Did you know that as your blog grows an RSS Feed is growing too? (Look at the last line under "Recent Posts" on the right side of this page.) So what the heck is that?

An RSS feed is a sort of summary web page that links to the entries (posts) in your blog. But it's in a special format that is recognized by computer programs that many people have on their computers. These programs might be the web browser you're using. Click the RSS feed link to find out. If you're using Internet Explorer 6, you can't currently see this page the way you should be able to. But there are free RSS Readers (Aggregators) out there for you; go to your favorite search engine and look up "RSS Reader". What you want is a FREE program that runs ON YOUR COMPUTER, not a service you subscribe to.

Why is this cool? Look at the graphic showing what my reader (Safari browser) looks like. You'll see that the entries are sorted by date, and the dates that are orange are ones I haven’t read yet. But I was actually alerted to the presence of unread entries before I brought the page up. The reader is set up to check for new posts every 30 minutes while I'm doing other stuff. What a great way to be alerted to news items! In fact, I see I have 253 unread items at The New York Times, so maybe I should stop writing and start reading.

It's really easy to "podcast" on these blogs. Just attach an MP3 file to an email and send it to the blog. The mp3 audio file will be linked in the post for anyone to download and play.

How you record on (get an audio file into) your computer will depend on the kind of computer and the software available. You'll want that file to be an mp3 because that's the common format for podcasting. If it's not, it seems like iTunes can convert a variety of formats to mp3. How do you get your audio file into iTunes so you can convert it? That's the same question I had after I recorded (next paragraph) and the answer is in the attached mp3.

If you have a Mac, an iSight (or other microphone) and QuickTime 7 Pro, see http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/ podcasting.html for info on making an audio file. It's easy. However QT 7 Pro does not save files as mp3, the most common format, so you use iTunes to convert it. How do you get it into iTunes? Listen to the audio.

qt_to_itunes.mp3

In my last post I mentioned the email address that will appear on your blog’s Admin screen. You can use that email address to send a post to your blog! Very cool. In case you haven't guessed, I'm sending this post from my email program. I could have used the webmail interface (SpanMail^Web) - which is accessible from any Internet connected computer.

The subject of your email becomes the headline for the post. That’s easy. The text you write appears below the subject on your blog. Best of all, you can attach one or more pictures to your email and they'll show up on your blog. I'm attaching a photo and another graphic that shows that I've enabled thumbnails on my blog's Admin page. I recommend you do that too. (If the pictures you see look small, click one of them.) It can’t get much easier, folks!

Oh, I forgot to tell you (previous post) about a couple of other settings before, because they're so easy. When you’re in the "Settings" section of your blog’s Admin screen, you can choose a template (that pull-down list at the top of the attached graphic). I decided to change mine from "journal" to "project" because I like the lighter background. (The template names aren't terribly important but I did cheat by editing the template to change Project Team to Blog Author, and Leader to Name.) And you'll also want to make an entry in"Your Name."

By the way, the graphic I'm attaching also shows an email address. When you see that in your blog admin screen, you might want to jot it down for future reference. Why? See my next post; it's a way cool feature of SpanBlog. Oh yeah, the address has been altered with x replacing a digit. Use your own blog!

This blog feature recently added to SpeedSpan's SpanMail package looks really useful. And it's easy to use. After I had a SpanMail account, I was able to log into it from www.speedspan.com (see the graphic I've attached) and then click the Blogs link and create a new blog. I modified the intro and profile text and put my own top banner graphic up, and then I was ready to post.