If you’ve attended the sorts of churches that I grew up in, you are very familiar with the “prayer chain.” This was a list of people (usually ladies) who formed a call tree to get people in prayer in the event of an urgent need involving a church member.

Lately, I’ve seen a lot of tweets and re-tweets requesting prayer, and people responding with their prayers. Especially today, when a case of mistaken identity reported that a very well-known blogger was in a car accident with his daughter this morning (as it turns out it was another guy with the same name with a daughter who has a similar name to his). The swiftness and the voracity of the twitter deluge that followed was surprising, with people calling for prayer on behalf of someone they really only know online (well, in most cases). It was somewhat counter productive until the correct information got out, but it was very encouraging to see the care and concern that was shown.

I think twitter is a great medium for the prayer chain for a couple of reasons:

• Information moves really quickly on twitter – the request can reach thousands in a matter of minutes.
• 140 characters is enough to send out a request, but not enough to gossip about it (if you know about old school prayer chains, no explanation required).

What do you think? Is twitter the new prayer chain?

I ran into an internet problem some time ago.  My network kept losing contact with my ISP’s (who shall remain nameless) DNS servers.  For the nerdically-challenged, DNS servers are important because they translate the web addresses we use from the text address into the actual numeric internet protocol (IP) address for the server that is hosting that domain.  No DNS server, you get a lot of “cannot contact web server” errors in your browser.

I was fed up with the continuous issues I was having with my ISP’s DNS servers, I set out to find some other servers I could use that may be more reliable. In my research, OpenDNS came highly recommended, and as a bonus they have other features that are very valuable.

And you can use OpenDNS for free. Yes, free. They also have for-pay services that appeal more to businesses or power users, but the free service gives me everything that I need.

Why I use OpenDNS:

• Their DNS servers are fast and reliable. Since I’ve switched, I’ve not had one DNS issue.
• They offer free internet filtering. You can use their DNS servers without signing up for an account, but creating an account allows you to turn on their filtering solution, which gives you four levels of filtering, no filtering or custom filtering(by site category). Their servers can filter out adware sites, phishing sites, botnets and pornography. This is one of the best ways to protect your personal information, and keep porn off of your network, without installing filtering software on your computer.
• It’s easy to use. Updating your home network router (or your computer, for single computer networks) with their DNS server addresses is all you need to do to use their DNS servers. If you are using their filtering service, you’ll need to install a client program on one of your home computers that keeps your home IP address associated with your settings. They have clients for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.
• You can blacklist and/or whitelist domains (up to 25 on the free version) in case your filtering level blocks a site you need to visit (whitelist) or doesn’t block a domain you need to block (blacklist).
• You get reports (for the past two weeks on the free version) of the top domains accessed on your network, and the blocked domains requested, all available through the web dashboard at the OpenDNS website.
• It’s Free!

Even if you are not having issues with your ISP’s DNS servers, you might benefit from the services OpenDNS provides, especially the free filtering. There are several software packages that you can install on your computer that do internet filtering (I recommend this one, if that is what you need), but you have to install that software on every computer that you own, and due to licensing restrictions, that may be prohibitively expensive. And in my experience, filtering software tends to drag down the performance of your computer (especially on older hardware). Using OpenDNS filtering allows you to filter all devices on your network, even laptops or smartphones that others bring into your home, without installing software on all of them.

Any questions? Ask me in the comments, and I’ll do my best to answer all of them.

A while back, a friend of mine gave me an iBook (PowerPC 3G-600Mhz, 256MB RAM, 20GB hard drive).  It was in good working condition, running OSX 10.1.

I love technology in all of its forms, so having this as another toy to play with was fun. But I can never leave well enough alone. Since I am a glutton for punishment always up for a challenge, I set out to improve this laptop as much as I could. My goal: to actually make it more useful.

My first order of business was a memory upgrade. The one available memory slot would only accept up to a 512mb so-dimm, so I snagged one from E-bay and installed it.  Next, I attempted an OS upgrade. My research showed that anything above OSX 10.2 was too much for the hardware.  Again, E-bay provided me with a 10.2 install and I upgraded successfully.

What I ended up with at this point, was not really what I was hoping for.  My intention was to have something that would handle light web-surfing and maybe some writing.  Unfortunately, there was not a sufficiently advanced web browser that would run on OSX 10.2. For a moment, I was ready to accept defeat.

There is an unwritten rule that pertains to most all computing devices: If it has a microprocessor, there is a good chance that there is a Linux distribution that will run on it. Some further research pointed me in the direction of the Xubuntu Linux distribution, a derivative of Ubuntu, which had a port for PowerPC processors.  Xubuntu was suggested because the user interface uses less system resources than a standard Ubuntu install.

I was able to download version 9.04 of the Xubuntu distribution for PowerPC processors, which installed flawlessly on my iBook 3G, no configuration file hacking required.  Video display, wireless networking and sound worked with no additional tweaking.  Now I have an up-to-date operating system with the latest version of Firefox, and a ton of productivity applications to boot.  Xubuntu is not terribly resource-hungry either, which makes for a snappier interface than even OSX 10.1 or 10.2 in my experience.

If you’re looking to resurrect some older hardware, but want the modern features of the latest OS, Xubuntu (or many of the other flavors of Linux) may be what you are looking for. Fair warning: if you’ve never attempted a Linux install (or any other OS install for that matter), the effort involved may be more than you bargained for.  On an iBook 3G with similar specifications (or most any other PowerPC based Mac), a novice should be able to follow the prompts and have a successful install. For other hardware, it could get much more complicated, especially getting video, sound and networking operating as it should.  Your mileage may vary, Google is your friend.

Good Luck!

I just downloaded the wordpress app from the iPhone app store. So now I can blog straight from my phone, anywhere.

Not that I have ever done a whole lot of blogging anyway, but at least the app will serve as a reminder to try to channel my thoughts into an intelligible blog entry.

Now I am twittering, checking my email and Myspace, and managing my calender and to-do list all from my phone. I still wonder what I am missing out on though.

What will be the next life-altering application I will install on my iPhone?