End of Week round up

March 21st, 2008 · No Comments

UPDATE/APOLOGY: To those reading the RSS feed (who likely wouldnt read this update anyway) I published this before some re-formats and spell checks and so it may look a horrendous mess in the feedreader.

…and plenty of it! I have been busy this week, but not to busy to pick up some interesting news, links and posts. Apologies for the massive length of this post, but its two round ups in one as I didnt manage my normal mid week round up this week, enjoy:

Apple is thinking about offering subcription-based unlimited iTunes downloads Ft reports:

"Detailed market research has shown strong appetite among consumers for deals bundling music in with the cost of the device, or in exchange for a monthly subscription, executives said. One executive said the research had shown that consumers would pay a premium of up to $100 for unlimited access to music for the lifetime of the device, or a monthly fee of $7-$8 for a subscription model."

Strong appetite is right, I would LOVE an unlimited iTunes account, the costs right now are definately prohibitive in my mp3 buying. The thing with downloads is you always feel ripped off, especially people in my generation who spent their entire teenage years downloading as much music as they could dream of from the originial napster. As illegal as that may have been is has now sown a mindset that downloads aren’t products, and seeing as you dont get a nice cd case and artwork inlay that you can pop into a shelf £7.99 is always going to feel like money down the drain.

Starbucks is cashing into the social networking craze whilst getting themselves some cheap market research and business development all at once. In light of their unsucessful starbucks card initiative they have set up mystarbucksidea.com

The idea is that people submit ideas and starbucks shows you how they’ve acted on it. Its still in its infancy and unsurprisingly the ideas are the ones that Baristas hear day in and day out, Free wifi, more sofas less chairs, how about a free drink after 10, A swipe card that includes your exact favourite drink order (now thats just lazy). My opinion is that starbucks are not going to get any particular marketting gems out of this campaign and it will end up being an expensive web design budget with not much to show for it, but hey, Im willing for them to prove me wrong , go and submit your idea here

Local Scottish Song writer Dan Lyth has released his new follow up album "Everything is Simple" from his first and excellent album "Breathe Easy". Interestingly Dan has set up an innovative choice for buying the album, you can either buy it as a download for £5 or as a CD (artwork, lyrics etc) but you also get the immediate download for £10 alternatively you can go all out for some Ltd Ed merch along with the CD for £25. Great Idea!

Christianity Today has released their book awards of 2008, plenty of good stuff here, though I think they missed some, or maybe that was me.

Floyd and Sally McClung are working in South Africa and have some amazing stories to tell here

As ever Jim Martin is blogging some excellent stuff, particularly his post on Seven Deadly Behaviours of Ministry, a very worthwhile read.

Pete Rollins from Northern Ireland menioned something in his interview at the Wittenburg Door which sent the cogs turning about the meaning of orthodoxy:

"ROLLINS: Well, that all depends on where you stand and how you define orthodoxy. The word today has taken on a rather unhelpful Enlightenment-influenced definition as “correct belief”—the ability to affirm a certain creedal formation. However, in the more ancient tradition the doxa of orthodoxy does not refer to belief but rather to praise. We see this in the word "doxology" which doesn’t mean belief, but rather worship "

Tim Hughes says all songs on the compassionart album will be listed as written by all 12 of the contributing worship leaders to take out the elemetnt of competition and concentrate on the cause.

"It meant that straight away there was no agenda. No one minded who got the credit and we all felt passionately about each song. It definitely made for an amazing sense of team and an amazing dedication to excellence with the writing of each song. It reminded me of a quote that Ronald Regan had on his desk when he was in office as the US President, “There is no limit to how far a person can go as long as he doesn’t care who gets the credit.” Andy Park was in Aberdeen right after this retreat and I blogged about it when he was up here.

I’ve often though that this is a useful element in how the Vineyard have released compilations or worship CD’s with the name of the Church instead of the song writer or worship leader, in some way it takes the problem of pride away, or the need to make a name for one’s self which must be such a difficulty for the more famous song-writers which much of the Christian culture would love to exalt.

Reclaiming the mind theology blog has posted six characteristics of a good seminary, the University of Aberdeen had almost none of these and I turned out OK (I think!). That being said the characteristics mentioned are certainly a good measure of many theology program, especially smaller seminaries in the states.

An Amazing Picture from the Antarctic in the Telegraph of a rainbow Iceberg, in fact I think it looks more camouflaged than rainbow. Pretty cool nonetheless.

Canon have released some new SD-range Cameras which further confuse the buying options for me, especially as they are including 5x optical zoom which was the reason I was looking at the Samsung options.