If you haven’t found your way over to PickAFig.com, the Catholic Social Bookmarking Site, I highly suggest you take the time to check it out if you are interested in increasing the readership of your blog or website.

Here are a few tips for using the new tool, which also apply for websites like Digg and del.icio.us - although those sites are not Catholic and it can be difficult to get noticed there.

1) Submit your own stories to PickAFig. Also, vote for your own stories if someone else submits them. There’s nothing wrong with self-promoting, since you can only vote once per article anyway. Besides, how can new readers find you if you don’t tell them on a directory like PickAFig that you have content worth reading?

2) Put a PickAFig button on your blog posts. If you put a PickAFig button on your blog template, it will automatically show on each post. It serves as a reminder to your readers to vote for your story and/or submit it, and it shows off your more popular posts at a glance.

3) Don’t pass up the free incoming link. To get better rankings in the search engines, you need to have quality incoming links. That is, links that are relevant to your content from other sites that are similar in content to your own site. PickAFig, being faithfully Catholic and pro-life, can provide those links… but you or your readers have to submit your stories!

4) Vote on other stories, and discuss other posts. Your profile name and link shows when you vote or comment on other stories, and if you comment enough you’ll show up on the “Top Comments” list. Your profile should provide a link back to your site, and will also include links to stories you submitted.

Also, this is free networking with other writers; if someone sees that you voted for their story, they may be curious about what it is you write and submit. Thus, they will be introduced to your content.

5) Get over Writer’s Block. Can’t think of a topic? Browse PickAFig and see what everyone else is talking about. You may have missed a tidbit of news, or get inspired by someone else’s post.

6) Recruit more PickAFig members. The more people that participate on PickAFig, the more people will see your posts on the site. Consider browsing Catholic directories such as catholicblogs.blogspot.com, Saint Blog’s Parish, or stblogs.net and finding posts you like, and submitting them on PickAFig. Then, let the blogger know that you liked their post so much you submitted it on PickAFig.

A relative forwarded me an email from KArl Keating’s Catholic Answers group that the IRS has ruled that the Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics will not threaten the non-profit standing of organizations or parishes that distribute it.

[Catholic Answers, Inc.] created, published, and distributed the Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics (VGSC). The VGSC asserts that it is intended to help the reader vote for candidates for public office in a manner consistent with Catholic moral teachings. The VGSC identifies five issues it deems to be “non-negotiable” issues and instructs the reader on how to narrow down the list of candidates to those who are acceptable based on the non-negotiable issues. The VGSC does not directly or indirectly make reference to any specific candidate, political party, or election. Therefore, the content of the VGSC, standing alone, is not political campaign intervention because the VGSC does not support or oppose any specific candidate for public office [Internal Revenue Service, Addendum to Letter 3609P, May 2, 2008].

They are asking for donations to distribute it.
Technorati Tags: catholic voting, catholic, election

Many of us who run Catholic websites and blogs rely on Google Adsense to generate some income to continue our work.

Unlike other websites, though, we have to be careful about what shows up on our sites. And as careful as we can be, there is always the chance that someone’s heretical or outright anti-Catholic or pro-abortion ads will show up on our sites.

Brian McDaniel ran into an issue where an organization promoting women priests was advertising through his adsense links, for instance.

So here’s my idea: let’s put together a blacklist for Google Adsense that we can all pool our bad urls to minimize the effectiveness of these ads.

To add sites to your blacklist:
1)Log into Google Adsense
2)Click the “Adsense Setup” tab
3) Under that tab in the navigation bar there will be a link to the “competitive ad filter”
4) Add the urls of the ads you don’t want to see.

Here is my blacklist so far - please post any other urls you see on Catholic sites (such as PickAFig) here and together we can blackball heretical advertisers targeting Catholics.

The BlackList

americanprogress.org
dontblamemeivoted4kerry.com
earlyprivate.com
workingassetswireless.com
www.cafepress.com
www.choiceisgoodtshirts.com
www.diabetes.org
www.directrelief.org
www.illinoisabortion.com
www.ldsplanet.com
www.msaa.com
www.sspxsingles.com
unicefusa.org
unitedway.org
nbc.edu
scientology.org
mostholyfamilymonastery.com
howmuchtime.org/
lifechurch.tv

(cafePress is on there since some anti-catholic and pro-abortion ads from cafepress stores were showing up. A few rotten apples in this case spoiled the whole barrel.)

Please post other urls in the comments section of this post.

Updated 8/9/08. Shockingly, I even found a protestant church targeting colelge students by offering “Mass online!”

To help spread the word and reward early adopters, we’re giving away a free copy of the Digital Catholic Library on CD-ROM (sold on our site for $30) to Bloggers and Webmasters of Catholic or Pro-Life Sites that add a PickAFig Voting button to their site’s template.

Here are the terms:

1) Your site must discuss Catholic and/or Pro-Life topics on a somewhat regular basis.

2) If your site is a blog, you must have at least 3 months of posts on a regular basis, or a Google Page Rank of at least 1. Websites must have at least a Page Rank of 1. We might be able to make exceptions, but we need to be sure that your site is not too new. Of course, adding a PickAFig button can help your traffic and page rank…

3) You must put a PickAFig voting button (from http://www.pickafig.com/button) on your template so that it shows up on each post and/or page. If you need help, we can help you get it put in.

4) You must agree to keep the code in place for at least 30 days. We’re doing this on the honor system, but if we do see it taken down sooner you will be invoiced for the CD-ROM.

5) Quantities are limited, and this is only offered for a limited time.

6) Once your code is placed, email us at sales@dyinglight.com with your website address, your name, and your mailing address. We’ll send out your CD within 6 weeks at the most. You can also email questions to that address if you need help getting the code placed in your site.

We hope that you’ll find PickAFig and the voting buttons to be a useful tool to boosting your sites traffic and popularity!

Frustrated by the fact that spiritual stories tend not to attract too much attention on Digg, or worse, receive negative votes from those who object to religion in general?

Well, now there is a site for Catholic and Pro-Life Social Bookmarks - PickAFig.com!

What’s in the name? Well, imagine the internet as a wilderness… We’re taught to judge by the fruits (Matthew 7:16), so if you find a good site for Catholics while browsing the internet be sure to “Pick It” so your fellow Catholics can find “good fruit.”

You can add buttons to your blog or site to make it easy for your readers to submit or vote for your content.

A friend just referred me to this site where you can order lots of free stuff, all Catholic and/or pro-life:

Free Stuff for Catholics

Be sure to look up the free copy of Orthodoxy from R.A.G.E. Media while you are there!

The following video explains how to use the Digital Catholic Library to print your own Catholic books, and use the unique ebook features:

I might have a more intimate view of this in my experience, but it seems we Catholics are becoming faced more and more with economic oppression in the job market.

Sometimes, it is the nature of the job that is becoming unconscionable. Pharmacists, nurses, and other hospital employees are facing this as some are required to dispense prescriptions or perform medical procedures that are contrary to Catholic teaching. My own story of leaving a pharmaceutical company for their ties to pro-abortion groups is only one among many tales of modern Catholics forced to lived their faith or keep their jobs.

Screening is happening more at the hiring level as well. I was applying for a job a few years ago, when the business owner approached me saying he had seen my website. He made a snide remark about the “activist” content and turned me down for the job. Recently, I applied at nationwide retail chain for a part time job. Although my availability was wide open except for Sunday morning, they refused to consider me. I explained that our Church only had one Mass, and that I had a religious obligation to attend. The interviewer refused to reconsider.

As employers are “googling” applicants, I am in the financially unfortunate position of having said quite a bit about my faith and beliefs online. Are we coming to a point where Catholics who speak their mind and live their faith are unemployable?

Technorati Tags: catholic, opression, hiring, job hunt

I’ve just started setting up a profile at 4marks.com - it’s like a myspace or facebook for Catholics.

Relatively new, and growing fast!

http://www.4marks.com/ragemedia

Open-source software is growing in popularity. OpenOffice and Mozilla Firefox and good examples of this trend, which is becoming more accepted and adopted by home users and business users alike. Under the open source model, software - and its source code - are made freely available to the public, allowing for more community involvement in the production of the software.

There are several similarities between this software licensing and development model that parallels an older idea regarding a broader application. Distributism is an economic philosophy that specifies that ownership of productive property (tools and resources necessary for production of goods) be distributed as widely as possible amongst the public. This is in contrast to the most dominant and established philosophies of capitalism and socialism.

In practice, capitalism leads to a handful of individuals controlling and owning the majority of the productive property. As G.K. Chesterton put it, “Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.” Microsoft’s veritable monopoly on PC operating systems and productivity software is an example of capitalism both in the economic and in the software licensing sense; as such it is notorious for being sluggish to fix errors in the software and overly taxing on users in the way of high prices. Socialism, on the other extreme, allows no individuals to own productive property, but rather the state or community. I can’t think of a corollary among software licenses, though.

At the surface, though, the popularity and effectiveness in open source software, which seeks to involve as many individuals in the development of new product by sharing the intellectual property, has some parallels in philosophy with Distributism, which seeks to put the resources and tools of production into as many different hands as possible.

I’m not sure how well the similarities will hold up upon closer examination, but it may be worth examining closer - especially since no American political part espouses the ideals of Distributism, and our current parties (if we are to even for a moment believe the media) are driving the country’s citizens further and further apart.