seeing in a mirror dimly

Starting this week, we’re blessed to have a guest blogger join us here: James MacLeod!

James is a great fella who I’ve known for many years.  He’s a young and keen Christian who wants to see Christ honoured in all aspects of life.  I’ve appreciated having James’ thought sharpen mine over the years and I’m hoping that his posts can sharpen yours too!

He’s going to do a 5 part series on things which he loves in life.  He’s going to see how things in his life fit into a Christian worldview, and then leave us with some thoughts to ponder! So, please do show him some love and fire some questions and thoughts across!

Well, this is the start of our double-Moff header.  This week, Matt Moffitt.  Next week, Justin Moffatt.  If you know a Moffitt (or Moffatt) who wants to be the third, let us know and you’ll win a prize!

This episode we go off-site and sit down with Matt at his pad.  We talk about Blogging, about Matt’s job at Church Missionary Society (CMS), about books, cars, Bob Hawke, and even Andrew Errington’s upcoming book (to be released in his collected works vol. 1 out soon).

Matt Moffitt is a lovely fella who blogs at Hebel.  It was really nice to sit down and chat to him.  He’s a thoughtful and kind guy and I’m sure his thoughts and encouragements will be great to listen to!

Download this episode of the Pilgrim's Podcast!

At the prompting of Dave Miers, I’m toying with the idea of revamping this old blog…

It’s been a few years since I’ve worked in the online IT world, but I think now’s the time to resurrect some of those skills.  My area of expertise was in the realm of online adverting at Sensis (Yellow Pages, White Pages, Whereis, Bigpond, Telstra etc) and am keen to see what sort of interesting things I might be able to conjure up…. And thus, I’m going to try and step this site up a notch and see what happens. But I really want you to tell me what you think makes a good blog site or website generally:

- Layout – do you like a 2 or 3 columned look?
- Audio/Video/Text – What do you mostly scour the net for?
- Blog posts – Do you like short or long posts?
- Other sites – What other sites do you really enjoy visiting? Why?

Basically, any thoughts on what you like in blogging websites, I’d love to hear!

Much love in Christ,
Mark

I stumbled across the Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2008 report tonight, and it’s fascinating.  I’m not sure whether I’m surprised or not in the general volume of blog traffic, but there are some interesting statistics to be taken note of.

comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)

Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US

Facebook: 41.0 million | M

ySpace 75.1 million

Total internet audience 188.9 million

eMarketer (May 2008)

94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users)

22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)

Universal McCann (March 2008)

184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US

346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US

77% of active Internet users read blogs

 

From reading over some of these stats, I really do feel like this is a great thing to do in 

service to our Lord.  Perhaps some of these stats might shape the direction of our blogs and link into what’s going on in the blogging world around us!