Back in March, I mentioned that Tom Dyson is working on XPath bindings for PostgreSQL. Today he wrote to announce something completely different: an email-to-RSS gateway called MailBucket. It couldn't be simpler to use. Moments ago I sent an email to clever@mailbucket.org. Almost immediately, I was able to subscribe to http://www.mailbucket.org/clever.xml, which is also rendered here.
I'm reminded of Steve Yost's QuickTopic, another clever hack that crosses communication-mode boundaries. I feel certain that MailBucket will be useful, though I can't say exactly in what ways. Whether and how names expire or get recycled is one interesting question that will come up. For example, I've just claimed the word 'clever' on a whim -- but when that thread dies, should 'clever' be tied perpetually to my whim?
Then, of course, there's the question of spam. A long-lived MailBucket namespace will undoubtedly get spammed. But perhaps an instance of the service supporting collaboration within a known group could make effective use of whitelisting.
In any case, it's a worthy experiment and a clever idea. Nice going, Tom!
Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2003/09/30.html#a814