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!

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!

The digital world we live in has brought the ability to produce content to the masses. Where previously, if you wanted to film a documentary or publish a book, you needed to have massive resources behind you, today with a video camera, some time and the use of services like YouTube, groups like Hearts Aflame (www.youtube.com/user/HeartsAflameTV) and Icon Media are able to produce professional quality videos to the masses, and self-publishing systems like CreateSpace (www.createspace.com) give you the ability to publish and market your masterpiece yourself without needing a fortune or the forces of a large company behind you.

However, while the ability to launch and deliver an independent project is more accessible than ever, it still, inevitably costs money to get most projects of the ground and to achieve the level of professionalism that would make it worthwhile. So, naturally, the internet has come to the party with a solution for this: Kickstarter (www.kickstarter.com).

Kickstarter is a fantastic method for raising funds from a community. Essentially, it gives you the ability to create a project and a target amount of funds to raise, then Kickstarter will handle the heavy lifting for you – by processing the funds and managing the relationship with your funders, you can focus on getting the word out and getting on with your project rather than managing the funds and other back end stuff. And because you’re running through Kickstarter, you immediately get a larger audience by picking up anyone else who might be visiting the site – increasing the potential for achieving your funding goals. You even have the ability to incentivise your supporters by offering a tiered reward scheme for bigger donors.

Finally, if the worst happens, and you don’t quite get to your funding target, the beauty of Kickstarter is that it works on an all or nothing scheme – if you don’t reach the targeted fundraising goal, no money changes hands. Contributors aren’t charged for their donation until the target is reached.

So what are you waiting for – Kickstart your project today!

Back at the dawn of the internet, there was really only one way to get online: connect through a terminal to a large, room-sized mainframe computer and stare at a lot of text. The personal computer revolution of the 1980’s then brought access to a flavour of the internet to people at home via desktop-based computers. It really wasn’t until the turn of this century that people started to access the internet in a rich format while on the go as cellphones gave way to smartphones. So, where to next?

Well, unless you have been living under a rock for the last couple of years, you have probably heard of the Apple iPad. While not the first “tablet” or “slate” computer – they have been on the scene since the mid 1990’s, Apple’s successful execution has proven the form-factor’s viability, and started a bit of a gold rush as everyone chases after the 10-inch screen.

Why? In contrast to 1995, tablets today are increasingly useful not because of what they can do alone, but what they can do when connected to an ever more functional internet. Ironic, really, given the similarities this model has with the earliest days of terminals connected to bigger computing power off-premise.

And so the race is on. Apple is way out in front at this stage, and the race-course is already littered with the also-rans and wannabes – the most recent casualty being HP who dropped their vaunted TouchPad not two months after launch, causing a stampede here and overseas as they “firesaled” the normally $800 device for little more than $100. With Amazon prepping to release a tablet soon, and more in development from HTC and others, it’s fair to say that this way of accessing the internet is probably only going to grow in popularity.

In the early days of the internet (say, pre-2000), the golden rule in creating a presence on the internet was to do so anonymously. Online contributions were frequently attributed to seemingly random collections of letters and numbers – like funnguy235 or l337h@x – rather than real names. This followed the general advice provided by geeks to non-geeks: be very careful giving out your real name and details to anyone you meet on the internet.

Today, things seem to be very different. Partly driven by social network sites like Facebook, which actively encourages sharing information about the “real” you, more and more people are seemingly comfortable operating under their real name online and voluntarily posting information about themselves to complete strangers – or at least to people they haven’t met IRL (in real life).

The likelihood of this trend reversing anytime soon seems slim, so it’s probably a good idea to update the advice from the 1990’s. Yes, still be careful about with whom you share what information, but the new rule of thumb is probably best phrased “the best defence is a good offense.” Put another way, it’s a very good idea to take a proactive approach to managing your identity online.

For example, do you own www.yourname.co.nz? If not, what’s to stop someone else from owning it? What about twitter.com/yourname? Or linkedin.com/in/yourname? If someone were to post something false about you online, where could others go to meet the “official” you on the internet and get the real story?

If you are going to be on the internet in any way, unless you have a PR agency working for you fulltime, it is up to you to take an active interest into how you are perceived online. Don’t be passive – actively claim your identity online…preferably before someone else does for you.

It has been said that the Internet often simply reflects in digital form that which exists already in analogue life. Take, for example, the real-life phenomenon of invitation-only access. Whether it be to the premiere of a movie, or to an exclusive wedding reception, being considered a VIP in the real world is still often seen as a status symbol.

The relatively recent explosion of social networks has worked to further cement this behaviour online. Whether this is via “friend”ing people on sites like Facebook, or counting how many followers you have on Twitter, it seems that the Internet can be pretty cliquey at the best of times, and downright exclusive at the worst.

But there may be something we can take from all of this that relates to our Faith and, specifically, evangelisation – namely that there is a lot of power in being invited. Take Google, for instance, and their launch of their most recent foray into social networking – Google+. Google+ is not open to the public – it is in a private “beta”. This means that an initial user group is selected to access the product, and they are occasionally allowed to invite others into the network as well. You can only get in if you have an invite.

To illustrate the power of being invited, Google+ has reached 10 million users…in its first two weeks. Some invites are even being sold on eBay!

What does this have to do with evangelisation? Well, when was the last time you invited someone to come to Mass with you? Maybe someone who has fallen away from the Faith? Or someone who has been asking questions? If you just assume they’re going to turn up, maybe they will…but maybe they won’t. Why not extend an “exclusive” invite instead and see what happens?

On June 29^th, Pope Benedict XVI celebrated the 60^th anniversary of his priestly ordination. This was a significant enough occasion in and of itself, but rather than resting on this, our good Pope used the opportunity to make the first recorded papal tweet. While the pope is no technical luddite, and no stranger to modern forms of communication, with texts from the Holy Father sent to the pilgrims of World Youth Day, this was the first tweet from the Pope. And what was this momentous occurrence used for? To launch the new Vatican news site, news.va!

The new site provides a aggregation of the information produced by a number of the media offices of the Vatican, including, Fides News Agency, L’Osservatore Romano, the Holy See Press Office, the Vatican Information Service, Vatican Radio, the Vatican Television Center (CTV) and the Internet Office of the Holy See. This is a great site to add to your daily rotation and is well worth keeping an eye on. And it doesn’t stop at the website – there’s also a presence on Facebook, Twitter (twitter.com/news_va_en), a YouTube channel, and a photostream on Flickr – the whole gamut of social media technologies are being embraced by the Holy See.

Finally, as we build up to World Youth Day 2011, it’s worth checking out www.madrid11.com for coverage of preparations as August 16^th gets closer. With Madrid being a bit far for most Kiwi pilgrims to make, it’s also worth checking out www.virtualworldyouthday.org to virtaually participate.

You don’t have to go too far back in recent history to find a time where computers were very rare in the “average” Kiwi home. In fact, as little as 20 years ago, they were still a pretty rare occurrence and, if present, probably confined to the study.

My how things have changed! Not only do more than 75% of New Zealand’s homes have access to the internet via dial-up or broadband, but an increasing number of the more than 4.6 million cell-phones have internet access…with all that that brings. The Post-PC world is upon us!

So, what does all this mean for the safety of Kiwis online? Because, without scaremongering, you have to admit that there is plenty of stuff available on the internet that isn’t healthy – for the body or soul. How do you keep yourself, or your children, safe when online?

One philosophy is that the best defence is a good offence. This translates to being very deliberate with your actions online. In other words, when sites like Facebook release safe browsing advice (www.facebook.com/safety) or Google shows what data they are storing about you (www.google.com/account), you should take the time to study those sites and be interested in your own information privacy. Don’t just blindly sign up to new services, or hand your personal information over to any site or email that asks for it.

In terms of in the home, the old practices are still the best: have the computer(s) in a “public” place in the house, rather than bedrooms; encourage your children to talk to you about any disturbing or worrying content they see online; learn about the changing technology landscape so you’re not out of touch.
There’s no safety net built in to the internet, but with some effort, you can create your own.

At the end of May, the announcement that people suffering from slow internet across Godzone had been waiting for was finally made – the successful tenderers for the Government’s UFB scheme were announced.

Wait – U-F-What? UFB stands for Ultra Fast Broadband. This is a forward looking initiative that New Zealand is undertaking, similar to many other countries around the world, to ensure that New Zealand homes, schools, and businesses have access to high speed internet to make sure that we’re ready for what future developments hold.

The reason for this is simple – the way the vast majority of people get connected to the outside world today, the good old phone line, is based around technology that dates back to Grahame Bell. While comparatively recent innovations like ADSL have allowed extra life to be stretched from the existing archaic networks, the inherent limitations of a copper wire network ensure that there’s only so much that can be done to eke out more speed – and most solutions mean that speed is good for receiving, not for sending.

UFB promises to change all that. By running fibre optic cable to your front door, all the limitations of the old copper network will be taken away. Fibre optic cabling is what the backbone of the internet operates on, and the solutions are designed to ensure that everyone gets the same high speed connection, taking away the limitation of how close you are to the telephone exchange. Speeds will start from connections that are twice as fast as present ADSL connections, with speeds 10 times as fast also to be available.

So watch for the cable guy to come visit your street in the coming years – and get ready to be sped away by UFB!

There is a term in IT research circles called “crossing the chasm”. This is where new technologies move from only being used by early adopters to being more widely used by “early majority pragmatists”. Once the chasm is crossed, mainstream adoption then follows.

A technology trend in this space is that of “cutting the cable”. In countries like the United States, people are choosing to cancel their cable TV subscriptions and instead get all their TV and radio content from free-to-air and internet-based sources. Whether renting or buying shows from iTunes or Amazon or using free sites like Hulu.com, people can watch most of their cable programming but for cheaper (and often more flexibly) via other means. While it will be a while before such a trend takes off in New Zealand – thanks to both the state of our broadband and the lack of content partnerships and licensing deals down here in the Antipodes – there are some interesting ramifications for Catholics. As a niche market, it is rare for Catholic content to feature on the secular networks, save for beatifications and papal elections. And while some are able to tune in EWTN, what about the rest of us?

Luckily, the internet is loaded with fantastic free Catholic content that you can download and enjoy at your leisure. Internationally, sites like SQPN and MyCatholicVoice have great lists of excellent Catholic content. If radio is more your thing, then the local The 15th Station produce free audio downloads on discussing the news, catechesis, and a recently launched show featuring weekly interviews with Bishop Patrick Dunn.

So, while you may not cut the cable quite yet, there’s nothing to stop you checking these out and maybe replacing some of the content from TV and radio with something a little more…fulfilling.