We just launched a "Secret email address" service that makes it possible to post to groups anonymously from any email address. This is a bit of a power-user feature, but it's a very useful for automated posting from scripts, forwarding email (e.g. customer service email), etc.
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Save As : Panos,
George Tziralis,
Walter Jessen,
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[email protected],
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Norman Savigar,
[email protected],
Ru Ok,
alieb,
мужчина по имени вася,
yole,
Thomas Power,
tom murphy,
Jaap Willem,
[email protected],
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onurc,
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Jonathan Hardesty,
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Özkan Altuner,
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Sameer,
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Mrs. Alix May,
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Karim,
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Sharon McPherson,
María A.,
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Richard Chen,
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Tudor Bosman,
Nimaa,
Edmund Tay,
phil baumann,
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Rahsheen,
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Mike Reynolds
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Here at the office, we use it to forward all of our mercurial changelog emails, server push notifications, etc to a private group. That way, we all see what's going on in real-time (thanks to the notifier: http://friendfeed.com/setting...), and can easily discuss them from the FriendFeed interface. To add a secret email address, click on "Import a service" in the "settings" dialog of any group. For regular posting, you should continue to use the normal email interface though ([email protected] or [email protected], see http://friendfeed.com/share... for details). Thanks to Tudor for writing and launching this!
- Paul Buchheit
Shhh! This is very sekret!
- Andrew Trinh
Interesting. My secret FriendFeed toy.
- phil baumann
I'm in my Private Group, but for the life of me I cannot find this option. Wouldn't it be under Edit Settings?
- Nick in Manila
Ah. NOW I see it.
- Nick in Manila
I am loving this feature idea... Very savvy for business use. Thanks!
- Susan Beebe
Matthew: No. Your home feed only shows things that you're subscribed to. Of course, if you're a member of a group whose admin allows anonymous posting, and you have that group on your home feed, then the anonymous posts will show up there -- but then, you can always leave the group or remove it from your home feed.
- Tudor Bosman
oh this is genius. there's so many use cases that can leverage this. platform +1
- Sameer
Groups already allow "anonymous" posts -- if you (as an admin) add a service to a group, posts originating from that service will show as belonging to the room, not to any particular user. You can think of anonymous posts (whether imported from RSS services, or posted by email) as being the responsibility of the group admins -- it's their job to police them if they deem necessary.
- Tudor Bosman
I see this working for the Confessions room. What else?
- Josh Haley
Logical Extremes: Yes, that is the point; it doesn't matter what address you send *from*. Sometimes you can't control the address that mail gets sent from. A few examples: your datacenter can notify you by email of any problems affecting your servers, but you'd prefer these notifications to go to a FriendFeed group. You are subscribed to a low-volume distribution list, but you'd rather read the messages in FriendFeed. Your customers contact you through a form on your website. Forwarding these messages to a FriendFeed group allows you and your friends / business partners / etc to discuss them (in comments) just like you discuss any other FriendFeed posts.
- Tudor Bosman
Paul has explained how we use this feature internally at FriendFeed. If one of us checks in a change (we use Mercurial for source control), Mercurial sends an email to a secret email address for a private group (that all FF engineers are subscribed to); the others see the change immediately, and we can discuss it in comments.
- Tudor Bosman
Cool! Very useful for room owners. If you don't have instructions, it's very hard to find. "Sekret"
- AJ Batac
LD: I don't understand. To which of my examples are you referring?
- Tudor Bosman
Oh yeah. Laughing uncontrollably. WOW.
- Webferret
It sounds like a pro-spam feature. Have you thought through all the consequences?
- Tim Tyler
Tim: the group admins should keep the address secret and only share it with trusted services. If the address gets leaked, then the group can get spammed, in which case the group admins can delete it or change it (which prevents all future mail to the old address from being posted to the group). We believe it to be reasonably secure, but please let us know if you notice any problems.
- Tudor Bosman
Matthew: :)
- Tudor Bosman
Ahsan, that's a bug that already existed with how searches handle imported content in groups (not specific to this release and already on our list, thanks).
- Dan Hsiao
LD: You're right, you can't reply from within FriendFeed. You could have the contact form send email to both the internal group and a regular email address, which you can then use to send a reply.
- Tudor Bosman
Tudor: btw. regarding mercurial, what's your experience using mercurial in friendfeed vs perforce in google?
- Amund Tveit
Tudor - what I really like is the business use cases you're laying out here, including your own internal engineering ones. Good stuff, as my e2.0 buddy Sameer above says.
- Hutch Carpenter
using this feature to post blog uptime statistics for several blog to blog owners
- Jeroen De Miranda
Its a good feeling when you know that the people behind a certain product know what there doing. Dont we FF Team?
- Webferret
Use case? How can one use the best readily filtering system available (Gmail filters) with best of breed group collaboration (Friendfeed). This is GOING to become the best in its class. I can drop so many business tools(that i pay for) for just FF Private rooms
- Webferret
Already is Webferret, already is...
- Chris Heath
sweet
- D Lets
Turn Gmail Into Your Personal Nerve Center http://www.micropersuasion.com/2007...
- Webferret
Amund: Mercurial works. We use it in a mostly-centralized setup (one central repo that we sync to very often). Can't really compare performance -- our repositories are tiny compared to Google's. We can take this offline if you'd like to discuss this in more detail.
- Tudor Bosman
That's a great add-on. Slowly, FF is going to be our "life center"
- Özkan Altuner
So this is kinda like when you posted the "advert"? :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
Kol: not quite; the "shameless self-promotion" showed up as an entry in your home feed, without any user (or group) name attached to it. Entries imported into a room (via RSS or via email) show up as being in that room.
- Tudor Bosman
OK, Tudor. I'll give it a test later. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
This is a cool idea, but it only seems to import the mail subject title only. Is that right, if so, how do we get the content of the mail in, or is it not meant to do that?
- Keith Bennett
Keith: it works for me. The subject goes in the main post (FF thread title?) and the message appears as a comment to the thread. Maybe you are sending an HTML e-mail?
- alieb
Cheers alieb, I just tested it by forwarding the first mail in my inbox and that didn't show anything up. Creating a mail and adding some text to the mail body works correctly. Thanks for the help.
- Keith Bennett
I just figured out a new use for this feature and it goes in line with Kevin Rose's idea for an Open Source security system. http://www.facebook.com/video... He was talking about having a neighborhood watch like program. Well each neighborhood can have a private room here in FF. If someone tripped an alarm in your house, it would send an email to the secret email for the private group and everyone in the group could be notified via email,IM,SMS,etc.
- BRҰANSAҰS
I think this secret address should be reminded somewhere in each group settings window.
- Zackatoustra
@Bryan Lee. shhhh lol
- Webferret
Zacaktoustra: group admins will see the address in the "services" window (click "add/edit" under Services in the settings dialog). Other group members will only see the words "secret email address", as, well, the address is supposed to be secret and only visible to admins.
- Tudor Bosman
could we have this for home feeds as well? some 3rd party messaging services will send from various addresses. great feature, thanks!
- Mike Chelen
I'm blonde so maybe need to tell you what I'd like to do and see if it works: I would like to have my ATT mail, my Yahoo mail AND my gmail all feed into a FF room so I could read it all at the same time (ATT and Yahoo are partnered so you can't sign into both at the same time. Both go through Yahoo's sign in page.) Is this possible to create? Having ATT and Yahoo feed into my Gmail through FF would be okay as well, btw. I get FF feeds through GMail already.
- Molly
Molly, what you're asking for is totally unrelated to this thread. If i was you I would set up gmail to receive the mail from your other email addresses. It's a bit complicated but can be done. Try reading this lifehacker gmail article first: http://lifehacker.com/374610...
- Chris Heath
Well said Heath
- Daniel J. Pritchett
Heath, thanks. I told you I'm blonde. :-P I tried your suggestion already and so far haven't been able to hook ATT and Yahoo to my Gmail (both being POP accounts) w/o paying extra. Will work on it again later. It's not THAT much trouble to check all three accounts from different sources.
- Molly
Molly, another option (if att offers it - i know yahoo does) is to set up forwarding so the email is automatically forwarded from ATT and Yahoo to your gmail address. Then once in gmail you can use filtering (by the to: field) to separate out the emails
- Chris Heath
I think that's the paid service from Yahoo. At least it was when I investigated it a few months ago. Thanks for thinking about it for me, though. Us techblondes need all the help we can get re: setting stuff up. I'm kind of on hold right now anyway (trying to recover my domain name and identity....... long story and boring to all but me). Molly
- Molly
Wow! This is awesome! Thanks.
- Svartling
cool neat improvements, gotta like this shit.
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