peace on the web, too

My first impressions after a couple of days of testing 2 mail subscriptions services. I did a comparison between R|mail service and RssFwd one.

R|mail post email

From: Rmail
To: …
Date: Sep 15, 2005 1:24 PM
Subject: Let’s … share! - mapopescu was here, too …

About the Web 2.0 need for API discovery, sharing and integration.

web dev tagging
Click here to view the original Webpage.

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Sent using R|mail.
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RssFwd.com post email

From: mapopescu was here, too …
To: …
Date: Sep 15, 2005 1:20 PM
Subject: Let’s … share!

Recently we saw a couple of blogs/people trying to put up a Web 2.0 APIs map. Just take a look at ProgrammableWeb.com and Web Service Finder (via ReadWriteWeb) and see for yourself..

[whole article content followed]

We are looking on something, but we don’t know what is it just yet.

Marius Popescu Thu, 15 Sep 2005 11:03:56 +0000

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Source: http://mapopescu.blogsome.com/2005/09/15/api-sharing/
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My first impressions

R|mail pros:

• very concise
• showing the summary (have you an option for sending full text?)
• showing article’s tags (excellent). I don’t know if I like that they point at your site, though!

R|mail cons:

• the link to the article should be at the beginning, not the end of the email, especially because you are sending only the summary.
• I like better the RssFwd’s “From” content
• from the subject content you don’t know that it is a blog sending you an email, the name of the blog is rather lost at the end
• your website is kind of complicated for me (and I am a web power user), perhaps a usability test won’t harm
• your “unsubscribe” feature seems kind of too brutal, a confirmation would be necessary for me
• I don’t like the proposal for integration (the design)

RssFwd pros:

• “From” is better
• the article link is more visible, even if it’s at the end (as the email contains the whole article, the link becomes less important too).
• you can see all your subscriptions
• when subscribing you can see the feed’s contents before subscribing, on their page
• their site is more simple (and usable)
• you can subscribe using only a link

RssFwd cons:

• the site is slower
• no feedburner.com statistics

Conclusion

Sorry if I seem more attracted to RssFwd. For now this is the truth.

PS A special note: R|mail appears on my feed provider (feedburner.com) while RssFwd doesn’t.
I don’t know yet why, perhaps is their way of doing things. This could become important.

PS2 R|mail is a service provided by a single person. RssFwd started the same, now it seems to be sponsored by Sproutit.com. RssFwd is open source too.

PS3 I evaluated also FeedBlitz.com, but it look too orange to me, perhaps a much better service like the two presented here, as it seems to be a company, but way to complicated for me