Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
h a l f b a k e r y
It's as much a hovercraft as a pancake is a waffle.

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Early Warning System
Spinoff from the Public Service Spam idea
  (+1, -2)
(+1, -2) 		  [vote for,
against]


As I was going through the annos from the aforementioned idea it occurred to me that there are a lot of things I do on a daily basis on the computer that involve more than one or two steps. Inexperienced users probably take even more steps. With that in mind it might be profitable for a company like Symantec to add a fee-based feature to its antivirus product that would let buyers automatically receive emails tailored to their interests and location that are sent to them when the LiveUpdate process takes place during the initial signon.

For instance, the program could be set up so that if you set on a flag for 'crime reports' and keyed in a distance you'd automatically get a list of the recent crimes falling within the distance you keyed. Another flag could be set on for 'traffic reports' that would look for accidents between a start and end point you loaded into the program. If a feature like this was offered then I wouldn't have to mess around with RSS or jump from site to site to get all of the information I'd like to get. I could just fire up my email program, click on the message from Symantec and find everything all put together for me in one spot.

longshot9999, Nov 29 2006


Short name, e.g., Bob's Coffee

Destination URL. E.g., http://www.coffee.com/

Description (displayed with the short name and URL.)







       (-) You want one vendor, whose business has nothing to do with media, to make your media choices for you? That just seems wrong on the face of it.   

       Geocoding RSS items and getting "local news" based on that - that's a good idea, though. I wonder if someone does that yet.   

       "I wouldn't have to mess around with RSS" -- reading RSS should be as easy as opening your newspaper. The existing RSS readers don't do it for you?
jutta, Nov 29 2006
   

       jutta - That pretty much sums up what I want. It's not such a jump though to ask a vendor who keeps me from getting what I don't want (spam, viruses, etc..) to give me what I do want (information pertinent to my specific location). From the vendor's point of view this would be a profitable enhancement that would help protect their product line by making it more diverse. From the user's point of view it would be a value-added situation that would save them time in exchange for money.   

       Existing RSS readers might do what I want but I'm not really thinking about myself here. I'm thinking about the users who go cross-eyed whenever they see an acronym like RSS. (And by 'mess around' I mean do the setup.)
longshot9999, Nov 29 2006
   


 
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