4. E-Mail Alerts

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 monitors). 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 disease you may be interested in.

This chapter discusses the benefits of e-mail alerts and how to find e-mail alert offerings that are relevant to your interests, as well as provides an overview of some of the more general and popular ...

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