RSS, Twitter, email subscribers, please read

If you subscribe to a blog, any blog, congratulations. Not only have you figured out how to keep up, for free, with huge amounts of information, you've done it in an elegant and efficient way. While it may be fun to try to remember which blogs you read and then go visit them in some sort of order, RSS and other subscription tools are way smarter.

If you previously subscribed to this blog via Twitter, please read this post from Phil. Due to previously confusing settings, some people signed up in a way that sends updates to all the people following you as well, which is not part of the plan. Phil explains how to remedy this error.

If you subscribe by email, I hope you're happy with the free service we're offering. Most people love it. If not, I can highly recommend a wide range of RSS tools, which can take your browsing efficiency way up.

And if you're not a subscriber (to this blog and others) today is a great day to start. RSS is a little like radio. Every blog and many news services 'broadcast' a tiny little signal that you can't hear, but your RSS reader can. (It's like a radio tuner). You tell the RSS reader which blogs and news feeds you like, and whenever it senses that signal, it goes out and grabs the post for you. Quick and free. With a good reader, you can easily keep up with 100 blogs in less than an hour.

Some media companies don't like RSS because it means you don't see their ads. I, on the other hand, love RSS because my goal is to reach people regularly, not just with the occasional juicy headline.

If you have a reader, the subscription tools you need are on the left hand column of this blog, and near the top of just about every blog or news site you visit.