Going Somewhere This Summer?

Bing Travel makes searches easier in order to help you for that upcoming trip, including a currency converter, finding the best prices for airlines and hotels, maps, and more.  After you go to bing.com, click on Travel in the links across the top.  You can choose flights or hotels to quickly find what you’re looking for.  The indicators even let you know if the prices are going up or down. (Or, here’s their link for Destinations which also includes flights and hotels for specific cities.)

Check out these recommended travel sites from Bing’s editors:

• Trip planning sites
• Road trips
• Budget travel advice
• Volunteer vacations*

*Of course, Campus Crusade for Christ also has mission trips to recommend:

• The JESUS Film Mission trips
• GAiN

What do you use for your trip-planning?

Related Posts:

• Bing.com for Your Travel Needs
• Google Your Trip to find motels and other destinations using Google Maps
• The Road Less Traveled about the “Traffic” feature on Google Maps
• Map Your Donor Team make an online map of your destination with locations for your motel, rental car, appointments, and more.

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Changed Lives in Israel

Are you aware of the internet ministry of OneforIsrael.org? Their vision “is to reach the entire nation of Israel with the gospel of Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) through media & online.”

Here’s a few facts from their site:

• Israel is the leading country in the world for hourly time spent online and also number one in the world in the amount of time spent on Facebook. 95% of Israelis between the ages 15-28 own a Facebook account.
• Every 100 Israelis will own 122 computers (First in the world)
• “WiFi” is available to the public for free at universities, coffee shops, malls, hospitals, and even at the beaches. Almost every house in Israel is connected to the Internet. In Israel, everyone is online, all the time!
• Proselytizing minors (under 18) is illegal in Israel. The Internet is both the best way for them to explore for themselves (as well as a point of reference for believing youth to send their friends to).
• Today, if an Israeli googles “Messianic Jews” or “God” or “Yeshua” in Hebrew, the first results to come up are anti-missionary websites because anti-missionary organizations invest a lot of money in search engine optimization and advertisements for the words people use when searching about our faith online.
• The Internet gives Israelis the freedom to investigate about Yeshua. They can read the New Testament without their father kicking them out of the house or they can chat online with believers in Yeshua, forming relationships with them.

I also found some stories (almost A to Z)  on one of their newsletters:

“A” has been asking many questions in our Q&A forum for over a year. Recently, we connected him with a Messianic congregation in northern Israel that he visited on a Shabbat (Saturday) and he absolutely loved it. Please pray that the seed that has been planted in his heart will grow and mature to bear much fruit.

An older Israeli woman has been in touch with us recently and is very interested in the gospel. She has been involved in the Kabballah, searching it for truth and spiritual fulfillment but has realised that it is not to be found there. Please keep her in you prayers, that the Lord will take her completely out of the darkness of the Kabballah and bring her into the light of Messiah.

“Y” first made contact with us through our Q&A forum and was soon asking direct and thoughtful questions. We had the chance of meeting with “Y” for lunch a few days ago and learned that he is a high-ranking officer in the IDF. He is studying religious Christianity at the university and through that has come to learn about Yeshua. Please pray that “Y” will be given a revelation of the true Messiah and that his mind will not be boggled with religion.

NOTES:

• Follow One for Israel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/oneforisrael
• Like the Facebook Page

3 Reasons Why You Need a Reader

Are you drowning in a sea of information?  Would you like to follow some internet sites regularly, but it would be just one more thing to do? A reader may be the answer for you.  (I’m referring to web-based aggregators, not eReaders for eBooks like Kindle or Nook.)  If you don’t have a reader (aggregator), then I hope by the end of this post, you’ll know some effective ways to follow content on the internet and whether a reader would help.

First, watch this video for a very easy explanation of RSS, feeds, and readers; it’ll help you know how to get started.  (YouTube wouldn’t let me embed it, so please come on back after you watch the video to find out the three reasons I promised you.)

Are you back from watching the video?  Good.  Now ask yourself how much you read (or would like to read) on the internet.

The Minimalist

If you only like to read occasionally, or from random sites, you might just use Read It Later on your computer, tablet, or mobile device.  Instead of being sidetracked by different sites you run across during the day, you mark the page to be read later when you have time.  You can even download what you want to read offline.

Alternatively, you can allow RSS feeds from a blog or two that you enjoy to go into your eMail inbox through Outlook 2007 and some other eMail services.  The posts will appear in separate folders for each feed instead of mixed in with your eMails.  Follow these instructions for Outlook 2007.

If you have a lot to read either of these might not be a good option. (Stay with me and keep reading.)

The Benefits of Readers over eMail Subscriptions

If you subscribe by eMail to a few blogs and receive posts in your inbox, you may want to consider a reader because:

1. Using a reader is safer because you aren’t using your eMail address when subscribing to a RSS feed, eliminating your exposure to spam, viruses, phishing, and identity theft, which can be associated with eMail. (Please see the note about MailChimp and this blog.)
2. When you don’t want a feed anymore, you just remove it from your aggregator, instead of sending an unsubscribe request to stop receiving eMails.
3. Feeds are sorted, not arriving randomly like eMail in your inbox. Each feed, whether its from your favorite blog, news source, or whatever, has its posts automatically grouped under the source.

Getting Started Tips

This post has actually gone long enough, so I’ll continue this as a series.  If you want to for now, follow the advice in the video to start using a reader. I’ve also included some links you can check out on your own if you don’t want to wait for me.

Visually Appealing Readers

• Feedly (recommended – works with your Google Reader – click on the image above for a closer look)
• Pulse

WordPress

• Follow WordPress blogs from within your home page

Twitter Readers

• Paper.li (recommended – you might want to wait for my post about it)

• The Tweeted Times

NOTES:

• I’m encouraging all regular e4e readers to subscribe to this blog using the very secure eMail service, MailChimp.  If you prefer, you can still use a reader or follow with WordPress, but subscribers receive eMails about upcoming events and they help me evaluate what everyone is most interested in reading so I can serve you better (and more efficiently).  So, CCC staff,  please subscribe here to receive weekly eMails of e4e posts, notifications of training, and more.
• The video is also available here in French, Japanese, German, Dutch, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish.

4 Things Your Website Needs from Social Media

This is the first in a series of three posts about the great day at Lake Hart we had with our guest, Steve Raquel, on Tuesday. (The link goes to Steve’s official bio, but I’d like to add that he and his wife, Stephanie, are also involved with the Cru metro and FamilyLife ministries in Chicago.  They were involved as students with Cru and invest in several of our staff members.)

Steve graciously spent time consulting with some individuals and also spoke at three sessions.   I’ll be posting three days consecutively for these sessions and hope to send an eMail out next week about how to view the videos.  The sessions were:

• Social Media and Websites
• Using Social Media with Your Donor Team
• Managing Social Media Networks

Because these materials need to be secure (see the third point in the notes), I won’t be posting how to obtain the videos and Power Points here; however, I thought I’d pass along some of my notes.

Social Media and Websites

Do you use social media to make entertainment choices or before purchasing something? (I know I go straight to “reviews” on Amazon.com when I’m considering buying something.) Subtly, our entire way of making decisions and being informed has changed.  Steve pointed out that people will likely go through their social networks to find our CCC websites.  Therefore, our websites need:

1. A community*
2. Content which needs to:
   • change 5 times per month*
   • be concise
   • be of good quality
   • be engaging
   • include user-generated content
   • load fast: in 3 to 4 seconds
3. A social media person to:
   • respond quickly to comments, eMails, and Tweets
   • be aware of Google ranking and “bad press,” responding appropriately
4. Links to other Campus Crusade for Christ websites

You’ll learn more from the video on social media and websites, including:

• An explanation of keywords and how they’re changing
• Why Siri is a game changer
• The importance of the time-of-day for your posts
• And more

Please comment if you attended this session and would like to share your take-aways from Steve.  (Because of Steve’s talk, I’m hoping to encourage our staff bloggers to link to each other’s blogs.)  Come back tomorrow for notes from the MPD session.

Next  >  Last >>

NOTES:

• *Facebook and Twitter feeds help refresh your content and provide a community.
• See photos from our sessions at Lake Hart.
• In a week or so, we’ll have the PowerPoints and videos from the sessions available.  I’ll let you know at that time how you can view them.  These will only be available on a secure site for CCC staff.  If you’re interested in these videos, simply subscribe to e4e and request to receive eMails about training.  You’ll also learn of other future training opportunities.
• Steve’s blog is a good resource for understanding and using social media.
• Steve’s Tweets

Desktop Search Engines

Last month, Google stopped supporting Google Desktop.

I have loved using it as my own Google search of my computer.  It’s a bit large in a sense and initially takes just a bit of time to index everything, but I like it much better than the Windows Search that comes with my PC.  Google Desktop looks in my eMail, documents, music, web history, and… everywhere!

Now that it’s not supported, I wonder about security, though.  Previous versions of Google Desktop had some vulnerabilities, so if a future hacker wanted to, I guess they could find content on your computer through this.  I guess I should find a new desktop search engine.

Here’s a list and links to other desktop search engines.  Do you use a desktop search engine?  Any recommendations?

Download Google Desktop from FileHippo.

CCC staff, so we can better serve you, please subscribe here to receive weekly emails of e4e posts, notifications of training, and more.