rss2gmail

since i've got a spare gmail invite, i've decided to waste it on another account for myself. i know there are starving children in ethiopia who don't have gmail, but they don't have computers. it's not like they'll find out...

i'm going to spend some spare time in the next day or so setting up aaron swartz's rss2email script. after i've got all my feeds imported and some filters set up in gmail, i'm going to point the script at my new account.

at first i'm going to try using gmail as a centralized rss reader. as long as i filter and label things properly, i think i'll be okay. if i'm not as hip on the idea in a month, i'll adapt the filters to mark everything as read and use the client as a personal feedster. i've got a gig to burn, i may as well put it to good use.

once i get everything set up, i'll drop a howto here.

note: a larger idea springs forth from this. what if there were a centralized service where you could send your list of feeds [in opml] that would then take your data and subscribe you to a mailing list for each feed? all the server would have to keep track of was who was subscribed to what list. then when one of the feeds would update, it'd just drop a post to the mailing list subscribers. to keep people from signing their friends and/or enemies up for robert scoble's feed list [at last count, 1377 feeds] one would want to tack on a web interface [to manage subscriptions] and an account verification tool.

i'm sure there's someone on the lazyweb who could whip this together in a weekend, but i'm not sure if anyone would want to. i sure think it'd be handy tho...

[addendum: i guess it should be noted that this is my 1200th post to gomi. it took a while for the balloons and confetti to drop from the celing, but they finally did. if you'll excuse me, i have to drink a celebratory jolt cola now.]