I’m not sure why it took me so long to figure out that this would be a good idea, but you can now get email updates from our site! While you have always been able to use RSS to subscribe to theroades.com (it’s the big orange icon on the site), I realize that some of you (ah-hem, most of our family) are still most comfortable with email. Click the “Subscribe” link that now appears in the menu, enter your email address, and click the link in the confirmation email you receive. From then on, you’ll get an email every time we post a new article!

Now for my soapbox…RSS (“really simple syndication”) is far superior to email for managing information (I adhere to the “inbox zero” mentality that’s part of my own personal “getting things done“). For those of you who want to step into the 21st century of web technology, think of it as subscribing to web content the same way you’d subscribe to a newspaper or magazine. If you find a magazine you like, you don’t want to check the newsstands every week for the latest edition – you subscribe to it and it comes to you instead.

When you subscribe to a site (e.g., a blog, a newspaper, the weather, etc.) using RSS, you no longer need to check the site to see if there’s something new. A site publishes something new, and it gets delivered to you through something called an RSS reader. I use Google Reader – it’s easy and web-based, so I can access it from home or work. If you already have a Google account, you’re all set to go! You may need to adjust your RSS options in Firefox (what, you aren’t using it?) so the browser automatically adds feeds to that reader.

For a little more insight, I included the Common Craft video “RSS In Plain English” that shows this idea visually: