Thank you to the many readers who sent comments on the first issue of “Technology Pulse.” Several of the comments asked for clarification of something in the newsletter. As I was replying to the emails, it occurred to me there may be others who might benefit from the information in the reply. The ideal situation would be to have an interactive newsletter that supports a two-way dialog instead of the one-way flow of information that a typical newsletter provides.
I explored several alternatives and the most obvious way to accomplish a two-way flow was to transition to a blog format. The way a blog works is the writer writes a post to the blog which is equivalent to a newsletter article. New posts are made in chronological order so the most recent post is the first item displayed and the oldest post is the last item in the blog.
What separates a blog from a newsletter is, it is possible to leave a comment on a blog post. So if you are not clear about a post or have insight about a post or want to compliment the writer, you click the “Leave a Comment” link that is at the end of each post and leave your comment. Comments are then viewable by all who read the blog.
To leave a comment on any of our blog posts, you’ll have to be a registered user on the site. Just click the Member Login button in the upper left of any page at http://totherescuedfw.com. Membership is FREE! If you are not yet a member, click the “Create an Account” link in the Member Login Dialog box. Once you create an account, anytime a new post is made to the blog, you’ll get an email advising you of the new post.
Technology Pulse and most other blogs are moderated, which means the blog writer has to read and accept the comment before the comment is actually published and viewable by other readers. This is to prevent obscene, inaccurate or irrelevant information from being blindly added to the blog.
If you are not familiar with a Blog, don’t worry as we’ll work to make the transition easy for you. I have written a document that provides Blog basics that may be helpful. You can get it by clicking here.
Periodically, I’ll continue to send an email newsletter but the articles in the newsletter will only contain the first paragraph of the new post (article). The title of the article in the newsletter will be a hyperlink that will take you directly to the blog post. Once you click the title you can read the entire article (blog post) and any comments that have been made since it was posted.
When you do click the title of this article a new window will open that has this post from the blog. Notice that above the post title on the left side of the page is a red hyperlink with the name of the next blog post. If you click it, you’ll be directed to that post. After clicking it, since you no longer at the latest article of the blog, in the right area above the title there is a red hyperlink with the name of the previous blog post. These two links can help you navigate forwards or backwards through the blog.
There are other advantages to using a blog besides the two-way dialog capability. Each blog post is tagged with keywords that are searchable making easier to find information when you need it. Blog posts will be timelier as they can be posted when the information is available instead of collecting articles until there are enough to produce a newsletter.
Hopefully you’ll like this change and find that it makes the information more useful. You can always get to the blog by going to http://totherescuedfw.com and click the Blog menu in the upper-right of the page.
Happy blogging and safe computing!
