One neat aspect about the RSS alerts from Notifications is that the service uses Superfeedr as its backend to power this feature. Superfeedr, which supports the PubSubHubbub standard, guarantees developers that it will send out notifications about a new blog post within 15 minutes. That's not exactly 'real time,' but close enough for most purposes and during our tests, alerts generally arrived within a few minutes. The Superfeedr blog also features a short step-by-step guide that explains how to add new feeds to your Notifications setup.

If you own a blog, you can also easily add a Notifications badge to your blog that allows your readers to add your blog to their notifications within seconds.

Email

The developers are currently focused on supporting Gmail in the app and your mileage with other email services may vary. To make this work, all you have to do is forward the messages you want to get notifications about (Twitter DMs, Facebook messages, Google Voice SMS etc.) to a personal appnotifications.com email address the service will provide you with when you sign up. Facebook notifications, by the way, will automatically start the Facebook app and Google Voice text messages will open up in the Google Voice web interface in Safari.

Twitter

Twitter notifications are keyword-based. In order to see mentions of your own name, for example, you just have to add your Twitter handle to the search terms on the service's website. In order to receive notifications of direct messages, you will have to use Notifications mail notifications feature and set up a filter that forwards all DMs to your personal appnotifications.com email address.

Verdict

Of course, all these notifications could easily overwhelm even the most dedicated information junkie, so some restraint is definitely in order. Thankfully, the app also includes the ability to set a quiet time, so that you won't be disturbed by new notifications in the middle of the night.

Typically, we experienced a delay of less than 3 seconds before we received a notification, which is better than most push notification apps we've seen lately.

Overall, the combination of Twitter, RSS, and email notifications allows you to receive push notifications from a very wide range of services and allows for a great deal of flexibility. It does take some time to set the service up, though, as you have to set up filters in your email, for example. Most of the setup happens on the service's website, though, which makes things pretty easy. If you need to get push notifications fast and from a wide variety of services, Notifications is the way to go right now and the hassle of setting it up is more than worth the effort.

Pull: RSS

Traditionally, RSS readers pull feeds at a regular interval (usually somewhere between 15 and 60 minutes). In a real-time world, that, of course, is far too slow. Services like FeedBurner introduce even more lag into this system, so that it can often take half an hour or longer before a new post appears in Google Reader. Notifixious itself polls every feed about twice an hour.

Pull Smarter

Thanks to FriendFeed's new Simple Update Protocol (SUP), some of the heavy lifting of regularly polling thousands of RSS feeds can be reduced, but as of now, only a small number of services actually support this new protocol. Notifixous also monitors the public activity of ping servers, similar to what PubSub is doing with its new (though still unreleased) product.

Push: XMPP

Currently, Notifixious can only get 'real' real-time updates through XMPP from Identica, Seesmic, LiveJournal, and Sixapart's TypePad and Vox blogging communities.  Genestoux notes that he would like to see every content provider use XMPP in the future.

Giving Back: Can Notifixious Replace Gnip's Abandoned XMPP Project?

Maybe the most exciting idea here, however, is that Notifixious plans to share an XMPP and SUP feed with the rest of the community. Gnip, of course, at one point promised to do something very similar, but, in the end, pulled the plug on this project.

Other companies like ZapTXT or Pingie offer a similar service - though we have also seen far too many promising services like Rasasa or Immidi.at close before they could ever live up to their promises. Our experience with these services has been quite mixed, however. We will have to wait and see if Notifixious can deliver on its promise.

Notifixious' Service Right Now

As for the Notifixious service itself, the company will send its updates to your cell phone, IM account, or email address. You can sign up for feeds individually, or import an OPML file.

If you want to send your own real-time updates from your blog to Notifixious, you can use the company's plugins and widgets for TypePad, Vox, Blogger, MovableType, and self-hosted Wordpress sites.

The white-label service LetMeKnow allows any web publisher to easily integrate the company's alerts technology into their web site by using just a small bit of copy-and-paste code. According to branchnext, that means the LetMeKnow platform can be implemented, tested, and released in days without placing the burden of software development on the web publishers themselves.

They call their technology "alerts-as-a-service" or "AaaS," but we think perhaps they haven't read that acronym out loud yet...it's not good. There's no need to use clever abbreviations to sell this product, though; the idea makes sense and can stand on its own without trying to join the "as-a-Service" bandwagon. Put simply, LetMeKnow allows anyone to integrate alerting technology into their site with little effort, adding additional value for their site's visitors, be them blog readers or shoppers.

Using LetMeKnow

After publishers implement LetMeKnow, visitors can use the service to stay informed about new posts, content updates, price changes, new comments, new reviews, saved searches, and more. The alerts they sign up for can arrive via email, mobile (SMS), instant messaging, RSS, or even via a downloadable Adobe AIR desktop software program.

Also included in the LetMeKnow service is the ability to add in extensible widgets that allow broadcasting of the alert notifications across the web, including to sites like Facebook, MySpace, and iGoogle. Users wishing to share their alert notifications can do so using email, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, and StumbleUpon, which are also integrated with the service.

Like Yotify, LetMeKnow also includes the social recommendation technology "AskFriends." With this, users can solicit input from their friends by sharing their scouts on sites like Facebook and FriendFeed and then gathering the responses.

For the Publishers

Besides the ease of implementation, LetMeKnow provides publishers extensive reporting tools which enable them to see how their site's visitors are using the service. There are 50 different metrics tracked that indicate how, when, and where the content is being viewed, shared, and published. Businesses using LetMeKnow also have the option to completely brand the service to their liking, so it appears to be a part of their web site and not some outside tool. Additionally, brandnext promises to deliver 99.9% uptime and support.

How much this will all cost or how well it will work isn't known as of yet. There isn't word on pricing for the service - only a sign-up form for those interested. However, if Yotify is any indication, LetMeKnow may be worth a look.

Yotify lets you track any number of things from hotel room rates to sports scores or even the latest videos on YouTube. The list of things you can track is practically endless. To help you find the scout you need, the different types are organized into broad categories which include shopping, fun, travel, classifieds, and news and blogs.

Saving Money

When it comes to product searches, Yotify is very smart. It doesn't just look at keywords, but also lets you know what the current best price is and then lets you select a checkbox to have the service alert you if the price drops below a certain point. You can also optionally check to be alerted when there are new product reviews available. The shopping section features scouts for common searches like digital cameras and laptops, but the shortcuts section lets you create more specific searches for a keyword, like a product ID or model number.

Staying Informed

The News and Blogs section lets you search a handful of sites, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The Huffington Post among others, but most people won't be satisfied with the small selection provided and will need to turn to the shortcuts section instead. From here, you can track any site's RSS feed, or for sites without RSS, you can search the blog itself just by entering its URL. You can also track changes to search results as well as track vanity search results for your name.

The shortcuts section includes a few other useful scouts, too, including one which lets you track a profile on LinkedIn, another to track local events (provided by Eventful), one for eBay auctions, and even one that tracks your FriendFeed.

Asking For Help

The social aspect of Yotify comes into play under the "Ask Friends" section. Here, you can share your scouts on Facebook and FriendFeed and get responses. Using either option will post your query directly to those social networks and when people reply you'll be informed via email. If you want to share a scout with select friends only, that can be done under the "Edit Scout" section where you can enter in individual email addresses instead. You can also share the scout with your friends on Yotify.

How It Compares

In a lot of ways, Yotify is reminiscent of the newly launched Alerts.com, a service which differentiates itself by letting you receive updates via SMS, email, voice, or IM. In a lot of ways, those various contact options from Alerts.com makes that service the more useful of the two, especially since a lot of our information overload today begins with email, which is currently the only way to receive Yotify updates. However, Yotify's options for sharing your scouts with friends give it a unique twist as do the various options for fine-tuning your searches.

Still, we definitely like the new direction Yotify is going with their service. Instead of adding to our social media burden by creating yet another place to "hang out" online, they're using the network of connections we've already built to make their service more useful to us. Our lives are busy enough, so we hope this is the start of a new trend of smart social apps.

After signing up for the Alerts.com service, you can choose from all sorts of pre-configured alerts. For example, the site offers alerts for things like news, weather, gas prices, flight info, price watches, CraigsList, sports scores, press releases, birthday reminders, horoscopes, Amber Alerts, and so much more.

However, what really appealed to me was that you had the option to configure your own personalized alerts which could be anything you need to remember to do. I'm also excited to see an RSS Feed Alert option, as well. With this alert, you can monitor feeds for keywords and receive messages immediately or on a scheduled basis via email or SMS.

Types of Alerts

Configuring Alerts

You can see an overview of the different alerts you subscribe to on your personalized homepage, a page which somewhat resembles iGoogle and its gadgets. There's also a handy "list view" which presents the alerts in a list so you can easily sort through them and turn them on or off as desired. This page also displays how many alerts have been sent out so far.

Editing an Alert

Business Model

Alerts.com is an ad-supported service. Specific advertising is inserted into the emails, texts, and voice messages sent out. The ads will be relevant to the type of alert requested by the user. This doesn't seem like a bad deal to get this sort of useful tool for free.

The platform is open and an API is currently available so that developers can create unique reminders, alerts, and notifications of their own.

The company is currently working with other third parties to expand their reach. Through their partnerships with iSAFE.org and AI Life, they will be able to reach out to 16,000 schools and eight million students in the next year.

You can sign up to start receiving your own alerts today, too. Just click here.]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/have_the_news_come_to_you_with_alerts.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/have_the_news_come_to_you_with_alerts.php Products Tue, 09 Sep 2008 09:00:00 -0800 Sarah Perez