While I recuperate from foot surgery, I am watching the unfolding horror of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. CNN talked to a blogger, Harish Iyer, who set up a “virtual helpline.”

What a tool this is! Not only for opinion, news analysis, &c., but also instant connection around the world to help find loved ones.

Check out a list of blogs on the attacks. Also here.

Photo services like Flickr allow digital images to be posted and shared instantly, as the above from Vinu at his blog Vinu’s Online Cloud prove.

Then there is Twitter. When I joined (as bppwhalon), I thought tweets were just cute ways of keeping in touch with friends and families. WRONG. Twitter has become a major player in the Mumbai horror, helping to create an immediate, global network, as people use their mobile phones and laptops to send and receive the small messages called “tweets,” instantly and extremely cheaply.

Also extremely helpful is tinyurl, which allows one to collapse long URLs into a few characters. Attached to a tweet, this allows you to reference an article on the Net.

One blogging bishop who makes great use of Twitter, TinyURL, YouTube, and the Google blogging tool blogspot, is the Bishop of Buckingham, Alan Wilson. I use Apple’s iWeb, principally because it is part of the iLife suite coupled with MobileMe. It produces a nice-looking product, I think, but it is not free, unlike what +Alan is doing.

If you haven’t noticed, Gentle Reader, you now have all the online tools you need to fight your own fights, wherever you are, just by following the links in this blog.