What's the Big Blogging Deal?

Blogging is sort of the "it" thing to do these days: TV shows like Quarterlife glamourize it, our favorite musicians use it to voice their opinions, and even local news outlets use them to keep us updated. But for the rest of us, what's the big deal?

Blogs let us—the people of the real world—voice our opinions and share our news. In our corner of the blogosphere, we have a place that's just ours, where we can express ourselves. But if you're like me, you wonder, "What's the use of expressing myself if nobody's reading this expression?"

Enter the LifePoint Blogging Family. Whether or not you were aware of it, there's a group of bloggers at LifePoint, and they've banded together to form the LPBF.

I can hear you ask once more, "What the big blogging deal?" Well, let me tell you. LifePoint's mission is "leading people to be real Christ-followers in life...together," right? The LPBF allows people to be their real, Christ-following selves on their individual blogs while being knit together as a blogging family. How cool is that?

But Sarah, I still don't understand what blogs are? No sweat. Rather than reinvent the wheel, which I hate doing, here's a video from the peeps over at CommonCraft.com who made the following video that will explain in plain English what blogs are and why they rock:

Now that you know how cool blogs are, you want your own right? Blogger.com and WordPress.com both offer free blogs, and they only take minutes to set up (if you feel clueless about setting up your blog, the Language Arts peeps will be hosting a blogging workshop in April—stay tuned to E.notes).

And if you already have a blog, why don't you jump in and join the LPBF? Simply send an e-mail to Sarah (saustin@lifepointozark.com) and request an official invitation. Further instructions can be found on the LPBF page, as can a complete list of LPBF members.

We hope you'll check us out and join us!

—Sarah Jo

The Skinny on RSS

If you've been around LifePoint the last few weeks, you know that we've been switching up our E.notes format so we can offer our weekly announcements by both e-mail and RSS. Until about a year ago, I hadn't the slightest clue about RSS, but once I learned what it did and how powerful it is, I was on the RSS train.

So what exactly is RSS? It stands for really simple syndication. By using an application called a reader and adding subscriptions from your favorite news sites and blogs (hmm...E.notes, What Is the Point?, and the LifePoint Journal come to mind), the new content from those sites comes to you in your reader. You no longer have to remember all the sites you frequently read, go to them, and hope for new content; if a site has been updated, the new content will appear in your reader.

Still confused? Watch this little video produced by Common Craft.to see how you can start using RSS within minutes. We'd have made our own video, but we hate reinventing the wheel, and this one is super easy to understand.

Click To Play

To summarize the video, to get started with RSS, you need a reader (e.g. Google Reader, NewsGator, Bloglines, My Yahoo!, etc.). Once you have a reader, add subscriptions to your account by looking for and clicking on the orange RSS logo. That's it! Just start reading!

If you have any questions about RSS or need help setting it up on your computer, don't hesitate to e-mail me your questions.

— Sarah Austin
saustin@lifepointozark.com

P.S.Not ready to jump on the RSS train but still want to stay in the loop? No problem! You can subscribe to e-mail updates from every LifePoint blog. Just navigate to the blog's home page, and enter your e-mail address in the right column under "Subscribe to E-mail Updates."