You may have noticed the little guys hanging out atop Mad Mariner stories. What—or who—are they?

The icons are actually links to other websites that act as filters, helping readers connect with interesting stories, photos and video. We though you might find them helpful.

The first, from left to right, is Stumbleupon.com, which allows you to rate websites you visit and then recommends similar content based on your ratings. The second is Digg.com, a popular site where users submit news stories and then vote on them. Those with high scores rise up the rankings and get even more readers. The third is Reddit.com, which operates on a similar concept and is also extremely popular. All three of these sites can help you zero in on the type of stories you want to read.

The fourth icon is Del.icio.us, a site that allows you to bookmark articles and other web pages and then share those bookmarks with others. One particularly useful feature of Del.icio.us is that it allows you to maintain your bookmarks online, then access them from any computer - very helpful for people who move between machines.

The icons can be used in connection with Mad Mariner's stories, allowing you to post them to these four sites. We encourage you to do this when you find a Mad Mariner article you like. It helps us get the word out to other readers. Of course, if you have any thoughts about the new icons, we'd like to hear them. Just use the Contact page or post in our Forum and we'll get back to you.