When it comes to staying up-to-date on the news, RSS is the best thing that could have ever happened to the web. You’ve probably subscribed to a ton of feeds by now through services such as Google Reader or software like FeedDemon. Instead of waiting impatiently for these services to give you the news you need immediately, why not try out Anothr from iNeZha.
Registration and Setup
First head over to the site and register for an account. Registration is quick and easy so you’ll be ready to start in no time. Anothr gives you three ways to receive instant updates:
- MSN Messenger
- Sype
- Google Talk
You can also set up Anothr to get subscriptions via email.
. After selecting your client you’ll be asked to add the iNeZha robot to your contacts. If successfully added, you should receive a message from the bot soon after. If a problem occurs or you wish to change clients, there’s a “delete and start over” button to restart the process. The bot will first give you a host of information such as news updates about iNeZha and keyword commands for navigation purposes.
Adding Feed Alerts
To get started, either type in a site URL or just send a keyword to the iNeZha bot and you’ll be given a list of feed results that match and a link to the feed profile. For example, if you type in “ReadWriteWeb”, a list of feeds pertaining to ReadWriteWeb would be instantly sent back to you with a link to the profile of each result. Each profile allows you to view the latest updates, the number of users sharing a feed, related feeds, tags, and a host of other information.
Once you’ve found your feed you can easily add it from the site or from the bot with a keyboard command.
Alert Functionality
Your alerts should instantly start rolling in through your IM client. From here there are a variety of things you can do. There are plenty of simple and easy to remember keyboard commands that you can instantly access by typing in ‘?’ or ‘menu’. Using the provided keyboard commands, you can share any of the items to Twitter, bookmark it via Del.icio.us, or share it with your friends on Anothr. Reading a feed from any of your alerts is a simple as typing in ‘Read: [id number]. ID numbers are provided with every feed you subscribe to and also for every item in a feed. You can also go back and search through your list of feeds for certain keywords and the iNeZha bot will return results only from the feed items that match your query.
Bundling Your Feeds
You can invite friends to subscribe to your personal bundle of feeds. Just enter in your username for the provided services such as Flickr, Del.icio.us, Twitter, Digg, Last.fm, Youtube and more. When pairing your Twitter account with Anothr, you can automatically share your subscriptions, IM moods, and bookmarked articles to Twitter without the need to type in a keyboard command to the bot. Head to your profile to track who’s subscribing to your bundle and more.
Get Your News Instantly
Ironically, Anothr isn’t just “another” real-time tracker. There’s a host of features to explore, many ways to stay up to date, and share your findings with friends. While we wouldn’t say it will replace feed readers such as Google Reader or FeedDemon, it sure beats waiting for those services to update you with the latest. For the news that just can’t wait, Anothr is a great service to get it instantly.
