to take, take, take! Opsound is another growing community for shared music.

Licensed, ready to go

The beauty of CC is that you don’t have to ask to use stuff. By selecting an appropriate license the artist gives you certain rights to use. And open doesn’t always mean free either. Sites like Magnatune allow you to purchase music already cleared for your chosen use. Non-commercial use is usually free, but to get a better quality recording you can purchase a download and other licensing options are instantly available too. BeatPick is another recording label providing music in a similar way. If Classical is more your thing then onClassical is also worth a look.

The Mixter

One of the greatest examples of how creative commons encourages creativity, is Creative Commons’ own project, ccMixter. This is a community site which features music samples and remixes licensed under Creative Commons. Here you can listen to, sample, remix, or interact with music in whatever way you want.

Being open with your music

If you are a musician or producer of music, you can license your work right now under a Creative Commons license by visiting their web site and answering a few simple questions. You can choose how you intend to share your work from all rights reserved to public domain.
Why not consider a license that promotes sharing and reuse.

Other sites

• The internet archive
• Cruxy
• The Free Music Project

You can also find more information on other groups using this approach to share audio here.

So what about Christian music?

Emmm…? Wonder why this hasn’t caught on yet. Have you found any, anywhere? Worship songs, Christians artists sharing their music openly? I haven’t found many to share here yet.

It took me longer to write this post than produce this video!

Honestly, this video took a couple of minutes to produce. I had the images already in a folder on my pc. The tool can also grab images from Flickr or Facebook or one of a number of photo hosting tools. I then chose one of Animoto’s music tracks, hit continue and out popped this video. It took me longer to write this post than produce this video!

I could see this being a very useful tool for worship leaders. Think of your theme for Sunday, grab some free images or your own photos to fit, go to Animoto, ten minutes before you leave for church and it will look like you’ve been up all night on this one.

Go and make your own at Animoto. A worship background video with no tears or late nights.

We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare “some rights reserved.”
(CreativeCommons.org)

I can’t help think that the Christian world of resources for worship, teaching and mission would be revolutionised by such an approach. For example, over the weekend I used a video I created that included images and animation that I had created. I couldn’t legally share the video on my blog because the artist who created the track I used for backing music would have wanted some kind of royalty (or I’d have had to wait weeks for them to grant rights to publish it). Well, with Creative Commons, I can source music, video, images and more, from artists willing to share and allow me to remix/reuse. As long as I then publish my remixed work in the same way, it is all legal and highly creative.

And so in this series of posts I hope to explore the Creative Commons world of open source content, with an emphasis, as always, on church use.

For now take a look at this video which explains the whole Creative Commons concept applied to different areas of content.