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Yahoo Email + RSS Integrates Blogs
yapplejax writes "In the new war of the Internet based applications, Yahoo is testing creating an email folder as the hub for RSS instead of using a web page for the feeds. " I've long thought this was the best way to do it- I've used web and application RSS readers for years, and email clients are simply a better interface.
Be careful with this UI concept: email demands immediate attention. More discussion, via technorati: http://technorati.com/search/%22river+of+news%22+e mail
You know I use to get hardly any SPAM in the old days. I had to go out of my way to find porn on the internet. Now, it is knocking at the door with enhancements I won't need for decades if ever. Somehow, I just know this is going to be exploited somehow. Can anyone explain this in terms that a Windows user could understand? I am without caffeine this morning and this whole thing makes no sense in my fuzzy state. Is this enhancement needed or just another offer?
Outlook 12 Beta 1 is also incorporating RSS into a mail folder. Seems to be a trend, not necessarily headline news, especially since other mail/news readers have been doing this for a while.
some sites i prefer processing the RSS through Thunderbird (Newsgator can do the same for Outlook users). other sites are more "blog" like to me and I prefer to read it in a blog style. I let LiveJournal syndicate and group them together so I get all my politics blogs in a single place & style, then all my web design feeds in one place, then my science ones, plus I can get my friends' blogs for those that aren't LJ users to be part of my "friends" list as if they all were in once place.
I've been sketching out ideas and prototypes on a "feedmixer" project, a php system that would do what LJ does in mixing feed entries into a single place, only more like JavaBlogs, it would mix multiple feeds into a single RSS feed, then CSS, XSL, and Ajax can be used to read it in blog style OR you can get them into a single place in Thunderbird.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
The most fundamental difference between usenet and RSS is that Usenet is push, and RSS is pull. The push nature of Usenet makes spam really, really easy, and hard to fight. You end up accepting a lot of crap on your machine, and filter it out later. When you go to an RSS feed you know that there is control over it, and if one particular source starts spewing junk you stop reading it.
It also makes Usenet very democratic: anybody can say anything, anonymously. Those two things will always be opposite sides of the same coin. RSS requires more resources of your own (though there are a remarkable number of free blogging sites, so anybody anywhere can create a blog as long as they have Web access).
Unfortunately, the number of anonymous sources with brilliant information is infinitesimal compared to the number of people willing to spew crap into whatever data stream is available for free. And that's why bloggers won't go to Usenet: they lack the control necessary to keep readers. RSS gives them that control.
Screenshots
As much as I love Opera and it's email/RSS client, it's not quite the same thing as what Yahoo's offering, the difference being that Yahoo's version is web-based and can be accessed from any computer. I personally use Opera's RSS client at home, since it's just so damn awesome, and Google Reader while on an alien PC.
And use RSS as a replacement for email entirely.
This would solve many problems associated with regular email IMHO. Instead of receiving dozens of unsolicited emails a {Day,Week,Month}, why not have a system that enables a person to setup an RSS feed intended only for one user.
For example, Alice gives Bob a link to a feed that only Bob knows about which is encrypted, and only Bob can read and subscribe to. Alice adds another feed for Carol, Dave, ad nauseum. If multiple recipients are required for an email, the client updates the feeds for the intended recipients only. A similar concept could be applied to workgroups, each recipient in a workgroup has the same key, enabling only that group to use the feed.
This would be a great replacement especially in situations where you send email to the same people frequently. And it wouldnt be annoying and disruptive like an IM client, you could read your 'email' feed whenever you want. Just a thought.
OSX users should take a look at Vienna 2. The author's pedigree is in a conferencing (BBS) off-line reader that did mail and news and the interface is extremely clean and email-like.
the difference being that Yahoo's version is web-based and can be accessed from any computer.
And that's why I carry my Opera RSS feeds on a USB stick (basically, you just need to move the Mail directory in Opera's app data dir). You need to have Opera installed on the machine to access it, but I rarely have the need for RSS feeds on other people's computers. As long as my laptop, my work PC and my home PC are synchronized, I'm fine.