Get Website Email Updates with RssFwd

Just after rejoicing the magical 200+ RSS subscribers yesterday, you can see how selfless I am. I am going to actually show you how you can get email updates without subscribing to a RSS/Atom feed.

If you are one of those email junkies and prefer to get updates from a website via email, you are in luck. A lot of blogs already offer this facility for readers who prefer getting email updates. But, there are still a large number of websites out there that have RSS/Atom feeds available but do not offer a way to get email updates.

At ShanKri-la you have that option already in the sidebar where you can add your email address to receive daily updates via email. Click this link or scroll down in the sidebar to sign for updates via email.

RssFwd

RssFwd is a free web service that lets you specify a RSS feed and your email address to start receiving email updates.

Quick facts:

• You can visit RssFwd website to enter the RSS feed and your email address to start receiving email updates.
• Or you could drag their bookmarklet to your browser toolbar, and you can click on it anytime you are on a website you would like email updates and enter your email address.
• Or you could even import your OPML file to RssFwd and get email updates for that set of RSS/Atom feeds.
• When you subscribe, you can choose to receive text only emails or HTML emails (with images and formatting)
• You also get an option to choose between get updates as individual emails or get digests sent to you in the morning/afternoon/evening/night everyday. And the timezone it refers to is yours.
• If you are a GMail user, you can choose the Clustered option that’ll put updates from a day in one single thread. Very cool.
• You get an option to unsubscribe to a feed at any time right in your email as a link that you can click to unsubscribe.
• RssFwd offers blog authors a way to offer this service for their blog similar to the Feedburner service. You can display a button or a form in your blog to offer this to your readers.

Get Creative with RssFwd

If a website do not offer RSS updates, you can use a service like Page2RSS (Review) to create a feed url. Then use that RSS feed to have those updates to be sent to your email. Now, you have automated getting email updates from a website that provided no way to be notified of updates. If that doesn’t make your day, then I have to keep trying harder, eh?

TUAW shows how you can use RssFwd to receive updates from a website as SMS text messages in your mobile phone. Useful if your plan includes unlimited text message but limited data.