One of the great things about the internet is it’s ability to allow people to connect all over the globe. By jumping online, you can be up and communicating with someone on the opposite side of the globe immediately. Now this reach has stepped even further with the ability for you to tap the internet to reach out and help someone on the other side of the world! Welcome to the world of microfinance.

Microfinance works on the principle that there are a lot of people who would like to try and improve their position in life, but due to falling below the thresholds required by traditional financial institutions, are normally unable to get access to loans. Microfinance institutions help give these people a chance to better themselves, and the internet has brought this concept into the 21^st century – allowing people to directly connect with others in need of help to lift themselves up.

Kiva is a fantastic example of an organisation working in microfinance. Kiva was set up in 2005, to provide a way for the public to directly help people in developing countries help themselves.To date, $128 million US dollars have been loaned to 323,000 entrepreneurs in needy countries with a 98.5% repayment rate. Kiva even partners with other microfinance institutions to broaden their reach – including a number of Catholic partners. You can find out more at http://www.kiva.org/ and sign up to get involved. Make a little change go a long way!

With summer drawing to an end, students across the country all drift back to another year of education. However, technology is helping make this return less of a chore with may neat ways the Catholic Geek can get into their education and have fun with technology at the same time. Firstly, what has become a staple for practically any student serious about their study: laptops . There are a great range of basic models available from as little as $700 now, which are all fantastic for taking your notes, writing assignments, and even a occaisional bit of entertainment between lectures. If you are looking for something smaller you can pick up a netbook for even cheaper – a light way of carrying all you need round on campus. However, it’s important to remember to back up your information in case your laptop suffers from an accident – keeping copies of important information on a USB stick or two is highly reccommended.

Moving on, more and more textbooks are moving into the digital era. While NZ doesn’t directly get great devices like the Kindle (www.amazon.com/kindle) and Nook (www.bn.com/nook), their software versions let you access their libraries on your PC or mobile device. For those who prefer the comfort of paper, www.amazon.com, and the local equivalents www.fishpond.co.nz, www.thenile.co.nz and www.realgroovy.co.nz have a great range of textbooks; often at cheaper prices then the University bookshops. If you have friends in the same courses go in together and save on shipping.

Finally, open to anyone wanting to broaden their education, iTunes U brings a heap of University content freely online – including content from a number of leading Catholic Universities. This makes for an easy way to study while en route to Uni via your MP3 player. Fire up the iTunes store (www.apple.com/itunes) and check it out!

How often do you get to the end of the day or the week and realise you haven’t prayed or thought about God? How about putting technology to use to help you get Christ into your daily life?

There are a variety of ways you can do this depending on what technology you use most often. Probably the simplest way is to use device reminders. You can programme reminders into your cell phone or Outlook calendar to pop up with a message – for example to pray the Our Father or Hail Mary when you get to work, or the Angelus at midday. Or a reminder to say a prayer of thanksgiving with your loved ones at the end of the day. If you use Google Calendar (http://calendar.google.com) you can even program it to send you a text message.

For something a bit more involved, have a look at Opus Dei or Regnum Christi for inspiration. Go to http://www.opusdei.org.nz/ and click on ‘message’ (right side of screen). If you like what you read, you can sign up to receive daily or weekly messages for reflection. Regnum Christi provides daily meditations based on scripture. Go to http://www.regnumchristi.org/english/ and follow the link (middle of page) to Daily meditation. Similarly you can also sign up for reflections to be sent to you by email on a weekly basis.

For more guided reflection, Sacred Space run by the Irish Jesuits is another option –http://sacredspace.ie/. This site moves you through a focused reflection section by section, giving time to reflect as you go. For easy access to daily readings, http://www.mobilegabriel.com/ provides both the readings and a reflection each day for the keener follower. Both these sites are mobile friendly – meaning that you can use your mobile phone browser to reflect on the go.

We’ve written before about the plethora of social networks that are out there on the internet, and the work that can be done by all of us to bring the Gospel to those sites and our networks therein. But sometimes the topics of discussion on these sites are a little…un-Catholic (to say the least). Sometimes you might find yourself wondering if there is a better way to also connect with your fellow Catholics and share our common interest in the Faith. Do you find yourself longing for a social network within the social networks?

Well, wonder no longer! It turns out that there are a growing number of social networks that aim to cater specifically for Catholics. Flocknote.com is an example of a network for Catholics. It was created to connect people to their parish and diocese and inside the site, you and your friends can create feeds with posts that are read by all those who subscribe.

For a more traditional social network, you can check out 4marks.com. This one requires registration to get to the good bits, but again it is free and is growing in popularity. 4marks has videos, groups and discussions – there’s a lot to check out.

If you wanted to build your own social network, you can use a site called Ning (www.ning.com). The podcast network SQPN has done this (sqpnconnect.ning.com) to connect those who listen to their shows. Here you can watch live video streams as well as chat with others who enjoy SQPN content.

A little closer to home, the Xt3 (www.xt3.com) network which was established for WYD 2008 is still growing and going strong. With the countdown on to Madrid in 2011, now may be a good time to explore the new ways of connecting with other Catholics around the world.

With the international Year for Priests, started from the 19^th of June, now in full swing, it’s a good opportunity to look at how the internet is being used to support the call to spiritual arms. Here’s a few of the sites around the world that are working through the coming year to promote the call for vocations and for support of our spiritual guardians:

Annus Sacerdotalis – http://tinyurl.com/n827jv – Set up by the Congregation for Clergy, this new site offers a range spiritual resources and documents for priests and lay people to help focus celebration, in a multitude of different languages.

WorldPriest – http://www.worldpriest.com – Run by an independent group of Catholic communications professionals from the US and Ireland, WorldPriest provides a range of online resources. On June 19^th the group co-ordinated four Masses around the globe to be celebrated at 3pm on the 19th of June in their respective timezones – see http://www.worldpriestday.com for more information.

FuturePriests – http://www.futurepriests.com – An initiative coming from the diocese of Utrecht in the Netherlands, FuturePriests.com is a global campaign to call for prayers and support for vocations using Twitter. Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networks in the world, making it a fantastics place to spread the word far and wide and get large numbers involved in this prayer-campaign.

The internet being a huge place, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Have you got any interesting sites on vocations to share – post a comment and help your fellow internet pilgrim to answer their call!

It’s always good to pay attention to your priest when sitting in the pews on Sunday (or any other day, for that matter). We’re not just saying that because our local parish priests might be reading this, but because we’ve heard some great homilies in our time.

If you ever leave your parish wanting more, there are some great sites online that are full of homilies to read or even listen to. A local example is Antipodean Catholic, run by Fr Frank Maguire. This site, while slightly dated in its design, is loaded with PDF copies of homilies for not just your regular Sundays, but weddings, funerals and other special occasions. There are also some essays and mediations for specific times of the year like Good Friday.

Also close to home is Living the Word – a site owned by Fr Frank Bird, a Marist priest in Auckland. Fr Bird’s site has a weekly reflection on the Sunday Readings for Mass that week. The documents are uploaded each Tuesday evening and have a copy of the Readings, some comments and some questions to guide personal reflection. Fr Bird encourages others to use these reflections and other resources on his site to form groups and share the Faith with others.

Internationally, some priests publish their homilies in audio form. EWTN publishes a free MP3 download each day with the readings and a sermon from the celebrating priest. These, along with other free podcasts, are available at www.ewtn.com/podcast. An American priest – Fr Jack Durkin – provides his sermons also as a podcast for free download and listening to at www.catholichomily.org. Subscribing to these (if you have an iPod or similar MP3 player) is a great way to follow the readings on the way to work or around the house.

The internet develops and evolves (for lack of a better word) at a speed that sometimes makes it hard to keep up. But one of the good things that can come from this speed of change is that functionality that starts as cost prohibitive can very quickly reduce in entry cost to

Case-in-point: internet television. It grew from non-existent to shaky and postage-stamp in size, to something restricted to those with big money. Then along came YouTube. And all of a sudden, anyone who was anyone could post videos and share them with the world.

To make surfing through millions of videos through it more like watching TV and to more easily group like videos together, YouTube allows users to create “channels”. These pages can be customised in their look and feel to better appeal to their target audiences.

A great example of this is the recently launched Vatican YouTube channel. Available 24×7 at www.youtube.com/vatican, the Vatican channel provides “news coverage of the main activities of the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI and of relevant Vatican events. It is updated daily.” The site, which has a beautiful background wallpaper, allows access to over a hundred (and counting) videos, which users can then share with other people, or even embed in their own websites and blogs.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have regular access to Centro Televisivo Vaticano or Vatican Radio, but since those are the sources this channel uses, I can now easily, freely access the “Catholic Church’s position regarding the principal issues of the world today.”

So, if you’re lamenting the quality of “normal” TV, why not supplement your viewing with something with a bit more substance? It will not cost anything more than your internet connection to hear the words of the Pope himself.

There has been much said about our technologically savvy Pope Benedict XIV – texting the pilgrims at World Youth Day and having an iPod. However, he’s not the only IT-literate one – have you checked out the official Vatican website, http://www.vatican.va? It’s been around a lot longer but is an excellent resource for Catholic doctrine.

If you follow the Saints and Blessed URL you can see all the people John Paul II made Saints during his pontificate which makes for inspirational reading. Following the Resource Library URL takes you to an online Bible (The New American), the Catechism of the Catholic Church (both the full version and the compendium), the Code of Canon Law (covering topics from being a minister of Holy Eucharist to ‘cases to declare the nullity of marriage’) and the documents of the Second Vatican Council. There is a special link for WYD information and one where you can read the letters from our Pope to Chinese Catholics.

To gain access to all the papal documents, follow the Papal Archive URL. This will take you to a menu based on each Papacy. John Paul II was well known for his prolific writing. Here you can read the encyclicals, apostolic letters, homilies, messages, speeches etc that he proclaimed. Among his most popularised writings are the encyclicals Evangelium Vitae and Veritatis Splendor. Probably the most ‘famous’ encyclical is Humanae Vitae which was written by Pope Paul VI 1968 and can also be accessed online – well worth a read! And of course, Benedict XVI is just getting started. So go forth and learn more about your faith!!!

Of course, the Vatican site is just the beginning. Do you have any other sites about our rich faith you’d like to see highlighted? Share them with all @ www.catholic.geek.nz. If there’s anything you’d like to hear more about – feel free to join in and let us know!

Whether you’re in an office job, or just addicted to checking your email, the part of your screen that you see the most is probably your desktop. This should be true regardless of operating system and screen size, so it makes sense to wallpaper your desk with something worthwhile.

There are a number of sites that can help. PhatMass has some really great images in different resolutions. All are free but you can donate a small amount if you download a lot of them. Catholic Digital Studio also has some nice shots with Bible quotes on them. Wallpaper4God (www.wallpaper4god.com) has some slightly edgier shots, along with Bible quotes broken down by book.

For those who aren’t aware of how to change your wallpaper, if you’re using Firefox, simply right click on the bigger image and select “Set as Desktop Background”. In Internet Explorer, it is roughly the same – right click on the image in question and select “Set as Background”.

But maybe none of these quite capture what you’re looking for. In that case, maybe get one of your own photos, select your favourite Bible verse, Papal quote or Church document line, and make your own wallpaper. In Windows, this is as simple as opening your image in Microsoft Paint (which is free) and adding your text where you like. If you’d like a little more creative control, trying downloading GNU Image Manipulation Programme and download the free – and very powerful – GIMP programme to your Windows, Mac OS or Linux box. This tool can take some time to master, but adding text is pretty easy (click on the “T” tool, click again on your image and type away) so give it a go. And drop us a line if you’d like to share your results.

There is an interesting micro-trend emerging on the internet at the moment. It seems that a number of people are giving up technology for Lent! While that concept is pretty far from being realised by the team here at Catholic.geek, there are plenty who are trying it out anyway!

High among the targets for fasting this Lent are the social networking sites that are becoming so prevalent in the lives of people of all ages. Facebook has over one hundred groups with hundreds of members who are giving up the site for the forty days leading up to Easter. Many participants are changing their profile picture (the little image that represents them on the network) to be a small graphic with the words “I’ve given up Facebook for Lent” or have set their status to something similar.

The phenomenon is widespread enough to garner attention from some of the mainstream media. The Wall Street Journal has an article talking about parents who are giving up their newly found Facebook addiction for Lent and promising to spend that extra time with their families. Cnet has an article entitled “How to give up Facebook for Lent and keep your friends” which has tips such as writing out birthdays and other events from your Facebook calendar so you don’t forget them!

It is an interesting concept, and one that apparently is gaining more traction every year. What it does say to those of us who aren’t planning to give up Facebook or Twitter for Lent, is that participating in such “movements” is one way to draw attention to Catholic causes. So, try logging in to Facebook today and searching for good Catholic groups to join. Who knows – if enough people join, it may bring that Catholic idea to the front page.

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