More Mark Steel - A Newsletter and Audio
When this blog was first created, Mr Steel was writing a weekly column in the Independent that was impossible to follow digitally. It was published on the Independent's then website, but it was a website with only general topic RSS feeds.
There was a Facebook page for Mark Steel in the Independent but it had been dormant for years.
The nearest thing was following him on Twitter, but for that you had to be on Twitter and you would also get lots of updates on the ups and the many downs of being Crystal Palace fan (pre Big Sam), along with the Tennis, Cricket and even Snooker...
This blog gave you the option to follow his articles via Blogger, Email, Facebook, Google+ and Twitter - all automatically updated by an RSS feed I created using the Feed43 service.
Since then there has been a number of changes, with the major one being the launch of the new Independent website, not long before it became the first digitally only national paper. The new website does have feeds for each "content provider" and so this blog began to use it to update all channels.
Mr Steel also started to do the odd article for the Mirror, but with no feed and so I created another one with Feed43, and this blogs Feed combines both. He also started to add his Independent articles to his official Facebook page along with the odd Independent article he liked.
This has made the Facebook page of this blog a bit of duplication, except for the odd Mirror article, if he is still doing them - it has been some time since the last one.
But if you just wanted his Independent articles emailed or via Twitter or Google+ then this was still the place to be.
However, Mr Steel recently announced he was doing a newsletter that you can sign up to on his rather funkay new website. I signed up thinking that this may well make this blog a bit redundant. After a couple of weeks nothing appeared, but then I checked my spam folder and there was the first newsletter...
It turns out it does not really work as a replacement for email alerts for this blog. It does link to his latest Independent articles, but it often appears a few days after, or just the day before the next one is published. But it is worth signing up for his ruminations on the comments section and for updates on all his other work. Sadly, there is no link to a web version to show it, but hopefully it will be compatible with whatever email software/device you might open it on.
His website also has an audio section with his BBC Radio series from 96-2002.
This blog has also been updated using a new responsive blogger theme, plus a Feedwind gadget on the Home page to display the latest articles via the Facebook page, with the full archive accessible below.