I have never kept it a secret that I think RSS feeds are the most efficient and satisfying way to keep up on my strips, and the web as a whole. Instead of going to 165 sites every day to see if there's something new, I go to one, Google Reader, and it shows me everything that's new. I can very quickly scroll through dozens of items at a time, reading some, skipping some, and marking the rest with a "star" to read later.

You can also "like" items, which is what I want to talk about today. Once I've read everything in my list there's an Explore Recommended Items feature which shows me items I might be interested on. It bases this, in part, on items I've "liked" and items other people have "liked". It's the RSS version of Amazon recommending a book to me based on my purchase history.

But yesterday the value of this feature skyrocketed with the introduction of Google Reader Play which presents recommended items in a very compelling interface. And suddenly this reasonably popular Not Invented Here strip went through the roof, with literally hundreds of thousands of views. Most of those viewers kept on clicking past, but a few were intrigued enough to go to our website, read the archive, and subscribe themselves. And that is a good thing.

So if you find yourself laughing at one of my strips on Google Reader, please "like" it. It will help new readers to find my strips, and help you find new stuff you like.

P.S. If you're a Mac user of Google Reader I recommend installing Greedy. Once you have you can subscribe to a website by clicking on the "RSS" logo in the address bar in Safari.

P.P.S. Here's are the RSS feeds for Unshelved and for Not Invented Here

I'll be at Seattle's super-awesome Emerald City Comic Con this weekend at booth 206, which Unshelved is sharing with the sublime Book of Biff. It's a little too early for Not Invented Here books and merchandise, but I'll be happy to make a quick sketch for you (I promise to really butcher Owen and Desmond) and hear your favorite story from the software world.

I'm excited and flattered to have been invited to speak at Google's Kirkland, WA office next week as part of their Authors@Google program. I'll be there on Wednesday, Feb 17 at noon for lunch (I've heard the food is excellent) and speaking from 1pm-2pm.

Cartooning in the Twenty-First Century
Remember when comic strips were the engine that drove newspaper circulation? Good times. Of course things have changed quite a bit. Hear the co-creator of popular webcomics Unshelved and Not Invented Here talk about how he came to support himself as a professional cartoonist in a fast-changing world.

Because it's at Google you can bet I'll be talking a lot about the genesis of Not Invented Here, which is based on my twenty years of experience in the software world. I hope to see you there!

It's taken about a month for the Big Port to stabilize enough to move on to the next feature: the store. There's no piece of our site better suited for outsourcing than the store. There must be a thousand ecommerce engines out there, including some real gems like Shopify. But again and again I hit the wall that the ones I like don't allow the kind of flexible pricing that we depend on. For example: Buy any shirt, get a book for $10. So it's back into the fray.

One of the ways we manage to make a living over at Unshelved is via our sponsorship program. By carefully selecting sponsors whose products and/or services match up with our readership, and bending over backwards to make sure the message is conveyed, we get both happy sponsors and happy readers.

Paul and I are ready to repeat history. After just four months Not Invented Here has already accumulated a sizable readership in the worlds of IT and software development (thanks for spreading the word, everyone!). Paul and I are looking for a short list of pilot sponsors who'd like to try out our innovative approach to online marketing. Email me if this sounds like you.