TO OUR 13 "MEMBERS" THANK YOU!
Unfortunately we have to admit that while we are genuine, certified, commissioned, licensed, published, and recognized maritime experts of various sorts we are flat out cyberspace novices. We here at American
Admiralty Books have all been members of crews
Photo,Naval History Command But somehow we think that members of a blog look different, but many don't post a photo, just a facial symbol so we are sort of left with a vague impression sort of like this: 
Some "members" have left us comments and we certainly appreciate those and feel that we "know" these members better than others now that they have "spoken up". But we are in a bit of a puzzlement. You see the blog dashboard arrived with the "member" program installed. Thankfully some members "signed up" but we haven't figured out yet what our role is relative to our members. Besides eternal gratitude for clicking in as members and thus assuring us that we aren't putting a lot of work into transmitting information into cyber space only to disappear, we're not sure what our obligations are supposed to be to members. Perhaps our members can tell us. Perhaps if you click into us regularly we should invite you to become a "member". Another word in cyberspace that seems to be associated with "member" is "Follower". We certainly appreciate anyone who "follows" our site with any regularity. But we think our "members" have done more for us than "follower" would indicate.
We aren't quite sure what we should be doing for our followers at this stage of our development, but we know they have helped shape us so far. So at the risk of seeming to look at this blogger/member relationship as a one way street we'd like to invite more of you who "follow" us to click on the "Membership" button and join us as "members". We'd like to ask all "members" to comment more often and help us shape the future of the blog/website.
Here are some of the things we are working on. (1) We are developing two "parallel blogs", these consist of expanded sections of our existing "special interest pages such as SAILING , FISHING, ADMIRALTY LAW, SURFING, DIVING, etc. that will allow us to pack in more content without more scrolling . As the content has expanded in the blog we've found that the scrolling format is getting lengthy and cumbersome. Tell us how you feel about that. We have reduced advertising to virtually nothing in the blog but used one of the parallel blogs to create a virtual on line shopping mall that is much more than a book store. We eventually have to make enough money with this effort for it to be self sustaining. Visit the "Shopping mall now while its under construction and tell us how we can improve it. (2) We are using one of the parallel blogs to create an archive expanding the RETAINED HEADLINE SERVICE of our NEWS SECTION. In that Archive section we are also trying to sort and organize for rapid retrieval the collected works of NAMAZU, and our series "HOW FAR WILL THE DRAGON SWIM?". We are considering for the archive permanent storage of our in progress on line book "PROTOCOLS" first published as a series of posts titled "SPACE AS AN OCEAN". We are also considering storing for on line reading there our maritime labor work "BLOOD ON BROWN WATER". (3) In our AUTHORITATIVE LITERATURE section we have now published two of the five American Admiralty Bureau's COMMENTATORS. Should we move them to the archive to shorten the scroll in the Authoritative literature section? We would describe them in AUTHORITATIVE LITERATURE and provide a hyper link to them. How far should we expand the on line legal research services of our Admiralty Law section? What do you think? (4) Finally we are considering going to a sort of PBS style of advertising on the blog itself, disallowing display advertising but allowing credit lines and links to "sponsors" and content providers. Use the comment section below this post, or below the STATION IDENTIFICATION AND NOTICE BOARD to tell us what you think. Or contact me, Johnas Presbyter at https://plus.google.com/u/0/100165001677844813061/posts and tell us what you think. When you clicked on the membership button, we didn't quite know what that meant, but we presume that you took some level of ownership in our content. We need you to tell us how we can improve, and how we can generate revenue to continue to improve. As we head into year two with our parallel blogs we are already experimenting with software to shift from blog to web site. When that shift comes we hope to have much more developed content than what we have now. If you read us here with any regularity please consider becoming a member and help guide and direct THE PORTAL TO THE MARITIME WORLD.
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