Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
In Chapters 2 and 3, we looked at both new-school ways to monitor for
information (RSS feeds) and decidedly old-school ways (Web page moni-
tors). Smack in the middle of those two technologies are e-mail alerts.
An e-mail alert is a service provided by a Web site that sends you an e-mail
whenever content on the site matches a topic or keyword in which you have
expressed an interest. For example, the Web site PubMed has a service that
sends an e-mail whenever new content is published about a particular dis-
ease you may be interested in.
his chapter discusses the beneits of e-mail alerts and how to ind e-mail
alert oferings that are relevant to your interests, as well as provides an
overview of some of the more general and popular e-mail alert services.
Later chapters explain how you can ilter your e-mail to best manage these
incoming alerts.
Advantages of E-Mail Alerts
Right now you might be thinking, “So what? Why not just use one of the
more advanced Web page monitors when you want to ind out when a
site matches one of the keywords in which you're interested?” here are a
couple reasons.
First, Web sites ofering e-mail alerts don't update you with false positives.
In other words, you're not going to get an alert about new content on a site
unless new content is really there.
Second, most e-mail alert services monitor entire sites, not just pages. If
you sign up for an alert from CNN, for instance, you get information about
content added throughout CNN's Web site, rather than only from the front
page. here are some Web sites, however, that provide e-mail alerts only
when Web content changes, as opposed to when content based on keywords
changes. I don't recommend those. If you only want to be informed when
a page changes, a page monitor is a better solution, being more lexible and
oten more customizable.
OK, so you know when and why you might use e-mail alerts instead of Web
page monitors, but what about RSS feeds? Why not use an RSS feed instead
of e-mail alerts?
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