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April 23, 2006
RSS to Email Options
RSS isn't email. And many people, including me, like it that way. I prefer collecting all my list email and RSS feeds in my Bloglines account where the stuff doesn't clutter up my inbox. Of course, there are RSS readers such as Newsgator, Attensa For Outlook, and soon, Microsoft Outlook 12, that will display RSS feeds within Outlook, which can certainly be a convenient alternative.
But if you don't monitor many RSS feeds, it may not be worth it to install an additional application and if you're using a web-based aggregator such as Bloglines for just a few feeds, you can easily forget to read them altogether. That's why it's good to know about some of the available services that convert RSS to email, notifying you whenever there's new headlines for you to puruse.
Librarian in Black notes that Feedburner is now offering an RSS to email feed option to publishers. However, this service is only available to recpients if the blog publisher offers it.
Bloglet, used by LawLibTech.com, is another tool available to bloggers and webmasters to enable email subscriptions to RSS feeds. Enhancements or changes to this service haven't been made in years, though it continues to function...some of the time. From a publisher's standpoint, the inability to easily download a list of all subscribers is a definite drawback to this service. If you register with Bloglet, you can subscribe to any RSS feed, regardless of whether the blog/site offers a Bloglet subscribe option.
R|Mail is another option for RSS to email delivery, and requires nothing more than an email address and the URL of the feed you wish to subscribe to. Registration is not necessary. In my experience, R|mail has been considerably more stable than Bloglet.
Other similar products include:
Feedblitz - Will import subscription lists from Bloglet. Hmm, I'm tempted....
Squeet - Incudes a keyword search option, notifying you of new content from Google News.
Zookoda.com/ - Allows publishers/bloggers to create customized newsletters for content delivery.
Blogarithm.com - Notifies you of new content on any web page, including blogs, via a once a day email with links to updated pages.
BotABlog - Very similar to Blogarithm.
So just because you don't want to be bothered with a RSS reader doesn't mean you can't keep your eye on your favorite blog!
Comments
Hi Cindy:
Can we tempt you further? How about: Try the FeedBlitz import from Bloglet and then pause the feeds fom the FeedBlitz dashboard (if you wish) in FeedBlitz. That way you can test the process and the kick the tires without your readers knowing. Then, only when you're ready, you can make the switch.
Posted by: Phil at April 25, 2006 10:48 AM
Just to let you know, Blogarithm can import subscriptions from Bloglet. We added this after a customer had problems with Bloglet working properly.
Blogarithm will also work with sites that do not offer RSS -- any page on the web, in fact.
Posted by: Andy MacDonald at April 25, 2006 04:35 PM
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