 Catholic Books, Blogs, and Podcasts in a New Digital Continent
Introduction
Keeping up with the fast development of the Web is truly a challenging task for
the small Catholic web site developer. In the article, "Introduction
to the Web 2.0
Technology Environment", there is a list of popular web sites that employ
web 2.0 technology which can be browsed over. When navigating through the features
of these web 2.0 sites, it will present opportunities to learn how their
services can be integrated with basic (web 1.0 technology) web site development
and blogging. And as we learn more how their sites operate, there is great promise
of
new ways of propagating the Catholic faith.
This article gives three brief reviews of three web 2.0 sites which any
Catholic web developer can read through and see how the new technology
from these sites can be integrated in their respective Catholic social networks.
Catholic books at LibraryThing.com
You can register for an account easily at LibraryThing.com, and start to catalog
your book collection in the web site. Cataloging your Catholic books can be
through online search (using the site's search function), or manually
- with you yourself filling in the title, author, publisher, and other details
about the book.
As you go on listing your Catholic books in the catalog, don't forget to tag
the books by topics. This will help organize the book collection you wish
to share with others at LibraryThing.com (The limit for a free account at
the site is 200 books. Beyond 200 books, you need to upgrade to a paid
account).
After saving a book in your catalog, the site will then report how others
have also registered books at the web site. This statistic will present
how many members of LibraryThing.com have read or are reading the same Catholic
book that you have registered at the site.
The potential of employing this service for the propagation of the Catholic
faith is immense. As we go on listing Catholic books in our catalog, we are
also given the opportunity to add a widget to our Catholic web site and blog -
a widget to show visitors what Catholic books we are presently reading or
have read. This widget can be a good source of reference for Catholic web
developers who are searching for ideas on good books that can help them in
the content development of their Catholic web or blog site.
Below is an example of the widget from LibraryThing.com:
Catholic blogs at Technorati.com
Since the majority of Catholic web developers are Catholic bloggers, then
Technorati.com would be an appropriate and popular site to promote their Catholic blogs.
The first step to do is to register for an account, and then begin to "claim"
your Catholic blogs. It takes a while for the web site to verify that you
are indeed the owner of the blog. But once verified, it will give Catholic
bloggers the opportunity to promote their own blogs, and set up a watch list
of topics related to the topics they post in their blogs.
Another service that Technorati.com provides is a widget which you can
place in the template of your Catholic blog. This widget provides many
functions - one of which is a search function that searches information
on the many blogs in Technorati.com. You can also customize the widget
to include only what would be useful to the readers of your Catholic blog:
such as the important tags of your Catholic blog posts and your blog
profile at Technorati.com.
Catholic podcasts at Odeo.com
Another way of using web 2.0 technology for developing Catholic web sites
and blogs is to search for Catholic podcasts at Odeo.com. This web site
will help you find podcasts on topics of the Catholic faith which can be
useful in giving information: when you share a link in an email to a friend
or contact; place it as one of the items in your Catholic rss feed; and
embed it as an object in a web page or blog post that is related to the
topic of the Catholic podcast. Below is an example of an embedded Catholic
podcast on the topic of "limbo":
Searching for Catholic podcasts at Odeo.com is easy because it has a
search box at the upper right corner of its home page. They have a wide
collection of podcasts - which are really just audio files of voice
content and music content, or a combination of both. To facilitate
your search of Catholic podcasts, you can subscribe to topic-oriented
channels. You can also download these audio files to your iPod.
Summary
The three web 2.0 sites featured above gives us a new way of promoting
Catholic books, Catholic blogs, and Catholic podcasts. Since the Web 2.0
environment is a world of sharing and social networking, we can add these
web sites to our network, and at the same time, respond to the call of
Pope Benedict XVI, to use the medium of social communications as a means
for promoting a culture of respect, dialogue and friendship.
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Dennis Emmanuel Cabrera
Web Developer Methods for Catholics
www.c-web-developer.net
My Main Catholic Blog
www.c-internet-mission.net
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