This announcement has been an extremely long time in the making, but we are thrilled that today is the day to talk about our second web app, called Linkpatch.

Linkpatch is meant for anyone that develops, oversees or works on a website. The purpose is simple: it sends you an email whenever someone encounters a 404 page (or other error pages, for that matter) on your website. The email has tons of useful information, from which you can figure out exactly what the problem is and fix it. Here is what a Linkpatch email looks like:

As you can see, the email provides a wealth of information about the user, where they came from and where they were trying to go. No matter what kind of error it is, you have all you need to go in and fix whatever might be wrong.

It's a foundation

As you may have seen with Feed My Inbox, the way we build web apps is to start extremely simple, let it simmer, and listen to our customers. Once we have a great idea of where we want to take things next, we build in more features.

Linkpatch is no exception. We know it's a really simple idea, but it's extremely useful for people that are behind-the-scenes of any website. We have tons of ideas on how to make this service more useful for webmasters, but we're going to let this app simmer first and listen to what you people have to say.

We're committed to Linkpatch, and building out a wealth of fantastic features in the future, just like we are committed to Feed My Inbox.

How to get a FREE 5-site account

Starting today, we have a special offer for all you early adopters out there. For 30 days (through July 8), we're giving away FREE 5-site accounts to anyone that is willing to post a message about Linkpatch on Twitter.

Visit this page to submit your tweet and get a free 5-site account.

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Recently we have been getting more inquiries from feed/website owners about moving their list from FeedBurner, FeedBlitz and other newsletter providers to Feed My Inbox. We are happy to help you move an email list over, but it's important to lay down some ground rules first.

We hate spam, and work very hard to make sure every subscriber using FMI has requested the content we are sending, and has an opportunity to opt out at any time. In order to prevent issues with our customers or any ISPs, importing your list is a manual process. Each feed and subscriber list is carefully reviewed by someone on our team before it can be imported. Here are some guidelines to keep in mind:

Basic requirements:

1. The easiest way to have your list approved quickly is to include a column with the date and time each subscriber opted-in to your mailing list. Exported lists from most newsletter providers include this information by default.
2. If the opt-in date and time is documented as part of your list, and the website contains appropriate (not spammy) content, we will import your list without requiring each subscriber to opt-in again. If not, you'll most likely get some questions from us, and there is a great chance all subscribers will have to click a confirmation link before receiving any updates.

What's against the rules:

• Lists that have been purchased or rented from a 3rd party (no exceptions)
• Any email addresses that you have collected or been given without the consent of those individual parties
• Your personal address book, simply because you have not communicated with those people in this nature before with their permission

Basically, if you don't already have permission to communicate with these subscribers by way of your website feed, and don't have a record of previous communication with them, we won't import the list. The privacy of our customers always comes first.

What about analytics and customization options?

For feed owners, what we provide on our end for you is extremely basic. Currently you do not have access to your subscriber count (available by request, though) or any sort of additional tools to better serve your subscribers.

Rest assured, we have plans for some really exciting tools for you in the works, but we're a small company and this is a part-time gig at the moment. Be patient with us and we'll make it worth your while in time.

Touch base with any questions, folks. Thanks!

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Thanks to the fact that you people keep using Feed My Inbox like crazy, we have to schedule some additional server maintenance this weekend to keep everything moving very fast and reliably. 

This Saturday, May 2, from 1 - 3pm Central Standard Time, the service will be unavailable while we add a new database server to the mix. No customer data will be at risk as a result of this maintenance, as we are simply moving the database and turning everything back on. If anything does not go according to plan, we'll be sure to let you know with another post to this blog. Thanks!

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What I really love about building web applications is watching them take on a life of their own. Feed My Inbox was our first real experiment with web apps, and it's been an incredibly fun experience. What started as a way for my Mom to read my personal twitter feed has now evolved into a legitimate business that is now supporting nearly 15,000 customers and counting. We're really proud of that, and won't be letting up anytime soon.

If there is anything I have learned as part of this process, it is to create the most simple iteration of your product and launch. Strip it down to the bare bones features; and launch.

This has a few crucial benefits for any small, self-funded company:

• It's easier to see light at the end of the tunnel, and do what it takes to launch a product without losing momentum.
• If your app is a bust, the time and money you spent on it is minimal.
• Less features to start means a more manageable learning curve for people to get started using it.
• Most importantly, you can count on your customers to tell you what features are really important, instead of trusting your own personal opinion.

Since Feed My Inbox launched, we have learned a TON. My best thinking 6 months ago would be ridiculous compared to what I know now about the app, our customers, and where we're headed. For instance, I thought from the beginning that we could support the service with advertising. Boy was I wrong about that. We WILL in fact monetize the service, but it will look nothing like what I had originally thought. What a waste of time it would have been for us to build anything out to support that original business model.

I want to be clear that this article is not about being anti-features. It's about being anti- business plans and pricing charts and complicated wireframes and wasteful marketing plans before your app even has any legs. Let your software breathe, listen to your customers, THEN make the best decisions you can about what's next.

Bottom line, screw what anyone else thinks and launch it. If you make mistakes, that makes you human. The quickest way to expose and fix them is to launch the project. On the web, nothing is permanent. If it's wrong, change it. If it's great, make the most of it. Either way, just get it out there and it's okay to learn as you go.

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A few weeks back we secretly launched a new bookmarklet for Feed My Inbox. Don't know what a bookmarklet is? Have no fear! We've embedded a simple 2-minute video demonstration for you below on how it works.

If you have an account, make sure to login, click "Tools", and drag the bookmarklet to your toolbar from there so your email address is pre-filled. We hope you enjoy the new feature, be sure to let us know what you think!

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Thanks to the 8,000+ customers and nearly 30,000 feeds we are now tracking, Feed My Inbox will be getting new digs this weekend! We are going to move the site to newer, faster hardware so that we can continue awesome growth of the service moving forward.

How it effects you

Feed My Inbox will go offline on Sunday around 1pm central standard time. There will be a message on the site informing everyone about the scheduled maintenance. We expect the downtime to last between 2-5 hours, however this will have absolutely no effect on your account or any emails scheduled to go out. During this time, you will be unable to access your account, subscribe to new feeds, confirm/unsubscribe from feeds and so forth.

Once we finish the move, the service will be back running like normal. We are taking all of the appropriate measures to ensure this process goes very smoothly. Thanks very much, feel free to drop us a line if you have any specific questions.

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As with any web application, there is a small percentage of users that abuse our service for personal gain. Today's post is about those people, and what we plan to do about it.

We have noticed that some of our customers found a way to re-post the text of an email from Feed My Inbox to a blog or website that is ad-supported, thus generating income from content that is not theirs. There are 3 problems with this practice:

1. The content is not yours, nor did you create it. Chances are you do not have authorization to re-post it on a blog or website. That's just mean.

2. Search engine guys call this "duplicate content". If your site has the same content as someone else that originally posted that content, both sites are penalized by search engines like Google. So that sucks for the content creator.

3. These blog posts include the Feed My Inbox branding, and we don't endorse it. We are watching, and will cancel your account since it is against our terms of service.

As content creators ourselves, we don't want to encourage anyone that takes part in this practice. Please don't do it, or you will have to find a new RSS to email provider.

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First things first, we made a mistake last week with regards to Feed My Inbox. Here is how it effects our customers:

1. Early Friday morning, the server had a hardware failure, and the email queue started crawling. Emails were piling up faster than the server could send them for 2 days. Early yesterday morning, we resumed normal operation and the email system is now completely up-to-date.

As a result of this issue, you may have seen emails stream in up to 2 days late yesterday or today, but nothing was lost.

2. In trying to improve the situation on Saturday, we made it a little worse and lost some data. Here are the customers that are effected:

• If you unsubscribed from a feed/email between Feb. 1 and Feb. 22, your unsubscription may have been lost. If you receive an email from a feed that you already unsubscribed from, simply unsubscribe again and we will NOT lose it this time.
• Between Feb. 1-22, if you subscribed to a new feed, confirmed your subscription, but never received any emails from that feed during Feb. 1-22, your subscription has been lost. If you received at least one email update from that feed, no account information has been lost.

This is the first real issue we have had with Feed My Inbox, and hopefully the last. We are very sorry for ANY inconvenience this has caused, and take full responsibility for the mistake.

The great thing about mistakes is that is forces you to take action to prevent them from happening again. In the very near future, Feed My Inbox will be moved to new hardware that is more capable of handling any problems, and full backups will take place more often. In addition, this was the kick in the butt we needed to finish out a long requested feature!

Announcing Customer Accounts!

It is most important to us that Feed My Inbox remains just as simple and easy to use as it has always been. So having an account is and always will be optional. Nothing is changing about the process of subscribing to feeds and receiving them via email.

From now on, the bottom of all confirmation and feed emails will have a link at the bottom where you can create an account. If you click the link to create your account, all you have to do is fill in a password and you are finished.

Once logged into your account, there is a simple dashboard where you can see all of your feeds, confirm new subscriptions and unsubscribe from them. We also have tabs where you can export an OPML of your feeds, update your account profile and even cancel your account.

In light of the recent issues from last week, the customer account area will hopefully assist you in keeping track of feeds and fixing anything that may have happened as a result of our mistake.

Next Steps

We have lots of great features planned for the account area in the near future. This is simply "phase 1", and we hope that it makes life a little easier.

One of the features we are currently testing is real-time email updates, instead of one daily digest of posts. If you are interested in getting all of your feed emails in real-time as opposed to one daily email with all posts, contact us and we will turn it on for you. Once we feel good about the feature, we will add frequency options to all accounts.

We appreciate you being a customer, and REALLY appreciate your understanding while we try to make up for the recent mistake. As always, your feedback, questions and comments about the new account area is welcome.

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We've been working on a little side project for about a month, and today we get to share it with you. Be warned, this website is a little bit geeky. It's called Mobile Awesomeness (http://www.mobileawesomeness.com). The site will showcase the very best in mobile web design, as well as share news and resources about developing for the mobile web.

We are design junkies, and have a great appreciation for all of the website showcase sites out there. Mobile Awesomeness is a showcase dedicated solely to mobile sites, and is the very first of it's kind according to our research. So if you are looking to see the best in mobile web design, or are looking for resources to get you started in learning to develop for this medium, head on over!

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