Adam Kalsey

This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

Introducing Feed Crier

19 Aug 2006

The town crier of old made sure that everyone was informed of important news and events. Today he’s back and powered by RSS and Instant Messaging.

Feed Crier is an IM bot that delivers real-time RSS feed updates to your desktop over popular instant messaging protocols. For end users, no account creation is necessary—just send a message to the bot (screen name "feedcrier") containing a feed URL and start getting feed alerts. Basic services are free, with premium services costing just a few dollars a month.

If you want to give your site’s readers an easy way to subscribe by IM, there’s a little "Add this feed to Feed Crier" button available. Publishers wanting a customized, branded feed alert service can hook into the Feed Crier API and provide readers with customized IM feed alerts. Publisher pricing is based on user volume.

Both Tailrank and TagJag have signed on to use Feed Crier to provide IM alerts to their users.

Currently, Feed Crier is in beta using the AOL Instant Messenger protocol. Support for other IM protocols including Yahoo, MSN, and Jabber is under development. Thanks to Kevin Burton and Jesper for extensive testing and feedback as I developed this.

Please use it and abuse it. There’s probably feeds out there that it doesn’t work with yet. Report those or any other oddities to me and I’ll get them fixed right away.

Recently Written

Your OKR Cascade is Breaking Your Strategy
Aug 1: Most companies cascade OKRs down their org chart thinking it creates alignment. Instead, it fragments strategy and marginalizes supporting teams. Here's what works better than the waterfall approach.
Your Prioritization Problem Is a Strategy Problem
Jul 23: Most teams struggle with prioritization because they're trying to optimize for everything at once. The real problem isn't having too many options—it's not having a clear strategy to choose between them. Without strategy, every decision feels equally important. With strategy, most decisions become obvious.
Behind schedule
Jul 21: Your team is 6 weeks late and still missing features. The solution isn't working harder—it's accepting that your deadlines were fake all along. Ship what you have. Cut ruthlessly. Stop letting "one more day" turn into one more month.
VC’s Future Lies In Building Winners
Jun 21: AI and megafunds are about to kill the traditional venture model, forcing smaller VCs to stop hunting for hidden gems and start rolling up their sleeves to fix broken companies instead.
Should individual people have OKRs?
May 14: A good OKR describes and measures an outcome, but it can be challenging to create an outcome-focused OKR for an individual.
10 OKR traps and how to avoid them
May 8: I’ve helped lots of teams implement OKRs or fix a broken OKR process. Here are the 10 most common problems I see, and what to do instead.
AI is Smart, But Wisdom Requires Judgement
May 3: AI can process data at lightning speed, but wisdom comes from human judgment—picking the best imperfect option when facts alone don’t point the way.
Decoding Product Leadership Titles
Mar 18: Not all product leadership titles mean what they sound like. ‘Head of Product’ can mean anything from a senior PM to a true VP. Here’s how to tell the difference.

Older...

What I'm Reading