We recently re-casted the Jobs category under Quick ZapTasks on the right side of main console. Our list of feeds, whilst somewhat arbitrary did have some method to the madness. They present a list of feeds from the leading technology/Web 2.0/New Media blogs that have started offering job boards with RSS feeds.

Update: We just added the LifeHacker Job Board Feed to this list as well. The ZapTask link below also has been updated.

For those that are wondering what the utility is of a specialty job board, here’s a good post I came across, written by Paul Stamatiou.

Here’s the (updated) list:

• 37 Signals
• Crunchboard (TechCrunch)
• Guy Kawasaki Job Site
• Joel On Software
• PaidContent
• ProBlogger
• Read/WriteWeb
• Slashdot
• TechGigger
• VentureBeat
• LifeHacker

Here’s what a sample ZapTXT alert looks like for a Flash designer posting on LifeHacker:

Unfortunately, some job boards offered by a few of the well-known blogs do not have well formed feeds but we have many of the good ones here.

To get started

• On ZapTXT.com, go to the Jobs section under Quick ZapTasks,
  check off the job boards that you want to monitor, filter listings if
  you like (e.g. Designer, Marketing, etc), and pick your delivery
  preferences. Thats it. Move on with your life, we’ll alert when we
  find a match.

OR

• Or if you want to monitor the whole list above, use this shared ZapTask for Jobs that has all of the feeds bundled up as one. For those of you so inclined, you can even export this as OPML if you like, to take it to your reader after you set it up. Just click on the Export link on your MyZapTasks page.

Drop us a line in the comments section below if you think we omitted any good ones.

Happy Zapping, Sameer

technorati tags:Jobs, ZapTXT, JobBoards, Job+Boards, Specialty+JobBoards, RSS+Jobs, RSS

We just formally announced ourselves to the world and released a new set of features.

Here’s a run-down of whats new in this release:

1. Publisher widgets: If you publish content that is RSS-enabled, please check this out. You’ll see how we can help you drive traffic, inform your editorial strategy and generate better ad revenue.

Here’s where you can find the the what’s, why’s and how’s.

2. Receive your alerts as a custom RSS feeds: If you like ZapTXT’s monitoring features but prefer using a traditional RSS reader to receive ZapTXT alerts, you can now do that.

In addition to traditional RSS Readers, if you live within a start page such as Netvibes, here’s what it would look like. All your information still on your start page. Cool?

3. Share your ZapTasks: You can now share a ZapTask that you created with friends and colleagues. So if you labored over building an air tight list of feeds to monitor say a competitor, a gadget, a drug, simply hit share and fire it off to someone. Of course you could also export as an OPML file if you like.

4: Top Searches: Don’t know what feeds to use for a ZapTask you would like to create? We now let you see feeds in the ZapTXT ecosystem, by search term. Some of you found that leveraging the collective intelligence in this way to be a useful approach. So here you go!

Eduard, Xavier, Jane get all the credit for making this happen on the development and production side. Finally, here’s the announcement that went out. For that, a big thanks to Tim for all his hard work and diligence.

Questions? We have answers.

Fire away in the comments section below or drop us a line at support [at] zaptxt-inc.com.

Just a quick note that we have consolidated blogs and news sites that relate to Politics. Based on usage and obvious interest in this subject, breaking this out as a separate Quick ZapTask gets you to resources within this subject area, right away.

Click here to get started

Have a Political News Site or Blog that we left out? Drop us a line at: feedback [at] zaptxt-inc [dot] com
Happy Zapping

Sameer

We’re thrilled to open up ZapTXT support for LJ Talk.
LiveJournal represents a solid illustration of how Social Networks can actually drive usage by leveraging open technologies. Unlike some of the closed networks, LJ users can now use LJ talk to participate in a community, chat with friends outside their LJ experience, as well as access other services such as ZapTXT that they otherwise had to use via an additional IM client. That leads to more LJ usage as opposed to what many closed networks m ight think.
For those of you that are existing ZapTXT users and plan to use LJ Talk as your Instant Messenger Client, follow these 2 steps:

1. Log into ZapTXT and under settings, select LJ Talk as your IM client as seen in the screen shot below

2. Once you’ve updated your settings, simply add ZapTXT as a friend in LiveJournal and ZapTXT will show up in your buddy list.
Now, all your ZapTXT Alerts that you elect to receive via IM will show up within LJ.
Here’s a sample….
I have a ZapTask for Mashable. Here’s what my alert looked like on LJ Talk:

If you are new to ZapTXT, simply go to zaptxt.com and click on ‘Start Here’. We’ll walk you through the process and you’ll be up and running in no time. If you have any questions, drop us a line at support [at] zaptxt-inc [dot] com.

Here’s the link to more information on LJ Talk from Live Journal: http://news.livejournal.com/, and a review by Pete Cashmore on Mashable
Happy Zapping,

Sameer

Steve Rubel wrote a post earlier today labeled: How to Get the Most Out of Technorati’s RSS Feeds that clearly describes how to get more out of RSS across the blogosphere using Technorati. Its really worth a read as it highlights how to filter information down to what you care about.

Since we are insanely focused on helping our users filter information down to what you care about I wanted to offer up some nifty uses of this new Technorati feature and ZapTXT. Here goes…
Lets say you want to monitor Google as an example:
To monitor Google on the blogosphere: Grab that feed for your search results in Technorati and create a ZapTask around it. Select delivery mechanisms (SMS, IM or Email) without keywords since you did that in Technorati already. Now get on with your life - we’ll monitor and send you a notification when Google shows up.

Quick Digression: Use the ZapIt! bookmarklet. One click on this link from the Technorati search results page link and we’ll zap you right into ZapTXT to select your delivery preferences. So no need to visit Zaptxt, copy and paste the feed manually etc etc.

To monitor Google on just your set of trusted feeds: (say Micropersuasion, Publishing2.0 and Read/Write Web), bring your feeds to ZapTXT and we’ll monitor them for you as one task for Google in the headlines

To monitor Google on the blogosphere, traditional media sites and just about any other RSS-enabled content source: Create one ZapTask with any amount of feeds - blogs, news related, podcasts, YouTube videos, or social news sites so you get the 360 degree view. Of course, with alerts via mechanisms that you dictate and prefer. (We don’t all like to use readers now do we?)

Happy Friday,

Sameer

Most of our users are really looking to get the right information they need from a set of trusted webpages, delivered to them in the most convenient way (email, IM, SMS, RSS).

Marshall Kirkpatrick of TechCrunch recently wrote a nice post on the new release from Grazr and his analysis, as well as some of the comments to the post prompted me to write a few notes on OPML and how it powers ZapTXT.

We do different stuff here at ZapTXT, the only connection being that we also strive to make access to RSS and OPML easier for the user. Grazr is a very cool application that pushes the limits of how RSS is used today and given that RSS is the backbone of ZapTXT we can’t help but be thrilled when someone else does something cool to push this technology into the spotlight. Grazr is still in its infancy in terms of promise and main stream usability but its charging at full speed in the right direction.

At ZapTXT we try very hard to bring the benefits of new technologies to our user community but shield our users from the technical mumbo jumbo. One of the technologies that we have a lot of faith in is OPML. Props to Dave Winer for conceiving of this technology and its many uses. In our case the ability of OPML to bring a set of RSS feeds in one file is the most common use.

So how did we accomplish this objective of leveraging useful technology without requiring you to have the technical know-how?

You many not know this but as a ZapTXT user, you are already using OPML. When you combine multiple feeds to search against, you have created an OPML file! Yay. It’s really that simple within ZapTXT. Once you set up a ZapTask with multiple feeds (your OPML file), you can edit this OPML file by a) adding or removing sites (yes, I say ’sites’ because we do the auto discovery for you - you enter a URL for a web page and we go and fetch the RSS feed for you), b) change your keywords or c) your delivery preferences to make this OPML file as pointed and relevant to your task monitoring needs.

For those that are aware of OPML, you can bring an OPML URL to ZapTXT by clicking on Advanced when you are logged in. We suck in the OPML file and let you monitor the entire feed set against keywords and alert you in real time when there’s a match. Say you spend a lot of time refining you feeds within the OPML file via ZapTXT and have other uses for it outside of ZapTXT (maybe you want to use it with Grazr!). No problem. It’s very easy to export. In fact if you use the RSS reader within Mozilla or Flock, just drag the file name to your RSS list and you’re done.

So congratulations to the rest of you ZapTXT users that prefer that the technology adapts to your needs, seamlessly and in the background, instead of the other way around. You can proudly say that you’ve been using OPML as well.

Happy Zapping, Sameer

ZapTXT forums went live last week. We hope to use the forums to collect feedback, comments and ignite a discussion on how ZapTXT can support specific user communities with their ‘need to know now’ as well as general content filtering needs.

In addition to Craigslist and eBay users, our tag cloud has begun to flourish with very useful feeds around topics such as diabetes, gadgets and PR. It’s nice to see how people are using ZapTXT to receive alerts about important information that they would otherwise have to monitor manually.

Two companies feed sets have also emerged for Sun and Cisco. For example the Sun tag ropes in a sort of 360 on the company’s publicly available content sources - press releases, events, Jonathans blog as well as other important information such as system and patch updates. Nice to see early on.

We hope that the forums compliments these and new user communities to drive not only sharing on useful feeds but also on how we can continue to improve how ZapTXT serves your specific filtering needs.

We look forward to engaging with you at the Forums site.

Happy Zapping, Sameer