Hi folks -- hope you all had a good weekend. Oh, and welcome to spring (don't put away those shovels just yet, though).
Now, about Alerts: I've gotten a few notes from people who are worried that Alerts are going away (they're not) -- for example, Csandhollow blogged about it.
The driver behind this is an e-mail that the Alerts folks sent out about some changes to Alerts that will be happening at the end of March.
One of those changes is that one specific type of alert is going away for a bit, to be replaced by a new version later this year. The version that's going away is the Member-Generated Alert -- it's one particular type of Alert that isn't used by very many people, and it doesn't affect anything else.
The Member-Generated Alert is an Alert that regular folks can create so they can send Alerts to a select group of people. It's kind of like an e-mail group, only it uses the Alerts delivery system.
For example, I have one that I'd created to let a few of my cow-orkers know when I get my new copy of People (it's a comp subscription -- I'm not a People person).
(The Daily Scores Roundup is also going to be discontinued, though I'm not as familiar with that one.)
I spoke to the Alerts product manager, who assured me that all the other kinds of Alerts, including the editorial Alerts (like the Skywatcher Alert that I get), and the Journals New Entry Alerts and Comment Added Alerts will still be around after the March 30 Alerts install.
FYI, I asked him if there were any other Alerts changes that would be happening on March 30; he said there would be some changes to clean up the UI (user interface), as well as a more significant change: Right now, there's an Alerts "cascade" -- when you sign up for an Alert, you can get instant delivery as well as e-mail delivery. If you're online when the Alert is sent, you will get the instant Alert; if you're not online, it will send you an e-mail.
The cascade seemed to confuse some people, who didn't realize that signing up for an alert meant they might get an instant Alert as well as an e-mail Alert, and were wondering where the e-mail was coming from.
After the March 30 install, you're still going to be able to get instant and e-mailed Alerts -- it just won't automaticallycascade anymore -- you'll have to explicitly pick your delivery methods.
Anyway, that's the story on Alerts. Thanks -- Joe
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
thank you very much for explaining this. I, for one, really appreciate this new way of communication between the Overlords and the consumer. Kudos, and best hopes that it continues.
Thanks for clearing it all up for us
Thanks so much for explaining this. And in a way that I actually understood! LOL
Kathy
people get hysterical over silly things, LOL , geesh.
~Julie
oh btw! my pic problem magically corrected itself!!
Thanks for the explanation, Joe. I hadn't heard anything about alert changes, so this was all new to me...thanks for keeping us informed! :-)
~ Susan
http://journals.aol.com/njmom72/InMyLife
The only people who got the Alerts changes e-mail was people who had created a Member-Generated Alert, which as noted, isn't really very many people.
Thanks -- Joe
h
I am glad to hear this. I hope it fixes the problem of the alerts that I have been having lately/ I have my alerts set to email only and every new journal I sign up for to get alerts automatically gets set to email and instant alert! That can get annoying.
I am glad the alerts are staying. For the most part I only have private journals on alerts anymore with a few exceptions, yours being one of them. I get your alert in email!
Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see you again someday.
Celeste
thanks for the info. I was confused on this
angelrose
Post a Comment