At Cornerstone we have been using the program Easyworship for a couple of years now. We use it to project everything for our services: song lyrics, pictures, powerpoint files, Bible verses, videos, and dvd’s. I highly recommend Easyworship because it is extremely easy to operate. Even if you are not familiar with the program, you can learn how to operate it in minutes. At church, we have a dedicated desktop computer that runs Easyworship, but there have been several times for youth events or special services where we don’t have anybody there to run the system. I’ve had to run back and forth from the stage to the sound booth to get everything working.

I’ve stumbled upon a pretty interesting solution. At my last company, we used a program called RealVNC to troubleshoot computers from a central location. At home, I use it to control my desktop computer from anywhere in the house using my laptop. I even downloaded a VNC viewer for my ipod touch that lets me control my computer and see everything that is on the screen from my ipod. That made me think, could I do the same thing at church?

After a little experimentation, I’ve got it working. Since the church computer runs Windows Vista, I couldn’t get RealVNC to work, so I had to download the free UltraVNC server. After opening some ports on Windows firewall, it works great. From my macbook pro laptop, I can pull up and control the windows computer from anywhere in the building. So I could be on stage loading images or changing powerpoint files before they get put on the screen. For a smaller church or situation where you don’t have a full tech crew, this is a cool solution, and it even works from my ipod touch. I could envision a worship leader controlling the worship lyrics, or the pastor controlling and re-arranging his powerpoint during the message. Not ideal, but incredibly useful when you need it.

VNC is not known as the most secure screen sharing software, but it is on our internal church network and there is nothing confidential on this computer, so I’m not worried about the security. It is password protected to keep someone from taking control of the computer as a prank. Overall, it is pretty slick to see your entire windows desktop being controlled from another computer.

My prediction from a few months ago became a reality. I ordered an ipod touch to replace my old nano with several Apple gift cards. Jennifer orchestrated everyone getting me Apple gift cards for Christmas. I ordered the 8 gig version and it should be here by Tuesday or Wednesday. I really want an iphone, but the fact that it is on AT&T kills it for me. They have zero bars in our entire city, so there’s no hope anytime soon. The ipod touch is simply the iphone without the phone.

Here’s my question for my blog readers. What apps would you download for your touch or iphone from Apple’s app store. I’m planning on adding Facebook, everything Google related, Evernote, Remember the Milk, Jott, YouVersion, Weather Channel, Amazon, and Apple Remote. What other apps or games would you recommend?

I’m curious to see how I can integrate this into my workflow. I have a feeling that it will mostly replace my smartphone. Since the touch has wifi internet, I may even drop my phone back to a basic model to save the internet fees every month. Most of the time when I’m on the internet with my phone, there is a wifi network available. The only downside is I will have to carry two devices around. I’ll let you know how it works.

Apple via kwout