Show HN: Convert Any Email into a Webpage | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Convert Any Email into a Webpage

4 pointssaimiam9 comments

tl;dr; - Convert any email into a webpage, then bookmark it, share the url, download it as html, crawl it using a bot, or discuss that email with friends right on the webpage https://moogle.cc

Hello HN,

Emails have been their own silo for far too long. They usually sit in your inbox or in some archive somewhere. You can't easily bookmark them, your can't link to specific emails in discussion threads, you can't invite comments on emails without descending into a flurry of reply-alls.

Moogle.cc solve these issues.

Simply TO or CC bookmarks@moogle.cc on any email thread you want to use outside your inbox and get back a shortlink.

Visit that shortlink to see your email like a webpage, download, bookmark it, discuss it, do whatever you could only do with webpages until now.

Security? For now, your emails sit on a unique, hard to guess url so it is security by obscurity. Also, the entire process is automated with access controls in place so no one actually sees your emails.

Looks interesting.

The link in the returned email isn't clickable though, and comes with a period at the end. You have to be careful to copy and paste the link without the period otherwise it redirects to the home page.

https://moogle.cc/r/XXXXXXX.

Definitely lose the period at the end.

Thanks for trying! I'll update the code to remove the period and make the link clickable.

This has been fixed. Appreciate the tip.

Interesting concept. I'm curious why you decided to make this — a scratch-your-own-itch thing, or some other motivation?

I was trying to scratch two itches with this.

One was a long pending one - once I moved jobs and stopped using outlook in favor of gmail, I found that attaching emails to other emails was impossible(?). While it wasn't a difficulty I faced every day, it still bothered me that sharing emails in gmail was so hard.

Then, on a recent HN thread, someone mentioned that they had subscribed to a gmail comment plugin solely to be able to discuss an email before finalizing a course of action. That's when I realized that many email threads could be much better handled simply by allowing comments and discussions on the side.

The final itch was realizing that if I wanted to self host my email, there was no easy way to parse and read eml files. So the entire effort started with trying to figure out how to present eml files in a human-friendly manner.

Once the eml file reader was ready, I figured I could do more with it than just reading my own emails..and hence Moogle.cc

On the security side, can you not store a password per link and return it as a GET Param on the link?

It would mean people can’t simply guess the link?

Not perfect I know.

Like Zoom’s meeting passwords? It’s doable for sure. I was thinking I’ll add security once there’s enough demand for it. E.g., anyone with a Google docs link can view a shared doc but no one seems overly bothered by that.

I’d use this to easily share emails with team members and discuss them over Slack - but I won’t do it without security.

I’d want to introduce the tool across the company but I don’t trust people to remember that it shouldn’t have sensitive information sent to it.

Got it. Can I connect with your privately to discuss how you would want to secure your emails?

Basic level of security: Before showing someone the email, ask them to click on a magic link sent to their inbox. This would include a domain check to ensure that only someone from the Moogler's domain is allowed to see emails, i.e., if the initial mail was Moogled by jane@example.com, only someone from example.com will be allowed to later see that email.

More advanced options: An entire authentication and authorization system could be created around this.

Self-hosting: I could also set you up to self-host this solution.

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