Subscribe to Sleeping in the Mountains!

I've never been the most computer literate of writers. The Internet is a wonderful tool that lets me publish my own content from anywhere in the world, to everyone in the world, but I don't understand all the nuts and bolts.

Here's one thing I do understand and it's incredibly important: the way you and I and a billion other people are about to access content on the Internet is changing. Instead of ordering up a website by typing out the address or searching for it with a search engine, people will SUBSCRIBE to their favorite content.

Sometimes this content will be personalized. For example, consider local weather reports, stock portfolios and updates about your favorite sports teams. Other subscriptions will be for major media outlets like ESPN, CNN, The New York Times and crazy old Rupert Murdoch's vehicles of delusion.

But I hope that you and I will also subscribe to media produced by small-time, independent writers, photographers, comics, musicians, producers, revolutionaries, travelers and crazy people, all of whom are now able to publish whatever they want, whenever they please.

Which brings me to...


THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THIS POST:

See that little orange icon to the left, under my profile?

(Wait. Scroll up for a second. Orange, under my profile. Got it!)

It's called an RSS Feed Button. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. By clicking on it, you can subscribe to Sleeping in the Mountains and my new posts will be accessible from your homepage or Internet Reader.

Everyone has a homepage. It's the first website you see when you log on to the Internet. I put subscriptions to my favorite sites on my homepage today, and I already love the convenience.

Go ahead and customize your homepage now if you haven't already. I chose the iGoogle homepage because, let's face it, Google is the most innovative and user friendly Internet giant and in the year 2106 our descendants will probably be colonizing the moons of Saturn in the Holy name of Lord Google, and you don't want to be one of those poor souls left behind to sweat it out on Earth.

If you do decide to subscribe to my blog, I'd be thrilled.

Thanks so much for reading!

-Tim

P.S. - Here's a link to a great explanation of RSS and the Internet subscription evolution.


Photo of Samurai Brendan by Tim Patterson in Uenohara, Japan