Boo-garithm

Happy Halloween from all of us at Blogarithm!

Buttons galore!

You asked for 'em and we have 'em. Two new buttons (in standard sizes) you can choose from to add to your blog.

The first is 15x80 pixels, like the buttons for My Yahoo, Newsgator and other RSS services. Many bloggers have a section with a cluster of buttons to a number of aggregation services, and this button is designed to go into that section.

The second is an animated button that is designed to catch your readers' eyes and encourage them to subscribe to your blog. At 150 pixels wide, it is perfect for the right or left column of your blog, and at only 22 pixels high, it is short enough to put above the fold without stealing precious advertising or blogrolling space.

Both of these new buttons can be generated from the Blogarithm form page. Just put in your blog's address and (optionally) your email address, and we'll create the code you need for these two buttons. Put the code on your blog, and when a reader clicks on the button, it will take him to a subscribe page with your blog address already filled in.

So don't let your readers forget you. Put up a Blogarithm button and keep them coming back.

FeedBurner aggregation

Many of you use FeedBurner to host your RSS feeds. Perhaps you have one of their buttons that shows how many readers your feed has. As of today, every person who subscribes to your feed through Blogarithm will be counted in your FeedBurner numbers. That's right: each day we let FeedBurner know how many people are reading your blog through us, and they add that into the circulation of your feed. Encourage your readers to subscribe with a Blogarithm form, and pump up your FeedBurner subscription numbers.

Linky goodness

Lots of fresh links to Blogarithm from around the web last week, in the wake of the launch of our Enhanced BlogMail. Author Brad Hill wrote us up in The RSS Weblog of Weblogs Inc on Tuesday. ProBlogger gave us a mention the next day. And TipMonkies not only mentioned us in this post, but put a Blogarithm subscribe form on their home page. Thanks everyone for all the linky goodness.

Bloggers - are you serving your readers?

Blogarithm offers the easiest way available for readers to track all of their online content, with features unavailable anywhere else. A subscriber through Blogarithm:

• gets an excerpt of new content (when available) in a simple and elegant format,
• can visit any recent article directly (using the included drop-down menu),
• can easily forward your content to a friend, who can then subscribe by clicking a single link,
• and will be able to use more great features, currently in development!

Perhaps best of all, a subscriber need not know anything about syndication feeds such as RSS and Atom. You and I may know and love RSS and Atom, but do you need to force your readers to figure it out also? As we all know, very few people do. And at Blogarithm, we think that the answer to that problem is providing an easy service that uses RSS or Atom, rather than waiting for people to learn what can be a difficult and confusing technology.

Get your readers started using Blogarithm and you'll give them a solution that will work with every blog (and any other webpage, too) that they follow. They'll never be rejected because the blog they want to track doesn't have a syndication feed (which still includes at least 25% of blogs out there!). They'll always know when you've created new content. They won't have to track you down only to find that you haven't. And you'll be part of a daily resource that will only become more important in the future.

So give your readers the best possible tool to stay connected to your blog - BlogMail from Blogarithm.

The Answer to RSS

Does RSS stand for Rocket Science Syndication? You'd think so. Not because it's so complicated, but because it's so often hard to use. Only about 1 in 10 blog readers seem to have figured it out!

Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that at least 1 in 4 bloggers doesn't even provide a feed at all.

That's why Blogarithm makes sure that you never have to worry about what blogs have a feed, whether it's RSS, Atom, what version, how to find it, etc, etc. In fact, the previous sentence is about as close to all of that we think you should have to go. Using Blogarithm, when you subscribe to a blog - or any website you choose, for that matter - you don't have to think about any of this. Just put in the URL and you're done. We'll figure out what that website provides and give you the best information possible.

Don't get me wrong - we love RSS, Atom, XML, etc. in all their many versions and all the various ways they're implemented. And we think you'll love what they can do for you, too. We just think you'd rather focus on tracking your content than sorting through a big bowl of technical alphabet soup.

Enhanced BlogMail from Blogarithm

As many of those who use our service have already discovered, we have made available a new, enhanced version of our BlogMail service!

We still provide daily (unless none of your blogs have been updated) emails letting you know which of the websites that you track have been updated during the previous day. Here's what's new:

• More attractive (HTML) format
• If any of the blogs or websites you track provide a syndication feed, we'll include:
• Excerpts - see what's going on before deciding to visit the site
• Article menus - go directly to any recent article you choose
• Clickable envelope icon - lets you forward an article to a friend
• Direct links to Blogarithm features and your account page
• Subscribe to new blogs from within your BlogMail

We'll be going into more detail about each of these features and more in upcomings posts to this blog. In the meantime, for more information, visit our page all about Blogmail.

To switch to receiving enhanced BlogMail, just see the User Options section of your account page.

We'd be happy to send you a fully functional sample BlogMail.

You can also get more information here.

To create a new blogarithm account, visit our home page.

As always, we'd love to hear your feedback!

Your Privacy

The folks at Blogarithm care about your privacy. When you give us your email address, you are placing trust in us that we won't sell that address or send you spam. We take that seriously, and treat all information you share with us as we would want others to treat our information.

Blogarithm has had an informal privacy statement in place for several years. That has gotten us far, but now it is time for something more explicit. So here is our official Blogarithm Privacy Policy. It is pretty detailed, but in summary it says we "[do] not share your personal information, including email addresses, preferences, or subscriptions, with anyone outside of the company..." It also details what information we collect and how you can make changes to it. You can send feedback and questions to privacy@blogarithm.com.

Thanks for your help

Thanks to everyone who clicked through our Google ads during the month of September. You've helped us raise money for the Red Cross to help the victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. And remember, they could use your direct help as well!