We're going to experiment with a publishing innovation to see if it will be preferable to some of our friends who like to keep up with what is happening with us. Right now, you see our new posts in one of two ways:

1. Going to the Blog and reading it when you think to check, in which case there may or may not be any new information.
2. Getting a copy of the latest post in email. Those of you who have followed us for awhile know that we've had ongoing trouble getting the email tie-in to work properly, i.e., sometimes it wouldn't send a copy of the post, and sometimes it would send the latest post and the next-to-latest post that you had already seen. Annoying. But at least you got to see it as soon as it was posted.

An innovation in Web publishing involves news feeds. Some are tied to Web sites, and some are tied to Blogs, but they all use a format called XML and they all can be read by newsreaders. It is a technology that is new enough to lead to format wars (remember Betamax vs. VHS? DVD+RW vs DVD-RW?), so which format we should use is not clear yet. It also takes either a separate reader (there are a lot of free ones out there) or an email program that is feed-enabled (either RSS, the older format, or Atom, the newer-but-open-source format that is likely to take over, the way VHS did and the way the PC platform did (not because they were better necessarily, but because the standards were allowed to develop)).

We are going to try to add the XML format to our site. If you know what that means, great. If you don't, you'll learn along the way (it is, after all, new). It doesn't involve any extra work for us, but it probably will require us to decide on a format at some point, or else work with a service that outputs our Blog in both formats. We'll keep you posted. Just watch for the addition of a button that will tell you the Web address of the newsfeed. With that address, you can add our feed to your newsreader account. Since every newsreader does this differently, I won't even try to tell you how to do it. But we'll list some links to some of the free readers after we've learned a little more about it ourselves.

It's worth mentioning that the major advantage of the newsreader is that it will check for new content on several sites all at once. If you were only going to use it for our Blog, it probably wouldn't be worthwhile. But more and more online newsletters are going to the format, since it's totally opt in and it isn't subject to Spam at all. And more and more Web sites are going to the format, since it gives you instant updates. So it's likely that you will find several of your favorite Web sites and email newsletters are available in the format, which will make it all worthwhile.