Mobile Ministry Magazine

I get "talked to" a lot about the handheld emphasis of mobility that I tend to have. And to a lage extent, I will not lstray much from that bias. There is much that I have been able to do on a handheld because of will, rather than because of need. This doesn't mean that this is only side of moiblity worth talking about though. There are others, and per th way much of tech is going, there is a lot happening that we should all take note of.

Hosted Applications
A few people I know have taken mobilty to mean that they can take their applications with them in a USB memory key or access them from a web browser. This is really neat. Basically, the idea is that either a server or USB key holds the applications, personal preferences, etc. and then the hardware (whether laptop, desktop, or thin client) serves as just the means to use this. What it means is that, like a smartphone, getting things done is never a process that is far from happening. It does require though that you at least have the permission on various public devices to log on or plug in. That can be an issue some places, but not enough to take the office and latch it to your keychain :)

The Officeless Worker
Another side of mobility is present in those that make their clients and coffeehouses their "offices." These are fields and people who get by far and away by being able to migrate a lot of what they do by smartphone or laptop, and then leverage avenues of connectivity to get things done. There are plenty of ways to connect in this manner (www.webworkerdaily.com is an excellent resource on this), and can in a lot of ways be even more freeing to the ministry or organization that is not just trying to cut costs, but stay visual to those they are working for and with.

There are other sides of mobility, and surely I am not the only one to experience these. Right now I am playing with the Treo 680 and a BT keyboard on one end doing this posting, and the N800 researching and RSS reading on another end (all at a public library). There are indeed several sides of mobility, but the center point isn't the device, but how you use the devices and services to be effective to Christ and others.

Google Gears
I have not been able to do too much looking into this yet, but it seems that Google has released an open source application called Google Gears (http://gears.google.com) that allows you to use some of Googles online applications while in an offline mode. For many people, this means something really simple, use Google's free applications online and offline and have the ability to use those apps ANYWHERE you can get into a browser.

I think that this will be big once people start taking more seriously the browser as a suitable place to do light work. This announcement plus that of Palm's Foleo yesterday (www.palm.com/foleo) makes for an interesting call to shift our usage of computing from that which had been predicated on static and not-as-mobile tech, to browsers (dynamic) and that which is as mobile as we inately are.