reading newsgroups with rss2email
Introduction
I like keeping up with a few newsgroups, but I hate the idea of having to use a separate program to read them. Google Groups provides RSS feeds for most groups, but RSS is more of a flat-level discussion while Usenet is threaded.
I use GMail to read my mail. One of its many nice features is the ability to automatically thread discussions. I realized that if there was a way to email myself RSS feeds, GMail will automatically thread them and then I'd have a pseudo-usenet client. I started designing my own rss-to-email program, but then I found a complete package already available: RSS2Email.
Installation
Instructions to download and install RSS2Email can be found on the Getting Started page. If you run a Debian server or desktop, you can simply install it via apt-get:
apt-get install rss2email
Configuration
Configuration is just as easy as the installation. A local file-based database needs to be created to store the configuration information:
r2e new joe@domain.com
Next, add the feeds you would like emailed to you:
r2e add http://feeds.feedburner.com/Adminspotting
After that, you will need to tell RSS2Email to collect the feeds and email them to you. If you don't feel like being blasted with an initial batch of messages, run r2e like this:
r2e run --no-send
This will get RSS2Email up-to-date with the feed.
To update the feed and have messages sent to you, run:
r2e run
Of course running this command manually all the time isn't the smartest idea, so you can put it in a cron job:
0 * * * * /usr/bin/r2e run
Conclusion
Using RSS2Email in combination with a threaded-based email client is a great way to easily keep up with Usenet discussions. Even though Usenet is rather old, there are still a lot of current discussions going on.
