Comments on: E-mail as an Alert System

By: MatthewBennett

MatthewBennett — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 10:36:12 +0000

Thanks! I have also come back to this thread after four months thanks to an e-mail notification.

I think my thoughts have developed a little in this area since I left my first comments. I tend towards using a combination of RSS search results and Google Reader. As an example, Twitter searches fed into Google Reader for things like 'spanish translator' have been directly useful for me.

It would also be great if Google Reader allowed saved searches. I find myself unsubscribing from e-mail notifications more and more and trying to shove them into Google Reader, which doesn't always work because not everyone has RSS feeds yet.

It also probably means that somewhere in my head, conceptually, e-mail is for longer direct interactions with people and Google Reader is for trying to sift through millions of news articles, blogposts and comments to find and keep up with things I'm interested in.

I think there's still lots of room for development though, we're not there yet.

By: Daniel J. Pritchett

Daniel J. Pritchett — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 01:15:58 +0000

I'm glad you enjoy these tools. I am also a very big fan of FriendFeed – my DISQUS and BackType comments are streamed together there along with my content from many other services.

By: houltmac

houltmac — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:14:07 +0000

I have to agree with this completely. Tools like Twitter search and BackType allow the internet to become smaller, like RSS did before that. With discussion aggregation I think these services could overtake the syndication meme.

By: Citizento

Citizento — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 22:09:55 +0000

Thanks. The per post feed is nice but I would request a global feed for all Disqus conversation.

By: Citizento

Citizento — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 21:09:55 +0000

Thanks. The per post feed is nice but I would request a global feed for all Disqus conversation.

By: Daniel J. Pritchett

Daniel J. Pritchett — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:50:06 +0000

I think there are some feeds available at the per-post level if that works for you. Click options->subscribe on this post.

If you were looking for something more complex, be sure and take it to Daniel Ha at DISQUS. He says he'll be setting up a UserVoice feature request tracking system soon.

By: Citizento

Citizento — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:56:39 +0000

I am in the same situation.
I think a few sites like Facebook and Linkedin publish a feed with messages/comments/events and you can just paste it into the reader and you can follow those sites in a rather satisfying manner. This is the best solution I think.
Then you have Disqus for the blogs that use it but it still relies on mail alerts because it doesn't publish a feed that covers all your replies.
Backtype is interesting but I can't see how it can track the comment replies that doesn't report your username.. But maybe I'm wrong..
For the majority of sites you just visit once in a while e-mail is still the solution.

By: Citizento

Citizento — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:47:29 +0000

I agree about Disqus/ Intense Debate, they are a very good solution for keeping track of comment threads. Today i came back here to comment thanks to a Disqus email alert.. However i tried to paste the Disqus personal comments in my feed reader feed but it works just for your own comments and not for replies so it's useless! For now with Disqus you have to receive e-mail alerts. I would like them to publish a feed that notificates you when you have replies then you follow the link and read them on their site.

By: MatthewBennett

MatthewBennett — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 08:14:08 +0000

Hi Daniel,

Thanks very much for that suggestion, that is indeed what I had in mind. I think debate aggregation is one of the next most interesting things we'll see to come out of the internet / blogosphere.

By: Daniel J. Pritchett

Daniel J. Pritchett — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:52:22 +0000

Matthew,

Have you seen BackType? It is a 'comment scraper' that tries to find every comment attributable to a single email address and then aggregate them into a feed.

I haven't exactly *enjoyed* the service yet but it's certainly a new perspective on reclaiming the little pieces of our minds we're scattering to the internet winds.