There are so many areas of our lives where technology is becoming ever more important. For most people their health is pretty high up on priorities so let’s have a look at how health and technology are moving on together. Did you know that there is such a thing as robotic surgery? Using robots surgery can be done remotely (over the internet!) in a minimally invasive way and essentially unmanned. Some of the theoretical advantages are that the incisions are smaller, the movements more precise and therefore there is less risk of bleeding and quicker recovery times. And this isn’t just science fiction – in 2006 an Italian 34 year old man had a heart procedure to ameliorate an abnormal heart rhythm by a surgeon in Boston, USA.

On a slightly different note there is a huge growth in the industry of what is called telemedicine. This is where clinical medicine takes place by the transfer of information over an interactive audiovisual platform. If you think about the Australian Outback where the average person is just unable to access healthcare, particularly specialist care, you can immediately see it’s usefulness. By employing satellite technology and videoconferencing technology a real-life and real-time medical consultation can occur between a patient at Ayers Rock and Central Sydney. This is also very time and cost efficient from the medical specialist’s point of view as there no longer the need to travel vast distances around the country – both saving money, and improving peoples access to quality healthcare.

Another fast growing are is telemonitoring – whereby a patient for example wears a blood pressure cuff and all recordings are sent directly to their GP, the same could be done for blood glucose measurements done at home in diabetic patients.

This is rapidly developing area in IT – so watch this space… and next time you visit your doctor, see how technology is helping you!

As we stare down the barrel of a new year, and a new decade, one cannot help but wonder what the future holds for us. When you look back on the past ten years from a technology perspective, things have changed quite a bit (as you would expect), and this rate of change seems to only be increasing.

Take, for example, the number of people using computers. Even in a recession, the numbers grow – seemingly without limit. But it is not just how many computers there are now out in the marketplace, but the plethora of other devices and ways for accessing technology playgrounds like the internet. Cellphones, smartphones, PDAs, netbooks, nettops, ebooks – it looks like we are only limited by the nouns we can smash together and acronyms we can create!

This increasing saturation of technology looks set to continue as the trends point to even more ubiquitous internet availability – whether we like it or not. So, where will things be in 2019? Well, it really is anyone’s guess, but if you would like one company’s take on things, check out this “visioning” video by Microsoft Research. The video shows a possible future where schoolchildren, business people and families all interact seamlessly with some pretty cool interfaces.

While it is all pretty sci-fi at the moment, ten years ago the idea of doing half of what we can now do with an iPhone was pretty farfetched too. The message in all of this? It does not look like technology is going away and as it becomes further intertwined with our lives, if we are to continue to spread the Good News of Christ in a way that is relevant and powerful, we’d do well to keep one eye on possible technology future states…lest we get left behind!

In previous editions of Catholic Geek we’ve talked about how going mobile with your faith can enhance your spiritual life. This week we’ll take a closer look at how Apple’s ultimate accessory the iPhone (and also, its non-phone sibling, the iPod Touch) can help you bring together a complete mobile Catholic Geek experience for those of you lucky enough to have one.

Podcasts – the iPhone makes a great MP3 player and has fantastic support for podcasts. There’s a large range of great Catholic podcasts available – see http://www.catholic.geek.nz/Blog/?p=57 for some starter podcasts to tune into.

Mobile Internet – one of the iPhone’s biggest strengths is the mobile browser. Mobile Safari is fantastic for browsing the mobile internet, and is also very capable of handling full web pages too! Check out http://www.sacredspace.ie/mobile/en for a great mobile reflection website we’ve talked about before.

App store – this is potentially the “killer” application for the iPhone. The App store provides a great resource for expanding your iPhone’s capabilities, and there’s a fantastic range of Catholic applications available in the store. There’s a good mix of both free and paid applications. Some of the better applications are:

• RC Calendar – a free application from the publishers of Universalis (http:// www.universalis.com), this is a comprehensive calendar that links through to the Universalis website to give you the daily Mass readings and the Liturgy of the Hours. The paid for application Universalis gives you a self-contained version of this, which is great if you don’t have a mobile internet connection.

• iMissal – This great app lets you turn your bulky Roman Missal into a svelte iPhone app, meaning you’ll always have your Missal handy! http://bit.ly/O6zXX

With all these tools at your disposal, you can make your iPhone your ultimate Catholic companion!

Do you have your own favourite device you’d like the team at Catholic Geek to investigate? Get in contact with us at www.catholic.geek.nz and we’ll include it in an upcoming issue!

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.

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.

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.

Technology has made navigation a whole load easier. Anyone with an internet connection can get turn-by-turn instructions to their destination, rather than this being restricted to the favoured few. One of the best examples of this is Google Maps,(http://maps.google.co.nz) which has an excellent presence in New Zealand and around the world.

First off, is the ability to get those turn by turn directions. With Google Maps, you simply have to give the start address and destination, and the site will plot your route. From here, you can then fine tune the route by dragging and dropping the trip – allowing you to bypass motorways if you want! Once you’ve got the directions just how you want them, you can print, save, or even email them to a friend – making it that much easier to give directions!

As an added bonus, Google have sent cars with cameras around major towns in New Zealand. So, if you’re unsure of the route you’ll be driving, you can use street view to take virtual tours of where you’re going, making it not just a theoretical map – you’ve actually seen the sights beforehand.

But the best part of Google Maps is that these maps available for others to reuse in their websites, letting the same powerful map technology be reused. An excellent example of this is how Auckland Diocese using this to show the location of all Auckland parishes on an interactive map. You can see this at http://tinyurl.com/c8pb2c.

Do you have any utility sites you can’t get by without? Don’t be shy about it – swing by www.catholic.geek.nz and share it with one and all – and we might feature it in an upcoming article!

It’s around this time of the year that people start thinking more about their calendars. This is usually due to the number of available days running down on their existing ones as the year draws to a close. More people are thinking about the days of the month when they’re counting down to Christmas, and Advent calendars just make checking what day it is a lot…tastier!

While the calendar that we all know hasn’t really changed much since Pope Gregory decreed its adoption in 1582, the way in which we monitor our calendars and the various appointments we make differs greatly from person to person.

If you are bit tired of using pen and paper calendars to mark your appointments, consider looking at your email client. If you are using Microsoft Outlook, there is a calendar already built in to the program. Add your appointments, enter birthdates of contacts with reminders, and even add in “New Zealand holidays” automatically (Tools > Options > Calendar Options > Add Holidays > New Zealand).

If you are using the free Mozilla Thunderbird client, download the Lightning extension to access similar functionality to Outlook’s. Or you can download Sunbird to have a stand-alone calendaring application for free. Windows Vista and Mac OSX also already have a built-in calendar with Windows Calendar and iCal respectively.

If you’d prefer to us an online option, check out Google Calendar where you can create a calendar for free using your Gmail account. Google Calendars can also be imported into each other. This means you can add Catholic Saint Feast Days alongside your other appointments with the click of a button. If your local parish is online with Google (and increasingly, many are) you can even add them in to see what’s happening locally – all for free!

With the advent of social networking, photo and video sites, and podcasting, the internet is becoming a better and better place to help share and spread the word of God. This week, we’ll look at how you can use all these to tie together an event and use the internet to help reach more people!

Step 1 – planning your event. Here, social networking sites like Facebook work brilliantly for creating your church group in the online space and make it easy to invite all your members with the click of a button. The advantage of this, aside from the convenience, is the ability to reach many more people – if you want, friends of the people you invite can see your event and join in themselves, and you can even make it public for all to see.

Step 2 – sharing your event. At the event, you can set up a laptop with a webcam attached, and simply broadcast your event to the world. This is a great way to involve people who can’t make it to your event. Check out www.ustream.com for a great option.

Step 3 – life after the event. Finally, after the event, sites like Flickr, and Youtube are a great way to share your experiences with everyone else. Create a Flickr group or a Youtube channel and upload your memories – others can upload them too. If you have a recording of your event (say for example a talk), make sure it’s available to everyone by uploading it as a podcast. Sites like www.podbean.com, www.podomatic.com and www.ourmedia.org provide free hosting for podcasts.

With these tips you can help lift your event to a new level – 2.0!

Is there anything you’re doing that we’ve missed? Share your tips and tricks with everyone in the comments below…

Unless you have been trying really hard not to notice, you almost definitely know that World Youth Day (WYD) 2008 is coming up and is going to be held in Sydney. For those not in the know, the event was started by Pope John Paul II in 1984. Since then, literally millions of young Catholics from nearly every nation on Earth have embarked on a pilgrimage every three or four years to meet with each other and the Pope and to learn, grow and celebrate their Catholic faith.

With WYD ’08 being so (relatively) close to home, nearly 4,000 Kiwi Catholics are heading across the ditch to Australia for the event which will be held from July 15-20 this year. One of the ways that the Church in New Zealand is preparing to support pilgrims connecting with each other ahead of, during and after the event is Connect.

Re-launched in May, Connect aims to act as “the online hub for young Catholic New Zealanders”. The new portal is running on the Spoke Framework – a shared platform that services many Church sites already. The portal’s features include frequently updated content, daily reflections, photos, news releases and links to other sites. Connect also “connects” by using a blog, YouTube channel, Flickr site and social networks like bebo and Facebook and brings them all back together on one site. In this way, Connect is being set up as a linking site that can bring other popular flavours of the internet together in one place, and then build a community around that.

While the new Connect site was born out of a need to prepare for WYD ’08, it is built for all young Catholics in NZ. So, even if you aren’t attending WYD, there’s sure to be something there for you.