MailFeed: Read your email via RSS

I’ve been using FeedDemon lately to get my hourly weblog/news fix via RSS, and it’s saved me countless minutes that would otherwise have been spent typing URLs, navigating websites, and squinting past distracting designs. RSS lets you get right to the information without all the fluff, which is exactly what I want these days.

This evening, it occurred to me that an RSS feed for my email would save me even more time. So I whipped up MailFeed, a PHP script that connects to a POP3, IMAP, or NNTP mailbox and spits out on RSS feed of the messages therein, thus allowing you to read your email using the RSS aggregator of your choice. I’ve found it particularly useful for reading mailing lists.

Like most of my brilliant ideas, at least one person has beaten me to it, but I like doing things my way.