The bubble of "free cool online services" has definitely burst. But why is it so hard just to get RSS in near-real-time in anything other than a feed reader or IM? I really don't want to write a service myself :(. - Lindsay

Try notifixious, I'm using it. They can notify You in various ways, including e-mail. I'm using IM notifications, but I think they have a couple glitches to solve. (http://notifixio.us/) - Mladen Srdić

I used to use xFruits for RSS->Email, but it wasn't always reliable. :/ - Gypsy

you could try http://www.rssfwd.com/ or http://www.tabbloid.com/ or http://www.feedmyinbox.com/ - Alfredo 亜瑠布れっど

Feedburner will do this. I think FF might too. - dpurrington from BuddyFeed

even more here http://delicious.com/search... - Alfredo 亜瑠布れっど

@Mladen - trying out notifixio.us but suspecting it will only send me a link to the post instead of the content... we'll see what happens. @Alfredo - RSSFwd is about to go away, FeedMyInbox only gives you daily aggregations (I need near-real-time as the posts I'm trying to monitor are time-sensitive) and Tabbloid is the same issue as FeedMyInbox. @Dave Feedburner also has the same one-email-a-day problem. I haven't thought of using FF, but I am trying to set it up so other people can subscribe to the emails as well and would prefer them not to have to figure out how to subscribe to the emails via FriendFeed (and set up an account... these aren't tech savvy people in the first place which is why the RSS feed isn't good enough). - Lindsay

Ah, quite different. Sounds like a RSS to listserve gateway. Interesting concept, hadn't heard of that approach. Yahoo Pipes might be useful too, but it would be a bit of a science project - dpurrington from BuddyFeed

Yahoo Pipes only creates an RSS feed, it' won't send emails. :(. Here's basically the deal... I created a tumblog for my son's teacher to post the class daily assignments to. She's been using it every day which is great for all the parents to keep up with their kid's assignments and it has generated quite a bit of interest. I am trying to find a service that I (and all the other parents) can subscribe to that will email us the daily post within a short time after she posts it. - Lindsay

I tried FeedBurner but it isn't posting until the next day (which is pointless because the kids will have already gone back to school!). All I want is a service that can email us the one post every day. She could post it anytime between 2pm and 5pm every day so I can't really set up a timer easily. I'm not sure why there are so few options out there for what, to me, seems like a pretty simple use-case: email me every time this site is updated... - Lindsay

I finally got through trying out http://notifixio.us and it sends out things within about 20 minutes of them being posted, but it doesn't include pictures (the daily posts are a photograph of the class assignment board with any extra items as text). I need full post notification, but I guess near-real-time teasers are better than full posts that are 20 hours too late. - Lindsay

You need features similar to Mailman in which you can subscribe to mailing lists. But it will not meet all of your requirements. But Moodle (http://docs.moodle.org/en...) will but it is too bloated for what you want to do and maybe be too much overhead to maintain. - imabonehead

Hey Lindsay, Julien from Notifixious here! Just wanted to let you know that we're working hard to improve our product and we're listening to anything you could have to say! Regarding the fact that we don't send full artciles, it is due to the fact that we don't want to "steal" visitors from the content sources. Blogs, media sites... etc usually make revenues from ads they have on their pages, we find it fair to let the user see these ads. Also, in some cases, it is to avoid 'copyright' problems, [...] - Julien

[...] since some services just won't allow us to reproduce their content (but they have rss feeds... go figure!. So, once again, feel free to make any suggestion or comment to help us improve our service! - Julien

Hi Julian. I "claimed" the blog when I created an account on Notifixio.us. Could you allow people to opt-in to having full posts as notifications if it's their blog? I set up the blog specifically to share that information easily with other people so it would be a great help, especially considering you guys seem to have the market cornered on near-real-time RSS email notifications. Also, I tried adding the widget code to my Tumblr and it wasn't compatible for some reason... - Lindsay

It got rid of everything underneath it on the sidebar where I added the code and it also hid the link at the top left of the page that allows me access to the dashboard / customize for the blog (when I'm logged in to that Tumblr account). Any help is appreciated. Thanks! - Lindsay

It's seriously weird that most of the services which provided rss2email in 'real-time' seem to be gone. Pragmatically speaking: if getting the posts emailed is a primary usecase you could consider using WordPress, Textpattern, ... and a plugin which emails new posts as they are published (haven't used any, but they should be available.) - Saurier Duval

Saurier, I agree about it being strange that there are so few RSS to Email services out there now. Part of the usecase for this was to be super dead simple for the teacher that's posting. I wanted her to be able to email posts to the blog and not even have to log in to create new posts (she knows how to use email). You can't get much simpler than a Tumblog. As for the email capabilities of Wordpress, Textpattern, etc, can you email posts to them AND can anyone other than the blog author subscribe to the email posts from them? - Lindsay

Email?? *rolls eyes* That is SO 2003! Only OLD people use email now. - iTad

Oi! I'm NOT old, and I use email. First thing I check in the morning; last thing at night. Most reliable way to get hold of me is to email me. I'm not always on here, but I've always got email running. Anyone emailing me requiring a reply, will probably get one back within an hour on an average day during business hours at least (and often other times too). I MUCH prefer it to phone, and there's a written record if necessary, as I archive everything I might need again. - Ian May

@Tad - Remember who I am trying to help out with this... Email is blogging for old people, yeah, but it is also stable, reliable, archive-able, ubiquitous and easy to use... it's not going away any time soon and it's what this "customer base" is familiar with so I need to figure out how to accommodate them. And, frankly, I want it too because it's a central place for me to keep up with incoming info. - Lindsay

It's possible, not out of the box though. And someone needs to manage the list manually, probably. Posterous lets you post via email AND emails a daily digest of your subscriptions, again not as they are posted. A social hack: have the teacher email the post both to the blog and to a mailinglist / the parents? - Saurier Duval

I thought about a mailing list but again was trying to keep it so dead simple. It was hard enough to get her to start mailing/posting to one place every day. I don't want to do anything to discourage or confuse her at this point now that the kids and other parents are following it. :) Hoping that Notifixio.us will maybe come through with that opt-in for blog owners to post full content. - Lindsay

1/31/2010 Too bad the notifixio.us service has folded, I checked feedmyinbox and for real time rss to email updates (each item arriving as separate mail as soon as published) they have pricing plans that run from $5 a month. I also discovered notify.me which is free real time notification. Trying both ... Glad I found this thread lot of useful info and opinions. I have a similar requirement that Lindsay had. - TrafficBug