Last night Fabio Capello announced in a TV interview, that David Beckham’s career was over.

And Beckham found out in a particularly unfortunate and unpleasant manner – by watching it happen on TV.

As the UK’s newpaper “the Guardian” put it: “David Beckham discovered his illustrious England career had been curtailed last night after Fabio Capello revealed, in a brief 17-word statement, that the former captain would play no further competitive football for the national team”.

Your whole life’s work over, in 17 words. And from a friend. Now that’s tough.

Our words are powerful, but our methods of communication are even more powerful.

It hurts to hear news about yourself second hand, doesn’t it?

It hurts when friends do things you never thought they would.

If you are a leader or pastor, how can we be more careful about how we communicate?

When we say we are “confidential”, are we really?

Or can’t we resist just sharing a few tidbits of news with our circle?

And when we find ourselves in this kind of painful situation, feeling stabbed in the back, how can we respond rightly?

-Vicky

This is a photo snapped during my MA graduation, at Oxford earlier this year. It shows how addicted I am to all things iPhone!

The iPhone 4 has been out for a while, and the dust clouds of hype have settled…

I have lots of friends with iPhone 3G and 3GS phones, wondering whether to spend the extra money for the iPhone 4 – or not?

I’ve had one for a month now. Before that I had a 3G. Here are my honest thoughts (and I’m not being paid in any way to talk about this product! I just know a lot of us are into iPhones, so it seems a good thing to discuss here).

1. The speed is WAY faster than an iPhone 3G. Ever since the upgrade to 4.0 operating system, my phone was slower than a tortoise stuck in treacle. If you have a 3G you will love the speed If you have a 3GS you’ll see an improvement too, but 3G users will the most.

2. The phone feels much sturdier. The design is more rugged. It feels like it doesn’t even need a case.

3. Face-time (video chatting on a phone call) is great concept, but both users need to be on a wireless network, not just a phone signal, to make this work. I’m rarely on a wireless signal when I’m out and about..so it’s a very restrictive and somewhat useless to me.  If I’m on a wireless network, it usually means I’m home and have my laptop. So why would I use a phone to video chat when I could use a laptop with a vastly bigger screen?

4. The “retina” display is incredible. It makes a Mac laptop screen look blurry after you’ve been on the iPhone 4 for a while. Incredible sharpness and clarity. The 960-by-640 resolution in a 3.5-inch screen is way better than any other smart phone. Apple say: “with four times the pixel count of previous iPhone models. In fact, the pixel density is so high that the human eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels”. Yup…I’d have to agree.

5. The camera is vastly better. Flash, zoom and 5 mexapixels. It also has a ‘front facing’ camera lens – you can see yourself on the screen, so self-taking photos of yourself with other people or scenery,  is easy.

6. The Apple store in the UK now sells all their iPhone 4’s unlocked. So I can use the same handset in the UK and the US, by swapping my sim cards in and out. (Before that I had two iPhones, one for the UK and one for the US, so now I can sell those 3G handsets and just have one).

7. There have been alleged signal issues, although I’ve never experienced this. I keep mine in a case, as I’m always on the go and don’t want to drop and smash it. Perhaps that’s what keeps me from the signal problems.

8. Built in HD video recording. I’m a Flip HD user for video recoding. But I’m thinking about selling that gadget now too, as the video abilities on the iPhone 4 might just be enough for me.

Overall:

I’m loving it. As someone always traveling and needing to be upto date online, the speed of the iPhone 4 makes it worth every penny/cent.

But to be honest is it only the speed that really makes any difference to my life. The front facing camera is cool too, for taking Twitter pictures of what I’m doing. But I don’t use Facetime at all, and I’m not too concerned about the sharpness of the display.

So overall, if my 3G had still been as fast as it was before the 4.0 operating system update, I would have stuck with it. But I give the iPhone 4 the thumbs up for excellent speed, and also for ‘fun new gadget value’ as I get a lot of enjoyment out it’s novelty and freshness.

Ways to improve it? Facetime needs to be upgraded to run on the 3G network. And the price should come down for unlocked handsets as it’s such a big investment if you aren’t due an upgrade/discount from your cell phone provider.

Apple are amazing at creating great gadgets. This one has won me over…but then I’m a geek, so I guess it would.

Are you an iPhone user? What are your thoughts?

-Vicky

As well as blogging here, I also run a site called “The Women In Worship Network“.

I started it to encourage female worship leaders, and the traffic we get proves that this is a need!

Rebecca is a dear friend of mine. We’ve been room-mates and had hours of conversation about life, God and ministry.

So here’s a short interview she did with me today, for my Women In Worship site. It just went live a few minutes ago.

You can read it here.

Her words are relevant to guys and girls, so don’t feel excluded if you’re not female!

-Vicky

Thanks for all your encouragement about my songs on Eternity Invades. Many of you asked for songwriting advice on the blog, so here is something I’ve found really useful.

If you want to write songs, or maybe already do and want to improve, this is my advice…

Harness the power of technology and spend a few hard earned coins on a piece of software that will really give your songwriting a kick in the pants

It’s called “Master Writer” and it was invented by a friend of mine called Barry DeVorzon who lives in LA.  I’ve used it for three years and would be lost without it.

There is a short video about how it works here.

You can download a free trial of it here.

Gwen Stefani, Rob Thomas, Steve Vai, LeAnn Rimes, Amy Grant and David Foster have a ton of Grammy’s and accolades. And they all rave about it.

It might sound unnecessary when all you seem to need to write a song is a piece of paper and an instrument. But as Rob Thomas put it “Producers have Pro Tools. Writers have Word. Songwriters have Masterwriter”. He’s won 14 Grammys for his songs..so I guess what he thinks carries a lot of weight.

My favorite things about Masterwriter, having used it for three years are:

-       I have scraps of paper with lyric ideas everywhere in my apartment. They get lost and are never found again. MW lets you document them all into their own folders.

-       I have audio snippets of melody ideas on my iPhone and my voicemail, which inevitably get trashed. MW lets you record audio snippets in the same folder as your written notes, keeping audio and lyrics together in one place.This has made SUCH a difference to me.

-       Stuck for a rhyme? MW has a built in rhyming dictionary, with soft and less obvious rhymes as well as hard rhymes. It gets you out of the ‘rhyming ruts’ so common in CCM/worship (grace, face, place etc!) and provides new ideas

-       It gives you a free way to copyright your songs, through emailing them to SongGuard, MW’s own secure database.

-       It identifies better word choices; highlight the words you are using to describe something in your song, and MW chooses more impacting and striking ways of saying the same thing.

-       It has all the text of the Bible built in, so you can search and find verses and phrases in Scripture for your lyrics.

Check out the video and the free trial, then let me know what you think.

I’ll leave you with a couple of screen shots:

Give the free trial a test-drive and see if it’s useful for you…

I’m glad I found it three years ago…it’s something I wouldn’t want to be without.

-Vicky

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored post.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via a cash payment, gift, or something else of value to write it. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Everyone has bad days at work, right? You do too, I’m guessing…

I just saw two stories online today proving that work can be a pretty testing and tough arena..Check these out.

A Jetblue flight assistant got hit in the head by a passenger’s lugagge. When the passenger wouldn’t apologise, the attendant got on the plane’s loudspeaker and told them all what he thought of them. He told them all that he quit, then he grabbed a few beers, activated the plane’s escape slide and left. Wow. What an exit.

Justin Bieber was on stage recently doing his thing, when someone in the crowd threw a water bottle at him which SMACKED him in the head..Owwwwww.

It’s interesting to see how each responded… The flight attendant freaked out and gave up. But Justin Bieber just carried on..

I guess life throws things at us (sometimes literally!) and we have to choose our reaction.

Do you enjoy your job? Are there days when you feel like quitting?

What makes YOU stay in the game?

Share in the comment secction and let me know..

-Vicky

Hey gang!

I love this web community… I love our discussions, and all the comments you leave. But the one thing I wish I could do is know you in more depth!

It would be amazing to sit and have a cup of coffee with each of you, to hear your stories, to see where you live, how old you are and what your spirituality and viewpoints on life are!

Sadly we can’t do that, as we are all in different countries and time zones… But I LOVE it if you could take three minutes and fill in a survey I’m doing here.

The survey will help me know what kind of content you want, based on who you are, what age you are, where you live, and so on! So this blog should become more intersting to YOU!

Would you mind doing it? I’d be soooooo grateful! Click HERE!

Love,

Vicky

Hope you like this 30 second video!

Love

Vicky

You’ll have heard me mentioning Spring Harvest a lot in my Blog and on Twitter. I led worship there for 2 weeks back in the Spring. The live worship recorded there is now available on a double-disc. You can order it here!

Continue Reading…

Hope you’re having a great week!

Many of you guys reading this are singers and involved in singing in your local church and beyond. One of my favourite people to get singing advice from is Sheri Gould, a vocal coach who has years of experience and wisdom!

I just finished a wonderful couple of days leading worship at “New Wine USA”. It’s a conference that originated in England. The “New Wine” event has happened in the UK for years, and Soul Survivor – England’s big youth worship and teaching event, was birthed out of New Wine. So… it was great to go and be part of the American branch of New Wine!

Continue Reading…