For the last number of months I’ve been doing a [...]]]> I’m a huge fan of using technology to augment and expedite whatever we are doing – within and outside of ministry. Obviously, technology is not the answer^[1], but in seeking to be “wise as serpents, innocent as doves” technology can certainly be a tremendous asset.

For the last number of months I’ve been doing a lot of research on Church Management Systems (ChMS). These are the church equivalent of business ERP and/or CRM systems. I’m hoping that the hours I’ve spent pouring over a variety of websites and systems will be of use to others as they consider the options available.

This is a living document, it will grow with time.

• BVCMS (Open Source)
  • Since 2007.
  • Developed initially for the megachurch Bellevue Baptist and still “underwritten” by Bellevue Baptist.
  • Free to download and deploy, or you can have hosted by BVCMS.
  • Web-Based.
  • My Take: This is the ChMS I have chosen to go with. It is extremely robust, utilized by a number of churches from tiny ones to mega-churches, etc. It continues to improve at a rapid pace. Its UI isn’t entirely intuitive, but this is getting better by leaps and bounds.
• Roll Call (Developer: BytheBook)
  • Since 1991.
  • Workstation or Client/Server Deployment.
  • Free Trial
  • Pricing begins at $100 for 100 people capacity, unlimited is $1699.
  • Runs on Windows and Mac OS X.
  • My Take: Seems like a fairly good application and the pricing is reasonable. The help system seems to be for the 4D development environment they used to create the application and not for Roll Call itself. I may be looping back to these folks for a reconsideration if I don’t find anything else.
• ChurchPro (Developer: Database Designs)
  • Since 1994.
  • Workstation.
  • Free Trial.
  • Pricing starts at $299 for a one computer license.
  • Runs on Windows.
  • My Take: Hmmm…the fact that they use Paradox/BDE pushes me away. The UI definitely has that feel to it…still, the pricing is right and the UI appears fairly intuitive.
• Church Helpmate (Developer: Helpmate Technology Solutions)
  • Since 1997.
  • Workstation or Client/Server Deployment.
  • Free Trial.
  • Pricing starts at $297 for 100 people capacity, unlimited is $1197.
  • Runs on Windows.
  • My Take: UI is intuitive and pricing is reasonable. I’m not a fan of their synchronization scheme, which uses a disconnected model which can sometimes result in conflicting data that needs to be merged. That said, I may be looping back around to them.
• PowerChurch
  • Since 1984.
  • Workstation or Web-Based.
  • Free Trial.
  • Pricing starts at $295 (sale price), regularly $595 or the web-based version for $40/mo.
  • Runs on Windows, Mac, Linux.
  • My Take: The longevity of the company is impressive, unfortunately as is usual with older companies, the UI and overall feel carries some legacy characteristics. The web-based version is really just a remote-desktop-type experience to their servers – which is fine – just be aware you are getting the exact same program.
• ACS Technologies
  • Since 1978.
  • One of the largest vendors of ChMS systems.
  • Offers various applications targeted at small / medium / large churches, organizations, schools, daycares, and specifically Catholic institutions.
  • There small church ChMS is Membership Plus which starts at $280 for a single user license or $380 for a multi-user license for the Standard edition and for the Deluxe edition is around $500.
  • My Take: I haven’t tried the software, but the site looks nice, the features look robust. If I need to investigate further, this ChMS would be on my list.
• Other ChMS Options:
  • ChurchLinc (Sciberus)
  • Richmond Software
  • CrowdSpace – I like this site, but the last product from the developer kind of fizzled out after a few years (ChurchRadius) and this one doesn’t seem to be getting regular updates (per Twitter/blog).
  • Donarius – Very old-fashioned UI.
  • ChurchLedger
  • ServantPC
  • Nativity Church Software
  • IgniteCRM (faithHighway)
  • ChurchInfo (Open Source, PHP/MYSQL).
  • Sheepology (Open Source, Django).
  • Church Management Solutions.
  • ChurchTrac (built on MS Access).
  • RDS Advantage.
  • ChurchKeeper (site is unattractive).
  • People Driven Software.
  • Excellerate.
  • Church Office Online.
  • ChurchWatch.
  • MaxPro.
  • ChurchDB.
  • ChurchEquip.
  • ChurchWindows.
  • CCIS.
  • Church Growth Software (“purpose-driven”).
  • ConnectionPower.
  • CongregationBuilder.
  • Churchhand.
  • CDM+.
  • Logos CMS.
  • Church Community Builder (web-based).
  • ChurchMetrics (web-based).

1. ^[1] In my humble opinion, Christ is. ↩

What For?

You shouldn’t use the same password for every site, in [...]]]> KeePass is a free and open source password manager that easily outstrips the commercial alternatives I have encountered. I’ve been using KeePass for several years now and can’t complain one bit.

What For?

You shouldn’t use the same password for every site, in fact, ideally you shouldn’t be using the same password on any two sites or services you access. So, your login to your bank should not be the same as to your email or to login to your computer – and so on. If they are the same you run the risk of one site being compromised and hackers being able to gain access to a large number of your sites. When you begin to carry this best practice out in real life you find yourself with a tremendous number of passwords – and KeePass helps you securely store and manage account information.

Don’t be deceived – KeePass can keep a lot more than just username/password combinations. If you wanted to you could use KeePass to keep a private journal…

Features:

• Utilizes advanced security methods to protect your data – for examples AES-256 and SHA-256.
• Import/Export Features to/from many formats.
• Allows for the creation of groups for organizing passwords.
• Integrates with web browsers, etc. to automatically input information.
• Robust search that allows you to quickly find records based on any word in the record.
• Has a plugin architecture that allows for extendibility.
• Runs on a wide variety of Operating Systems.
• Shows you how strong your passwords are as you type them.
• Can generate random passwords for you.

Conclusion:

I suppose I could go on…but enough said. Its a great little application – there is no reason not to use it. Go get it now. There is no excuse not to be keeping track of your accounts and no excuse for this information to be unencrypted.

Related articles

• 5 Tools for Keeping Track of Your Passwords (mashable.com)
• Keep Your Password Safe With KeePass (tesarn.blogspot.com)
• KeePassX: Secure Password Management For Linux & OS X (makeuseof.com)
• KeePass 2.13 Released, Sports Big Batch of New Features (ostatic.com)

On Sept. 26th I wrote a provocatively titled post entitled, “SugarSync – A Love/Hate Relationship.” I’m happy to report that SugarSync has fully addressed the dilemma in our relationship and I’m now happier than I have ever been paying my $5/mo. to SugarSync.

As a sign of this [...]]]>

On Sept. 26th I wrote a provocatively titled post entitled, “SugarSync – A Love/Hate Relationship.” I’m happy to report that SugarSync has fully addressed the dilemma in our relationship and I’m now happier than I have ever been paying my $5/mo. to SugarSync.

As a sign of this renewed relationship I figured I should do something nice from my end…You know, that whole give-take concept in a relationship? So here I am, writing a fuller review of SugarSync and without the downer of last time.

Why YOU Must Get SugarSync NOW!

I work in the Technology Services Department at Philadelphia Biblical University. On occasion individuals walk into my office and ask, “Can you help me get my files back? I have all the pictures I ever took in my life on this hard drive…and it isn’t booting.” Yes, there is variation to what is lost and how it is lost – but the point is, I hear quite regularly – at work, at home, everywhere – that people are losing data. Sometimes the data is relatively unimportant – sometimes it is heartbreakingly important. That masters thesis you were 3/4th’s done with? Gone. Those emails from your beloved, now-deceased family member? Obliterated. Those copies of legal documents you need for an upcoming court case? No longer available.

Back in the day it was a hassle to ensure your files were backed up – that is no longer the case. No one has any excuse for not having a backup of their critical files - and SugarSync eliminates this excuse. As a teenager, in spite of knowing better, I twice lost significant numbers of files to a systems crash – applications I had developed, documents I had written, emails I really wanted to save. Back in those days it was a bear to save things. You were using dialup internet and floppy disks were all the rage. Today, those excuses no longer exist – thanks to SugarSync.

Other Options?

There are other options. When it comes to backups the options are multitudinous – for example Mozy and Carbonite. Unfortunately, while I once was a Mozy fanatic (I was with them from the early beta days when Josh(?) sent us very random emails masquerading as newsletters) they refused to make their pricing competitive – continuing to charge for software licenses (almost nobody else does) and exceeding the going rates for data storage (I’d say Amazon S3 defines this) by 2x-3x! Carbonite’s user interface has never particularly impressed me.

Now SugarSync extends far beyond backups – though backups are the must-have feature everyone needs – and there are numerous competitors on this front as well. Probably the best known is Dropbox. At the time I was considering Dropbox you were forced to place all your files in one directory – I’m not sure whether they removed this limitation or not – but this was unacceptable to me, and I generally liked SugarSync’s clients and interoperability better anyways. Now I’m a bit of a SugarSync fan-boy but for good reason. I’m open to alternatives – if you believe you know of a better one let me know – but it will take more than feature parity to make me switch (and I’ll ask SugarSync if they have intentions for the feature first…and it’d have to be a pretty killer feature).

How Much Does it Cost?

For most people it is free. If you just want to ensure your critical files are protected you can use the free 2 GB account SugarSync offers and will likely never need anything more. If you want not only your critical files but your music files, saved games, pictures, and so on – then you’ll need to pay, but still – it is really reasonable. I pay $5/mo. for 30 GB and I utilize around 8 GB. If 30 GB isn’t enough you can get 60 GB for $10/mo. and so on. It is really reasonable^[1]

What Else Can it Do?

The absolute, must-have feature is backups. If you don’t use SugarSync for anything else you should utilize it for backups of your files. That said, SugarSync offers a wide variety of sheer awesome features, let me outline a few of my favorites below:

• Security – Worried about your files being in the cloud? How about knowing they are protected by 128-bit AES encryption and that all communication to/from the servers occurs over a SSL (Secure Socket Layer) connection?
• Infinity Device Sync – I have a home laptop, a home desktop, a work laptop, a work desktop, a Verizon Droid, and an Apple iPhone 3G…If I want to have my files synced to all of these computers – I can. I can also define specific subsets to go to specific computers. For example, don’t want those work files going home? Exclude them.
• File Versioning – What happens if you accidentally overwrite an important file? Delete the file? What happens if you need to look five revisions back? SugarSync offers seamless and intuitive file versioning – and any file that is deleted gets dropped into their deleted files bin – waiting to be permanently deleted, so if your little kid deletes a critical file – no worries, SugarSync still has it ready to go.
• Cross Platform – SugarSync has clients for Windows, Mac OS X, iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile, and Symbian. Pretty nifty aye?
• Sharing – Want to share files with someone else? With the whole world? No problem! Its easy and intuitive and with the latest revision you can have those files you shared or others shared with you sync to your computers just like any other files you personally own.
• Archiving – Have files you want to keep around but never use? Put them in the Archive folder and they won’t be kept on your local machines but will be kept on SugarSync’s central servers.

What Would You Still Like to See?

So, I know I said I’d be happy if I saw just this one additional feature – and I am…but I suppose the grass does always look greener on the other side…So, here are a few dream wishes:

• SugarSync has upgraded their customer support portal and forums, I hope this indicates a new era of responsiveness to consumer feature requests, even if it is only to say, “Hey guys…we really don’t have enough demand for this feature right now” or “Yeah, we are working on it…We’ll keep you updated on how it goes.” Transparency is a huge feature to me.
• While I was raving about the cross-platform support I noticed SugarSync doesn’t support Linux…wait a second? I swore they did once? Anyways, no matter – point is, SugarSync should support Linux…and, yeah, I mainly say this b/c I’m an open source lover – not b/c its necessarily a sensible business proposition.
• As soon as I heard about the new sharing feature I opened SugarSync to check for updates…but wait, there is no check for new versions? Boo. Please add one, I don’t want to have to navigate to a website to grab the latest client. Give me an option to force a check for updates. Again, just a small issue.

Conclusion

You better be on your way to get SugarSync right now…or when you complain about losing your files I might just have to…okay, I’ll try to help you anyways, but you should get SugarSync and save yourself a lot of time and headache.

Related articles by Zemanta

• SugarSync Now Syncs Between People for Easy and Instant Sharing of Files (eon.businesswire.com)
• SugarSync Allows File Sharing Between People (intomobile.com)
• SugarSync’s File Sync Gets Collaborative (informationweek.com)
• What Do I Do When Dropbox Goes Down? [Ask Lifehacker] (lifehacker.com)
• SugarSync for Android is just like Dropbox… but better (downloadsquad.com)
• Fuze Meeting Posts Dropbox and SugarSync Tutorials for IPad (pcworld.com)

1. ^[1] If you have a huge collection of photos you may want to consider sending those over to Google’s Picasa Web Albums as their pricing is ridiculously inexpensive. ↩

I’ve been using computers for a long time and remember Apple and Commodore computers when the concept of viruses was completely foreign. Over the years the threats from viruses and various sorts of malware has grown significantly and one would be unwise to run a computer (at least a [...]]]>

I’ve been using computers for a long time and remember Apple and Commodore computers when the concept of viruses was completely foreign. Over the years the threats from viruses and various sorts of malware has grown significantly and one would be unwise to run a computer (at least a Windows one) without some form of malware protection.

Over the years I’ve used just about every antivirus application under the sun as well. McAfee, Symantec, Panda, Kaspersky, F-Secure, Avira, AVG, Comodo, ESET, BitDefender, ClamWin, and dozens of specialized tools aimed at destroying specific forms of malware. At various times I’ve had various favorites. I expect this to change again in the future as well. Security software is a constantly evolving market segment and the innovators one day are the leftovers the next day.

Currently, my favorite security application is Avast. Avast offers several features that really impress me:

• Boot-time scans – These scans run before Windows launches making it possible to detect and disable many viruses that otherwise refuse to be removed.
• Effectiveness – Avast when combined with MalwareBytes has never been unable to overcome a virus (or set of virsues) I have encountered.
• Performance – Many antivirus applications I’ve run slow down machines dramatically. My subjective opinion of Avast is that while not the absolute lightest and fastest it does offer minimal system disruption while still maintaining high effectiveness.
• Price – For the home user Avast is free. I love telling friends to dump McAfee and Symantec (okay, I admit it, I don’t like either) and instead use Avast (especially when its time for license renewal).

So go grab yourself a copy – the price is right (and reasonable for commercial uses).