New Blog Features

 Posted by at 6:53 PM  Tagged with:
Mar 172011
 

I just wanted to highlight a few new blog features that I thought my readers might enjoy:

“Share and Enjoy!” Links

You may notice the spiffy (OK, I think they’re spiffy) new icons that appear below each post. These are links to popular social networking and news aggregator services, like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, etc. If you find an article you especially enjoy, you can share it with your friends by clicking the appropriate icon. There are also links to email the article or subscribe to the RSS feed (also see the icons in the upper-right of the page). I work hard researching and writing my blog posts, and I hope my readers find them useful. It’s very rewarding to receive confirmation that people are enjoying the blog when I see that people have shared my posts with their friends.

Related Posts Links

When viewing an individual blog post, you’ll now see a list of 2–5 links to related posts at the bottom (below the “Share and Enjoy” icons, and above the comment form). These links (and the comment form) only show up when viewing an individual post page (the page for this post is here), not the overall blog home page. This should be a convenient way for you to find related posts that discuss the same or similar topics. Another great way to find similar posts is to click on the links in the “Browse by Category” or “Browse by Tag” boxes in the left-hand column.

Subscribe by Email

Just added today, you’ll now find a box at the bottom of the right-hand column that allows you to enter your email address to receive notifications when I post a new article on my blog. Once you subscribe, you’ll receive a confirmation email, and once you click the link, you’ll receive an email each time I make a new blog post (usually about 10–12 times a month). Don’t worry — I hate spam as much (probably more) than you do, your email address will never be given to anyone else, and you can unsubscribe at any time. I’m still testing this one out, so please let me know if you encounter any bugs and let me know what you think of it!

Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think of the new features, or if there are any other suggestions or other features you’d like to see. Thank you!

Subscribe to the Always Write Blog on Kindle

 Posted by at 6:23 PM  Tagged with: , , ,
May 212010
 

Get posts delivered wirelessly

I’ve recently made my blog available on Amazon, so Kindle users can subscribe and receive wireless updates that deliver new posts directly to their Kindles. Pretty cool stuff.

One of the big advantages of Amazon’s Kindle is that lifetime, unlimited wireless access is included, for free. (By comparison, an iPad 3G’s unlimited data plan will cost you $30 a month, which is enough to buy a $259 Kindle 2 in less than 9 months, and comes to $1,080 over 3 years.) The Kindle’s wireless access can be used to browse, buy, and download books; surf the Internet or check e-mail (slowly, in black and white); sync your bookmarks, notes, and your position in books you’re reading across multiple devices; or subscribe to newspapers or blogs and get daily issues or new posts sent to you throughout the day.

While Amazon provides the wireless access for free, they do charge for blog subscriptions. Interestingly, they choose the pricing of the blogs they offer (I have no say in the matter), and they’ve chosen to price mine at $1.99 a month. (I get 30% of that.) They also offer a free, 14-day trial subscription if you want to check out the functionality.

Anyway, I’m obviously happy to provide my blog through my website or RSS feed for free, but I figured this gives people another option — getting wireless updates throughout the day from blogs you subscribe to is a pretty cool feature. Even if you don’t have a Kindle, feel free to head over to my blog’s Amazon page and leave a review or just help click on the “tags” halfway down the page so people can find me. Thanks!

 news  Comments Off on Subscribe to the Always Write Blog on Kindle