Subscribing to Immingpool

This is a drastic rewrite, since Jen informs me that almost nobody out there reading this actually cares about how this works. Fair point. So, let me tell you what I mean by "subscribing" to the blog. You may be annoyed that you don't know when there is new stuff up on the blog, and you almost certainly don't want to check every day just to see if we have something new up. And we don't want you to lose interest, because this is the best way for us to put stuff up, and not worry about whether it makes a good e-mail. The recent "Dinnertime Conversation" post is a perfect example. That wouldn't be a good e-mail. But you might want to read it along with seeing some new photos. Subscribing just means that you can find out when something new is up, and you can even read some or all of the content without going to the site. If you'd like to do that, read on.

Subscriptions to Immingpool! are available through the magic of something called Atom. This is a more recent version of a technology called RSS. There’s a lot of technical stuff going on inside RSS and Atom, but the long and the short of it is that if you want to just magically know when we have updated the site, our Atom feed is the way to go.

There are two really good programs for getting the feed. The first is Thunderbird, the e-mail program that the Mozilla project puts out. You can find out more and download it at Mozilla.org. You can also use the new Google Desktop 2.0. It has a plugin called Web Clips. This plugin looks at all of the sites you visit, and if there is an RSS or Atom feed, it can automatically show you new items from the feed. This is a really useful feature. I also enjoy the other features of the Google Desktop sidebar – well worth a visit to the Google Desktop site. If you want a list of other programs that do similar things, check out this list at Wiki.

I don't expect that you will want to change from Outlook Express or whatever other program you use to read e-mail, but there's a chance you are already using Thunderbird, or are looking for an alternative already. If so, here’s the way to subscribe in Thunderbird. Simply go to the File menu, go to New, and choose Account. On the dialog that pops up, select “RSS News & Blogs”. Give it a name (remember that this will be not just for immingpool, but for any feeds you have). Click Finish on the next screen, and you are almost there. You should see a new account in your account list. Click on it, and you’ll get a screen with options. Choose Manage Subscriptions, then click Add. Paste this URL into it: http://immingpool.blogspot.com/atom.xml. You should then be all set. Say OK, and you’ll soon be getting updates in something close to real time.

The Google Desktop will probably just automatically add Immingpool! to the Web Clips plugin the first time you visit the site while the sidebar is running. If it doesn't, you can always contact me for help.