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.

Our new network plan relies on Ubiquiti UniFi access plans and then use multiple SSIDs with VLAN tagging. Unfortunately our network is a little odd as well. I would like to be able to have the Public SSID be able to only access the internet while the password secured WiFi would allow access to internal servers for the staff.

Network Summary and Picture:

Yes, we currently have 2 separate Internet connections. One to Comcast and one for our phones and connecting to our other campuses.

Our important servers are currently at the farthest point away from the internet so we need to make sure everything works out to them.

Our T1 connections use a firewall out at the provider, but our Comcast connection uses an old SonicWall.  It currently has no DHCP set up.

So, any suggestions? What would be an easy way of doing this?

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!

I am considering the JW Image Rotator (free) and building a PHP backend to do an automated xml of a folder if images. Maybe someday write something more custom. @ckehayias wrote something similar in .Net.

@srushik – http://getcu3er.com/ ($50) with custom built ASP backend that builds xml from images.

@dszp pointed to @crewNeckTech mentioning  http://www.drmretriever.com/ (not sure of cost).

@granata http://www.getsignboard.com/

Also from @granata (here) there is http://mediasignage.com and their free product.

More work and info to come

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?

SignUsUP.com is Gone

My guess is that it is a “Last person out turrn off the lights and shut off the server.” It will be interesting to see what we have going on tomorrow.

UPDATE: SignUsUp.com is now a GoDaddy.com parking page

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?

UPDATE: The original linked video was removed by the person who posted it, I have found another copy.

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.

Exactly 1 year ago today I was dealing with some memory card issues and did some research (Memory Card Corruption Tips).

On Friday I was handed a camera that had been dropped and had images missing. I did what I could to get it back together, but we still could not access the images. Tonight I pulled the card out of the camera (I couldn’t find the proper USB cable for it) and plugged it into my personal digital camera, but I still could not find anything.

Then, after digging up the page linked above, I found PhotoRescue and did the trial run. It found lots of images so I paid the $29 registration fee. The result?

• About 10 minutes to scan a 256 MB SD card
• 94 images found
• 34.4 MB of files
• 2 images were just thumbnail size
• 3 were corrupted

Unfortunately the images I needed were not accessible. They were the 5 duds mentioned above and one of the thumbnails was a  junk image to begin with. These duds may have resulted from a test image being taken that may have overwritten some of the data.

This leaves 89 old images found. Some of them were many months old (I recognized the event). Some could have possibly been several years old, but there is a chance that someone just set the date wrong on the camera before those images were taken. This is a useful tool, but remember to be careful what images you take even if you plan to delete.

I did get a shock from the site though, The girl in the pictures here looks just like my daughter. Even my wife was shocked when she saw them.