Sitting in my hotel room getting ready to go set up our exhibit booth at Worship Northwest near Salem, Oregon. With me on this trip is Joey McNair who is the man behind Defy Creative, creater of Shoutable media. It is his Luminous Bible Backs collection that we use every sundy in our services and on the road.

Flying in we saw Mt. Hood and Mt. Rainier rising above the mounainous landscap topped in white. God’s masterful creations are so incredible to look upon.  We are expecting to have a great time and meet some new faces at this event that we can introduce to MediaShout’s great list if features and user friendly interface.

More updates to come….

I stumbled upon this application simply called Bluetooth Remote while looking for way to have my Sprint Mogul control my home A/V system.

I downloaded the free trial and was immediately impressed with its capabilities. I have been using the Beta build 0.9.0.33422 and it works great. According to the home page at www.blueshareware.com it has limited time usage but you can simply restart the connection.

Once the Bluetooth server connection is made between the PC and the phone you can choose which currently running application you wish to control.

When MediaShout is running I choose the Screen Control application from the Options menu. I can now use my finger or stylus to control the placement of my mouse and the slideout Qwerty keyboard on my phone operates the same as any other (minus the F keys). The up and down arrows can be used to select cues in the script and the Enter key will Fire it.

Here are a list of features from the website.

- Control iTunes, PowerPoint, Mouse, WinAMP, Windows Media Player and much more
- See the actual desktop in your phone
- No Bluetooth setup! Just connect from your phone
- Create your own applications via Keymaps or VB and JScripts
- Supports all PC Bluetooth solutions Toshiba, Windows, BlueSoleil and Widcomm/Brodacom

This last Sunday I was preaching so I set up my sermon points in MediaShout and used the Vines Bumper set from Igniter. I did not have to put MediaShout into SlideShow mode, I simply opened the remote app on my phone, chose Screen Control, and hit the spacebar to advance all my pre-set sermon cues. IT WAS SWEET! I was about 15-20 feet from my laptop and did not lose the connection.

It was a day of Firsts for us as I also used the Visualizer as a background for the first song. I was very proud of MediaShout’s abilities even though few people knew or even understood the complexity of the setup that morning. This is yet another reason why I believe that MediaShout is the best presentation software on the market today.

To download and try it for yourself you can go to the developers page at http://www.jaylee.org/RemoteControl/ or http://www.blueshareware.com/bluetooth_remote_control.asp.

I will post any updates as I learn more about the capabilities of the full version.

FINALLY! after several weeks I am excited to announce the launch of the

CLEARPOINT COMMUNITY.

My hope is that MediaShout users, Tech Directors, Content Creators and Worship Leaders will find a community where ideas and experiences can be shared.

Check it out and if you feel so inspired, JOIN US! Create your own profile and start up a conversation with other volunteers, paid staff and creative professionals who have a common goal, making a better presentation.

Every week churches all over the world are giving a first impression to thousands of first time visitors. What they see and experience will impact their decision to return well before the Pastor even speaks. As a worship leader, it is my goal to make our multimedia presentation as excellent and transparent as possible. I say transparent because you want the audience to experience the content you selected not the shortcomings of your set up.

I want to learn from your success and failures in order to better our Sunday morning presentation. So, join the community today and lets learn together.