Slashdot Mirror
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.
The AP is reporting on this as well.
I've been Pine-ing for this for a while now.
Get it? Pine? Pining? Hahahahahahahasomebodykillme
Don't think I've ever seen CmdrTaco reply in comments, but I'd love to hear his reasons for this. I've gone the hardcore geeky route with rss2email and also the true standalone desktop aggregator route. What I've settled on is Bloglines, because I use 4 machines in different locations quite frequently. Bloglines simply makes this easiest and maintains state perfectly between all 4. I'm on win2k, XP, and OSX on those 4 machines. The Bloglines notifier extension for Firefox is quite handy as well.
slashsearch.org - slashdot search. powered by google.
Be careful with this UI concept: email demands immediate attention. More discussion, via technorati: http://technorati.com/search/%22river+of+news%22+e mail
Give me a local machine (which is to say non-spyware) version of this and I might just be interested because then my RSS choices don't automatically associate me with any particular group in the corporate and/or government mindsets. For example, if a particular RSS feed is read frequently by a known terrorist, I am also then to be associated with a known terrorist?
No thanks, I'd rather be invisible and local.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Hmmmph.... news? Thunderbird does RSS just fine, and displays the blog page to boot.
Three Squirrels
Unlike email, people can't just send you an RSS feed. You need to subscribe. (i.e. your RSS-client needs to be set to go check the feed every so often to see if there's anything new)
To the best of my knowledge, if you get spam from this, it's your own fault for subscribing to crappy feeds.
That's nothing new for M2 users...
I use Onfolio to read read and go over my RSS feeds. It integrated with Firefox, so I can make use of all the Firefox extensions when browsing the feeds.
I don't think using an email client to read RSS feeds is the best choice. The best choice is having the RSS reader generate a 'newspaper-style' webpage that lists all the latest posts in a certain feed folder.
Using an email client for news reading is so 1999. You'll have to click on each headline to know what the content is all about in the preview pane. Using the newspaper-style, you can just skim over posts very quickly, while not only having the headline, but the content too. Using the space bar key, you just go down page by page.
You know, the number of times bloggers try to turn blogging into something more like Usenet, you'd think eventually they'd figure it out and go back to Usenet.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
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.
The internet is coming full circle, this is almost like usenet all over again, only with even worse spelling this time around.
So we're back to listservs now?
Screenshots
So we're back to Usenet... finally!
Has anyone else noticed the trend to read RSS of blogs/forums in an application window- is rather similar to basic old Usenet of old?
http://blog.grcm.net/
Mmm.. no. The market as a whole dropped yesterday, supposedly because of inflation fears.
i used to respect Yahoo back in the early 90's , now they are just another desperate american advertising company
Well, they are American. I suppose that's good cause to loathe them, if that's your thing. But lately Yahoo has been changing quite a bit. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but after they purchased Flickr, they've been "flickrizing" their apps at a fairly rapid clip. They're overhauling the interfaces to their key apps. Some of their beta apps are work very well and are a pleasure to use. It's easy to add new Yahoo services without getting tied into any Passport-like crap. You can use the apps you like and disregard the ones you don't like.
They're not first to market, but they're restructing their whole approach to provide regular non-geeks the opportunity to exchange information, establish online communities, create their own blogs, and so on. It's not the Google approach, which is tool-centric. Yahoo is remaking itself as what AOL could have become if it had any brains. As for being an "advertising company" maybe you haven't compared Google web apps to Yahoo web apps lately.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
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.