MailChimp, Readr Board and Instagram

There is a new mailing list!

Chimp, my new mailman… mailmonkey.

I’ve long suspected that my last newsletter provider, Feedburner, often misplaced my emails. Since you are reading this through RSS, it doesn’t much matter I guess, but it was a constant horn in my side. So, I’ve switched over to MailChimp.

This might be a great time to ditch the RSS and switch over to email updates. Who knows, there may even be special content sent out to those who subscribe there. *wink wink* Or just keep on with the RSS goodness. The important part is that no matter which method you use, you’ll be notified when there is a new article on The Modern Nomad!

Readr Board

Screenshot of the article reaction menu.

Pride is one of the big sins (trust me, I’ve done far worse sins than that!) and so I am going straight to hell when I die. Why so prideful? Because I have the best comments the net has ever seen. You guys are awesome, through and through. Sure, there is the occasional hater but the quality of the comments is gold standard. No, better, unobtanium standard. Thank you and keep ’em coming! I read everything.

But I know that there are loyal lurkers who don’t like leaving comments but who still have opinions on my writing. Well, for you guys, I’ve installed something called Readr Board. At the end of each article, you can now pick one or more pre-selected reactions or make one up yourself!

Think of it as the Facebook Like button, but on steroids and without all those nasty privacy issues.

Screenshot of in-line text reaction.

But wait, it gets better! You can add reactions to any piece of text or image in the article itself. Just hover over the image or select the text you want to react to and get busy!

Readr Board is in beta, which means that it is … a bit unstable. It’s unlikely to make you impotent, but if you see some issues, do let me know. (I love dancing on the bleeding edge!)

Instagram

It’s easy to glamorize the nomadic lifestyle. It is pretty neat, but as I said in the Nomad ≠ Tourist article, I also have an everyday life full of grocery shopping (as if I could cook…), work (I wish…) and other mundane events. But this side is difficult to present on The Modern Nomad as I try to make each article deal with a specific concept or location. The Travel Updates at the end of the articles help, but not enough.

Enter stage, left: picture of the day, the latest entry in things-that-eat-up-all-my-free-time! Each day, I will take a picture of what I get up to, and post it on a time line for you to browse while waiting for the milkman.

I’m using Instagram to take these photos. Eventually I will develop something to show these photos on The Modern Nomad. Until then, you can follow me on Instagram.