Art of Progress

Several people I know subscribe to multiple email newsletters, but would prefer RSS because it’s more convenient and doesn’t clutter their inbox. Unfortunately, despite the Web 2.0 craze, a lot of good content still isn’t available via RSS. By the way, if you are a content provider that needs help syndicating your email newsletter as an RSS feed, I’m available for “nights and weekends” consulting.

There’s no reason you should be prevented you from getting your favorite email newsletters via RSS, thanks to this simple GMail hack. Here it is, step by step:

1. Create a new GMail account. For example: thefavoritenewslettersofjames@gmail.com.
2. Unsubscribe from all of your newsletters.
3. Re-subscribe using your new GMail account. Take this time to eliminate the ones you no longer read.
4. Subscribe to your new GMail account’s RSS feed.

Note that if you use Google Reader you may be disappointed to find that they do not support authenticated feeds by default. You can get around this using this Google FeedBurner Hack from lifehacker which works with Google Reader and other web-based readers that don’t support authenticated feeds. It works by using FeedBurner‘s secure feed support to publish an unsecured feed:

Of course, you can always use a reader that supports authenticated feeds. This is an especially good idea if any of your subscriptions need to remain private.

That should help unclutter your inbox and save you some time while still getting the information you need. If you use this trick, I’d love for you to post a comment with your experience.