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Yahoo Email + RSS Integrates Blogs 133

Posted by CmdrTaco from the makes-sense-to-me dept.
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.
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Yahoo Email + RSS Integrates Blogs More

Yahoo Email + RSS Integrates Blogs

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  • I love being able to use it in Thunderbird, now to be able to do it when I dont have one of my machines....awesome!
    • Evolution 1.x used to support RSS (not sure which versions) on an overview page that included weather and mail summaries. They dropped it in 2.x because "stand alone readers/aggregators are better suited to the task". Since Evo 2.x arrived, I've tried several RSS readers for Linux as well as Firefox's Live Bookmarks, and I still miss it in Evolution. Not because it was presented well (it only presented a hyperlinked title), but because of accessibility. Presenting each feed as a folder sounds good. But

  • Associated Press article (Score:3, Informative)

    by yapplejax ( 931268 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @09:21AM (#14146601) Homepage
    The AP is reporting on this [ap.org] as well.

  • Pine (Score:2, Funny)

    by SpaceAdmiral ( 869318 )
    I've been Pine-ing for this for a while now.

    Get it? Pine? Pining? Hahahahahahahasomebodykillme

  • Bloglines is my answer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phildog ( 650210 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @09:23AM (#14146615) Homepage
    >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 [aaronsw.com] and also the true standalone desktop aggregator route. What I've settled on is Bloglines [bloglines.com], 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' (Score:5, Interesting)

    by supton ( 90168 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @09:23AM (#14146616) Homepage
    Be careful with this UI concept: email demands immediate attention. More discussion, via technorati: http://technorati.com/search/%22river+of+news%22+e mail [technorati.com]
  • 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?
    • 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.
      • Thanks - that helped. So for the majority of people who don't know reliable sources or feeds and cruise the internet indescriminately - this is just a way of making oneself have to wade through loads of *stuff*. I am sure most will somehow collect more SPAMMISH junk than they do now through poor content choices. I think I will just trust Slashdot and the Commander to gather important stuff for me to read and then wander the net. Sometimes though - I wish there were more /. polls dealing with hardware ch

  • I like the privacy of anonymity better (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CodeShark ( 17400 ) <ellsworthpc@yah o o . com> on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @09:27AM (#14146647) Homepage
    Not to belabor the point, but why would I want a giant provider like Yahoo (or Google for that matter) to have any idea which RSS feeds I am getting?

    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.

    • But you aren't invisible and local because the server logs still note who connected to the site and received updates, right? So, it's just a matter of google or Yahoo or any other aggregator being easier to subpoena, not that the local machines are untraceable.
      • Good points. But server-logs, etc. are enough removed from my actual identity (and I am with a small enough local ISP) that I would like to think that the judicial system(s) wouldn't grant a carte blanche "cyber-warrant" to an investigative agency to go after anyone who may have ever read a particular RSS based on some nebulous idea in a "bad-cop" world that such a warrant would help them identify me as something I am not.
        • your faith in the US judicial process leads me to believe you haven't read your RSS feeds lately. Many US citizens have been arrested merely based on their associations lately; some have been sent to Gitmo, where the Geneva accords are considered suggestion, not policy. I would not be surprised if subscribing to a radical Islam RSS feed would get you arrested and questioned within a matter of days. In fact, anyone brave enough to try this and find out for the rest of us?

    • No thanks, I'd rather be invisible and local.

      You're using HTTP in order to get your xml/rss feeds, right? So that means each and every request may contain one or many of those lovely delicacies known as cookies. Besides, many rss readers rely on the ie activeX for the dirty plumbing stuff.

      I think I'll stick with stealing the morning newspaper from the paperboy's bike to get my news.

      • No thanks, I'd rather be invisible and local.

        I think I'll stick with stealing the morning newspaper from the paperboy's bike to get my news.

        Boy, that just went from paranoid to paranoid...er. Companies track trends, its true. My fear is not that Yahoo has some clue as to what I read (shit, when you search for "xxx boobies" they probably know who you are) but it's when the government gets the ability to subpoena that information that I start to get scared.

    • Because if you're not doing anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about?

      Oh ... woops, never mind.

    • While I don't believe that there actually is such a thing as anonymity on the internet, that is it is a good assumption that people can always find out who you are, you make a good point. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch for Yahoo or Google to use RSS subscription data for marketing purposes. Indeed, I'd be surprised if they didn't. That said, I like the email+rss idea which if widely adopted will probably increase the popularity of blogs, which may or may not be a good thing...smirk
    • Not to belabor the point, but why would I want a giant provider like Yahoo (or Google for that matter) to have any idea which RSS feeds I am getting?

      So that they can help you get them, through a convenient, well organized interface.

      You have certainly pointed out some real disadvantages to this approach. However, it is silly to suggest there are not any advantages.

  • Big Deal. Use Thunderbird (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rueger ( 210566 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @09:28AM (#14146653) Homepage
    Hmmmph.... news? Thunderbird [mozilla.com] does RSS just fine, and displays the blog page to boot.

  • Old news (Score:4, Informative)

    by porneL ( 674499 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @09:33AM (#14146690) Homepage
    That's nothing new for M2 [opera.com] users...
    • Opera has had an email-style RSS feed aggregator for a long time now.

    • Re:Old news (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Vicsun ( 812730 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @10:34AM (#14147172)
      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.

      • Re:Old news (Score:3, Interesting)

        by jpop32 ( 596022 )
        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.

  • Newspaper-style is the best for RSS feeds (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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. Us

  • Getting there (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ptomblin ( 1378 ) <ptomblin@xcski.com> on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @09:35AM (#14146702) Homepage Journal
    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 (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @09:41AM (#14146765)
      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 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jfengel ( 409917 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @09:50AM (#14146829) Homepage Journal
      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 same's true of slashdot. or any group forum. To the individual it's a push medium. The Karma concepts one of the better ones I've seen.

        BTW, was it /. who came up with it?

         
        • I'm not an expert on the history, but I believe that the moderation/karma system was devised by Slashdot. I've never seen anything quite like it. I'm sure there were various predecessors, but Slashdot's is particularly effective.

      • 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.

        Huh? Sorry but you lost me already. They are both PULL. With usenet, you connect to your usenet server, see if there are a

        • The push is on the posting end. Rather than there being one particular server for each news feed, each post is pushed out to all of the Usenet servers in the world. It's very clever, and nicely redundant (in the good way), but the pull is only for the last mile from your NNTP host to your client.

          I suppose you could use the Usenet protocol like this, where each blogger set up his own Usenet server and you pulled from that. That would have some advantages over RSS (like two-way communication). But that's
    • I'm waiting for gopher to come back in style, man.
  • It seems to me that a newsgroup reader (e.g.,rtin) would be even better for reading RSS feeds. Is there any service analogous to gmane [gmane.org] that does this for RSS feeds?
  • Forget about email as an rss reader...Klip Folio [serence.com] from Serence is way more versitile.

  • Outlook 12 (Score:1, Interesting)

    by malachai ( 62092 )
    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.
  • Ive used Bloglines, Newsgator and Google Reader. So far, Newsgator seems to be the most easiest to use, much better than any damn email reader interface can do. Yes, it is much easier to use than Google Reader.
  • Gnus takes the approach that your email is like a special UUNET group.

    So it is a newsreader that can do your mail too.
    • As the enlightened know, Gnus [gnus.org] can do everything. RSS, news, mail, whatever. Seriously (I don't mean parent poster), if you didn't try Gnus and aren't afraid of a little Lisp here and there, give it a try. It will blow your mind away.

      It's a shame, that for 5 years I've been reading Slashdot, it is actually first time I see Gnus being mentioned in email-related discussion. Those kids with their posh buttony mail clients, Thunderbird, bah!

      • If only Gnus did exchange servers, I would be such a happy man. Since
        I've been forced onto an exchange server, nothing has ever been the
        same again. Click, click, point, crawl through email in outlook that I would
        have flown through in Gnus.

        I really miss it.

        Phil
        • Well, Gnus does IMAP, so if you have IMAP enabled on your exchange server you could try connecting to it this way. Not everyone enables IMAP access though, and there could be some compatibility issues (I never actually tried myself, our company uses only OSS mail clients and servers), but it's worth a try anyway.
          • They damn sys admins switched it off. By only supporting
            one email client and nobbling all the others, they ensure that
            they have to do the minimum amount of work necessary, while
            their users have to put up with a crap client.

            Great plan. For them.

            Phil

  • depends on the feed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by acroyear ( 5882 ) <jws-slashdot@javaclientcookbook.net> on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @09:50AM (#14146820) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • I'm currently trying to do something like that - KickRSS [kickrss.com] (example [kickrss.com]). Take a look. You might find it useful.
      • that's close to what i want, though my user interface ideas are a little different. my current hassles are 1) i really lack the time, 2) i'm actually concerned with preserving extensions, particularly the multiple ways of dating a feed item and getting things mixed properly by true date rather than just by when it was read, and 3) Ajax is still in the process of mucking with my brain over what can and can't be done, considering the last major php project i worked on was 3 years ago.

        though really its the ti
      • actually, i just read that you've seen the date problem as well (and the same solution i had come to). :)

    • Re:depends on the feed (Score:3, Interesting)

      by acroyear ( 5882 )
      to be more specific -- "daily" updates are lousy in blog-style. Newspapers and daily update sites like sjgames.com are definitely "inbox" things because they get populated overnight and are in my mailbox-like folder in Thunderbird just fine.

      feeds that are blogs are meant to be read in blog style, even if i'm reading them through my own (livejournal-driven) aggregated UI rather than going to each site individually (becausing remembering to visit all my bookmarks sucks -- let my aggregator visit my bookmarks

  • reminds me of USENET (Score:3, Funny)

    by ikanreed 2 ( 934798 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @09:54AM (#14146859)
    The internet is coming full circle, this is almost like usenet all over again, only with even worse spelling this time around.
    • Good point.

      Although (obviously) this time it is (mostly) pull, there is no (common) archive, and if you're away for a month you (may) lose a lot of "postings." (I'm not sure if some aggregators will keep items indefinitely even if they are removed from the feed, but I am pretty sure that referred content won't always stay around).

      Cheers,
      Ashley.
  • I hate platform-based email clients. I can get my mail, RSS feeds, and a whole boatload of crap I don't need from my personalized Google home page and it loads in under a second. I don't have to have some memory-hogging program eat my RAM when I'm don't even care to check the news or mail, and the information is right in front of me whenever I open an internet browser...which is probably the most used application on my computer.

    Long live Google.
    • And when Firefox crashes due to some JavaScript it didn't like, it takes down your mail client, your newsreader, your word processor, and all your other "applications" with it. I wish Firefox would run every window in its own process like IE does; it would make Firefox feel less "snappy" but it would do wonders for crash resistance.
  • Email provider Fusemail (www.fusemail.com) already does this. Not that it's earth-shattering, but honestly I prefer email integrated RSS.

    1. Faster to forward articles of interest
    2. One interface to deal with reading text content
    3. IMAP shows articles read / unread and supports flaggging, marking of messages

    I'm sure I could do this with another program / web site. Why would I want to?
  • develops an application that is just so universal and expandable that it can cope with anything and do anything with any data. It could show RSS as RSS or as email, or MSN it to you or anything. Everyone would have their only person "UNIVERSAL SUPER APPLICATION" that would receive or fetch data in any form and send it to you in your prefered form. I'd write it, but I have a job and so don't have enough time for personal projects.

  • And everything old is new again (Score:3, Funny)

    by dv8ed ( 697300 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @09:59AM (#14146894)
    So we're back to listservs now?
  • I subscribe to several yahoo groups and would love to see rss feeds for them. They could even make me look at an advertisement with each message instead of just with the index page. The yahoo groups interface is horrible but the content can be quite vaulable, if they made it easier to view I, and many others would probably check it out more often.
  • If memory serves, Yahoo! bought oddpost, whose schtick was web-based email with RSS feeds integrated as email folders -- wonder if it's the same stuff, or bolted on to Yahoo! mail, or just re-implemented entirely?
    • Sort of. I am an Oddpost user and we were offered "beta" access to the new Yahoo interface about four months ago. It is just a slightly reworked version of the Oddpost interface we have been using since the begining. RSS feeds just show up as another folder under our inbox folder tree.

      Don
  • I just can't imagine to have to switch an RSS reader for my feeds. This is IMHO completely against the reason for (at least News-) RSS feeds. I want to know about news on sites automatically, and i want to read these sites without switching to a browser and back to the reader for the next feed.

    And all this has Opera's Mail Reader M2. The Mail sidebar is permanently open and i get informed about new RSS feeds as about new mail while I browse the web.

    So it should be. Amen.

    PAT

  • I hope I understood this right but people are saying email is a better way to read RSS feads?? wTF??? I like the way Safari does it. I have a group of RSS feeds and it will tell me how many new entries there are (looks like this: Cool News (15) ). Then I just open that link in Safari and read the headlines. I open up articles for more details if I want.

    The only sad thing is it streamlined my web browsing so much that I end up with too much free time at home! ahah

    Why would I want to pollute my inbox with
  • http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/rss2email/ [aaronsw.com]

    Great little app.

    Set it up as a cron, use your normal email filters to sort all the RSS feeds.
  • Wow. it's deja vu alll over again
  • Why not create a flood fill system which aggregates all RSS feeds? That way a local server at my ISP could have every RSS feed, locally. It'd save a huge amount of bandwidth...

    It's a news aggregator which uses a network so we could call it UseNet News! how cool would that be?

     

  • Why not take it a step further... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PrimeNumber ( 136578 ) <PrimeNumber@@@excite...com> on Wednesday November 30, 2005 @01:16PM (#14148896) Homepage
    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.
     

  • Vienna (Score:2, Interesting)

    by adamwood ( 5089 )
    OSX users should take a look at Vienna 2 [opencommunity.co.uk]. 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.
  • I don't understand why you would want to have all of those articles in your inbox. My RSS reader, NetNewsWire, does have a similar interface to my email application, Mail, but it's sufficiently different that I wouldn't want one of them to perform the duty of the other.

  • WTF (Score:2)

    by wasabii ( 693236 )
    Hasn't anybody ever heard of a mailing list?

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