Re: OT: favorite free-software email-subscription / feeds.
On Sat, 07 Apr 2012 10:38:49 +0700, Sthu Deus wrote:
(...)
>> Because I consider news (rss feeds) to be a "temporary" source of bits
>> (read and ditch) I don't want to "store" anywhere but just help to keep
>> me updated/informed (they also allow me to avoid browsing the
>> newspapers websites full of advertizing materials). Basically, I use
>> rss feeds as a modern incarnation of the teletype: it's fast, simple
>> and gets to the point.
>>
>>
> Well. I think the email subscription of news does the same - first sends
> You the material You have chosen, then You can easily delete it as any
> other message. Seems same to tme? - But what is comfortable - I use the
> very same program - the email client for both, whereas in case of using
> feeds - I have to use for the very same purposes already two programs -
> I can not call it wise, or s oit seems to me.
Well, kind of... the main difference I see between e-mail based
newsletters/alerts and RSS based ones is about:
- Time: RSS feeds are usually updated quicker that e-mail alerts
- Content: E-mail subscriptions usually include the complete (self-
contained) data (full text story, images and even attached PDF or
multimedia files), while RSS is usually a two-step system, you first get
a snippet of the news and if you're interested in expanding the
information you can follow the link to the complete source.
- Transport channel: E-mail can have its own issues (spam handling, mail
service blackouts, you need and account where to receive the
subscriptions...) while atom/xml based feeds are less picky and they can
be reached/fetched with no special tool nor additional requirement other
than having an Internet connection.
As I said, I think they're following different targets although the above
is not always so, I mean, you can find a company using e-mail based
alerts in a very similar way it does RSS and viceversa (you can get very,
very long and detailed RSS feeds, holding images, audio, etc...).
Greetings,
--
Camaleón
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