Women2.0 is a San Francisco based organization focused on encouraging and supporting women in the field of entrepreneurship. We’re thrilled to share that the site is now using ZapTXT to power notifications via IM, Skype, Email or Mobile device. The Women2.0 community, the press and other interested folks can now receive filtered notifications on topics of interest across the site.

“We are a group of ambitious women and always have to balance our full time jobs, with full time passions. We are confident ZapTXT is the perfect tool for our community. Our members can now be in sync about upcoming Women 2.0 events through the channel of their choice. ZapTXT is a perfect fit for my lifestyle.” said Shaherose Charania of Women 2.0.

Women 2.0 hosts events and mixers that provide a forum for women entrepreneurs, to help launch new companies, network with experienced entrepreneurs and executives and to meet investors. The group also hosts a Ning-powered social network for Women Entrepreneurs so if you are a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned one that has wisdom to share, take a look here.

The group hosts an annual Pitch event where finalists will pitch to a judging panel of investors, executives and seasoned entrepreneurs for the chance to earn top prizes of cash and exclusive meetings with iconic investors. The deadline for submitting a business plan is April 1, 2008.

Women2.0 was founded by Shaherose Charania, Angie Chang, Shivani Sopory and Wen-Wen Lam and has a impressive Steering Committee that includes Rachel Cook, Chris Shipley, Rebecca Weeks, Katherine Barr, Ellen Levy, Alka Gupta, Carol Sands and Shannon McClenaghan.

We also join TeXtra, mogulus and realgirlsmedia (RGM) as media partners with Women2.0 and we plan to do a lot more to help get the word out in the coming months.

Special thanks to Shaherose Charania and Angie Chang for making this happen.

To follow the latest at Women2.0, subscribe to this ZapTask.

Cheers, Sameer

technorati tags:ZapTXT, Women2.0, Notifications, Ning, Shaherose+Charania, Angie+Chang

We’re stoked to announce that TheStreet.com is using ZapTXT to enable its reader community to receive filtered notifications via Instant Messenger, SMS, Skype or Email. TheStreet.com users get all the current functionality that they would from ZapTXT.com - filter content, edit their feed sets, share ZapTasks and of course elect to receive alerts via any and all delivery mechanisms including the recently announced support for Skype.

For those of you not from the United States, TheStreet.com, founded in 1996, is a premium content provider on topics such as Investing, Stocks, Home Business, Mutual Funds, Real Estate & Personal Finance News and Analysis.

What’s particularly neat is that ZapTXT is wired to monitor content at the category level (Top Stories, Jim Cramer’s Mad Money Recap, Personal Finance, Video, Podcasts, etc.) as seen in the image below. A total of 58 new feeds and 20 paid content feeds are available

TheStreet.com users can now use ZapTXT to receive notifications when say a stock, fund, or any particular topic that they are interested in, hits the headlines on TheStreet.com. You pick one or more categories as seen above, filter by keywords or phrases and move on with your life. ZapTXT will notify you when we find a match.Here’s a quick example: Say the topic of Housing is top of mind for you these days.

• Go to the Street.coms RSS page
• Click on the ZapTXT button and you’ll see all of the categories light up with a ZapTXT button.
• Click on ZapTXT next any of the topics (e.g. Latest Headlines or Nicholas Yulicos who writes about real estate) and you’ll land on a set up page where you can filter headlines by keywords such as Housing, Homes, Tuscon, Townhouses etc.
• Select your delivery preferences (Email, IM, Skype or Mobile) and that’s it. You can create as many alerts as you want.

Or here are a few ZapTasks we set up to get you started. Click on any of these links and you’ll be on your way.
TheStreet.com Headlines: ZapTask
TheStreet.com Top Read: ZapTask
TheStreet.com 5 Dumbest Things on WallStreet: ZapTask
Jim Cramer’s Mad Money Recap: ZapTask
TheStreet.com Videos: ZapTask
All of Jim Cramer’s goodies rolled into one Task (Mad Money, Mailbag, Stop Trading, Cramer on Demand, Exec Interviews): ZapTask

We’ve been seeing a lot of users monitoring financial sites and blogs recently from ZapTXT.com and TheStreet.com is a great addition that we are thrilled and proud to be working with. As our newest publisher, it’s been great to work with them and we look forward to more goodies as we roll out new capabilities over the coming months.

TheStreet.com’s feeds are powered by the wonderful FeedBurner. Here’s FeedBurners announcement and the press release.

Happy Zapping or maybe Booyah! is more appropriate this time
Cheers, Sameer

There’s been quality commentary about local journalism and citizen journalism lately due to the difficult (but hopefully not insurmountable) developments at BackFence. I was drawn to this story by Mathew Ingram’s post that kindled good discussion amongst experts, one of which I certainly am NOT!

What I do know is that from a consumer perspective, hyper local blogging works. We are proud and grateful to be powering notifications via IM, Email and SMS for a very vibrant local community called Hoboken411.com (they were nice enough to post about ZapTXT here) that has many of the qualities that Mathew alludes to in this quote: “I would agree with Frank that in order to draw people in, a local site has to live and breathe the area it covers, and have lively personalities and content.”

Hoboken411.com services the Hoboken community with blow by blow, almost real time commentary on News, Events, Reviews, Accidents and Recreation, getting north of 50 comments on many many posts. Sample this post that generated over 350 comments that any blogger or publisher would be envious of.

I for one really want local journalism to work. Backfence sent me invaluable information about a shooting one day when I was at work and my wife and 11-month old son were at home, blocks away from an incident that took place in our nieghbourhood. I have received many other useful posts coming straight from the police and fire department via BackFence.

This stuff works for consumers folks. Please find a way to make it work for the bottom line too.

Happy Zapping, Sameer