The Internet is a busy place these days and few people have the time to check back with every web site they follow just to see if it has new content. Therefore good web sites make it easy for you to subscribe to notification services that will alert you when they add new material. This site has two main ways to subscribe to such notifications.

The first method is what is known as an RSS Feed. This is a means whereby a web site can broadcast headlines, or event complete articles, to any service capable of receiving them. Normally these “feeds” are read through an aggregation service such as Google Reader or Bloglines which allow their users to assemble a custom news service from a wide variety of different sources. The BBC has a good explanation of the system.

I provide two RSS feeds – one for posts to this site’s main blog, and one for comments posted to the site by readers.

If you would prefer a more direct notification you can ask to be emailed whenever a new blog post is made. This service is provided for me by Google’s FeedBurner system. You need to sign up using the box provided in the sidebar. You will receive a maximum of one email per day. If more than one post is made in a day they will all be included in the email. Instructions for unsubscribing are contained in each email.

We don’t use Google’s email alert service for comments as one email a day is not timely enough for people wanting to participate in a discussion. Also you may only wish to follow one discussion. Instead you can sign up for email alerts for comments on an individual post when you comment on that post. In that case the email address you provide is stored in the database for this web site. We may use it to contact you with reference to comments you post.