“The complicated kissing cousins of the bluegrass state’s bourbon industry”.

The photo above by Antoine Claudet was of a figure one would not normally associate with photography or modernity: the Duke of Wellington. Claudet was a disciple of Louis Daguerre, who became active in London and was appointed a court photographer to both Queen Victoria and Napoleon III. Remarkably little of his work survives, for most of them were lost in a fire in his studio shortly after his death.

The Iron Duke was a remarkable man. After his military victories, he was twice the premier of Britain, made a duke in Spain and Portugal, a prince in the Netherlands, and was honored with the topmost military rank by seven continental powers — not to mention giving his name to a dish and an item of clothing.

The photo itself taken in 1844 was a remarkable bridge across centuries. Memories of Elizabeth the First or the English War were as fresh and recent to Wellington (born 1769) as Wellington or Lincoln is to us. The photo was different from latter paintings and engravings based upon it — unlike the kindly old man which smiled down from the paintings, the photo showed a crankier, more determined Wellington — a face you truly expect from the Victor of Waterloo.

Why does it take one click to follow you on Twitter, but a dozen clicks on acronyms or copying and pasting URLs between apps to follow your RSS feed? Ask a non-geek which one is easier, and you’ll quickly see why the web is now owned by silos. We can do better.

At Superfeedr, we thought hard about the “follow” problem and came up with a simple button called SubToMe:

It’s fully decentralized (no app server involved), runs in your browser (HTML5 FTW), and is completely open source. It’s also integrated with many feed readers and remembers your favorite choice.

Install the universal bookmarklet, Chrome extension or Firefox extension to start using SubToMe everywhere on the web and save time when subscribing to new feeds.

More importantly, put a Follow button on your blog for people to follow you easily!

Thanks to SubToMe for sponsoring Marco.org this week.

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