If you’re anything like me, Fridays, especially rainy ones, are big days to look around other people’s blogs. I use it as a time to keep an eye on the industry, see what kinds of thoughts are out there and spend some thoughtful time learning. Not that I’m avoiding work or anything …

In a spirit of sharing, I’d like to present some of my most frequently visited tech-oriented blogs so you too can have something to do before 5 p.m. comes.

Enjoy:

Religious Blogs

Church Marketing Sucks: A good all-around marketing blog, but especially useful for congregations.

Center for Congregations: These guys are based in Indianapolis but do a lot of good work that congregations anywhere could learn from.

CO-STAR blog: A client of ours that explores synagogue life. The staff posts info on spirituality, collaboration and sometimes technology.

Web Design & Development Blogs

Smashing Magazine: I can’t get enough of this excellent resource for design. So, so many good ideas in here.

Read/Write Web: “Web Technology news, reviews and analysis.” Lots of non-profit worthy stuff on here too.

Productivity Blogs

Lifehacker: One of my favorite sources for useful tools and tips with an especially technical angle, but not completely.

Unclutterer: A blog about getting organized that’s useful for anything from the filing cabinet to the sock drawer.

You’ve heard me harp on about how religious and secular nonprofits need to get with the program and start using technology to build community. A post I came across on the Jewish Common Sense blog by Rabbi Randall J. Konigsburg proves I’m not the only one talking about it.

Konisburg’s call-to-action pleads, “if we Rabbis can’t change, if the community can’t change, then we will fade into history.” Even if that change is a challenge, it’s necessary. To help soothe the transition from an old-fashioned world to a brave new one, he gives loads of insight for churches and synagogues.

His posting outlines all sorts of friendly upgrades synagogues can make (which can be applied to any church and many nonprofit environments), with special emphasis on technology. A few helpful takeaways, in no particular order, which you can use as a checklist for getting your own technology policy in gear:

• Forget websites that open up to a picture of a building. Home pages should have pictures of people having fun.
• Do congregants share information online through a listserv?
• Is there a social network group so they can see which friends will be attending a program this week?
• How many congregations have free wifi in the lobby or in a meeting room so waiting parents can use their laptops while they wait for children in lessons?
• Websites must be updated weekly and have up to the minute information.
• It should be possible to sign up for a program and even pay for it online.
• You can mail notices to seniors, but young people want their messages by email.
• Adult Education classes should be recorded and placed as podcasts on the website, for those who missed, in a timely fashion. Even better, video the class and post it as a webcast.
• Rabbis, Cantors, and Educators need to use blogs and the web to stay in touch and teach modern Jews.
• Event pictures and video should be posted on the web within days if not hours.
• And why not have a section of the synagogue website for members only?

I just submitted my article to The Jewish Daily Forward on how Jewish nonprofits are faring with Web 2.0 technology. The short answer: they’ve got some catching up to do.

An interesting idea came up during my research. I was asking Rabbi Hayim Herring from STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal) if he had thoughts about why Jewish philanthropies are slow to jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon, especially when some Christian organizations are maybe better thought of as Church 2.0.

He said, “Historically, we are a people of the book. We are not a people of the byte.”

Do you think Jewish organizations are slow to pick up on technology because they’ve got their noses in books? What’s your take?

You can read my entire article in the Forward’s special issue on Giving on June 20.