
Show HN: Use Your Inbox As A Google Reader Replacement - cameronbrown
http://feedsub.com?hn
======
kmstout
Or, to do it yourself,
[https://github.com/wking/rss2email](https://github.com/wking/rss2email)

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floatingatoll
The difference between an email client and an RSS reader is that an email
client can parse message/rfc822 entries in a feed and an RSS reader has a
prominent Mark All As Read button.

I patched Thunderbird for a friend back in 2005 to enable it to show the email
UI for message/rfc822 entries in RSS feeds, so that you could receive your
email by RSS. We got it working end-to-end with SMTP delivery to the feed,
which was pretty cool. It looks like he published a whitepaper about the idea:
[http://mengwong.com/rssemail/rssemail-006.pdf](http://mengwong.com/rssemail/rssemail-006.pdf)

~~~
rakoo
Most email clients have a 2-click solution to "mark all as read", which is
more than enough in my opinion

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floatingatoll
Sure, but it speaks directly to why the difference between them is really
about mindset and not technologies. For example: If email newsletters were
just published as an RSS feed there’d be a lot less need to spend big bucks on
deliverability providers. And: If people had a clearly visible button “Mark
All As Read” in their email client (with confirmation) there’d be a less
uncertainty about using it when underwater.

~~~
rakoo
Indeed, there's a different in mindset between what is and what isn't
acceptable to skip. It's too bad it takes work to make the distinction in
one's own mailbox between the two categories, but once it's done RSS can be
managed the same way email is

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rcarmo
A long time ago I hacked this together from Aaron’s code:

[https://github.com/rcarmo/rss2imap](https://github.com/rcarmo/rss2imap)

I’ve been meaning to revisit it for Python 3, maybe make it run serverless
(which is a major pain because of the need to access an IMAP server).

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hutattedonmyarm
Interestingly, I'm the opposite way: I'd love to get some of my emails in my
RSS feed instead. I even wrote a little tool for myself which hackily forwards
patreon update emails to my inoreader address so they land in my RSS feed.
Cron regularily runs the script (ideally before I see the email)

~~~
nunodonato
I'm working on an app that will deliver daily emails of all the stuff that
matters to you (rss, calendars, weather, so on..) will need beta testers
soon.if you are up for it I'd love to have you test it since you seem to be
one of my target users :)

~~~
hutattedonmyarm
Are you sure? I want things _out_ of my inbox and in my RSS feed instead. I
don't want my RSS feed in my emails. Yours seems to be more the latter

~~~
nunodonato
Ah, you are right, I misread your comment. Perhaps it's my mind playing tricks
on me to think I have real users xD

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bharani_m
Good idea! I am always happy to see more tools come up around the email inbox.
Few suggestions -

1\. Your privacy page is empty.

2\. Instead of asking me to enter a feed URL during signup, you could just
start with the email, and then on the next screen, you could show me your list
of feed suggestions. I think that would simplify the signup flow.

All the best!

Shameless plug: I run a similar tool called EmailThis [0] that brings
bookmarking (similar to Pocket and Instapaper) to your email inbox.

[0] [https://www.emailthis.me](https://www.emailthis.me)

~~~
cameronbrown
Hey - thanks for the link and the suggestions :)

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nicolaslem
Funny enough, I run a RSS reader at almost the same domain:
[https://feedsubs.com](https://feedsubs.com)

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cameronbrown
Hey everyone! I wanted to share a tool I built a few months ago and have
quietly been working on in the background. It's a little rough around the
edges, so happy to take feedback, here, or hello@cameronbrown.co.uk.

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cameronbrown
(I'd edit the original comment, but that's past due)

One thing I use the service for is to receive notifications from HN replies,
by subscribing to the
[https://hnrss.org/replies?id=cameronbrown](https://hnrss.org/replies?id=cameronbrown)
feed. It was the original pain point I wanted to solve.

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rakoo
Like others I also used the RSS to email route, because my mail system has
everything a RSS reader needs and then more.

It's at this point I realized I spent more time skimming over title and
summaries and marking all entries as read than actually reading content that
felt interesting. RSS is the ultimate form of information flood and it didn't
bring as much value as it should have so I stopped completely and relied on
"organic" link aggregators, namely HN and Reddit, because content is triaged
by a community whose appeal to news I share.

Maybe I just wasn't subscribed to the correct feeds ? I saw a post a long time
ago where RSS is not for feeds with multiple articles in a day or in a week,
it's for those very low-volume little websites where authors publish one post
per month but you still want to keep track of them. Maybe I should get into
that again

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Jaruzel
If you are a Windows user, Outlook has a built in RSS reader functionality.
It's not great, but it does mean you can easily consume feeds on say, a work
computer where adding new software is prohibited. It's also private to you, so
you are not storing your reading habits on someone else's server.

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scarface74
But now your RSS feeds are on your work computer. Isn’t that worse?

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satoshua
Cool to see people curating their own content feeds insstead of relying solely
on algorithms. Similar premise to our product, except we do all your feeds in
one daily email ([https://rssmailer.app](https://rssmailer.app)).

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ggop
There are some comics I'd like to follow but I'm not interested in creating an
Instagram account. If you can add an Instagram feed, I'd be serious in signing
up to your service. For most other content, I'm happy enough to run rss2email
myself.

~~~
hutattedonmyarm
I've been using RSS Bridge[1]. Let's you funnel other things into an RSS feed.
One of my use cases is in fact following comics on Instagram from creators who
don't upload anywhere else

[1][https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge](https://github.com/RSS-
Bridge/rss-bridge)

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stewbrew
What's the advantage over ifttt etc.?

Unfortunately, many sites don't provide an rss feed anymore. I have never
understood what makes it better to support twitter, fb etc. instead of rss.
Somebody will know the answer.

~~~
cameronbrown
Currently, no specific advantages over IFTTT. But one day I'd like to add
other features in future, to grab content that isn't available through feeds
(like Instagram), along with custom CSS.

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self_awareness
I don't really get it, there are LOTS of RSS readers out there, why people
still reference a product that doesn't exist since several years?

~~~
lemiffe
It was “the” RSS reader. Nostalgia probably.

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pabs3
feed2exec is another option for this:

[https://feed2exec.readthedocs.io/](https://feed2exec.readthedocs.io/)

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mshaler
I would love to access Twitter as a RSS-style feed because I love the "mark
all as read" amnesty feature...

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slightwinder
And where is the replacement? The main benefit of a feedreader is to have an
interface and workflow dedicated for newsfeeds.

Just collecting feed-items is easy, there are several options for this.

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twapi
IFTTT is better way

~~~
jchook
I find IFTTT unreliable, with spotty response to events.

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zenlot
I really like the idea, but 2.99 for Pro plan for updating every 15mins and a
dark theme? Doesn't sound right. When I see such options(e.g dark theme for
paid plan) for those simple tools I always wonder how many open source
products people have used to create the product in first place.

