It's Web 2.0 week, and that means lots of announcements of companies changing names, startups launching, and new products being introduced.
Jeff Barr caught the early buzz on KnowNow's new product, eLerts, which gives KnowNow itself a rebirth. (Full disclosure: I'm on the Board.)
I do believe eLerts represents a fascinating new direction for the company: a consumer Internet service that plays well with other Web 2.0 services such as PubSub and Syndic8, offering real-time delivery of notifications of things people want to know about, as they happen on the Web, straight to peoples' desktops.
eLerts let you be alert. From Ron Rasmussen, KnowNow's CTO, I got this description:
With the new KnowNow eLerts service, users can now instantly receive relevant news and content as soon as it is available, without the need to be anchored to a particular site, RSS reader, or aggregator. This translates into a cleaner and more efficient experience: no pop-blockers, search, IM, voice, email, or portal interference. Subscriptions are created by simply dragging-and-dropping any RSS or Atom feed onto the eLert Toobar or Deskbar.
I have played with the alpha version of the service, and I believe there are a lot of potential uses for it. We're only at the starting gate of innovative possibilities for RSS (now that the RSS aggregators are consolidating) -- and KnowNow is exploring that frontier, blazing new trails.
Further buzz: Tom Foremski, Matt Marshall, J.D. Lasica, Dan Farber, Stowe Boyd, "bete-noire"

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