Over the last few months our team has been hard at work on a new version of Feed My Inbox, adding many of the most popular feature requests we hear from our customers. We've also decided on the best way to monetize the application (aka recoup server costs for the last 14 months).

We are REALLY proud of how it has come together. The official launch will be on January 9, 2010, but for now we've put together a one-page website to tell you all about it and answer some questions. Let the countdown begin!

http://www.feedmyinbox.com/v2

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Recently a service popped up that is really great for finding personalized feed recommendations based on feeds that you are already subscribed to. It's called SuggestRSS. Simply upload your OPML file (see below for instructions on getting it from Feed My Inbox), and their engine will recommend other blogs and feeds you are likely to enjoy.

Here is a little sample of what it looks like:

How to get your OPML file from Feed My Inbox

1. Login to your account
2. Click on Tools in the main account menu
3. Click the link to "Export your feeds as an OPML file", and it will download to your computer

Currently SuggestRSS is free to use, a great little tool for finding other interesting stuff to subscribe to!

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In the world of RSS feeds, one thing missing from the beginning has been support for real-time notifications. Until recently, any feed reader (Feed My Inbox in our case) has to manually go check a feed for updates on a regular basis. That is, unless it is being notified through a pinging service.

We've been testing "real-time" emails on Feed My Inbox for a while. Anyone that sends us an email (help(at)feedmyinbox.com) and requests to receive their updates in real-time rather than once per day can try it. The problem is that our system only gets around to checking a feed roughly every 3-4 hours for updates, so it is not truly real-time.

Over the last several months, two extensions to the RSS protocol have been made available, which allow real-time "pushing" of new feed content to third party services (like ours). They are RSS Cloud and PubSubHubbub. We plan on supporting both, but decided to start with RSS Cloud.

We deployed support for RSS Cloud a couple of weeks ago. Already over 2,000 feeds in our system are cloud-enabled, with that number growing every day. Cloud-enabled feeds will "push" new feed content to our service immediately, allowing the updates sent to subscribers to be truly real-time.

Dave Winer is the guy behind RSS Cloud and literally wrote the book on the RSS specification almost nine years ago. Wordpress is the first major supporter, and all 7.5 million blogs hosted on Wordpress.com are already cloud-enabled. If you self-host a version of Wordpress, there's a plugin to help.

How do I know if my feed is supported?

Look at your feed's source code. Cloud-enabled feeds have a tag like this at the top:

<cloud domain="rpc.rsscloud.org" port="5337" path="/rsscloud/pleaseNotify" registerProcedure="" protocol="http-post" />

Can I implement this into my feed(s)?

Yes, but doing so is rather technical in nature. Here are a few resources to get you going:

• Implementor's Guide to RSS Cloud
• W3 Schools Documentation
• RSS Cloud Wordpress Plugin

We're so excited to bring these protocols to you, as we feel it's a huge step in the evolution of RSS (and Atom) feeds.

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Today we deployed support for 52 languages (and counting) on Feed My Inbox. Actually, it only took about 10 minutes thanks to a new tool from Google Translate! At the bottom of all pages on FeedMyInbox.com, you will now see a dropdown to select an available language. Select one and the page is translated for you! Here is what it looks like in French:

We hope it helps our friends in the 185+ countries now using Feed My Inbox!

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This morning we received a great question from a customer asking how to subscribe to a private or password-protected feed. That's a great question we hear quite often, so we thought it would be valuable to post it here on the blog.

Method 1

What seems to work best in our experience is to modify the URL of the feed to include your username/password. Here is what it should look like:

https://[username]:[password]@[domain]/[path]

An example with fake values filled in would look something like this:

https://admin:testing@brightwurks.com/rss.xml

Simply type that into Feed My Inbox, and it works like magic. We know this is tested and works well for web apps with protected feeds, like those from 37signals, as covered on their product blog a while back.

Method 2

If you are not so keen about having your username/password as part of the URL and would rather have a feed URL you can share with others, FreeMyFeed.com is definitely worth a shot. Simply type in your feed URL, username and password, then they will generate a NEW URL that does not have any login information in it, like so: http://freemyfeed.com/feed/SPGadlaeK1291JA91LAMadmaldkfdls= (just an example).

The only potential downfall to Free My Feed would be depending on their website to be up and working properly in order to get updates from your feed.

We hope this helps, just let us know if you have any questions.

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One year ago today, we launched this little idea called Feed My Inbox, a simple RSS to email application. We never set out to re-invent the wheel ... only to grease it up so that it worked a hell of a lot better.

To say we've been surprised by the popularity and growth of Feed My Inbox over the last year would be a serious understatement. It's been tons of fun, and the app is something our team is fully dedicated to for many more birthdays.

We are so grateful to all of the people that use this service. Here are some statistics of what happened behind-the-scenes over the last year:

Unique Visitors- 131,134
Pageviews- 550,599

Active accounts- 34,727
Feeds we're tracking- 56,606
Confirmed subscriptions- 66,840
Emails sent- 3,077,382
Feed entries emailed- 33,771,734

Service Outages- 37 (most of them less than 5 minutes)
Uptime- 99.91%
* We're getting better at this!

Although the application looks pretty much the same to you, under the hood it is literally 100% different. We have learned a lot along the way and are now to the point where we can scale this thing for the long haul.

I also wanted to give you an update on where we hope Feed My Inbox is headed in the next year. Putting this in writing is serious business, so we fully intend to live up to the following:

1. New features are on the way

We are currently working on the next big version of Feed My Inbox, which will bring many of the feature requests we have collected over the last year to light. We are not close enough to say when it will be launched, but it is officially a work in progress. Stay tuned to the blog for the first announcement.

2. We heart webmasters

Since we announced that webmasters can embed a sign-up form on their website that ties to Feed My Inbox, tools for you to see subscribers and have more control over outgoing emails have been sorely lacking. We have not forgotten about you, and over the next year we'll be bringing some game-changing stuff your way that no other RSS to Email provider can do.

3. We're listening

Our small team is BIG on customer service. We answer all emails and keep a close eye on the support discussions over at Get Satisfaction. If you have any feedback, questions,  suggestions or constructive criticism, don't hesitate to send it our way. 

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Hey everyone! This is a quick note to let you know that Feed My Inbox emails did not go out at the normal time this morning due to a little blip with our system. The issue is fixed and emails are going out as we speak. You should receive all your notifications by 11am CST today. Thanks!

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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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