My new writing position (not really) and social media wishlist

So, I started actually writing for "pay" -- if you can call it that. I signed up on examiner.com as a local "board game" examiner, which pays the princely sum of $1 per article (plus additional monies, as determined by traffic).

Unlike this blog, which has really evolved (or devolved, depending on your interests!) into more of a professional thinkbank for me, the examiner piece allows me to write about a hobby of mine, and keeps my skills up. Plus, it's fun being an ambassador for - what I consider to be - a great pastime. Unlike some of the boardgaming-focused sites, which are really geared towards the experienced player, this column will attempt to bring these games to the public's awareness.

You can access (and subscribe to) my column here. Right now, there's only one story up, but I'll try and get 2-3 up each week (more often than not, it'll be '2'). But, almost all of them will be shorter than what I typically write here!

The other thing I've been working on is figuring out the best way to secure emails in an RSS feed. For those who've been reading this column, you know that I'm a huge fan of the use of RSS feeds. I find email to be cumbersome and inefficient. Nevertheless, there are still some sites that *insist* on using email to communicate -- most notably, YahooGroups (understandable, as Yahoo, in general, is years behind the rest of the world) and - shockingly - Linked In.

I've gone through so many attempts to figure out ways to do it -- using blogger.com, using xfruits.com -- my latest attempt used posterous.com, but even that has fallen short (although, there's still a possibility of that working -- next week will tell).

So, here's my WISHLIST of social media/technology tools, that would make my life significantly easier:

1. An easy way to convert email to RSS feeds that stays private. I want to be able to get the full text of the message in the RSS reader. Basically - a dream would be to combine posterous.com -- which allows you to subscribe to a private RSS feed, with blogger.com or wordpress.com -- which allows ANY email address to post to the blog (whereas, posterous only allows approved/confirmed email addresses to post).
   
   This makes for a circuitous snafu. I receive emails at gmail.com, and auto-forward to the blog; but since I'm unable to confirm email addresses from yahoogroups or linkedin, and the auto-forward *retains* the original sending email address, the posts never arrive at posterous.
   
   Admittedly, this is probably over the head of most people; but if it's not - there will be MUCH gratitude for assistance in fixing this issue.
   
2. Nested folders in google reader -- isn't it about time, already?

Starting next week, I'll be tackling some new topics that still remain professional in origin; but aren't completely communications-related. You'll have to stay tuned, to see!