Tech Review: Jott - voice transcription for free!

There is so much new technology popping up these days it's hard to keep up, much less test it and see if it's worth your time. I've gotten pretty particular about what I'll even try out but I discovered Jott recently and it's pretty sweet and certainly worth the couple minutes it takes to set up (and it's free too).

Here's what Jott does in a nutshell...call the 800 number and tell Jott who you want to send a message to. So far I've only been sending messages to myself so when it asks, "who do you want to Jott?" I simply say, "myself" and it says "okay." Then I leave a message for myself like a reminder to send someone an email or to schedule a meeting. Jott then says "got it" and I'm done. In about five minutes I get an email with both a text transcription and an audio file of the message I left.

It's been really handy. The other day I was getting a phone number from a guy and we didn't have pen and paper handy so I called Jott (I have it set to speed dial from my cell phone), and said the name and number there. When I got home a few hours later I had it waiting for me in my inbox.

Jott also lets you send messages to individuals or groups. This would be very handy to send a single message to an entire team with just one phone call. Each Jott has about 30 seconds of recording time but you can say a lot in that time. Also, I was cautious about the transcription quality and so far I've been pretty impressed at how well it's done but you get the audio file to listen to if needed.

Like I said above, a lot of new technology is coming along these days that may or may not help you, but for me Jott is already making my life a little easier.

Video of the Week: Funny Moments in Churches

This one doesn't need much explanation. Just enjoy!



Link for the feed readers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZKq49eO_u8

Digg Gets Church Website Design

My friend Christopher sent me a link to a recent story that made the front page of Digg. It turns out a web design blog discovered some of the best websites for solid design and web standards were for churches. Enough people agreed with the blogger and Dugg the story right up to the front page. Here is the top 10 list:

• Revolution Church, Kansas City, Missouri
• Soul Purpose, ministry in New Zealand
• Bethlehem United Methodist Church, Thornton, Pennsylvania (they might want to consider an alternate URL...it's currently bethmeth.com which kinda sounds like a girl on drugs)
• River City Church, Jacksonville, Florida
• Generation Church, a ministry of another church in Seattle, Washington
• Church of the Incarnation, Toronto, Ontario
• The City Church, Kirkland Washington (this is the church that sponsors Generation Church)
• Edmond's First Baptist Church, Edmond, Oklahoma
• Dulles Community Church, South Riding, Virginia
• Mars Hill Church, Seattle, Washington

Cadbury gets creme egg on its face

Just last week I wrote an article that included these lines:

Here's the thing about blogging, it's a great medium that facilitates conversation and understanding, but if you're not telling the whole truth, you're going to wish you never said anything at all. Whether you get busted in your own blog's comments or on someone else's blog, I can almost guarantee you'll be caught (probably by another blogger) if you give half truths, misleading statements or outright lies.

These same principles of truth and the Internet apply to video as much (if not more) than in blogging. Tonight I discovered this case in point from the video below:



When you visit the Cadbury FAQ page you find this:










In the grand scheme of things who really cares about the size of chocolate and creme eggs? The bigger lesson here is that truth has always been the best (and I would suggest only) option. Now, with the Internet it's just going to be more obvious when you've decided not to do it.

Video(s) of the Week: Bad Pitch

The mayor of Cincinnati recently threw out the first pitch before a Reds baseball game. It was...shall we say...not good. The mayor later went on Jimmy Kimmel Live to discuss this but, alas, the damage was done. Kimmel's staff put a hilarious attack ad together and also gave the mayor a chance for redemption. The do-over pitch was...well...you'll have to watch.

Bad Pitch

Get Games and Fun Videos at MyPartyPost.Com

Interview with Jimmy Kimmel


The Do-Over


Links for feed readers:
Bad pitch:
http://www.mypartypost.com/watchflashbig/5138/Cincinnati_Mayor_First_Pitch

Interview with Jimmy Kimmel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtFGLbsidZc

The do-over:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjwFnfEVdgQ

Free Pi for new readers!

There are several new people checking out MicroExplosion right now due to my post on ChurchMarketingSucks.com yesterday. As a way of thanking you for checking out this blog, I'd like to give you a free slice of Pi from mysliceofPi.com. So here's the deal, the first ten new MicroExplosion readers to email me (fourthbill@gmail.com) with a Pi request will get a code for a free slice of Pi.

If you've been a faithful reader for a while I don't want to leave you out either, so the first five regulars to email me will get a free code also.

Everyone be sure to note if you're a new reader or a regular. Also, if anyone includes a really good Pidea we'll post it to the list and I'll give you another free Pi code.

How to change a YouTube video size

Every so often I get asked by new bloggers how to change the size of the YouTube video when they want to embed a particular video into their blog. It's actually very simple and takes less than 10 seconds once you know what to do. Here's all you need to do:

1. Find the "embed" code on the video you are choosing. It's just to the right of the video.
2. Click the embed link once and the whole line will highlight.
3. Copy it (Ctrl+C) and paste (Ctrl+V) into your blog post. Your code will look like this:








4. Change the size within the code to adjust the width and height and make it fit your specifications. For this blog I change the width to 400 and height to 325 so my code looks like this before I post any videos here:







5. Note: The video width and height appear twice in the code so make sure you change them in both places.
6. Post and done.

See, wasn't that easy? I should note that this basic premise works with most embeddable links at other video sites so this should help you out with just about any of them.