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Comment by seabee | Hacker News Reader

What problem does this solve that RSS doesn't already?

Well for one, RSS is pull. This is push. RSS also requires that you subscribe. This wouldn't necessarily require that.

It's replacing a subset of email, and email is often pull.

Needing to subscribe is arguably a feature. In fact, if subscription was required on the protocol level like RSS spam would be impossible (for some values of "impossible").

> email is often pull

So... when is it that I pull an email sent to me from the SMTP server of the person sending it? Pulling it from the server to the client to read it doesn't count as email being 'pull.'

The difference is that with RSS you are pulling from the source not pulling from your personal 'cache' (unless you use a web reader like Google Reader, but even then Google is pulling from the source; RSS updates aren't being pushed to Google). The email equivalent would be querying all SMTP servers out there (or a subset) to see if they have mail for you rather than hitting up your IMAP/POP server to see if anyone has sent something to you.

I think the better question is what does this solve that email doesn't? You can already sort notifications into different inboxes with a decent client. Now, true, you can't have your client take specific actions based on, but that doesn't mean clients can't support it as is. Simply add a feature to a mail client that allows you to enter in certain criteria for titles and take that action. I'm not really sure how this would be any different.

I think a better solution is the one a poster made above. Have a single email address for notifications and some web or desktop app that takes care of those. If it's web based with an API or allows plugins, you can build something that plugs into that and do everything that the author is suggesting.

I'm just generally against mucking with standards when a solution can already be implemented.

Because there could be value in reimplementing a similar idea in a different way. Whether it's an RSS redo or not, it looks like it could be valuable. People in the comments argued the "notifications" idea can already be done by Gmail folders. But his idea may be the better implementation.

Adoption. Email is universal. The notifications are already coming via email, not RSS.

Here's a use case: someone sends an office-wide email saying, "There are Christmas cookies in the kitchen. Help yourself."

I think notifications handle that use case better than RSS. I think of notifications as basically an email subject with no body.

Exellent point. Web apps are not the only use case.

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