Bloglines—A Communication Resource

Technology turns into a slave master unless you and I make a point take dominion over it. Cell phones, instant messaging, email, facebook, and yes, even blogs, all seem to emanate some sort of "tyranny of the urgent" in demanding our attention. I find myself having to deliberately swim upstream, lest I get sucked into wasted hours.

So here’s a tool I’ve found and value for helping me control the inflow of technology communication in my day. It’s called Bloglines and I’m sharing it on this Missionary Heart blog, because, while it’s great for many reasons, it’s especially valuable for helping us keep up with your missionary friends.

Missionaries are starting blogs by the day (like this), as a tool for communicating with all us folks back home. They can put up pictures, prayer requests, and family updates easily. The different missionary friends I know don’t post frequently, maybe every few weeks, but I enjoy reading them so I can pray specifically. However, because they are less frequent, they can be easy to forget about checking on.

Bloglines is a free service that cuts down on the chase. I’ve been a user for several months now and would not even think of going back to my old way of looking at blogs. It has cut my hunt and read time in half easily. Not only that, but it is ad free.

Instead of having a dozen blog links saved in my Favorites folder, Bloglines allows me to “subscribe” to blogs and view them all on one screen. I just have my Bloglines account saved in favorites now; they keep track of the rest. It’s so easy and probably took me 10 minutes to set up.

The left side of my Bloglines screen shows my blogroll, the list of blogs I’ve subscribed to. The blog is highlighted if there has been a post, along with the number of postings added. If I click on it, Bloglines allows me to view the new postings on the left hand side of the screen. With Bloglines I can see at a glance when all my favorite bloggers post.



I hope you will give Bloglines a try, redeem your time, and make use of it for Kingdom purposes.



Phillipians 4:8 "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."

~Christie