

Please give me feedback on my project-- RSS digests via email. - tymekpavel
http://www.peekfeed.com/

======
surfmike
I really like getting RSS by email, because I can avoid using another product
(an RSS reader) but still get the feeds I want without having to browse out to
them everyday. I've found I waste less time browsing blogs ever since I
switched to a once-a-day digest.

It'd be nice to set the time you get the digest, in addition to specifying how
often you get it. I also found the URLs on the right side (once you're logged
in) are cut a bit short, perhaps you could display the full URL on hover?

~~~
tymekpavel
Thanks for the suggestion! I'll also include the title of the feed along with
the url.

------
gcv
Nice. I'd been looking for some way to consolidate information gathering into
one app (email), and tried feedmyinbox at one point (ended up giving up on it
because, at the time, it could not do digests).

With regard to the UI, I'd appreciate a cue telling me when to expect the next
digest. I see that it's on a 24-hour cycle, but is that on the stroke of
midnight? Midnight in which time zone? Is that 24 hours since the last time I
added a feed?

~~~
tymekpavel
Thanks for the suggestion! I'll add a timing option so users can choose
whether they want digests to arrive at 8am, 1pm, etc...

~~~
gcv
I signed up for the service, and noticed a couple of things.

First, even though I chose 24-hour notification, I seem to have been getting
emails every hour. Feature or bug? :)

Second, it seems that the NYT feed reposts its full content in each email,
even though articles repeat. I didn't check to see if the feed is different in
its entirety, but I think that each mail sent out should only include
previously unsent articles (you may have to filter by subscriber by permalink
or possibly by subscriber by message hash to catch changed messages).

~~~
tymekpavel
Interesting, I'll look into it-- we haven't experienced that problem yet.

As for the NYT feed, thanks for the suggestion. I'm on it!

------
tdoggette
It seems to me (and I might be wrong) that a large portion of your customer
base might be people that are comfortable with email but not RSS, and thus
could benefit from a sentence of copy on what exactly RSS does for them.

------
turtle4
Not bad. Immediate thought is that I would like to have the ability to make
more than 1 digest. I don't really want -everything- all at once. I might want
all my deal feeds to come in one email, and all my news feeds to come in
another email.

A simple [Add new digest] feature would be nice, where each digest can be set
up on a different schedule, and with a custom email subject line. Then when
you add, you add a feed to a particular digest.

~~~
tymekpavel
I've put individual digests on the to-do, thanks for the idea!

------
paraschopra
Nice one. This is exactly what I was looking at.

A note about using PHP's mail function. Sending excessive mails from one IP
may get it blacklisted, unless you take special measures. Sending mail
reliably is hard and doing it on a large scale is even harder.

BTW, is it on shared host or a VPS?

~~~
paraschopra
see, already, gmail classified your account activation mail as spam.

~~~
tymekpavel
thanks for the heads up, i believe i've fixed the problem.

------
johnpaulett
Interesting.

One competitor, xFruits, has been around for a while and offers quite a few
methods for transforming data from one form to another (RSS to email, mobile,
voice, etc.) <http://www.xfruits.com/>

~~~
tymekpavel
Thanks for the heads up!

------
tymekpavel
demo account details:

    
    
         username: demo@peekfeed.com
         password: demo
    

...or make a free account and try it out!

------
adharmad
Which email client users are you targetting?

Thunderbird and gmail both have abilities to show RSS feeds natively (gmail
via web links).

~~~
tymekpavel
The formatting is designed for the Peek (www.getpeek.com), but can be used
with a variety of mobile and non-mobile email clients.

------
pstinnett
Any thoughts on adding an API so that sites can use your service to offer
email digests of their posts?

~~~
tymekpavel
Thanks for the idea! I'll put an API on my to-do list. I'm thinking of
allowing users to develop modules, so they can custom format whatever site
they want. These modules would be available through the "Select Feed Type..."
menu.

~~~
pstinnett
Great. I know my team would definitely be interested in leveraging this tool
if it worked that way. I'm envisioning it looking something like AddThis or
SocialTwist. You mouse-over an embedded item that gives you the opportunity to
sign up for daily/weekly/monthly digests via email. Anyway, I've bookmarked
this. Looking forward to seeing more.

------
python_kiss
I like it. What are you using to send the email? Simple HTML functions or
perhaps something more sophisticated, like phpList?

~~~
tymekpavel
interesting, i didn't know about phpList-- perhaps i'll use is somehow in the
next release. at the moment i'm using simple PHP to send out the emails.

------
umen
teach question if i may what configuration do u use for the email sending ?
did you set up smtp server to deal with the load. or are u using what ever
scripting language build in tools for sending emails Thanks

~~~
tymekpavel
i'm using php to send out the digests using the mail() command. the service
was coded in python, php, and ajax.

------
pqs
how dows it compare to feedmyinbox.com? Did you try both? Which one would you
choose?

