We have become aware that several of our blog friends have been forwarding our blog posts as email.  In fact, we offer a way to sign up for the blog and have it sent to your email.  It is very hard to go to several blogs a day to keep up with what is going on.  However, technology and the internet offer easy ways to keep up with the information you view most often.  One really neat, free, and easy tool that allows you to go to one site and have your favorite updates sent there is Google Reader.  Instead of visiting 5 different sites or getting 10 new emails a day, you go to one site and catch up on all your updates at once.

Here is a link to a YouTube video that explains Google Reader. Click on the blue title to see the video. How to Use Google Reader.  Reader is available at www.google.com/reader.  Once you create an account, you can click subscribe and type in (or copy and paste) arlaallen.wordpress.com.  You can also add links to other blogs.  If you have ever seen the letters RSS or have seen the orange symbol to the right on a website, you are visiting a site that will push content to Google Reader.   You visit your reader once a day and see what new news is there.  So many sites will push content to Google reader.  (Did you know the online bible reading program that First UM Church uses can be sent to Google Reader?)  If you are really tech savvy, you can also download a reader app to your smartphone and get all your reader feeds there as well.  I personally like FeedlerRSS.