dave winer writes: we already have enough mail readers, wire up RSS to email and you're done. Who needs another piece of software to do what an already-existing category does so well
obviously i agree here, or i wouldn't have written an application to wire up RSS to email. i love net news wire, but i just don't see a compelling distinction between the content of RSS and email.
brent simmons responds: The thing is, the mail reader aggregators are not very much like mail readers. They are smart about what they?re displaying.
he goes on to mention how the net news wire interface is targeted toward the content in different ways. but his two examples of the differences between a news reader and an email reader strike me as lacking real substance. first, most email clients also have the concept of groups. second, the ability to read unread items (of subgroups) within any group is a feature that could (and should) be applied to email just as he's applied it to news items.
these differences between net news wire and an email client are so minimal that brent dismisses them in his own product description, which mentions Its familiar three-paned interface—similar to Apple Mail and Outlook Express
even before discussing what the program does. i continue to see no reason that mbox couldn't have been used to syndicate news back when RSS was created.
off on the horizon, implementing initial drafts of the emerging syndication format has made it clear to me that it's substantially more than a replacement for RSS. it's custom-built for weblogging in ways that will make it overkill for something like a simple mailing list. and when it's incorporated into news readers like net news wire, i suspect it will provide the clear distinction between weblog and email content that i still don't see in RSS.