Thing 69: Feed My Inbox

This discovery exercise has us exploring Feed My Inbox. Feed My Inbox takes the RSS feed of any blog or website and sends it to your email. It was simple to use. I tested it by subscribing to the comic strip, Unshelved. I made sure that I copied the RSS feed and not the website's URL. Unshelved also has a direct link to subscribe via Email so I could have done this directly without having to use Feed My Inbox. But, not all websites have this service. The confirmation message showed up in my email and I just clicked on the link to activate my subscription. The email also suggested that I add updates@feedmyinbox.com to my address book so that my email provider would not think it was spam.

Feed My Inbox would be good for someone who only has a few feeds to keep up with. But as with anything, time has a way of making a few feeds into a lot of feeds. So for me, I can't say that I would be using Feed My Inbox unless it is to make sure I don't miss an infrequent update in my Bloglines reader. After I received my first feed from Unshelved I promptly unsubscribed. I have way too many feeds to keep up with so a feed reader is much better for me. Also, by using a feed reader, you can avoid some spam that sometimes crops up from sending RSS feeds to your inbox.
As for recommentations to patrons, it would be on a case by case basis. Many websites already have a way for you to directly subscribe on their site. Still it is handy to know about as a back up.