I love technology! I admit it. Widgets get my heart pumping, shiny new gizmos make my pulse quicken. My favorite part of a James Bond movie is always the part where 007 is in the lab with Q trying out the latest gadgets. I have read all twelve of the “Left Behind” books. Not because I wanted to work out my own pre-rapture timeline, but because I got hooked on reading about the doodads and thingamabobs they came up with.

Unfortunately, I am not a computer genius. Get me much past right click, left click, or start talking baud rates and interrupt prompts and my eyes start to glaze over. I am, however, a product of a generation raised on computers, so I am pretty comfortable around them, and I do not share the same fear of “breaking the dumb thing” that some of my colleagues seem to have.

This is all by way of introduction to a new column of the NACYML Newsletter. I will try to point you towards some resources (whenever possible, free ones), which will help you use technology to assist in your ministry to young people.

In this edition of Confessions I thought I would point you towards two applications available online as free downloads.

PDF Files (Easy and Free)

Primo PDF is what’s known as a virtual printer, and is used to convert printable documents (Microsoft Word, Publisher, etc…) into PDF or “portable document format” files which can be opened, viewed, and printed with Adobe’s free “Adobe Reader” software.

So, why bother converting your documents to pdf? Well, see if this sounds familiar…

“Hey Chris, I really want to go on the retreat this weekend, but I lost the flyers that you mailed to my house, handed to me at youth group, put in my backpack at religious education, and sent home to me with my mother, father, little sister, and third cousin twice removed. Could you e-mail it to me?”

If the flyer in question was created using a program like Microsoft Word and unless said student happens to have the exact same edition of Word on his or her home computer there’s a good chance they will not be able to open it or that the file may lose something “in the translation” from one version to another. Solution—convert that retreat flyer into a pdf file using Primo PDF, and e-mail it to your student, along with a link to http://www.adobe.com and instructions on how to download the free Adobe Reader (chances are, they already have Adobe Reader on their computer anyway).

This sort of “sharability” is a great asset. In addition to sharabilty, PDF files have a few other benefits worth mentioning:

• Size—bulkier files (like MS Publisher) tend to be about half as big when converted to pdf
• Security—Primo PDF allows you to chose the level of security you want in a given pdf file. This is a handy feature when you want to avoid unauthorized edits to the text of a given file.

All Your Instant Messengers in One Program (Same Great Taste—Less Filling)

If you have discovered the many ministry applications of programs like AOL’s Instant Messenger (AOLIM), MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and ICQ (pronounced “I Seek You”), you have probably found everyone has their own opinion about which is the best. Consequently, if you have ten kids to keep in touch with they are probably using four different programs. That many programs running simultaneously not only take up valuable memory, but they can clutter your desktop. Let's face it, even the best multi-taskers get confused when five different people IM you about four different programs!

That i’s why I am hooked on Trillian. This free program allows you to “talk” to people using all four of the major messenger programs (AOLIM, MSN Messenger, ICQ, and Yahoo), while only having one program running on your computer.

Once you download and install Trillian Basic (there is a Trillian Pro which costs $25—but I have yet to find something I cannot do using the free version) to your machine, all you have to do is tell it your usernames and passwords for your other messaging services and it will automatically import your contact lists. Once you have got the program up and running, you can customize when and how it notifies you that a contact has come online, change the sounds it plays (or turn them off completely), and add contact notes for each contact (this is a great way to help you remember that hifly_887$$123 is actually Jane Doe, and hifly_887$$124 is her twin sister Jean).

So, get out there and get downloading! And until next time, stand proud closet techies!

Praise, accolades, clarifying questions, and suggestions for future columns can be sent to cweber@mccym.net. Gripes, grumps, and examples of places where I was outright wrong should probably be sent to someone wiser than I ;-)