PubSub announces instant notification search capability for blogs and RSS
NEW YORK, NY - February 9, 2004 - PubSub Concepts (www.pubsub.com) today officially launched a no-cost "search-and-alert" subscription service that continuously scans over a million weblogs and RSS news feeds to instantly alert users whenever specified items of interest appear. This unique, real-time, notification service is made possible by PubSub's proprietary technology. Every day, the company's servers perform billions of matches of requests against newly published items.
PubSub's "search-and-alert" service is based on a new internet-scale generation of Publish & Subscribe technologies designed to extend traditional search engine capabilities, which currently function on historic data. Today's search engines crawl the web to fill databases and then wait for a user to come and search against that indexed information. Because of the time it takes for search engines to crawl and index billions of web pages, their information is, on average, several weeks old. In addition, a user must repeatedly visit the search engine to refresh their search.
Where search engines cover information from the past, PubSub's "search-and-alert" service searches the future. The service receives a user's search term only once, and then is continuously on alert as that search term is matched in real-time across a vast array of weblogs and RSS news feeds worldwide. Users are immediately notified whenever their search term matches newly released information.
Users need not register personal information to take advantage of this free service, which is activated once the user inputs a search phrase and selects their notification preference. "Search-and-alert" then stays active, continuously monitoring new content until the user commands otherwise.
In addition to providing up-to-date information on search requests, PubSub's service makes it possible to connect users interested in the same subject matter. As users subscribe to alerts for real-time data on a variety of interests, and the service responds by pointing to information as it is published, people talking about the same topics will immediately find each other. For instance, a search subscription for "antique Porsche" will very quickly bring together all users who have mentioned those words in their weblogs.
"Our technology creates connections between people based on what is being said rather than where it is being published," said Bob Wyman, PubSub's CTO and co-founder. "The technology, because it matches on search terms, will rapidly find and connect users with the same interests."
In addition to "search-and-alert" results, PubSub's high-speed matching technology allows developers to build applications that perform statistical and trend analyses in real-time. The company has published an API to the service, allowing users to be notified via REST the instant their subscription is matched. Other interfaces such as SOAP will be added soon.
To illustrate the capability of the service, PubSub has created sample "search-and-alert" feeds that currently connect to news and conversation on the Oscars, the U.S. Presidential Elections and Technology Trends. On the site, users can very easily create their own customized subscriptions to track published information on any item of interest, including hobbies, favorite movies, interesting gadgets, favorite celebrities, etc.
About PubSub Concepts
PubSub Concepts is a New York-based company founded in 2002 by Robert Wyman, Chief Technology Officer and Salim Ismail, Chief Executive Officer. The company develops real-time, content-based Publish & Subscribe systems at internet scale and plans a series of product releases, extending the search capabilities of this unique technology, throughout 2004.
For more information, please visit www.pubsub.com or email us at info@pubsub.com.