|PIC1|The number of people going online is on the rise.

According to monitoring firm Netcraft, the web grew by more than 17 million sites, exceeding the fever pitch growth of 2000 when 16 million sites sprouted at its peak.

In its October 2005 survey, Netcraft found 74.4 million web addresses, a rise of more than 2.68 million from the September figure. This jump of just under three million took the total growth in sites for 2005 past the previous record of 16 million seen five years ago.

Rich Miller, an analyst at the net monitoring firm, believes that much of the recent growth is genuine and marks the appearance of proper, active sites.

"A website is now seen as indispensable for small businesses," he reportedly told the BBC News website. "Domains have become the base for anything else folks want to do on the web," he said. "That's your brand."
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In America, similar research into technology in Churches by the Barna Group reported that a majority of Protestant churches now have Web sites also. More than half of all Protestant churches have a Web site, 57 percent, up from 33 percent in 2000.

George Barna, who directed the study, noted that the wider acceptance of these technologies has triggered other ministry trends, such as multi-campus churches. He forecasts that the use of Internet technology will only increase in the next five years.

"During the next half of this decade,” he commented, “we expect increased broadband access, podcasting, and ubiquitous adoption of handheld mobile computing devices by consumers to further alter the way churches conduct ministry."


Blogs
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This year has also seen the remarkable rise in blogging, where users regularly write updated web journals on any and every topic.

Some blog sites host the journals on their own domain but many bloggers have taken the step of setting up their own site and installing blogging software on that.

Christian blogs gained momentum in recent years with new communities of Christian bloggers appearing in both professional and grass-roots settings. Through individual blogs, thousands of Christians have professed and shared their faith, and organizers of Internet Evangelism Day have dubbed blogging a “unique potential” tool for witnessing.

In particular, Female Presbyterian students can now be virtually united through a new “blogging” initiative by the National Network of Presbyterian College Women.

The NNPCW recently announced the launch of its blog – a web log or online journal – that provides the latest news from the Network as well as new topics for discussion and spiritual reflection. The blogs feature daily offerings for spiritual reflection and social action as well as reports on the travels of the Network staff members.

The Christian blogging movement has been so solid that it reached its culmination this weekend as the first ever religioius blogging convention was launched to bring participants of the Christian blogosphere together. GodBlogCon 2005 was held at Biola University, USA just finishing today, Oct 15.

Christian blogs are unique from secular blogs because they have the purpose of letting people know about Christ. But within this umbrella of Christ-driven blogs, several distinct categories of Christian blogs have emerged. Seminars will be held at GodBlogCon to cover the various types of Christian blogs, including seminars for political blogging, pastoral blogging, cultural blogging, pro-life blogging, and theological blogging.

The convention aims at anyone interested in the Christian blogging world, providing opportunities for Christian bloggers to contemplate their role in the larger body of Christian blogs.

For an example of a British Christian Blog site, please visit Adrian's Blog by clicking here