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What alternatives to Google Alerts are there? The only one I knew of that came close to it was Backtype, but they were acquired and shut down a couple of years

What alternatives to Google Alerts are there? The only one I knew of that came close to it was Backtype, but they were acquired and shut down a couple of years ago.

kayge 14y ago
There was an alternative called Mention[1] that made the front page[2] of HN a few days ago, I have no idea how it compares in terms of features/quality/etc though: [1]https://en.mention.net/ https://en.mention.net/ [2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5376180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5376180
- easytiger 14y ago
  and they same to have a native client for win/lin/mac ... which is nice... but wouldnt a web portal be the way to do this
  - welcometothesky 14y ago
    Hi, I'm a co-founder at mention. mention goes way beyond what Google Alerts can do. We're real-time, monitor way more sources (Twitter for example). We do have native clients, but we also have a web and mobile version available. We'll soon be available right from your iPad too.
    - easytiger 14y ago
      ah cool. I'd put it on my list of platforms then, Windows, Mac, Linux, Web :)
- gwern 14y ago
  The pricing of Mention alone torpedoes it as a tool for anyone but a commercial entity: you need to pay them $120 a year to get like more than 5 searches! (5 searches wouldn't even cover my existing Google Alerts for just my family, to say nothing of all the other interesting things I want news of.)
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
yesimahuman 14y ago
Newsle.com is one for people-related alerts. Grabs your LinkedIn and just gives you news on people in your network.
ht_th 14y ago
You could roll your own, I suppose. Start building an index and feed it search results on a regular basis. I shouldn't be too much of a problem to hack something together with SQLite3, CRON, and your favorite scripting language. Sounds like a fun project, actually. Thanks, I'll add it to the queue with side projects!

What alternatives to Google Alerts are there? The only one I knew of that came close to it was Backtype, but they were acquired and shut down a couple of years ago.

kayge 14y ago

There was an alternative called Mention[1] that made the front page[2] of HN a few days ago, I have no idea how it compares in terms of features/quality/etc though: [1]https://en.mention.net/ https://en.mention.net/ [2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5376180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5376180

easytiger 14y ago
and they same to have a native client for win/lin/mac ... which is nice... but wouldnt a web portal be the way to do this
- welcometothesky 14y ago
  Hi, I'm a co-founder at mention. mention goes way beyond what Google Alerts can do. We're real-time, monitor way more sources (Twitter for example). We do have native clients, but we also have a web and mobile version available. We'll soon be available right from your iPad too.
  - easytiger 14y ago
    ah cool. I'd put it on my list of platforms then, Windows, Mac, Linux, Web :)
gwern 14y ago
The pricing of Mention alone torpedoes it as a tool for anyone but a commercial entity: you need to pay them $120 a year to get like more than 5 searches! (5 searches wouldn't even cover my existing Google Alerts for just my family, to say nothing of all the other interesting things I want news of.)
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

yesimahuman 14y ago

Newsle.com is one for people-related alerts. Grabs your LinkedIn and just gives you news on people in your network.

ht_th 14y ago

You could roll your own, I suppose. Start building an index and feed it search results on a regular basis. I shouldn't be too much of a problem to hack something together with SQLite3, CRON, and your favorite scripting language. Sounds like a fun project, actually. Thanks, I'll add it to the queue with side projects!