The InterWebs: An open letter

So how much do you use the Web and all of its trappings, anyway? Do you visit www.hmenews.com each day? Do you spend your lunch hour pondering your next status update on Facebook?

I've been thinking about your use of the Web a lot lately. With all the hard work we've been putting into our Web site, I can't help but wonder: Have our readers noticed?

In case you haven't, we've added quite a few features to our Web site, including HME News TV episodes every Wednesday and Friday. (A recent Weekly Update on the surety bond rule by Executive Editor Mike Moran had more than 500 views. For a minute, we thought: They have noticed! But for the most part, that has been the exception, not the rule.)

Another new feature: blogs. That's right - plural. We've been posting regularly to our main blog, “Notes from the Golden Commode,” since last year, although we only recently committed ourselves to daily posts. (Forgive us for taking the occasional day off.) But we've also added two new blogs, “eSP” (get it?) and “Wheels in Motion,” for our specialty provider and rehab provider readers. By the way, we love it when you comment on our blogs. It's validating. It's like getting a sticker on your homework in grade school. We like to brag about these things around the office, you know.

We've also started posting a new story to the Web site every day. (Again, forgive us for taking the occasional day off.) It's easy to find: It appears at the top of the main page.

So long story short: Each day you visit our Web site - each week day, that is - you'll see new content: new TV episodes, new blogs, new stories. If you sign up for our RSS feed (click on the small orange box with the white, sonar-looking lines), you can have those new stories delivered right to your Yahoo or Google home page through a feed reader.

But before we go over the Web's deep end and start creating HME News networks on LinkedIn or start twittering - for those of you in the dark, it's a way to blast one liners, much like Facebook status updates, to a network of people - I'll ask again: How much do you use the Web and all of its trappings, anyway?

I'm all ears. Or, considering you'll use the Web to e-mail me and not pick up the phone to call me, I'm all eyes.