14 “OTHER” Ways to Use RSS Feeds

Undeniably RSS is one of the best things that has happened to the web after email. Not only has it made browsing a lot more productive, convenient, fun … you name it, but it has also introduced a number of new ways to interact with content that we could never have imagined before. While you’re most probably already familiar with the idea of RSS feeds and Feedreader (No? See this video) , there are several other ways you can make use of feeds.

(1) SendMeRSS – Send RSS feeds to email

SendMeRSS – Also known as R-mail. If you’re more of an email person and like to follow-up on everything from your email inbox then this is for you. SendMeRSS can take any feed and forward updates to your email. It checks for updates at least once in every two hours so whenever something new gets published it lands in your inbox within at most 2 hours. [All Features].

(2) MailBucket – Forward Emails to RSS feed

MailBucket – Ever wanted to forward emails to your feedreader? Enter MailBucket, a simple online app that can generate custom RSS feeds for your emails. The implementation is quite simple, first you need to create a filter in your email program and set it to forward filtered messages to XYZ@mailbucket.org. Next, open your feedreader and following feed: http://mailbucket.org/XYZ.xml (where XYZ can be anything you choose). While it may be neither convenient nor secure to forward all emails to feeds, it certainly makes sense in some cases, i.e. daily reports, newsletters etc. [All Features]



(3) TwitterFeed – Send RSS feeds to Twitter

TwitterFeed – I have been using Twitterfeed for sometime now and recommend it to everyone. It’s a free service that can be set to track several RSS feeds and send updates to a Twitter account. If you got a blog, you may also consider setting up a separate Twitter account for your blog and ‘twit’ all your blog feeds so that other Twitter users can “follow” it. We have one for MUO as well, you can check it out here.



(4) Pingie – Send RSS feeds to Phone

Pingie (US only) – Get feed updates as SMS messages. It’s absolutely free and works with any cell phone that can receive standard text messages. Nothing to install or download.

(5) FeedJournal – Print RSS feeds to PDF

FeedJournal – Here you can subscribe and convert multiple RSS feeds to an elegant printable newspaper. Just grab your favorite feeds, set preferred layout (i.e. 3- column) and generate a printable newspaper-style document. This is something that would go extremely well with news and lengthy articles.

(6) Wigitize – Add RSS feeds to your Website

Wigitize – If you ever need to add some RSS feeds to your website, Widgitize offers a quick and simple way to do that. Unlike other similar services, Wigitize gives you a really light and plain widget that you can style yourself.



(7) ReminderFeed – Send Reminders to Feedreader

ReminderFeed – Quick and simple way to schedule one-time or recurrent reminders to your feed reader. Just fill-in the reminder form, set start and end dates, and press ‘create’ button to generate custom feed for your reminder.

(8) TagMindr

TagMindr – Another tool to schedule RSS reminders. More than anything else, Tagmindr offers a simple way to remind yourself of webpages or some images you find while browsing the web. Once it’s set you willl be able to easily remind yourself of a link or image that gets bookmarked in your Delicious, Twitter, Flickr or Magnolia accounts. See how it works.

(9) FeedBlendr – Merge RSS feeds

FeedBlendr / FeeDoor – Combine muliple RSS and Atom feeds into one. You can even merge video and audio feeds (such as podcasts) with text feeds.

(10) FeedCrier – Send RSS feeds to IM

FeedCrier – Receive feed updates in your chat program. Feedcrier supports AIM , MSN Messenger, Jabber and Google Talk clients.

(11) ZapTXT – Monitor feeds for Keywords

ZapTXT – ZapTXT enables you to monitor RSS feeds for specific keywords and get alerts as soon as there is a new article that includes specified keywords. Alerts can be set to be delivered to email, instant messaging program or mobile phone.



(12) SpokenText – Convert RSS feeds to Speech

SpokenText – Automatically convert RSS news feeds to speech and subscribe to them as podcasts (via iTunes). You can also download your recordings as an mp3 file.

(13) RSSMixer – Combine RSS feeds

RSSMixer – This nifty tool lets you combine multiple feeds into one master feed and make it accessible via a regular feedreader, iPhone or Apple Dashboard. No-registration requied, simply enter the feeds you want to combine and click “Mix”. Next you will be prompted with a page where you can chose how you want to access it.

(14) AideRSS – Filter RSS Feeds

AideRSS – If you’re subscribed to dozens of popular sources and are having difficulties keeping up with feeds, then AideRSS is for you. Basically, it can take your current subscription list and filter out less popular stories leaving only the BUZZ. Please note, the best way to use it would be on multiple popular sources which publish more than 10-15 stoies per day (Engadget, Gizmodo, Mashable etc.)

Did we miss anything ? Let us know in comments.