The convergence of technology, media in particular, is effecting the way people worldwide do business, socialize, gather information, make connections, and draw conclusions.

Watch this video, then ask yourself: How do I use these tools connect with those around me?

Description from YouTube:

This is another official update to the original “Shift Happens” video. This completely new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist. For more information, or to join the conversation, please visithttp://mediaconvergence.economist.com and http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com.

Credits:

Content by XPLANE, The Economist, Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and Laura Bestler. Music by DoKashiteru, “Home Tonight.” Design and development by XPLANE, http://www.xplane.com.You can follow us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/xplane

This week is All Church Camp in rural Helena, Arkansas. On the agenda this week is teaching a group of 12 teens how to develop a website using WordPress. A few pictures have been posted on Twitter – via @robmcbryde and @brandon_moore.

Here are the websites they’ve been building:

Home Away From Home Bed & Breakfast

JLST’s Bar & Grill

JJ’TD Jewelry

Windows only: Image resizing tools are a dime a dozen, but free utility Shrink Pic is actually an extremely clever original: Instead of requiring manual processing, it runs in the background and automatically resizes images whenever you attach or upload them.

A perfect tool for frequent Facebook uploaders, for example, Shrink Pic works with a number of applications (most browsers, Outlook, Thunderbird, Skype, and MSN Messenger, to name just a few) to monitor when you upload, attach, or send pictures via IM. When you do, it automatically resizes the images in the background based on user-defined settings, then uploads the smaller image (so you don’t have to wait several minutes for an upload to complete just to have it severely compressed at its destination anyway). It can even resize multiple photos in the same upload. The speed at which it resizes and the quality of the compression are nothing to sneeze at, either.

Shrink Pic saves the resized images in a temporary directory, so your originals are never touched—just copied. You can use any kind of compression level you want, as well as choose from 5 different photo types to check for. If you want to disable it, all you need to do is uncheck an option in your system tray—and re-enabling it is just as easy. You can even install a portable version to a USB drive, so you never have to resize images again—not even at other computers.

Shrink Pic is a free download, Windows only.