Big IDEA

RSS and email: So happy together

22 June 2004

In a former blog, which I didn’t bother to convert when I switched to WordPress, I wrote about how I would like to see an integrated email/nntp/rss application. I just think it would be nice to have the familiar email interface for dealing with rss feeds. Well I just tried IzyNews and my hunch was right: rss and email do mix.

IzyNews is actually an online subscription service based on IMAP (email). First you sign up for the service and set up your mail client to access the IzyNews IMAP server. Once you connect, you have several sample feeds already there. There is a subscription form in one of the “mail” messages that lets you enter the URL of a feed.

There are two views for each feed: summary and detail. The summary view offers the title and a short description of all the posts on one page. The detail view has each story as its own “mail” message.

Organizing feeds and posts is great because you can use your regular email functions: filter, label, delete, move, forward, etc.

And, since the service is offered via IMAP, it will keep track of your read/unread messages, and you can access your subs from any Internet-connected machine (as long as you can run an IMAP-capable mail client).

Other advantages I see this having over, say Bloglines, is that an email client tends to respond faster to requests compared to the browser interface. The disadvantage is that you cannot share your subs or export them to OPML.

The fine print: IzyNews is still in beta, and it’s free now but they reserve the right to charge for the service in the future. My guess is that it won’t be free for long. I’d consider using it more, but I’m too lazy to manually enter my feeds since it doesn’t import from OPML.
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