Re: [syndication] MailBucket: Email->RSS gateway

[Rick Bradley <roundeye@roundeye.net>]

* tom dyson (tom@torchbox.com) [031001 10:13]:
> I've just launched MailBucket, a public service Email->RSS gateway:
> 
> http://www.mailbucket.org
> 
> In a nutshell, the last 10 emails sent to foo@mailbucket.org will be
> available as RSS at www.mailbucket.org/foo.xml, where you choose foo.
> 
> I'll be very grateful for any feedback and feature suggestions.

This is a cool idea (spoken as someone who's been using email->website
for a couple of years now, and email->website->RSS for a number of
months).  I don't know why it's so cool, but it is.  Thoughts:

1 - You could probably munge the mail headers into RSS fields, especially if
you're willing to use DC.  The From field is probably akin to the
creator of the document, the Subject: could arguably appear in a number
of places.  You have a couple of dates (the mail's Date: header, and the
time received) that you could place in fields in the feed.

2 - If the body of the email is well-formed XML you may
want/desire/fear/hate to include it as part of the RSS.  One problem is
that you will probably need namespace declarations to make the resulting
document valid XML.

3 - I fear a Spinal Tap-esque 1-word review:  "spambucket".

;-)

Rick
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