Reflections by the Pond – February 27, 2012

Important News for Our Subscribers

Gentle Reader:

We have reached the end of an era. For 18 years we have e-mailed our devotional publications to our subscribers. As in so many aspects of life, however, it seems evil has held sway over good. For the last three weeks our mailings have been thwarted for many of you—either by those using e-mail channels for spurious use, or simply because our innocent routing has been interpreted as spurious.

In either case, out of fairness to our subscribers, we can no longer dependably e-mail our publications. We must adapt. (Even if this situation were rectified tomorrow, next week or the week after it could start all over again.)

Therefore, beginning immediately with this issue of Reflections by the Pond, we will no longer be publishing by e-mail, but only to our web site. We continue writing and publishing—just not e-mailing each issue. This leaves open two avenues to our readers:

1. Visit our site once a week to read or download the current issue. All editions—except plain text, which will no longer be offered—will still be available as usual from our front page. There, as always, you may read the current issue (as well as back issues) and/or download the PDF editions—all from the front page. This is not really very different from opening your e-mail client to read or download each issue.
2. Subscribe to the RSS feed of our web site. If you are not familiar with this method, detailed instructions for implementing it are included below. (If you are, you will find the RSS icon at the bottom of our front page, or in the address bar of your browser.) Using the RSS feed, you will be notified each week when the new Reflections issue has been published to your computer. You then use your browser or dedicated RSS to read the current issue (you will still need to click on the displayed icon to download either of the PDF editions). Again, if you have been getting the HTML edition each week, this will not be very different from receiving it by e-mail.

Everything being equal, we would rather continue e-mailing our publications to subscribers, but today's climate is just not conducive to small shops such as ours doing this without big headaches. And we do not want to continue with the current situation when with each mailing perhaps a third of our subscribers do not receive their promised issue (indeed, that same third may not have received this notice!). Hence our decision to bring it all home to our web site.

We regret and apologize for any inconvenience this causes you, but we believe that once the dust settles, however you decide to keep reading our publications, it won't be that much different from the way it is now.

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RSS Feed Instructions

Below are instructions for implementing RSS feeds in three top Windows browsers. (Sorry, we have no experience with Mac or handheld devices.)

Browser: Firefox (recommended)

RSS comes built into the Firefox browser, with a convenient menu placed on your toolbar, and its implementation is the smoothest, when compared to Internet Explorer and Google Chrome, although to actually read the document it takes you to the respective page at our web site. (Download free Firefox)

1. Click on the RSS icon at the bottom of our front page.
2. This displays a preview of the issues currently on our front page along with a subscription dialogue at the top. Accept "Live Bookmarks" (should be the default) as your preferred reader, then click on the "Subscribe Now" button.
3. A second dialogue is displayed giving you options for placing the reader link (the default option is best) on your Bookmarks Toolbar. Click "Subscribe".
4. This will place a bookmark where you chose to assign it. (You may now close or disregard the page being displayed.) Click on this bookmark to display a menu of the Reflections issues currently on our front page. Click on the top one to read the latest at our web site. (Each of the links in this list take you to the respective issue's full page--not our front page.)
5. Each week this list will be updated with the latest issue.

Browser: Google Chrome

Google Chrome is also a free download. Once the dust settles, its implementation of RSS is quite nice, using a dedicated Reader—which means you will not be taken to the web site to read the document—but we place it second because the RSS implementation is not built into the browser—and (a big "and") you must subscribe/register with Google with your e-mail address to use it.

If you do not already have an RSS extension installed in Google Chrome...

1. Click on the "Customize and Control" icon in the upper right (looks like a wrench).
2. Click on Tools / Extensions.
3. Click on the "Get More Extensions" button.
4. In the "Search the Store" dialogue (upper left), type "RSS" and press Enter.
5. The first item should be RSS Subscription Extension (by Google). Click on the "Add to Chrome" button to install the extension. (You are free, of course, to try any of the other RSS readers, but this is the one we tried and it is by Google.)
6. Once it is installed, the orange RSS icon should be displayed in the address bar when our front page is open. Click on it.
7. Click on the "Subscribe Now" button.
8. If you are not already logged into Google, you will be prompted to log in or create a new account.

The biggest difference between Chrome and Firefox is that Firefox gives you a handy list of issues right in your toolbar—but when you click on one you are taken to the actual web site to read (slower). Chrome puts the list inside the Reader, so it is a little less handy, but once you are there, it works faster because the issues actually reside on your computer, and you read them inside the dedicated Reader.

Browser: Windows Internet Explorer

1. With our web site open in IE, click on the RSS icon at the bottom of the page.
2. Click on "Subscribe to this Feed".
3. In the displayed dialogue, you can tell IE where you wish to save the RSS link. Click the "Subscribe" button to confirm.
4. Click on "View My Feeds".

The biggest problem with the IE RSS Reader is that it does a poor job of formatting the Reflections issues, beginning each with a huge paragraph of raw HTML code, and below that the issue is displayed in essentially plain text. There is a tiny blue arrow under the issue title that will take you to the actual issue at the web site.

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If you need our help with any of this, send us a note using the "Contact Us" link at our web site.

Copyright 2012, David S. Lampel. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture is from the New American Standard Bible (Updated Edition).
This and earlier issues of Reflections by the Pond may be read and/or downloaded at our web site at http://dlampel.com