The concept is pretty simple.  What if you could go back in time one year and relive your life — at least the part of it you shared with the world on Twitter?  Twitshift does just that. I started using Twitshift about two weeks ago after I saw this article on Lifehacker.

The way it works is simple too.  Simply login to Twitter with the Twitshift app.  They download your last 3600 tweets.  You create a second Twitter profile for yourself. (I called mine @pastorbuhroed because it’s really the past tense of me.)  Then  Twitshift reposts your tweets from a year ago onto the new profile on the same day they were previously posted. Finally you follow your past-tense profile with your real profile, and your old tweets march out of the mists of time and onto your timeline one year later.  Or you can choose to follow yourself from two years ago as long as that wasn’t more that 3600 tweets ago for you.

You might notice @pastorbuhroed is a protected feed.  That keeps all the people you @replied or mentioned from getting your old posts too.  (Imagine the confusion that might cause.)

Twitshift allows you to take your Twitter narcissism to a whole new level.  But before you write this off as just indulging an inordinate sense of self-interest, hear me out.

I will admit the reason I started following my year-old self is because I make myself laugh.  It probably is narcissism. But now that I’ve started using it, I’ve found is that it’s helpful as a micro-journaling tool as well. I don’t just tweet those thoughts that make me chuckle to myself, I also tend to tweet thought provoking things I hear or read.  Being reminded of those things again a year later has been a helpful thing.

Here’s an example of some of the tweets — some funny, some thoughtful — I’ve been reminded of this week:

• E Stanley Jones notes the man who cannot say “this one thing I do” says “these many things I dabble in.” -Dr Benson
• If being in the presence of God was enough to cause Moses’ face to shine with glory, how much more glorious should the indwelling Spirit be?
• Overheard on a bus of Jr Highers: I’m not a band geek. I’m a band ninja.
• RT @middletownnaz: “In the life of the Spirit, the line between can’t and won’t tends to be very, very thin.” -Dr Benson.
• And there’s a curved line between “hobby” and “lobby”. (In reply to a friend’s tweet that there’s a fine line between two now-unremembered things.)
• Fascinating blend of demographics @ Convention Center today: Indiana Assn of Homeschooling Educators & the 2010 NFL Combine
• I’d try to skip the homeschool convo & crash the power lifter’s convo down the hall, but I imagine I’d feel equally out of place.
• Reading General 24 today. Struck by the fact that Rebekah came to the well even before Eliezer finished praying.
• @toddowens Yeah. General. First book in the Bible. Or don’t you read the Millitant Study Bible? (Stupid new phone autocomplete…)
• Michelle’s preparing to go to a workshop entitled “Helping the Distractible Child” Presenter: Melinda Boring #imnotmakingthisup
• Wesley had good insight. Gifts of the Spirit can be faked. The Fruit can’t. That’s why the Bible says judge by the fruit, not the gifts.
• What was it like growing old with the name “Exalted Father” (Abram) but having no kids?

So, you’ve made that awesome Animoto video of scenes from your last youth retreat. You want to show it before service starts, but you always show countdowns before service so things start on time, and you just don’t know what to do about this connived conundrum . . .

Don’t worry.

Do the logical.  Turn your own custom video into a countdown.

There are a couple of good ways to do this.

First, istockphoto.com has some decent countdowns over green backgrounds perfect for chroma keying, assuming you have a video editor capable of chroma keying.  Don’t know what chroma keying is?  It’s a way to combine two videos, one over another.  The chroma key selects a color and makes all areas of the top video which are that color transparent so the background shows through.  You might have heard it called shooting in front of a greenscreen or a bluescreen and it’s how meteorologists show up in front of their weather maps on the news.  With a chroma key countdown from istockphoto, you can do the same thing to put a timer over your video.

Of course, that may not be the most cost effective way of making your own countdown, especially when you can buy the Countdown Creator for $34.95.  Countdown Creator is a program that will allow you to take your own photos or video and add a countdown clock over the top.  You can even customize the soundtrack and font of the countdown.  It’s quick.  It’s really easy.  And the final product is great.

And no, I didn’t receive any perks for this endorsement – I had to buy my own copy just like the rest of the world.  But for the same cost of two countdown video from sermonspice.com, I figure it may be one of the best video purchases I ever made.

So, you’re fresh back from your youth retreat with a digital camera full of stunning photos and you want to know the best way to show your church all the great things that happened while you were away, but you don’t have the time to spend all day editing a video together.  What do you do?

If you’ve been reading this site recently, you know what I’d do.

Head to Animoto.com.

Animoto is a web-based service that takes your photos and video clips and edits them into a montage, complete with a tightly synced soundtrack.  It is, quite honestly, amazing what this software can do.

First, sign up for an account.  With a free account you can make as many free 30-second clips as you would like.  Want a longer video?  That’s easy.  For $3 you can buy an upgrade credit and make a full-length video.  Even better, in my opinion, is to upgrade to an all-access pass for $30 and for a whole year you can make as many videos as you want.  (As easy as Animoto is, you’ll make a lot.)

Or you can even go to the next step up, and for $249 you can not only make as many videos as you want for a year, you can make as many Hi-Res videos as you want.  (Hi-Res upgrade credits for all-access pass holders is $5 per video and with one you can download a hi-res mp4 video as well as .iso files for easy burning to DVD.)  What’s more, with the $249 professional account you can make videos for commercial use, access a wider range of soundtracks licensed for commercial use, add buttons to your video that drive viewers to your website and strip the Animoto logo from the end of your video so the focus is on you and your organization rather than on Animoto.

Once you have your account, making your first video is just three easy steps. 

First, upload your photos. You can either upload them directly to Animoto, or retrieve them from your own Flickr, Facebook or Picasa account.  (Since I use Flickr I know you can even retrieve the photos by photoset, so creating a video from a specific event is fast and easy.)  Or, if you want a montage of video clips you can upload them directly to Animoto (there are currently no retrieval services available for videos.)  Then you can adjust the order of the elements and even add some text.

Once you’ve chosen your photos, you pick your soundtrack.  The program will tell you how long your final video will probably be and you can search Animoto’s collection of soundtracks for tracks of similar length.  (The even have a nice collection of music from Christian artists.)  Don’t like what they offer? Upload your own audio (keeping in mind to respect copyrights as you do so).  Is the track too long? Don’t worry; Animoto will let you set start and stop points, or, if you prefer, trim the audio automatically to match your video length.

Finally, give your video a title and optional description (which appears on the Animoto site), and your video’s ready to render.

When it’s done rendering the video, Animoto will notify you by email with a link to your final video.  From there, if you don’t like it, you can remix it or fine tune it.  Or if you do like it, you can use the video toolbox to share it with your friends by sending it as a video email, embedding it into your website, or exporting it directly to YouTube.  The YouTube export can take a while to complete, but once you set it to export, you don’t need to babysit the process and in the end, you expose your video to the world’s second most used search engine.

As is so often the case here, I’ve received nothing from Animoto in exchange for this review.  It’s just a great web service that has made my life easier and created some great quality content.  Go ahead, try it out. It’s free.

polleverywhere.com SMS Audience Response System

We’ve introduced you to our new series at Water’s Edge called “You Decide.”  The essence of this series is the opportunity for students to text in questions and topics for us to cover in our teaching.  To facilitate this, we’re using the SMS poll service from polleverywhere.com.

It seems really simple from the audience’s viewpoint.  At the start of each service we invite students to text in any questions they’d like us to address.  “Simply text ‘youdecide’ and your question to 99503,” I say, and questions start rolling in.  “Have Twitter? Just tweet an @reply to @poll with ‘youdecide’ and your question.  And if you don’t have a cell phone, you can always go to our website, watersedgeyouth.com and follow the link to submit a question.”

During the week, students can check the live text wall at watersedgeyouth.com and see what questions come in.  As questions are submitted, we moderate the answers to make sure inappropriate messages don’t get posted to the wall of our website.

And all of it is made possible by polleverywhere.com.

Ask Anything

Polleverywhere.com is a SMS voting and audience response system.  A subscription allows you to ask as many questions as you want in a month, and results can be posted to your website or even sent live to your video projector in the room.

Multiple Choice Poll

Your question can be a multiple choice poll where participants send a keyword or number to 99503 to cast their vote for one option or another.  (See the image on the right for a detail.  To vote for “dam : river” (the ‘correct’ answer, btw) all a student would have to do is send the code 26157 to 99503.)

Or you can ask an open ended question (like “What would you like us to address at the next Water’s Edge?”) in which participants include a keyword or number at the beginning of their text message, and then use the rest of the message to send in their answer.

Customizable Subscription Plans

Subscription plans run from free (maximum 30 responses per poll) to $1,400 per month (20,000 responses per poll).  Each subscription level provides additional features.

For $15 per month you accept up to 50 responses per poll, and you can track users across multiple polls to see how they answer multiple polls.  Make one of the polls an open-ended question that asks their name, and you can identify what responses come from what participants.

For $65 per month you can accept up to 250 responses per poll, two users can create polls, and live response moderation is enabled so you can approve responses before they get posted to your live response wall.  Finally, the $65 per month plan allows you to create custom keywords that add a level of usability and professionalism to your poll.  (You can say use an easy to remember word like “youdecide” rather than a hard to remember number to identify your poll.)

Each upgrade in plan from there includes the same features, and accepts additional responses and users per plan.

One Tool, Multiple Uses

We’re obviously using Poll Everywhere to accept questions and topics for our You Decide series.  We’re also using it to enable students to ask questions or make comments during the teaching by sending a text message to an open ended poll.  I have my laptop up front with me and see questions and comments come in as students respond.  That way I can address questions without questions interrupting the flow of the teaching.  (Although we also have a question and comment time during the lesson for students who don’t have a cell phone.)

We’ve also used Poll Everywhere in the past for games.  The poll pictured above came from a trivia game in which we pitted a contestant against the combined intelligence of the audience.  We threw a analogy from SAT practice tests up on the video screen and had the contestant select their answer and write it down in advance.  Then we opened the poll to the audience.  If the student got the answer right and the audience got it wrong, they won a prize.

(When we played this at Water’s Edge, we enabled multiple responses per poll, so students who didn’t have a cell phone could borrow a friends to participate.  Of course, a select few students found it funny to spam the poll with multiple entries of the wrong answer, which not only skewed the results but also froze up the poll once we hit our maximum response limit.  Needless to say, next time we try this we’ll disable multiple responses.)

We’re also planning on using it the next time we play “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” for the “poll the audience” lifeline.

Have you used Poll Everywhere in Your Ministry?

We’re always looking for new ways to use tools like these.  Maybe you’ve done something creative with Poll Everywhere in your ministry.  Sound off in the comments and share your ideas.

MinistryQuestions.com

Tim Schmoyer of Life in Student Ministry has just launched a new website to help answer some of those nagging youth ministry questions you might find yourself asking.  Tim describes MinistryQuestions.com this way: “Think of Yahoo! Answers except with the added ability to interact via video and audio clips.”

If you haven’t checked it out, do so, now!  It’s not only chocked full of information and growing by leaps and bounds, it’s absolutely beautiful!  And be sure to check out this Youtube video to see how it all works.

Now, go, check out the site, and be sure to vote for all my answers. I’m saving up rewards points for a free trip to Peoria! (Now all I’ve got to do is figure out how to redeem them.)