(Sorry for the shameless self promotion ... If anyone thinks it's inappropriate, down vote me:) )
Looks like Mailpin (http://mailp.in) is what your mother needs.
Does she know how to send email? If yes, then she just sends a mail to [email protected], and the mail she sends become a web page like this: http://mailp.in/c8cN1BEb
Thanks for your testing! We have fixed the script / meta tag strip problem. We keep improving our code base, making sure emails are rendered correctly on web pages. We won't use user data for anything else.
If you put your link to public places like hacker news, then google will find it.
If you simply create a post page and keep it to yourself or share in a closed social network (e.g., IM, facebook private group ...) that cannot be indexed by google, then you are good.
That said, you decide to what degree you want to share your page.
"I never got around to turning attachments on because I was afraid of the hosting costs; how do you plan on dealing with those?"
As long as users don't delete their posts, we keep them (including attachments) there. If we are running out of storage space, we can add more machines :)
"One question: how long are the URL and the content preserved?"
You decide. If you don't delete it yourself, it'll be there forever.
And it's private. You decide who to share with. You decide whether to keep it or not.
We will commit to improving mailpin, making it a robust and useful service.
"Where's your privacy policy detailed? With the nature of the service (gathering email addresses etc) you could head-off lots of questions with that."
We haven't worked out a formal privacy policy ... but of course, user privacy is our top priority! We won't use user emails for anything else. In fact, from the post page, you can't find your email address.
"A default serif font drags anything down. For me personally I'd prefer another font."
We are still improving on the UI ... We would appreciate if you tell us your preferred font :)
"You sensibly replace emails, but other links like 'unsubscribe' remain intact, which could be problematic (don't worry, you'll still get your costco emails although it can sometimes lead to real emails/names)"
We also take care of unsubscribe part if the unsubscribe url contains your email address.
"I guess grouping and parsing is the next step, i.e. process them and provide features around them a la tripit. Is that the direction you might take it?"
Definitely there are many possibilities to explore from what we have right now. We'd like to hear users comments / critiques / suggestions first.
We (as developers of mailpin) use the services ourselves:
1. Ad hoc image album. Put a bunch of images as attachments in an email and send to [email protected] to create a simple page.
2. Forward company receipts to [email protected] and create a page, and share the link in coworkers ... (this sounds weird ... but it works well for us ...)
3. Forward marketing spams to create page, and publicly share such pages to denounce those spammers :)
4. Forward paper acceptance latters or other letters to create pages, and share them to show off -- vanity!
5. Ad hoc blogging ... Don't want to have an account, don't want people to follow me. But occasionally, we still want to say something and share to Friends that we really trust.
6. Create a playlist of youtube videos. Put a bunch of youtube links and send to [email protected]. A page with embedded videos will be created. We don't have youtube accounts ... sorry ... but still want to share a bunch of videos with friends ...
7. Tweet more than 140 characters. Create a page with short url, and tweet!
There would be more use cases. The point is, we want something dead simple. No registration, no app (well, email client is still needed ...), and private.
1) http://lifehacker.com/mailpin-creates-quick-easy-hosted-web-...
2) http://designinstruct.com/tool/mailpin/