NewsMon

NewsMon is a terrific new tool provided free by Paul Myers of TalkBiz News.  It allows you to subscribe to ezines, news, and other information sources without using your email address.  The impetus behind the development of this program is the proliferation of spam online and the difficulties in delivering information content to subscribers because of spam filters.

Let's start out by taking a look at NewsMon.  It is a downloadable program that sits unobtrusively in your system tray.

The NewsMon icon is the first icon in the system tray at the bottom of the screen, right hand side.  To open Newsmon, all you do is click the icon.

NewsMon opens and looks like this on your screen (Figure 1):

Figure 1:

Figure 1

NewsMon is open to the "News Updates" screen.  In this example you see our two newsletters listed along with three updates from NewsMon.  To open an update, just double-click it in the list or click the button labeled "Open Article" on the left hand side.

You will also notice that the status of these articles is "Hidden."  You can see this status in the column labeled "Visited" on the right hand side.  Once you have viewed an update, the article is hidden.  You can still access it through NewsMon by clicking the "View Hidden" button on the left hand side.

When you visit a site that supports NewsMon, you will be given a link to paste into NewsMon when setting up a new ezine.  The link will look something like this:

http://www.peaksbc.com/update.txt

From NewsMon you would select the "Setup Ezines" button on the left side.  NewsMon will look like this (Figure 2):

Figure 2:

Figure 2

When you choose the "Add Ezine" button on the left side, you get a popup screen that looks like this (Figure 3) after you add the name of the update and the URL the publisher provides you:

Figure 3:

Figure 3

Once your information is entered, the ezine will be added to your list and you can access future issues as they are released.

NewsMon users should set up our magazine on NewsMon using the following information:

Simply highlight the URL in the text box and copy it into the appropriate field on NewsMon.

As you can see from Figure 2, you can also modify or remove ezines from your updates list whenever you choose.  Want to unsubscribe?  You don't need to send an email.  Just remove it from NewsMon and it's gone.

You can also set an ezine as inactive if you want to cease receiving update notices for awhile.  When you're ready to continue reading, simply toggle the ezine back to active.  Again, you are in total control.