BlogToaster

Check this out: you can get MSN Instant Messenger updates whenever your favorite blogs update.

Nice. But what if you could combine with an RSS feed? Ooh…

(Apologies in advance to any who are certain this makes no sense.)

Geek stuff aside, there are some positive implications for any organization looking to rely on weblogs for knowledge management. By their nature, individuals don’t like to hunt for information. (<kiss up>Well, OK: many reading this site might like it, but people reading this site are probably not the “average” user inside most organizations. You’re all very smart, very tech-savvy, and motivated to seek out information you’re interested in.</kiss up>)

What this little tool does is monitor weblogs.com, which itself is a clearinghouse of weblog updates. (When I add content to my web site, Radio – the application I use to manage my site – sends a message to weblogs.com to tell it that I’ve updated the site.) BlogToaster sends you an IM whenever blogs you like are updated. From an organizational point of view, this lets users off the hook (in a good way): they don’t have to hunt stuff down, it just comes their way. If it were combined with RSS feeds, then your instant messaging client could notify you of new content on your intranet. (See John Robb’s post to the K-Logs group from a couple weeks ago on using RSS for distributing corporate info.)

Add the ability to post instant messages to your weblog (wouldn’t that be nice) and you’ve got a wonderful way to capture, share and distribute relevant information.

Nice.

Interesting. Is anyone else working on something like this?