Information Overload? Use Snail Mail!

Real Snail Mail is the perfect answer to the deluge of emails we wade through every day. I love the disclaimer:

For testing purposes some messages may be forwarded sooner than expected.
Sorry we can not guarantee unreliability of service at this time.
We hope to have RealSnailMail working less predictably as soon as possible.

They could definately teach Twitter a thing or two about expectation management :-)

RSS Feed Synchronization

Moving computers is always stressful, and moving RSS feeds from one machine to another is even more painful. This week I moved over to a (literally) shiny new machine and hoped my RSS would follow, but there were some glitches. I use Outlook 2007 + Exchange for reading syndicated feeds (I realise other readers are available) and I like the synchronization with Internet Explorer's feed list. However, if you add a few hundered feeds at once to IE (via the File > Import / Export option), Outlook only gets the first 10 or so before giving up. A reliable (if tedious) way to do the integration is as follows:

1. Export your feeds as an OPML file on your old computer: File > Import and Export... > Export RSS Feeds to an OPML file


2. Move to your new computer


3. Delete any RSS feeds that are registered in Outlook: Tools > Account Settings > RSS Feeds


4. Delete the RSS feed list for IE by deleting all files in %LocalAppData%/Microsoft/Feeds


5. Delete all of your RSS folders. This is especially tedious because of a lack of multi-select


6. Make sure that RSS feeds are synchronized between IE and Outlook: Tools > Options > Other > Advanced Options... > Sync RSS Feeds to the Common Feed List


7. Add the RSS feeds by importing the OPML file in Outlook: File > Import and Export... > Import RSS Feeds from an OPML file

Other hightlights of the move included a UI failure caused by local file caching and a UI deadlock apparently caused by appearance of a password dialog (some of my PST files are password protected).