Home > Denominational Ministries > Communications > Ministries and Publications > Covenant Companion > Webwatch > Webwatch Archive

Webwatch 2006-06: Web 2.0

Webwatch is a column published in the Covenant Companion Magazine every month. It is written by Heidi Griepp, manager of Covenant Internet Services and an avid web wanderer. This month, Webwatch lets you in on a few new online toys.

We are in a new era of the web. There is a great deal of extra energy and momentum online these days, which web observers have labeled “Web 2.0.” Some say it’s a smarter version of the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. Remember that? When everyone threw their money into Internet stocks and lost most of it.

This new era has been fueled by big companies like Google and Yahoo developing and buying new web tools as well as new companies, like the creators of Myspace.com, entering a growth surge.

How does this impact you and your church? It gives you new tools and resources for doing ministry. Besides it is likely your youth are already using MySpace.com, your college kids are using YouTube.com or Yahoo Answers.com, and perhaps you are using Flickr.

Don’t know what these are? Read on.

www.betachurch.org
www.web2list.com

Two great sites inspired this month’s Webwatch: the Web 2.0 list and BetaChurch.org. I recommend them both. BetaChurch is a great site for anyone who does church web design and the Web 2.0 list will keep you in the know,  and point you to the more than 1,400 websites and companies considered the leading edge of Web 2.0.

www.43places.com
So you want to go on a trip? 43places.com is a great place to start dreaming and planning. 43Places helps you make a list of the great places you want to visit and share stories and photos of the places you’ve been. It’s a super-charged version of a map with pins on the wall—you get information and pictures from people who live there.

This site cooperates with the photo website Flickr (see next review), which makes it more powerful. On the home page, the first thing to appear is a big box to type in, with the headline “Where do you want to go?” I wanted to see what was online for my city, Chicago. I found 1,024 people talking about Chicago with some great reviews and pictures.

Possible Uses: A great resource to consult before taking a trip. It will give you a good understanding of what’s worth seeing from the perspective of someone who lives there.

Rating: This site goes places and sees people with excellence. ★★★★★

www.flickr.com
Flickr is currently the best photo storage and sharing website online. The site allows users to set up a personal web page to show and store photos. Those photos can be shared with the whole web or with only a restricted group of people. Flickr’s software allows you to display different photo sizes and rotate photos easily, set privacy levels on each photo, and make space for comments. Photos can be uploaded by email or from your camera phone or posted from just about any blog software—LiveJournal, Blogger, Moveable Type, Typepad, Manila, you name it!

Possible Uses: Take those pictures of the church picnic or mission trip and put them up here.

Rating: A great (and very pretty) resource. A well-designed photo site. What’s not to love? ★★★★★

www.MySpace.com
According to the April 3 issue of Newsweek about 65 million (mostly young) people are on MySpace.com. (Newsweek also noted that earlier this year, MySpace had 250,000 people register in one day.) My Space is a community networking website where you create an account, add information about yourself and a picture, and then add friends. Friends can be anyone you find on MySpace—whether they are actors, bands, people you don’t know, or people you do know. You can also choose to have your account profile available for everyone to see or only friends. It is understandable why this has become so popular with high-school and college kids. It provides a fast and easy way to stay in touch with all your friends.

Possible Uses: If you are a youth pastor or a parent you should know about MySpace and similar sites, and know what your kids are doing on it. According to the Pew Internet and American Life project (pewinternet.org) 87 percent of American youth go online. Because of the illusion of anonymity on the web, your children and youth group members will likely be more candid online than they will be in person. You may just learn more about them online than in a year of youth group nights.

Rating: This is a popular new site that should be used wisely. (It is also heavy on advertising.) ★★★★

www.rememberthemilk.com
Remember the Milk is a free, online to-do list for individuals or groups of people. Do you ever need to know what another family member, coworker, or friend is working on or when they plan on finishing a project? Then this is the site for you.

What makes this site great is that it interacts with Apple iCal, Google Calendar, and RSS feeds. Other features include extensive keyboard shortcuts and the ability to send reminders via email, SMS, and instant messenger (AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN and Yahoo! are all supported). You can set tasks to repeat every week,  create as many lists as you need, store notes along with your tasks and much more.

My favorite feature is this: you can manage your to-do list—share, send, edit, and publish lists or tasks by email. There is also a quick add-task feature that lets you add any event you see online.

Possible Uses: Get organized and communicate what’s being done when with others. No more asking when the bulletin is being printed this week. You can see it for yourself and add notes to that task as well.

Rating: The collaboration with Google Calendar is a powerful and fun partnership. ★★★★★

All Webwatch reviews are for informational and resource purposes only. The Evangelical Covenant Church does not endorse any website, organization, or content. From time to time some of these links will go dead or they will be sold. When we learn about this we will take the link off. If you see a dead link please let us know. Copyright The Covenant Companion.