# \[ANN\] 9cays - A Rails app for Group Email **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [February 14, 2006, 1:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-9cays-a-rails-app-for-group-email/53726 "2006-02-14T01:19:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/3ab097/32.png) [@pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pete)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2006, 1:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-9cays-a-rails-app-for-group-email/53726/1 "2006-02-14T01:19:20Z")
Even though it’s a little OT, I thought I’d announce the free public beta of a new Rails app that I’ve been working on for a while: ``` http://9cays.com ``` Think of it as mini-mailing list software. For a lot of smallish conversations, normal mailing list are too heavyweight (requiring setup, moderation, admin, etc.), but group email is a pain because messages fly everywhere, people miss out on some, other people don’t want them but keep getting them… The description of how to start a new 9cays conversation from the web site: > First of all, you need to sign up to 9cays if you haven’t already. > > Then just email the people you’d like to include in the > conversation, and add the email address removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid in either the > To or Cc field. > > 9cays will create a new email address for the conversation, and set > up a web page to hold all the messages. We’ll then email you with > the conversation details, and send an invitation to each of the > participants. > You can invite more people just by Cc-ing them in on any email to the > conversation’s address, and there’s a link in the bottom of every > email that lets you leave the conversation whenever you want. It’s still a little rough around the edges, but I’d love to hear any comments from anyone who wants to give it a try. One thing worthy of note: there’s an obvious comparison to be made with CampFire. You could say that 9cays is for email what CampFire is for instant messaging. The interfaces even look remarkably similar. (For those who are wondering, we started work on 9cays about six months ago, and I hadn’t seen CampFire until a few days ago, so it is just a case of converging design for similar apps, and 37signals ideas generally influencing our design.) I’d like to think that CampFire and 9cays will compliment each other quite well. And finally I’d like to say a big thanks to 37signals, DHH, and the Rails community in general. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed developing apps this much. Cheers, Pete Y. ---
**Author:** ![pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/3ab097/32.png) [@pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pete)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2006, 2:48am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-9cays-a-rails-app-for-group-email/53726/2 "2006-02-14T02:48:18Z")
Nice work! b ---
**Author:** ![pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/3ab097/32.png) [@pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pete)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2006, 4:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-9cays-a-rails-app-for-group-email/53726/3 "2006-02-14T04:35:01Z")
Bit of an assumption, but spammers will likely target the emails: conversation-([0-9]+)@9cays.com with messages. Curious if and how you might have solved this? -Nb ```auto Nathaniel S. H. Brown http://nshb.net ``` ---
**Author:** ![pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/3ab097/32.png) [@pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pete)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2006, 5:00am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-9cays-a-rails-app-for-group-email/53726/4 "2006-02-14T05:00:39Z")
Sweet 🙂 Meant to say this before my question, but it looks like a really nicely done app. -Nb ```auto Nathaniel S. H. Brown http://nshb.net ``` ---
**Author:** ![pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/3ab097/32.png) [@pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pete)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2006, 4:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-9cays-a-rails-app-for-group-email/53726/5 "2006-02-14T04:43:13Z")
Nathaniel, On 14/02/2006, at 2:34 PM, Nathaniel S. H. Brown wrote: > Bit of an assumption, but spammers will likely target the emails: > > conversation-([0-9]+)@9cays.com > > with messages. Curious if and how you might have solved this? Conversations aren’t open. We only process email to a conversation’s address from registered participants of a conversation, and the only way you can become a participant is to have an existing participant invite you. Pete Y. ---
**Author:** ![pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/3ab097/32.png) [@pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pete)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2006, 11:59am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-9cays-a-rails-app-for-group-email/53726/6 "2006-02-15T11:59:29Z")
Hi, On 2/14/06, Pete Y. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > participants. > > You can invite more people just by Cc-ing them in on any email to the > > conversation’s address, and there’s a link in the bottom of every > > email that lets you leave the conversation whenever you want. This is really really nice! I was thinking about the same kind of interaction for a small application I’m going to build so it’ll be nice to view how the two compares in the end. What is important of such approach is that it is a good way to capture many of the casual interactions which happens so frequently on the net. Ease of use and low barriers to partecipate are too often overlook in many systems. bye Luca ---
**Author:** ![pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/3ab097/32.png) [@pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pete)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2006, 11:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-9cays-a-rails-app-for-group-email/53726/7 "2006-02-14T23:45:29Z")
On 14/02/2006, at 3:00 PM, Nathaniel S. H. Brown wrote: > Meant to say this before my question, but it looks like a really > nicely done > app. Thanks! It’s certainly coming along. We’re using it as a base to test some ideas and build up some useful code that’s going to go towards some other projects, so stay tuned. (We should have a blog set up pretty soon.) Pete Y. ---
**Author:** ![pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/3ab097/32.png) [@pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pete)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2006, 12:02am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-9cays-a-rails-app-for-group-email/53726/8 "2006-02-17T00:02:26Z")
On 15/02/2006, at 9:57 PM, Luca M. wrote: > This is really really nice! I was thinking about the same kind of > interaction for a small application I’m going to build so it’ll be > nice to view how the two compares in the end. > > What is important of such approach is that it is a good way to > capture many of the casual interactions which happens so > frequently on the net. Ease of use and low barriers to partecipate > are too often overlook in many systems. Thanks! That’s exactly what we’re going for: trivial setup and no admin. As an experiment to make it even more trivial to start a conversation, we’ve made a plugin for Mail.app on OS X that adds a button to the toolbar. (It also does a couple of other things behind the scenes to make the experience nicer for those you invite into the conversation.) For those who use Mail.app on OS X 10.4, you can grab the plugin here: [http://homepage.mac.com/yandell/9caysPlugin-0.1.dmg](http://homepage.mac.com/yandell/9caysPlugin-0.1.dmg) Cheers, Pete.