Astute observers might notice something different. No, it's not that we have a new President-elect. Give up? It's a new blog with 21st century features such as commenting and RSS feeds. I know a lot of our readers aren't technophiles, so I'll keep it simple. If you read or see something you like, you can leave us a message directly on the web site. And, if you use a news aggregator such as Google Reader, you can add our RSS feed. Don't worry, the photographs are still the main focus, and I'll continue to update them frequently.

So what's the big deal about these new features? The old blog was a one-page static web site that I cobbled together over a weekend several years ago. It was cumbersome to update, didn't encourage feedback, and wasn't very user- or internet-friendly. Our development team at Rare Bird is evaluating a new programming framework, so I thought reworking the family blog would be a great opportunity for me to kick the tires of the new software as well as reap some benefit for doing so. I plan to use my corner of the site to blog about the experience from a technical standpoint without adding cruft to the family posts.