This is the last of the four webinars that I produced for our clergy. This topic covers Google+, Hangouts and Drive. I hope that our clergy will find this useful in figuring out how to use these important collaboration tools.

On a personal note, scheduling four webinars for the same week was a bit aggressive. Perhaps future episodes should be spaced out a bit more.

My prayers have been with the people of Boston for the last week. I can’t imagine the pain of the people who were injured in the bombing. As a runner myself I have a family that waits for me at the end of races. All runners are a family. It takes a special kind of drive to get out every day and run as far as we do. It took even more drive to get up and run the day after these terrible attacks. These bombs won’t stop us from running forward. Nothing will. God be with the people of Boston and the families of the injured during this difficult time.

This is the third of four online training webinars that I am working on at work. We are starting this new emphasis on empowering our clergy using the Google+ Hangout system. We suffered a glitch in the webinar today where it didn’t seem to be recording the first few minutes to the archive. I noticed that it had glitched during the presentation and started it up at somewhere around the 12-14 minute mark. The archive missed the introduction as well as a description of the major browsers. The main part of the discussion was preserved.

In case you are wondering, you should use Google Chrome for everything. Period.

This is the second of four online training webinars that we are working on for the members of our Annual Conference. This session covers the basic features of Gmail as well as walking through all of the configuration settings. You can find out more about the webinar schedule here: http://nccumc.org/it/webinars/.

We are experimenting at work with technology webinars delivered over the Google+ Hangout system. This was the first of four that I am working on this week. It’s a very basic discussion of the history of technology, where are are now and a brief overview of social networks and hardware options. The class is designed for our clergy that want more of an overview of various technology topics. It was well received when I went on a recent training trip so I thought I would repackage it here for online viewing. You can find out more about the webinar schedule here: http://nccumc.org/it/webinars/.

I’m not sure what that middle option means but it sure seems scary…

Feedly has a nice looking interface that takes some time to adjust to.

Feedly was the first service that I tried to use. After being used to the Google Reader interface for several years this was quite an adjustment to make. I was looking for a concise presentation of headlines with perhaps a small snippet of the article itself. Feedly’s interface concentrates more on the presentation of the data instead. It took me awhile to get used to this interface. The mobile apps for this service mirror the website closely. I was able to use it on my smart phone, tablet, laptop and desktop computer.

The Old Reader has the closest interface to Google Reader. Mobile support isn’t that great though.

The Old Reader had the closest interface to Google Reader. The layout felt familiar and was the easiest to adjust to. The biggest problem with this service was the lack of good support for mobile devices. There is no corresponding app for smart phones or tablets. The website interface didn’t seem to work well in the mobile browser. I kept accidentally clicking the wrong links as I was using it.

At the end of the day I decided to stick with Feedly. Both sites were very easy to configure and start using. After I imported my Google Reader feed list they picked right up where Google dropped me. Even though Google Reader is still going for a few more months I’ve already switched. The key factor in my decision was mobile support. You just can’t beat a solid mobile app.

Note: Even after you deactivate, your friends can still invite you to events, tag you in photos, or ask you to join groups. If you opt out, you will NOT receive these email invitations and notifications from your friends.

I thought their account deactivation page was very clever. I’ll share it below:

Don’t go, everyone will miss you!

I’ll still see some stuff via e-mail. I’m not sure how long this will stick but I’ve set myself a goal of 30-45 days. We’ll see where it goes from there. If you would like to keep in touch with me until then you can find me on DouglasWard.net, on Google+ or on Twitter. See you soon!

I did it! I’ll be back later!

Start by heading over to Account Settings and clicking on the link to download a copy of your Facebook data.

You can download your entire Facebook Profile!

Click the Start My Archive button to start the process. This is when you start waiting for the archive to process. If you have years of history on Facebook (like I do) then it might take awhile.

Click the button to start the archive process.

No big decisions can happen without being asked twice if you really want to do it.

Every major question needs to be asked twice, right?

Now we wait for the archive to process. Facebook will send you an email with a download link once the file is ready.

…And now we wait.

Facebook also has an option for downloading an expanded archive. This archive contains a lot of the internal system information that Facebook tracks behind the scenes. It includes login times, who you are friends with, etc. This archive processes a lot more quickly but doesn’t contain any of your pictures, status updates or any other personal information.

The expanded archive includes more technical data than just your posts and photos.

Same prompt as before when you click the button to start creating the archive.

The screen that you see while waiting is nearly the same as well.

…And now we wait, again!

That’s about all it takes to get your files (in theory). My archive failed twice. After spending a good deal of time trying to figure it out I gave up. I’ll take another swing at this later and see how it goes. I hope it works better for you!

Some of my friends post genuinely funny, witty and relevant content. I love interacting with them and finding out what is going on with them and their families. I also enjoy keeping up with my own family. Facebook keeps me in closer touch with them than I ever was before they started using it. It is a very valuable tool for interacting with the people that I am journeying through this life with.

The rest of the system is a giant noise generation machine. People post the same memes and joke photos repeatedly. Blocking game notifications is a lot like playing whack-a-mole. My likes and my friend’s likes keep cluttering my news feeds with advertisements. I won’t even comment on presidential elections, the gun control debate, how much I love Jesus, support the troops or any other major news story of the day. My news feed settings seem to change from time to time, burying content from the folks that I interact with regularly underneath a digital waterfall. It’s true that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. If you take that one opinion and multiply it by 242 and the sound can be deafening.

I don’t mean this to be a complaint against Facebook. I’ve been using it since it was first released to the public. I still enjoy using it. I just remember when I didn’t need to spend a lot of time every day keeping up with all of that content. I’m burned out. I need a break.

It would seem that the easy solution would be to cut into my friends list. We all have a bunch of folks that we added on a whim, or because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe they were much better friends in the past than they are now. People change. People move on. Paths diverge and people head off in opposite directions. No hard feelings, right? It turns out there are hard feelings after all. Somewhere along the way people started tying their personal identities into their Facebook profiles. Some people (myself included) don’t mind if they get removed from other’s friends lists. It’s nothing personal. After all, it’s just a website, right? Others take it personally. The first time I had to deal with personal fallout from my friends list was an eye-opening experience. Fast forward to today and I’m getting tired of worrying about it. I could hide them from my news feed. I could even limit what they can see. That’s not the point though. It’s my profile, not theirs. When I start feeling like I can’t remove people because of how they will take it then I’ve lost control of my information. I find that to be unsettling.

The fact that I’m tired is also troubling. It means that this social network has become way too heavily integrated in my daily life. I’ve been going back and forth with this decision for a long time now. I’ve finally made up my mind. I’m going to take a break. I’ll write about that process as I work through it. Will it stick? Will I be able to handle the silence? Time will tell. I’ll write more on this decision later. For now though, it feels good to have finally made up my mind. Instead of reading Facebook today I think I’ll read a book!