There’s no shortage of information on RSS, gathering feeds, and the abundance of feed readers available, so I won’t bore you with all those gritty details. Basically it’s a way for you to get all the latest updates from a website in one location (your feed reader) instead of navigating to each site. There are many people that still don’t know about RSS or find the jump from reading on the web to browsing a feed reader too confusing. Feedmailer is just one company that is likely to change that.

Feedmailer allows anyone to subscribe to feeds through their email address, getting the latest content from their favorite sites delivered directly to their inbox. For many users this makes a bit more sense, after all everyone uses email these days, why require a feed reader to deliver the content? It’s a free, ad-supported service and I wanted to find out if it helped bridge the gap between RSS and the average user so I’m testing Feedmailer out today.

1. The homepage shows me the basic 3 step process that will be needed to make use of Feedmailer’s services. Register, Add Feeds, and Receive. So I’m off to do step one by clicking on the “register now” link. One thing I’ll go ahead and say is that I wish the large “Register” circle had been a link to actually register since that was my first instinct for signing up, not the tiny link under the sign-in form.

2. Register is fairly simple, same old information so just sign up.

3. After registering I have to validate my email address. Once that’s done I’m taken back to the Feedmailer homepage to login.

4. Logging in should have been simple but I ran into a problem here. It’s a minor thing and I know I’m always cranky about user interface design, but the button to login does not look like a button, which made me skip right over it and accidently hit “register” again. I think a border or something is needed to make the word “Login” look more like a clickable button than simply a heading.

5. Once I’m logged in I’m directed to a page that looks strangely familiar. It’s the homepage with a new menu to the left. I can view some of the recent additions by users and additions to the Global Directory. Let’s give it a whirl by adding a Feed of our own. To do this I select the Feed Manager on menu to the left.

6. To subscribe to a feed I need to copy the XML link into the first field and then choose how often I want to receive updates and how many updates at a time I would like to receive.

7. Let’s try it out by adding the feed for TechMeme. The first step is to go to the Techmeme Homepage and find the XML button (you see it here to the right). In many cases it is also an icon that looks like this . Go ahead and click it.

8. Depending on what browser you use the next screen could be different for you. Firefox 2.0 is what I’m on so I get a screen that shows me what the feed looks like and some options to subscribe. Since I only need the URL for the feed I will simply copy the address from the top of the browser instead of choosing any of these options. You should do the same in whatever browser you are using.

9. We’re back at Feedmailer again and I’ve copied the XML link into the form and chosen to receive hourly updates with a maximum of 5 updates. Now I just click add and I’m done.

10. After a short popup notifying me that the feed has been added I’m taken back to the feed manager where my new Techmeme feed shows up with the option to edit or delete it. I should now receive hourly updates by email for that website. However, the process was not all that easy, but Feedmailer knows this and that’s why they’ve added in a Global Directory of popular feeds. Let’s check that out next.

11. The global directory is an area where users who aren’t familiar with how to add feeds on their own can find popular websites and add them to their list without worrying about XML URLs. The sites are split up by category and ignoring the cheesy icons it’s actually a very handy feature.

12. Taking a look at the Technology section all the big sites are listed. I’m a bit disappointed that there’s no option to search for feeds. Who wants to click through 20 pages to see if a site is listed or not? But nevertheless the directory makes it easy for someone to find interesting sites and adding a feed is as easy as a click of the button.

13. Feedmailer has built in two other handy features that will greatly appeal to the average user. The first is the ability to create a Youtube feed based on a username or tag. Using there form I can simply input a topic or certain user and receive email updates when a video is posted with that criteria.

14. Another handy addition is the Myspace Feed creator where users can put in a Username or Photo Page URL and get a feed based on that. Feedmailer does a great job of highlighting where the user can find this information to create their feed and these extra features are a great addition to the service.

Feedmailer has managed to take quite a bit of the mysterious nature of RSS away with their ability to provide content from a variety of sites and deliver directly to email without the use of a feedreader or any prior knowledge. There are options for the advanced user (manual feed additions) as well as the novice. It’s questionable how popular this service can become since sites like Feedburner already allow publishers to provide email subscriptions (see the DemoMarks sidebar for an example of this), but nevertheless Feedmailer has a great product here that delivers, literally! (Ok, even I’ll admit that was cheesy, but I could do worse for closing lines)