Monitor critical feeds with InstantFeed

A while ago I first mentioned my need to keep an eye on certain critical RSS feeds without having NetNewsWire open all the time. I had a highly proactive approach to solving this problem:

Now is when I sit back and wait for the innovative products to magically appear.

Appear they have…or, at least, one has. I recently spotted a new web service called InstantFeed that will notify you via instant messaging if a new item is posted to a certain feed. It’s a very clever idea…I’ve used it for the past week or so and it seems to work fairly well.

The only such feed I have set for this notification as of now is my FeedBurner FeedBulletin, which notifies me if there’s a problem with my blog’s feed. If more software apps publish info via RSS, there could be all kinds of fun possibilities here…low disk space, new e-mail, build done compiling, etc.

InstantFeed is part of the larger “toolbox” known as Big in Japan, which is the best company name I’ve heard in quite some time. They also provide a podcast hosting service, a link shortening tool, and half a dozen other nifty apps. I’m really excited about two tools they haven’t released yet: one that converts e-mail into RSS feeds and another that stores/shares your blogroll.

Anyway, check out Big in Japan if you do a lot on the web.