Welcome

Welcome to Crossroads' new blog. I don't know about you, but I'm really excited to see us, as a community, reclaiming our place on the internet. The past decade has seen the net become an integral part of the way people all over the world communicate, do business, and build relationships. It only seems natural that we, as a body, would seek to establish a meaningful presence there - whether it's to disperse information, connect with each other, or discuss important topics.

The internet is a big part of my day to day life - bigger than my boss would like, no doubt - and so I thought to get started I'd share some of the sites I frequent, or at the very least find interesting. Maybe you'll find you enjoy some of these sites as well. If so, use the comment section to let me know - or even better, use the comment section to share some of the site you find useful or interesting in your day to day life.

Remember it's the internet and you never know what might be on the other side of a link, so browse carefully. I didn't knowingly post any links with obscene material, but you never know when something like that might just be a few wrong clicks away from you.

Starting with the obvious, the easy way to find anything on the net is with Google. Besides being a search engine, though, they also provide a lot of neat services like home pages, email, calendars, and book marking.

Once you find something interesting via Google, you'll always want it at your fingertips. That's where Del.icio.us comes in. Del.icio.us is a web-based bookmarking service. It works the same way your "favorites" folder on your computer works, but since it's web based you can sign in from anywhere - and you can make your favorite links public so other people can see them.

My favotie way of surfing the net is via Firefox. It's an open source browser. What that means is that it's creators have built it so that anyone with the know-how can open it up and tinker with it's guts to make it run better or add features.

Once you're out there surfing, you've got your well known sites like your ebay, your Amazon, your Netflix, your Wikipedia, and your Myspace.

Less well known, but also interesting are:
-Theopedia, an online reference for theological topics.
-Digg, a site that catalogues interesting tidbits of news and culture from around the net.
-This site that keeps a running tab on how much money in legal fines Dunder Mifflin (the fictional paper company from the NBC show, The Office) would have racked up by now thanks to their behavior.
-The Calvin & Hobbes Searchable Database - Just type in a topic you remember from a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon (like Snowmen) and it'll pull up all the strips that featured said topic.
-Donald Miller, my favorite Christian writer, has his own site here.

That's enough for now. Don't forget to let me know what sites you like to visit.