Have The News Come To You With Alerts.com

With Alerts.com service, instead of visiting multiple sites to stay up-to-date with the latest news and and information, you can have the news come to you. You can configure alerts that are relevant to your interests and then have them arrive in the method you choose: SMS, voice, email, IM, or on your desktop via an Adobe Air app.

Types of Alerts

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 also working with a number of educational institutions around the U.S. to deliver alerts to the enrolled students. Currently, there are 8 million students receiving alerts from the Alerts.com.

You can sign up to start receiving your own alerts today, too. Just click here.

Courtesy: TechCrunch

MySchoolAlerts Keeps Faculty, Parents, and Students Connected in Emergencies

Alerts.com has announced at DEMOfall 08 a free messaging and notification system called MySchoolAlerts that will allow schools to communicate instantly with teachers, parents and students.

This is a perfect solution for sharing information such as school closings due to inclement weather or enabling communication in the event of a campus security threat. Yes, every school has a phone number that parents and staff members can call to find out whether or not their school is open, but most of the time that information can be incorrect or the phone line busy or down. Enabling schools to send current news and alerts instantly to everyone connected to the school will be far more effective and truly appreciated by everyone.

How it works

MySchoolAlerts is free and there’s nothing to download or install for the school or parents. The school simply creates an account and the faculty members, parents and students just subscribe to the service. Everyone has the option to receive the messages any way they prefer because they can be delivered via e-mail, SMS, voice, widget or through a desktop application. Other types of alerts can be added as well, such as child safety alerts, severe weather warnings, gas price alerts and more.

Everysecond counts

Obviously, this messaging service will become invaluable in the event of campus security threats such as the tragic events that unfolded at schools like Columbine and more recently Virginia Tech. The horrific events were only intensified because school staff members and authorities had no way of communicating with parents or students in a timely manner. In situations like that, every second counts.

Schools are trying to remedy this problem by taking expensive and drastic measures such as providing laptops, cell phones and even iPhones to all students so they can communicate with them instantly. Some schools that have done this are Oklahoma Christian University and Abilene Christain University.

Conclusion

As a parent, I think this is a long overdue solution. I think every school needs to sign up and start communicating with teachers, parents and students in real time. The fact that it’s free and does not require any hardware or software should make this a no-brainer. This kind of solution can also work for other organizations that need to communicate with large numbers of people in a timely manner. Quite frankly, I will be very surprised if this service isn’t embraced immediately across the country by all schools.

Courtesy: Mashable

The OtherInbox Wants to be Your Mailman (Exclusive Invites!)

OtherInbox is a unique new email service that just launched today. It wants to provide a way to manage all of the emails that you don’t really want going to your personal or business email accounts. For example, emails from online shopping vendors, newsletters, news updates, social networking messages and more.

Howdoes it work?
Instead of having all of these emails flooding your inbox, OtherInbox allows you to maintain unlimited email addresses at your own domain name, such as JohnDoe.otherinbox.com.

Thegood news is that you don’t have to create these email addresses ahead of time before you can use them. You can create them on the fly as needed. For example, you can create a new email address amazon@JohnDoe.otherinbox.com for Amazong emails and Facebook@JohnDoe.otherinbox.com for Facebook and so on for all other sites. OtherInbox then sorts everything coming back into the appropriate folders.

Ifanyone sells your email address then you will know exactly who was responsible and you can then Block that one email address so that you’ll never see their emails again. It’s quite handy.

WhatElse can You Do with It?
Besides creating an email address for all websites you shop at, you can also create addresses for events and functions that you attend such as the TechCrunch50@JohnDoe.Otherinbox.com or DemoFall2008@JohnDoe.Otherinbox.com. It’s also handy when it comes to tracking rebates, coupons and shipment tracking information. It’s a powerful new weapon against spammers as well.

Conclusion
Mostof us already own many “other” inboxes on services like Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail to handle these types of emails but OtherInbox can replace them all. It could become SpamCentral Station, if you will. The interface is intuitive and it does make managing your emails much easier.

Youcan find emails a lot quicker as well thanks to the folder system it uses. Yes, some of you are saying “why not just use bloody rules and filters to automatically archives emails according to the sender!” Well, true, rules and filters can do something like that but it still requires a great deal of work on your part that would never end.

Everytime you joined a new site or service you would have to create a new rule or filter to handle it. With the Otherinbox all you have to do is create a new email address on the fly and you’re done.

***INVITES***
Special invites only for Mashable Readers! The first 25 readers can claim their own OtherInbox right now!

Courtesy: Mashable