This post is mostly for the benefit of neophyte bloggers Mike and Mindee, although others might be interested. M&M mentioned in a recent mass note to friends & family that they have yet to figure out how to make subscriptions to their blog available. I hadn't totally figured that out yet, either, but now I have, so here's the goods:

You can add a widget that will allow interested readers to subscribe to your blog via e-mail -- like the one that now appears at the bottom of my sidebar. To do this:

1. Go to www.feedburner.com.
2. Create a feedburner account by entering your blog url in the space provided and following the instructions.
3. Select the "Publicize" tab on your feed manager page.
4. Select "Email Subscriptions" from the left-side menu.
5. Follow instructions for generating a widget for your blog.

Voila! You now have an e-mail enabled blog!

You can do a bunch of other things with feedburner, too, but I haven't really bothered exploring them too much yet.

For people like me who monitor multiple blogs, subscribing to feeds with a feedreader is probably a more efficient way to keep track of whether there's any news at any of their sites. Rather than getting my inbox flooded with updates from all of my favorite blogs, I have one page where I can go to check them all at once. I use and like Bloglines, and I've just discovered that Google offers its own product, the Google Reader. There are other programs available, too. You don't have to do anything to make your blog available to readers in this way, just as long as you don't turn off the site feed on your Blogger dashboard (default is to have it on).

Hope this is useful. Happy blogging!