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.

Comments

Bloglines is my answer

[phildog]

>I've used web and application RSS readers for years, and email clients are simply a better interface.

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.

Search Technorati for '"river of news" email'

[supton]

Be careful with this UI concept: email demands immediate attention. More discussion, via technorati: http://technorati.com/search/%22river+of+news%22+e mail

Re:Search Technorati for '"river of news" email'

[JaredOfEuropa]

Be careful with this UI concept: email demands immediate attention.

Only if you let it. Many people do treat email like the phone or an IM client, but reading and responding to email is a task in its own right; something you should sit down for and focus on. If you get lots of email, try ignoring incoming mail if you're working on something else (turn the "new email" sound off!). When you feel like it, process all items in your inbox in one go. Trust me, you'll feel much less "swamped" by your email this way. Oh, and if you're afraid of missing an urgent mail item... if something is really urgent, people will call you, believe me.

With that said, I prefer the specialised RSS readers over Outlook-lookalikes.

Getting there

[ptomblin]

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.

Re:Getting there

[Anonymous Coward]

Usenet is dying because it is not Web 2.0 Compliant.

Can I tag Usenet groups? Can I delicious them to the bookmarkiverse and flickr them across the photosphere? Can I TrackBack a Usenet post and moblog a counterpost from a flashmob?

No? Not interested. (sips latte)

Usenet vs. RSS

[jfengel]

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.