Another week, another social network. You could be forgiven for thinking that a new one appears with that kind of frequency. And while that may be a slight exaggeration, it is getting harder to distinguish the wheat from the MySpace…er…chaff.

In order to rise above the rest, some networks are attempting to take a very different approach. A good example of this is Path. Available for both iOS (iPhones) and Android, Path started in late 2010 as a way to “keep a personal journal or ‘Path’ of your life.” The app – and it is an app, with the only way point of access being via your phone – is a bit of an amalgamation of common social features seen in other networks: sharing photos, status/text updates, and connecting with friends.

It is that last feature that is a bit different though – unlike Twitter, where the limit number of on followers is non-existent, or on Facebook where it is in the thousands, on Path you can only add 150 people to your network.

Why would a social network put limitations on how social you can be? Their argument is that “we tend to have 5 best friends, 15 good friends, 50 close friends and family, and 150 total friends.” Read another way, the value of digital friendship isn’t high, given how common they can be. Path reminds you that true relationships are scarce and precious, and that you shouldn’t lose sight of that just because you’re now connected to a global online community.

Given that our Church started when Christ started to walk His path with 12 of his closest friends, the impact of building strong relationships with a special few can be huge! So, maybe it’s time to take another look at your social networks, and think about quality vs. quantity.

As technology becomes more engrained in our daily lives, it sometimes becomes difficult to gain perspective on just how much it has altered our perspective. It is easy to see technology when it is embodied directly in a physical form, such as a consumer electronics gadget. However, when you have been looking at the result of technology for decades, it becomes hard to discern just what kind of impact that technology has had – until something goes wrong, and what was almost invisible before becomes starkly visible after.

One example of this is the digital editing of images – or ‘photoshopping’. This used to be called ‘airbrushing’, but neither of these created verbs really does justice to what is possible when using a tool like Photoshop to edit an image. People can be removed, added, shortened, made taller, thinner, curvier, cleaner, lighter, darker, older, younger – there really isn’t a limit!

Even though these techniques are ubiquitous in the fashion/photography/media industries, we often take for granted that the images we see in magazines are somewhat accurate depictions of another person when they are, in fact, very rarely so.

Think of the impact this has and has had on our society – through the negative contributions to self-esteem issues and unrealistic physical expectations of others if nothing else. The bar is literally set higher than any of us will be able to achieve without similar editing of our photos!

However, some moves are being made in the ‘anti-photoshopping’ camp, most recently by some scientists at Darmouth College (http://bit.ly/I8R0y8) who have developed some software to detect how ‘photoshopped’ an image is. Until it is readily available and being used by everyone though, it is probably very prudent that you and your friends take every magazine and billboard photo you see with a metric tonne of salt!

Many of the internet’s hottest properties started life out as taking offline, non-digital activities that were already popular and then adding a digital ‘twist; in the process of taking them online: search engines were modelled on phone directories, Facebook was modelled on university face books (showing photos of the students enrolled in each year), and Flickr was modelled loosely on photo albums and sharing them with friends.

Pinterest is the latest hot online social network, and has been getting a lot of press and buzz this year already. It is actually relatively difficult to describe, but the simplest metaphor I have heard is that it is like social scrapbooking. The site allows users to take photos and other media from around the internet and share – or ‘pin’ them to categories – or ‘boards’ – that they create.

It may not sound that appealing, but Pinterest is recording record growth in new active members. Additionally, due to the highly visual nature of the site’s function, people seem to be drawn in – not only to the site itself, but into clicking on the various photos and images people have pinned. Doing so leads the user to the original site the image was taken from. This is called ‘referring’ and Pinterest now accounts for more referral traffic to some major sites than many of the other social networks that have been around for a lot longer!

Another thing that sets Pinterest apart is the demographics of its user-base. In late January 2012, more than 80% of the userbase were registered as female. This is the first mainstream social network to show that kind of skew.

For Catholic geeks, Pinterest creates an opportunity to share and pin some of the inspirational Catholic art and symbols from our rich history. A ‘mysteries of the Rosary board’ anyone?

It seems that barely a month goes by without another social network rising to prominence online. While many of these are fads that disappear as quickly as they appear, some have the backing of huge organisations, and seem to be building momentum that is potentially maintainable. One recent example of this is Google+.

It’s no secret in the technology world that Google is more than a little concerned about social technologies and the impact they are having on the way we search for things. Before the ‘social revolution’, the default position of the majority of internet users when searching for something was to go to Google.com and simply type their search query. However, for a number of reasons, people are increasingly turning to their social networks for important buying advice. Have you ever asked your friends on Facebook whether you should buy A or B? If not, the stats and trends tend to say you will soon start to.

So, Google has tied the bonus of everyone in the company to Google’s performance in social. And this is partly why Google+ was launched. If you are logged in to a free Google account, you will see a ‘+You’ link at the top of Google.com in a black status bar. You can then click on your account, add friends, follow people – the normal social networking gig.

Where things get interesting is the recent announcement that Google will be looking to integrate Google+ results into Google searches, so your ‘+1′s’ (equivalent of ‘Likes’ in Facebook) suddenly have more impact. For the Church, this means we should be active in this network, promoting content and sites that are worthwhile and good for the soul. Doing so may actually help promote these to a wider audience and potentially change the nature of searching online.

Especially in the second era of Steve Jobs, one particular characteristic which Apple exhibited repeatedly was the amazing ability to anticipate customer demands and desire, and then ‘mainstream’ technology innovations to meet those needs. The Apple that Jobs built is a great mainstreamer.

Take the iPad, for example: far from being the first tablet form-factor computing device, the iPad was introduced to a somewhat sceptical and market, whose cynicism was built upon 15 years of failed tablet PCs from a variety of manufacturers. Pundits and technology commentators took great delight forecasting a similar fate for this attempt from Apple – only to have Apple’s only real problem being making enough of them, with roughly 25-30 million devices being sold to date. They took a concept, refined it, and then made it more than just palatable to the mainstream consumer – they created (another) object of desire. When Apple integrates a new technology into their products, it’s a good idea to pay attention for insights into where the future is heading.

Enter Siri, a voice-recognition capability that has been integrated into the new iPhone 4S. It supports ‘natural language’ queries, so you can ask Siri “will I need an umbrella tomorrow?”, and it will figure out you’re asking about the weather and provide you with the forecast.

Again, voice recognition is not new, but with Apple baking it into their flagship phone, will this change the way we interact with all of our devices – tablets, PCs, TVs..fridges? Worth thinking about how we, as a church, can take advantage of this new way of working – how long before we need to be providing the right information to companies like Apple, so that finding local Mass times is only a matter of saying “Siri, where I can experience the miracle of the Eucharist right now?”

Do you ever stop and think about what it must have been like when Christ was born? Thinking not just about the miraculous event itself and all that came after it, but actually thinking about what the world was like at that point in history, and how it would have been experienced by those surrounding the stable after Our Lady gave birth. Doing so really makes you appreciate how different (not necessarily better) our gadget-laden, technology-filled world is 2,000 years later.

Think, for a moment, about the Magi navigating to meet the Saviour without GPS. As more and more people have phones with GPS navigation built in, and/or access to free satellite imagery through services like Google Maps and Bing, navigating by using a map book is becoming as outmoded as the ancient ways of navigating by the stars!

Then, think about how the word was spread that the Messiah had been born. Granted, a few choirs of angels are a pretty effective way of getting the message across to those shepherds on the hillside, but remember that the news of His birth and all that means initially was really only shared with a very small group of people, globally speaking.

If the same event took place today, it would no doubt be captured from a hundred different angles on mobile phone video cameras, in high-definition, and uploaded to the internet within minutes. What’s more, tweets and Facebook updates would fly around the world at the speed of light, informing millions of people simultaneously that Christ is born!

And yet, with all the gadgetry and technology at our fingertips, the message of Christ’s birth struggles to be heard nowadays. How about taking a moment to use your social media network or technology of choice to proclaim ‘hallelujah’ this Holy Season!

As we hasten towards the end of the year, and Christmas looms in the horizon, up in the cold dark north of Canada, a group of intrepid Canadians prepare themselves to submit themselves to various forms of torture to raise funds for the Child’s Play charity. In order to raise money these brave people commit themselves to play the most boring game in the world, Desert Bus (http://j.mp/cG-Desert-Bus) for as long as donations make them. In the five years that this trip has been undertaken, more than $500,000 has been raised to bring games to sick children in hospitals around the world. As we go to press, by the time this year’s journey is complete, the team are on track to have raised more than $200,000 this year alone.

The Child’s Play charity is entering its seventh year of operation (see http://www.catholic.geek.nz/Blog/?p=196 for our rundown of the charity last year) and as always it’s a fantastic reminder that geeks have a social conscience too. In 2010, nearly $2,300,000 was raised and already in 2011 the total is approaching the million dollar mark.

If you’d like to participate this year, there is plenty of ways to donate, but for something a little different, consider the Humble Bundle (http://www.humblebundle.com) – by buying a set of games as a gift, you can donate a percentage of the amount you pay to Child’s Play – getting a great gift and supporting a great charity at the same time! The next bundle of games should be available before Christmas.

So, this year, rather than getting caught up in the commercialism of Christmas, the team at Catholic Geek would like you to again think of the children, and consider donating to the Child’s Play charity – giving is child’s play!

One of the great things about the Catholic Faith is our depth of tradition – both with a capital and lowercase ‘t’. We are blessed to be part of a religion that is in itself a culture, a way of life. In the modern world, sometimes we are too quick to throw away tradition, in favour of the latest ‘innovations’ or change for the sake of change. But sometimes technology can also remind us of our customs and practices, and put a new spin on things as well.

November is typically the month when we as Catholic remember our dead – both those who have been formally recognised by the Church as being Saints, as well as those near and dear to us who have gone on to experience the fulfilment of Christ’s promises to us of everlasting life in Heaven. It is important to make time in our lives to reflect on those who have gone before us, and to take stock of our own lives in doing so in order to seek out new opportunities to orient our lives in a more saintly direction.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines has launched a new online portal focusing on All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day and allowing for the faithful to pay their respects online. The site – www.undasonline.com – contains valuable teaching from the Church on the importance of the month of remembrance, as well as videos, prayers, blogs and other resources for those who are interested.

When the American public alone is expected to spend close to US$7 this year on Halloween festivities, it is nice to see a cheaper, better way of focusing on the dead coming to the fore. And if technology can help us remember to pray for the dead, then that is a good thing indeed.

The Catholic Geek team makes no bones about our love of the power of mobile technology, and over the years we’ve talked at great length over the developing range of devices that can keep you connected and productive on the go. Smartphone technology has been rapidly evolving in the past few years, with the market sparked into life by the release of the iPhone in 2007. Just in time for the end-of-year rush, the big players in the smartphone market have all announced their latest and greatest innovations in the mobile space – making it ripe for an overview of the moblile battlefield!

Apple’s iPhones have been the phones to beat since their release in 2007. Famous for making smartphones easy for everyone, the iPhone has been the phone to make the mobile market take off. With the latest release of iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S, Apple have continued to refine a great product while keeping the fundamental easy-to-use heart of the iPhone in place.

Google’s Android phones have become the most widely sold handsets by Google doing what they do best – providing a great service for free and making their profits through supporting services. By giving the operating system away for free to handset manufacturers, Google has managed to get the majority of the smartphone marketshare through saturation of the range of devices. Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of the Android’s operating system, makes great strides in making Android more user friendly, and Google’s signature phone, the new Galaxy Nexus, makes a great handset to consider for your next phone.

Microsoft has become the dark horse in this race, with their Windows Phone software playing catchup by coming late to the party. While they have struggled for marketshare in the year that Windows Phone has been on the market, their ace in the hole has been played with Nokia launching the first pair in a range of Windows Phone handsets just in time for the end of the year. With the new version, known as ‘Mango’, receiving great reviews across the internet, Windows Phone could be the new technology to watch in the coming months.

Would you like to hear more on mobile? Join the conversation!

When we started this column, I didn’t think we’d be writing too many obituaries. But it seems only fitting that some words are written about Steve Jobs, who died this month after a long battle with cancer.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Steve was one of the single most important innovators and businessmen in the technology industry. He founded Apple Computers in 1977 and produced some of the first widely-recognised personal computers, including the 1984 launch of the Apple Macintosh. This began a revolution of sorts, leading to all manner of competitors and developments in that space – and without which, I don’t know what I’d be writing this piece on!

After the highs and lows of the mid-80′s and 1990′s – including Steve being ousted from his own company, going on to create Pixar Animation, and seeing Microsoft dominate over Apple in the PC wars – he returned to Apple in 1996. Upon his return, he began a turnaround unparalleled in technology history as Apple became a consumer electronics company. The release of the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010 saw Apple revolutionise the music and entertainment businesses, and soar to their current position as the most valuable technology company in the world.

But it is the impact that these devices have had on the modern world that will be Steve Jobs’ legacy. They have changed the way we communicate, entertain research and even minister to one another. Would all that we and the Church have gained from social and new media have been possible without the innovations of one man and the company he built? We need not wonder, for our modern world has been forever changed by a man who was crazy enough to try…and succeed!

Requiescat in pace, Steve.