So, if you want to know the latest goings-on in my little corner of the world, you’re welcome to “subscribe” to this blog via email. That way you’ll be able to see what’s happening without having to dive into my site. Once it’s set up, you’ll receive an email the day after a new post shows up on my site. Singing up is relatively simple.

Point your mouse to the “Subscribe” link in the right-hand menu. A dialog box will pop up, where you can click on the “Email” tab – then select either of the RSS feed subscription services – SimplyHeadlines or FeedBlitz. Clicking on either one will take you to a page where you can enter your email address (I recommend that you use a web email address such as Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail or the like) and some other bits of information that will let you go back and unsubscribe when you like.

Once you’ve completed the form you’ll receive an confirmation email that will have an active web link that you need to click on in order to “close the deal” and set up your email subscription. From there, you simply check your mail as you usually do – and the day after a new blog post comes up on our site, you’ll get a notification email. It’s that simple.

Both subscription services (SimplyHeadlines and FeedBlitz) have a good reputation for not sharing email addresses and whatnot to outside parties. But to be safe, I recommend that you only use a web-based/throw-away email address for any service like this. Of course, you can unsubscribe at any time – which is the nice thing about this service – you have total control of what you see.

You may also click on the “Subscribe” tab to select an RSS feed site/aggregation service that you may already use. If you’re one of the savvy ones that’s part of the crest of that wave, you probably don’t need an instructional blog post telling you how to sign up.

I may also open up a few other avenues of communication through this site, such as switching Comments on and allowing people to sign up, etc. – but for now I like the amount of maintenance (very little once it’s set up) that is required on both sides of the information loop using end-user-drive email subscription. If you have any comments or questions about the “subscribe” function, give me a shout through the Contact form on this site. Cheers!

I’ve always avoided Facebook “applications” – because they’re all designed to surreptitiously  glean more information about its users – and leverages the social networking model to bully other people in a social circle to do the same. Lately, I’ve seen a huge uptick in “Top Five” posts where people on my friends list have offered up their personal favorite movies, TV shows, foods, whatever… which not only clogs the status page with crap I don’t care about, but also (I believe) unwittingly sets up those people to receive a deluge of ads from Facebook. I find this distasteful, but as long as *I’m* not the one having his home page run over with ads echoing my “top five” rock-and-roll albums, I’m okay with it. I *really* would have liked to have control on *my* home page as to whether to show that stuff from other folks – because it’s really just another form of advertising as far as I’m concerned.

But now, I’ve become incensed over Facebook’s ham-handed approach to laying up ads on my home page. I can deal with the “meet sexy female singles over 40″ ads on my site – because indeed, I’m single and Facebook knows my gender interests and date of birth (as does anyone else that’s “friended” me on FB or knows me personally). But when I put the word “Margarita” in my Facebook status and all-of-the-sudden I start seeing stupid ads for the “real age” test that’s actually a Trojan Horse for Big Pharma to collect information and market *their* intoxicants, I become more than simply irritated. At this point, I get really, really REALLY hacked off…

So that does it. I’m leaving Facebook. I downloaded Fonebook to synchronize my Facebook contacts with Outlook – and then I will in turn synchronize that with my mobile phone. After I figure out how to delete my FB account, I’ll be gone from *that* part of the Cyberverse…

[Update] Facebook tries to trick you into simply “deactivating” your account – and even tries to leave a back door open for your friends’ invites to continue reaching you via email – ostensibly to pull you back into the site. Once you log back in – VIOLA! - you’re magically re-activated again… However, there’s a page to request deletion of your Facebook account that actually fully and finally deletes your account after 14 days. I still think it’s a bit of a marketing ploy to wait two weeks to finally delete someone’s account, and I imagine that I’ll start seeing emails from Facebook in my inbox, but that’s what SPAM filters are for… anyway, lesson learned.