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I kludged together an online Google Map tool for our ministry staff this week.

After trying it out for a little bit I am putting it here on the community to help others and to improve it.

There is a live instance available at http://osministry.com/map/ and I included the files in a zip here: http://osministry.com/map/files/

The tool itself is just an html file relying on Javascript and the Google Maps API V3. It does not need an API key so it will work on any domain name without you having to register your own.

Included is a file called csv.php. I code in php, but since not everyone else does I kept all code in a separate file so you can easily make your own and just change the file name listed in the javascript.

This tool was really built for designing Area Maps for ArenaChMS, but a little adaptation will make it usable for other purposes.

You can click on different locations and it will gather together the coordinates of those locations into a textarea which is then exported out as a  csv file ready to be imported with the ImportArea.exe file that Arena Support can provide (I would rather point you to them for support on that).

New features I would like:

Importing a list of coordinates – I would like to be able to take a list of coordinates from either the CSV or from an Arena exported xls file and import them into the tool so that we can more easily edit shapes in the future.

Closing the shape – The Google API version of this tool (here) has a “Close PolyShape” button that would close the shape back on the original coordinates. I found that our ministry staff liked this feature even though it put an extra identical coordinate in the list. I would filter that last one out when creating the csv, but it does help to visually close the map for people.

Clean up the file – The index.html file is a mess. As I said, I kludged it from another tool and so I left a lot of the extra stuff in there as reference as I worked on features. At some point I really should get rid of all the stuff I set to “Display: none;” or commented out.

Giving credit where it is due, the original file I started with was from http://www.birdtheme.org/useful/v3tool.html

ArenaChMS users can discuss this tool in the community here.

I get tired of redownloading Adobe Reader when doing a bunch of updates. I also get tired of the ambush software that Adobe keeps trying to slip in.

For this reason, I prefer to use and refer to the standalone installer at the Adobe FTP site. The link for Reader X is:
ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/win/10.x/

And to the future me who comes looking for this note, You Are Welcome!

Over the years we have required our volunteers to fill out applications. Not to long ago we started doing them online and now managing this process has been moved over to one of my tasks. To be honest, the system we have is a pain in the neck so I want to fix it up.

I’ll start by showing what we have.

Yes, we use Survey Monkey to manage this form (please do not submit it, that would really bother the very busy lady who does the work of receiving and following up on them). The results are cut and pasted into a doc, exported to PDF, and stored as a part of that person’s profile in our database (we use Arena). Paper based copies have been pulled out of their filing cabinets and scanned in order keep us consistent.

The information is this form is used to provide information about a person so they can be evaluated for a serving position, have background checks run, and references to call.

Now for what we want.

• We want something that is easily submitted and received
• Required fields
• Easily edited in the future
• I would really like an integrated module for Arena that does all of this, but we are not set to coding that yet and it might be worth knowing more about what we really want before we do.

As a long time web geek I almost said “Hey, I’ll code that right up.” but I don’t have that kind of time available anymore. I do about a half dozen jobs and have an infant at home. Instead I said “I’ll look into seeing what other people are doing and we can move forward from there.

so, . . .

What are YOU doing?

Other churches must be dealing with this same issue. We want to know what you are doing. Do you do volunteer applications? do you do them online? do you have a special workflow?

I am sure there is a lot of this in every country except where the Internet is almost mandatory for dealing with the government.
Many Americans see little point to Web: survey

Offline Americans see Internet of Little Value
44% – Not interested in anything on the Internet
22% – Say they cannot afford a computer or internet access.
17% – Say they don’t understand or know how to use the Internet.
14% – Do all their e-commerce and surfing from work.
03% – Said the internet does not reach their homes.

My notes:
US broadband use reached 52% in 2006, up from 42% in 2005.
29% – No Internet
52% – Broadband
19% – Dial-up?

I am posting a link to http://picnik.com in order to remind myself of it later.

It is an online photoediting site that will be useful if away from a good editing program or for people who don’t want to buy/learn an editing program.

 Via Lifehacker.