new earth online

The idea of emailing content to a site to post content isn't a new one, and many people have tried this to varying levels of success. It's envisioned as a way of making it easier to post content from wherever you are; so if you're out and about you can just send an email from your phone and it will be added to the site automatically. You can probably instantly think of a few potential pitfalls with a technology like this, but they are ones that can be solved by adding a human element to the publishing process.

Typically when I think of publishing by email I think of problems with providing any properties about the content such as categorisation and any additional information that is required such as metadata. There are various solutions to this such as sending the content to a holding place where it requires further information to be added at a later date, but if you're good enough at coding then it should also be possible to categorise based on keywords picked up within the content you email.

Another potential pitfall is that of security, something which is usually handled by using the sender's email address to identify a registered user. If you want to allow unregistered users to post content then there is potential danger from spammers, but again there are ways around that such as making sure the email address uses a spam filter on the email server.

The latest site I've seen to go with the idea of submitting content via email just so happens to be one of my favourite sites at the minute; RateItAll. RateItAll is a consumer review website where anyone can register to submit their own reviews and can rate and comment on other peoples reviews to give consumers the best possible range of opinions for not just consumer items, but for hot topics. I've been registered for a few months now based upon the recommendation of someone I consider a friend who has great tastes. That's the thing about that site too, it's not just serious business of writing reviews, it's also a place to socialise with like-minded people where you can debate differences in opinion.

Now what RateItAll has done is to take the concept of how people review items and to turn it into something radical and worthy of review itself. To submit a review of an item by email it is so easy:

1. Open your favourite email client
2. Use reviews@rateitall.com  as the recipient email address
3. Type the name of the item into the subject
4. Type your review into the email body
5. Click send

That's all there is to it, and then it will try it's best to automatically categorise it, if it can't then a human will intervene and complete the process. I have seen some people mention that their reviews have ended up in the wrong place but I guess that will be down to generic item names.

What's great about how they've done this though is that you don't need to be registered to submit a review by email either. I look forward to seeing how this feature evolves over time. I think it's something more and more sites may begin to offer as people move away from solely browsing whilst at home or work, but begin to browse more from mobile devices. Since practically everyone has an email address these days why not use it for publishing? There's no need to fiddle about logging in, you can can just send an email.