I just bought this in support of this.
I’m a sucker for beautiful design. 

The single greatest improvement to an operating system ever.

 I don’t even open half the programs I used to. 

If I need some info from inside a file, I just highlight it and click the spacebar. I can see full files from Word, Excel, Images, Pages, Keynote, Powerpoint, whatever….All without ever opening up the applications.

Quick Look is better than sliced bread. 

Kiva is amazing. Microcredit is all the rage. All the kids are doing it.

Here’s 5 individuals whose lives and the lives of their families will be transformed by a few bucks from overseas.

Check out The Power of We portfolio from a Kiva party that Erin and Neeraj hosted last summer.

what happens when you put out a fire in a minnesota winter?

My friend Phil takes a beautiful set of pictures. 
 

Formerly of Tak Photo

Soon to be of: Philip Hussong Photography 

You should get married so you can have your photo taken by him. 

Hasta la Vista-link from kem

re-read the things I write in the middle of the night. 

Guy Kawasaki talks about why Kiva works. 
I love Kiva. I think it’s one of the most important tools that the average person has to make a concrete difference in someone’s life. Micro-lending is a good thing. I Kiva. Do you?
Others are doing it. But few with the ease of participation that Kiva has.Do it.  

Innovation is essential to life. Whether it’s using logs to move 2000 pound rocks to build pyramids or harnessing the power of the wind to turn on the lights…Innovation makes life better.

It transforms our surroundings. It qualifies efficiency. It affirms our reflection of God. After all, the first thing he did was create something out of nothing. That’s innovation. 

Innovation is hard, though.

It stretches us to think in ways that no one else has.   It’s the charge to look in the negative space and discover what’s missing. To solve problems most people don’t even recognize as problems.

Innovation is:

1. Solving today’s problems
2. Harnessing tomorrow’s possibilities
3. The challenge to change and grow

Innovation requires:

1. Anticipation
2. Analysis
3. Intuition
4. Creativity
5. Adoption

When Jesus was around, he did most of his ministry on foot going to people rather than bringing people to him. He used meaningful stories and illustrations that made sense and were relevant to their lives. The temple was reserved for the holy, the pure, the godly to enter into God’s presence.

Isn’t it interesting that the modern church in America is leaning towards the opposite scenario. We open the doors of the church to the unholy and make them come inside our house, stepping out of their comfort zones and their natural settings and ask them to watch our media clip and listen to our story and then join the folds. We have a hard time walking the hillsides of our communities to meet people in their own natural settings. We tend to make them come to us…

That’s one of the reasons I love the idea of Love Minneapolis. 

We’re not going to tell you where you’re going. You just show up because you want to serve. Because you want to love. Or maybe because you’ve read a little something about Jesus and you just want to be a little more like him.

Whatever the reason. Whatever your hope. Whatever you want out of it. We hope you’ll see that a love revolution doesn’t take much. Just a few people willing to say, “I want to do something.” 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfPTGTGLA3E&rel=1]

I was looking for a new printer driver for my printer/scanner since I upgraded to Leopard. 
Here’s the list I had to choose from: Notice the difference?

• Mac OS X
• Microsoft Windows 2000
• Microsoft Windows 98
• Microsoft Windows 98SE
• Microsoft Windows ME
• Microsoft Windows Vista
• Microsoft Windows Vista (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Business (32-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Business (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise (32-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Starter
• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic (32-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows XP
• Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
• Microsoft Windows XP Media Center
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
• Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
• Microsoft Windows XP x64

One full version for everybody. No mess. No fuss. 

Seth Godin wrote about the kindle yesterday…(Amazon’s new electronic book reader)

I’m not ready to hyperventilate the way he is.  This thing is going to be $399. It doesn’t exactly fit in your hands. Has no backlight. Even has an extension arm booklight? 

I like to curl up with a book at the cabin. On the dock. Maybe even out on the fun island.

Why do I want another device?
If you can put my movies, music, calendar and phone in the palm of my hand in one device, why not just add books to that list and call it quits.

It’s the equivalent cost of my yearly book budget…and then I still have to buy the books? 

I don’t get it…yet. I need convincing.

Tech Companies have been trying to get books to go digital for ten years and the true innovations just aren’t there yet. And as great of an entrepreneur Jeff Bezos is….I don’t this thing has legs.

What if I’ve  got all my digi-books in there and I drop it in the lake at the cabin as I did to two books last summer? Good ole paper books have an easy to replace factor that this thing just doesn’t have…  

kindle=kindling   

still sick and cranky though.

We had to take our baby to the hospital tonight. He’s had a fever for two days.  

When I got home from work, we checked his temperature. I watched the numbers start at 99 and skyrocket. Before it even stopped climbing, it hit 104. I told Sarah we needed to go to the hospital now.

I remembered watching some movie were this girl was going in to shock from a high fever and Harrison Ford made the family soak her in an ice bath.

I didn’t use ice, but I drenched him in cold water for 10 minutes and then we zoomed to the hospital. When we got there, his fever was down to 101.7. After many tests, the ER docs wanted to admit him. The don’t have any answers yet, just a bunch of stuff ruled out. The fever is still there. He’s on an IV. He was finally sleeping peacefully when I left to go pick up Elliot from Erin and Neeraj’s house.

He’ll see a Pediatrician in the morning…

Every week as the bulletins get done, I can’t help think about the group of people who would sit around a table with their coffee and donuts before Sunday Worship and fold the bulletins. The folding machine replaced them.

With one person, the machine can get more done in 20 minutes than the whole team that worked on folding bulletins previously. 

So I’ve taken away their community time.

The updates on the kids, catching up with life stories…and I replaced them with a loud obnoxious machine that acts up from time to time.

Goodbye Community. Hello Technology. Where’s the innovation in that? I’m an evil, evil man. 

but i’m really burnt out right now.i’ll be back after turkey week. 

Katya from Network for Good and Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog takes us back to the basics. As we share our story its more about them than us:

 …I found myself saying the same thing I always say, over and over: focus on the audience, listen to the audience, then engage the audience in conversation.  Our work is not to drop pamphlets or preach or pontificate.  Our job is to connect.

One thing I learned early on from reading the Art of Innovation is that renovation is often much harder than innovation.

It’s one thing to have a problem that nobody has solved yet. Your solution is the best solution by definition of being the only solution. In the case of the grocery store shopping cart that IDEO was charged with renovating, the challenge was clear: Make the best shopping cart ever. The problem however was deeper: Rethink the grocery shopping experience so that the design and functionality of the shopping cart matches the reality of your shopping experience or makes it a more desirable experience.

So they had to dive in and rethink things from the moment you walk in the store. Whether you’re the urban hipster, the soccer mom, or the daily shopper. The results were drammatic. The traditional shopping cart took on the form of this multi-compartment hodgepodge of speciaiized functionality.I don’t think it was that great.In fact, it looked bulky and awkward. Spaceage and untouchable….(yet fascinating).

The reality is the traditional shopping cart meets most of the needs we ask of it. And even if IDEO’s cart is a good design, the awkwardness of it compared with something I’m used to, makes it harder to adopt in it’s renovated state.

Last year when I started renovating my kitchen, I would have begged for a blank slate to work with. Not bad wiring, banged up walls and 5 layers of flooring. It would have been much easier to start with nothing but studs, but instead, it was a renovation job. It required rethinking how to make something old into something new. Something broken into something that works. Something stylishly outdated into something fresh, modern and visually appealing.

It took sweat. And it’s still not done.

Renovation can be much harder than innovation. 

<p>How well does the church renovate?

As I’ve continued to read The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley, I’ve been thinking more and more about whether I’m an innovator or renovator. Tom hasn’t really talked much about the art of renovation, but I think it deserves a conversation just as much as innovation.

On the one hand, the church should be the innovator of ideas for the purpose of advancing God’s work on earth. Leading the way, shaping culture, defining the norm, and not in the tailgate of the truck (along for the ride, not driving, and fearful of falling off the bandwagon at any bump in the road.)

On the other hand, the church needs to be an expert at the fine art of renovation. We have a 2,000 year old message that needs a fresh face: a new look, a new appeal, a new way to interpret it’s meaning. The church needs to be in constant renovation to remain relevant while holding on to the main structure, a firm foundation, some way to look at the outside and see the house that was built long ago.  

So am I an innovator or a renovator?

Sometimes both, but more so a renovator. I have a vision of what the church could be. And it looks a little like your church, a little like my old church, a little like a church  I’ve only seen on the web. I’m going to steal all their ideas and make changes based on our audience. 

My goal in 2008:
Innovate.Observe the behavior of our people, and birth a new idea. a new solution. a new way to get meaning in our lives.