RSS is NOT Email
on 05.15.05, 11:01am in weblog • comments (10)
[Rob Fahrni] I love FeedDemon, I really do, but… I’d like it to live inside Outlook.
Ugh. Perhaps I’m in the minority here, but I personally feel that RSS aggregation should stay far away from Outlook. Why?
- I’m a ‘clean inbox’ junkie, I have to be. While I’ve tried the GTD philosophy, what works best for me is to keep my inbox with as few items as possible. If it’s not directly addressed to me, it gets routed to a subfolder someplace, and I use Search Folders to read them later in the day. Having RSS items added to the mix is a constant distraction.
- Frame of mind. I’m in a totally different frame of mind when I fire up my aggregator (RSS Bandit). I sit down, consciously think "Ok, now I’m going to see what’s going on", and read blog entries. When I’m done, I shut it down and check again later in the day.
- RSS is NOT email. Email is stuff that I (usually) need to address right away, where as with RSS I’m reading (and searching) content based on a topic.
- Outlook. While I think Outlook is a decent email client, it already suffers from inconsistencies and feature bloat. Does it really need to do more?
I’m sure I’ll get my fair amount of flaming over this, but thought it would be interesting to see people’s comments.
JeffMc (May 15, 2005 @ 8:46 pm)
I agree. Email != Rss
RSS == at night when I can relax
Dustin (May 16, 2005 @ 6:57 am)
I’m going to agree with this one, too. I purchased NewsGator and used it for a few months, but I found myself getting distracted when I’d go in to see if I had any new email. Plus the one item per entry was not fast enough for me.
I’ve been using Onfolio’s RSS reader in Firefox. I still might get distracted when I fire up my browser, but it stays hidden until I need it. Plus, it’s newspaper view makes skimming much faster.
l.m.orchard (May 16, 2005 @ 12:58 pm)
I’m with you. Feeds are more of a firehose to me– I skim & scan, I flag & shuttle things off to browser tabs, I mark items “read” with abandon. I must go through 5000 entries across 700 feeds every day, but with prioritized categories and a total lack of obsession with reading every little thing, I usually have them all cleared before the next day.
It’s because email is addressed directly to me, and usually requires some action, so I can’t be so dismissive about it. And for those few emails not directly addressed to me, they’re either mailing lists or bulk mail, and I don’t see too much of that (thanks to spam filters and lists piped to feeds).
shahine.com/omar/ (May 16, 2005 @ 10:06 pm)
Newsgator + FeedDemon
Jonathan Hardwick (May 17, 2005 @ 5:56 pm)
FeedDemon vs NewsGator: why platforms are bad and RSS isn’t email
Several months ago I started writing a review of FeedDemon and NewsGator, together with an explanation…
zach (May 18, 2005 @ 11:52 am)
I’m assuming that you are talking about the NewsGator Outlook plugin..and..I guess I’m just a little confused here… why exactly do your RSS feeds have to drop into your inbox?
I have a folder called “RSS Feeds” and each feed that NewsGator processes feeds into its own subfolder off that main folder. What I end up with is a nicely organized set of RSS feeds that I can browse through in no time at all.
All that without mentioning the fact that I dont have to run a SECOND app just for RSS.. I have my email and my RSS feeds all in one spot..AND..they are stored on my Exchange account so I can access them from anywhere..even Outlook Web Access.
realgeek (May 20, 2005 @ 1:59 pm)
RSS is NOT Email
Steve Makofsky: RSS is NOT email. Email is stuff that I (usually) need to address right away, where as …
Randy Charles Morin (May 24, 2005 @ 3:25 pm)
Steve, thanks for the note over on Jeff Nolan’s blog on Rmail.
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