FeedCrier is a free web service that delivers RSS feeds into your IM client and works with AIM, MSN, and Jabber/GTalk. It can also provide a widget for your website that your readers can use to quickly subscribe to your site’s RSS feed and have it delivered into their IM clients.
If (a) you use AIM, MSN, or Jabber/GTalk, and (b) there is a site or news source that you follow religiously and like to be instantly notified in real time whenever updates are published (e.g. Freewaregenius 
), you can use FeedCrier to deliver these RSS updates straight into your IM.
Or for example if you publish a blog and would like to be instantly notified whenever there’s a new comment you can have your comments RSS delivered to your IM client in real time. Here are more notes on this service:
- How it works: all you have to do is add ’FeedCrier’ to your buddy list within your IM client. From that point forward you can add RSS subscriptions in 3 different ways (a) through your IM client itself, (b) using the FeedCrier site or a FeedCrier widget featured on a site, or (c) using a FeedCrier bookmarklet that you can add to your favorites.
Interaction with FeedCrier: there are 4 commands; help, subscribe [URL], unsubscribe [URL] and list, which lists all of your RSS subscriptions. These simple commands allow you to quickly and easily manage your account, and I found them to be easier to use that man anging your account through your account page on the FeedCrier site. The URL used can either be the site URL (in-which case FeedCrier will attempt to find the RSS feed on its own), or you can specify the RSS feed URL itself.- Adding a widget to your site or blog: is extremely easy; you can generate a little code snippet that does this that you can insert into your site.
The verdict: I tested this with my AIM account, and what I found is that using the commands within the IM client worked very well (in fact, the ’add subscription’ form on the FeedCrier site and the bookmarklet both did not work, but I expect this to be a temporary glitch). My advice to you is to use this only for a few feeds that you follow closely, as having your IM client be firing off constantly interrupting your work on behalf of feeds that you do not really want to read is not ideal. For what it does, and if you’ve been looking for something like this, FeedCrier does a very competent job.
For other interesting RSS related service, check out this posting.
Version Tested: the FeedCrier site as of Feb 11th, 2008.
Go to the FeedCrier site.
