With regards to Google Alerts, wouldn't it be pretty easy to set up a scheduled task using any decent scripting language (or even just standard unix utilities) to just read a text file of search-terms, scrape the results on Google, and email you the results?
HN Challenge: Do the above, in any language, in the smallest number of lines. I have a feeling it can be achieved in one, so we may need to judge by number of characters :-)
And sorry, I don't see discontinuing Google Reader as the death of RSS, no matter what the author may feel. It's really just the death of a nice RSS reader. I do however feel that the author is correct in saying that RSS is not really compatible with Google's advertising business.
HN Challenge: Do the above, in any language, in the smallest number of lines. I have a feeling it can be achieved in one, so we may need to judge by number of characters :-)
And sorry, I don't see discontinuing Google Reader as the death of RSS, no matter what the author may feel. It's really just the death of a nice RSS reader. I do however feel that the author is correct in saying that RSS is not really compatible with Google's advertising business.