You’ll notice a couple of changes to the sidebar, I’m sure. First off, I have two RSS subscription links. One for a reader and one for email.

If you’re unfamiliar with RSS, it provides an easy, automatic way to keep up with blogs you read regularly. If you subscribe using something like Google Reader or Bloglines, you’ll use an account there (free) to subscribe to feeds. Then, you can view all feeds in one window. It’s much quicker than visiting each blog individually and checking to see if it’s been updated.

If you prefer, you can also subscribe via email. Each time a blog is updated, you’ll receive an email notification. Either way, you don’t have to worry about missing posts.

I’m using Feedburner to handle both types of feeds. The biggest reason is the ability to track subscribers. Without feedburner, I’d have no idea how many people are reading my RSS feeds. Because people using feeds don’t usually visit the site and don’t show up in the stats there, I’d get an artificially low estimate of how many readers I really have.

Another reason for using Feedurner is the fact that I’m a member of a feedburner ad network. You can see the three most recent posts by members in the sidebar.

If you’re not already subscribed to my feed, please take a second to do so now. And remember, if you use the email subscription option, you’ll need to confirm your subscription.