Over the last day or two I’ve been testing a tool that bloggers wanting to stay right on top of the news breaking in their niche might find very useful. It’s called Anothr and it’s an RSS bot for Skype users.
How does it work? – its pretty simple really. You add Anothr as a buddy on your Skype account, you subscribe over at the Anothr site with the feed you want updates on (lets use the random example of… hmmm…. ProBlogger’s feed). Add some tags and you’re done. When the feed you’ve subscribed to updates you’ll get a quick skype message delivered to you via skype.
Why would you want to use it? – While news aggregators are wonderful at helping you keep on top of the breaking stories around the blogosphere they only really work as fast as you check them (unless you have some sort of notification tool). If you’re like me, skype is a logical tool to use as a notification tool because I’m on it all day (more than I’m looking at my news aggregator).
I don’t use it with every feed that I’m subscribing to (it would be pinging you all day everyday) – however with those key blogs and sites that it’s really advantageous to be right on top of (as they break key news) this is well worth using.
There’s a few other cool features (you can subscribe to new feeds via skype, share your subscriptions (or keep them private), promote your blog on Another with widgets (see mine below).
Like I say – this is a tool for those of you looking to really stay on top of the news on a particular niche. If it’s crucial that you know when a feed’s published – this is a tool to check out.
About Darren Rowse
My name is Darren Rowse and I’m a full time Blogger making a living from blogs like 
Wow, another cool tool for the news blogger. I guess it’s time to get my own Skype account.
Ultra-cool!
Now that’s integrated technology at it’s best!
I’m just waiting for the ‘true’ mobile version of Skype (if it is ever launched). But this one could be of great help to users who write a lot of reviews on gadget launch news by the big blogs like Endgadget & Gizmodo.
Cheers!
Siddharth Thakkar
Same here. I think I’m gonna cave now and get an account…
Wow, its kinda getting hard to keep up with all the new add ons and plug ins that are coming out to facilitate bloggers. 1 month in web 2.0 is like 2 years in real life.
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That’s a great tool indeed. Is there any tool that sends a SMS when a subscribed feed is updated?
Awesome tool! I can see me using this for my most important feeds…
Thanks for letting us know, good tool indeed
I could see this coming in very handy! im going to check it out definitely
Is there anything like this for AIM, Y!, or MSN messenger that you know of?
As long as this doesn’t IM you every 10 minutes it could be useful (I guess)
I don’t really like it. Anothr chatted to me without my authorization and stretch my nerves. It contacted me again and again till I switch Anothr’s status to blocked. Now it’s peace ;-).
Darren, Anothr.com has supported multiple IMs now. Including Gtalk and MSN in list.