StackMail - Making the StackExchange Sites Accessible Via Email

Question

Planned Obsolescence

Due to almost negligible usage and ongoing maintenance issues, I would like to announce that the StackMail service will be shut down in a few days.

Screenshot

http://files.quickmediasolutions.com/stackmail.png

About

StackMail is an email-based web service for the StackExchange sites. The concept is simple: send an email to stackmail@quickmediasolutions.com with one of the commands as the subject line - and presto! You will receive a reply with the results.

If you just want a demonstration, (and I'm sure you do) send the following as the subject line:

help

...and you will receive a reply with the list of commands and what they do. Some more ideas:

stats meta
user 18 stackapps
questions serverfault

Eventually, as more methods are added, you will be able to search for questions, users, etc.

License

Closed-source.

Download

N/A

Platform

Any email client that can send and receive text-based email.

Contact

I can be reached at admin@quickmediasolutions.com

Code

Yet another application that uses my stack.PHP wrapper.

Very nice; however, I don't imagine I will be using StackMail a lot unless I'm in a situation where I can only use email... — Maxim Zaslavsky, Jun 26 '10 at 04:22
Also, are all of those examples supposed to be sent through the subject line? Furthermore, what happens if I include something in the message body? — Maxim Zaslavsky, Jun 26 '10 at 04:26
@Maxim: Yes, all examples go into the subject line. The body of the message is ignored. As for using this, my idea is that it would be great for someone who only has access to a cellphone / smartphone and wants something quick. On some networks, this can even be done through text messaging. — Nathan Osman, Jun 26 '10 at 05:44
sup @George - got just one question: can this be used for instant and/or automated email notifications? using e-mail as a request basis is completely against all reasons I wanted to use e-mails at first! :o — cregox, Sep 22 '10 at 20:08
@Cawas: Unfortunately not right now. If this feature is deemed important, I might consider adding it. — Nathan Osman, Sep 22 '10 at 20:20
to me it's fundamental. I still find it almost unconceivable that so many educated people overlook e-mail this much. — cregox, Sep 22 '10 at 20:31
@Cawas: Fair enough. I'll see what I can do. Bear in mind that this service, when I create it, will be limited in the amount of email it sends / receives. After all, I don't want my domain put on a blacklist for bulk emailing. — Nathan Osman, Sep 22 '10 at 20:56
George, that sounds fantastic! to me that service don't need to receive anything but that wouldn't help on the blacklisting issue at all. — cregox, Sep 22 '10 at 21:11
@Cawas: It will take a bit of work to get this working for a large number of people, but it would be great if you would be willing to test it. Please send me an email at admin@quickmediasolutions.com and I'll try to get back to you within a day or two. — Nathan Osman, Sep 24 '10 at 06:31
@Cawas: You should receive an email within an hour or so. It's not complete yet, but it will give you an idea of how it will look. — Nathan Osman, Sep 24 '10 at 20:32
@George it looks pretty good. Hope the final version comes soon! :) I have also tried google's feedburner or something, but not only takes a while to configure - I still haven't received any emails other than confirming I was registered to receive them. — cregox, Sep 24 '10 at 21:14
@Cawas: Okay. I've finished most of it now. You can find it here: http://quickmediasolutions.com/stackmail/ After registering, select the 'Recent Comments' feed, fill in the details, and click 'Subscribe'. — Nathan Osman, Sep 28 '10 at 02:26
I'd like to say just "hey that's amazing!" because it truly is to me. I couldn't ever code it that fast! But... The last digest I've got in Sep 25 comes with too much info and I can't find most of those comments unless I search individually for each. Do you think it would be too hard to add a link to them? :P — cregox, Sep 28 '10 at 13:07
@Cawas: I certainly could. And the reason I created it so fast was because I used CakePHP. — Nathan Osman, Sep 28 '10 at 16:33
@George heard of it. Now I'm more interested in trying it. :) — cregox, Sep 28 '10 at 17:50
I don't know where else to report this, but I'm receiving completly wrong daily digests. I did register for two, but none seem to be working. One comes with RJFalconer from users/28411/mentioned (that should be me on superuser) and the other one comes empty from users/143411/mentioned (no idea where that code came from, I've registered 274502 for SO). — cregox, Oct 01 '10 at 21:05
@Cawas: I manually fixed this. Tomorrow you should get the proper feed. — Nathan Osman, Oct 02 '10 at 00:22
@George two observations from all this time (since my last comment): (1) I'm getting two emails now, for quite a while. (2) they come every day, even if there's nothing new. so I get a lot of repetition again. :P — cregox, Nov 18 '10 at 22:22
@Cawas: Thanks for letting me know. I'll see what I can do and I'll check the database to see why you're getting two of them. Eventually, I'd like to only send off an email if there is new content like you mentioned. — Nathan Osman, Nov 18 '10 at 22:44
@george if you haven't, you really should consider using github and or google code for tickets such as this. ;) — cregox, Nov 19 '10 at 00:10
@Cawas: Well, for most of my other projects, I have used Launchpad. — Nathan Osman, Nov 19 '10 at 00:45
@George launchpad is great... why don't you use it for all your projects? — cregox, Nov 19 '10 at 10:48
@Cawas: I use it for all of my code-hosting. This particular project isn't actually open-source at the moment. — Nathan Osman, Nov 19 '10 at 17:58
@George refrain the first (1) observation. I actually get two emails from two different sources. So that's not actually a bug... It's just really annoying due to the second (2) observation! :P — cregox, Nov 19 '10 at 22:04