Gospelr: Ready for BETA Testers!!!

First things first: Praise God.  Gospelr is finally done and ready for BETA.  That means that I need YOU to Sign Up and spread the word.

Designing, developing, coding, online web technology for the Kingdom… that’s what I’m all about, and is a small part of what I’m trying to do for LifeShare… and beyond.

Blog about it, tweet it, email it out! Twitter-land needs a little more Jesus.  More info after the jump.

So, what is Gospelr all about you say?  Is it just another Twitter service?

The answer is no.  It’s not just another one in the mix, but rather it’s microblogging-as-ministry: Ministry Microblogging perhaps!

The purpose is to provide provide an effective communication medium for sharing thoughts, ideas, words of encouragement, prayer requests, daily scripture readings/devotionals, and more to friends, staff, ministries, family, and others.

But my hope is that it becomes so much more than just a Christian-Twitter: My desire is that it is actually effectual in regards to sharing the Gospel with those that have already heard the Good News (because we all could use a good reminder… daily!) and those that have not.

That’s why it’s integrated with Twitter.

Kind of like the “be in the world but not of it” deal.  Read more about the Mission and Vision on the About and FAQ page here.

And that’s why I really like Gospelr’s favicon and RSS feed icon: It’s Christ, His Good Work on the Cross, being communicated and broadcast to a fallen and dying world, via web technology.

To be quite honest though, I have no idea how Gospelr might eventually be used.

I could imagine small groups picking it up to keep updated with each other… I could imagine ministries, ministry teams, ministry leaders using it to keep others in the loop… or something to the effect of what Eric was talking about in his blog entry about how it would be neat for christians to connect with others and build real relationships, communicating truth and encouragement.

Or perhaps like what Tony, Carlos, and Brandon did this past week with the LifeShare movement, and how a community came together, from all parts of the world, to share ideas and experiences, and encourage each other to go out into their respective communities and spread the Gospel.

Because that’s what it’s really all about, right?  Being missional: It’s Missional Microblogging.

Anyways, done with the preaching.

Here are some of the neat features and doodads that Gospelr has that Twitter (and a few others) do not:

It’s got a way cool logo. … … … ok.  On to the next feature…

It’s got 3 flavours of fun.

As you can see above, the first one is a “normal” tweet.  The second is a “reply” and is colored in green, and the third is an imported tweet from Twitter, colored in blue.

This way, you can easily identify the source and the purpose of the tweet visually.

There are also buttons to reply, delete your tweet, grab the permalink, and make the tweet a “favorite”.

In addition, looking to the right, there’s a little yellow arrow.  This means that the user has uploaded a file with their tweet and you can download it by clicking the arrow.

A user can upload a file with the handy-dandy uploader under the typical update box.  Sweet.  Can Twitter do that?  Nope.  (But Pownce and a billion others can…)

You can change the background of your profile page as well with a cool image or wallpaper… and you can change a number of other configurations, the most important one being integration with Twitter!

But one of the coolest things that Gospelr has is that it auto-refreshes the page… so you don’t have to.

Finally, you’ll see there are a few small things like floating boxes if you hover your mouse over other people’s avatar… WordPress Plugins for your personal blog (coming soon!), Jabber support (coming soon!), and some other neat stuff.

Gotta dig the floating…

But best of all (and this is pretty much my biggest win) is getting API source parameter approval from Twitter for Gospelr.

…

All that means is that when you use applications like TweetDeck or visit Twitter you’ll see the way-cool “from Gospelr.com”

Ok.

So that’s the skinny and the 411.

Sign up, stay tuned for more info, and spread the Good News (and the lowercase “good news” about Gospelr!)