4INFO Cool

Do you have a blog or RSS feed you wish to promote via SMS? I found a cool new tool from 4INFO that, in about two minutes time, allows one to create an SMS service for just about any RSS feed. In my case I used my Feedburner URL, http://feeds.feedburner.com/drury, and reserved the "drury" and "markdrury" keywords with 4INFO. So if you text either of the those terms to short code 44636 (4info) you'll get an SMS message with my latest blog entries. Why you would wish to do that for my blog is another question, but it's a pretty handy way to promote information services, especially those that change frequently. Here are just a few of the services I created while testing 4INFO's offering:

cnnpt (CNN's political ticker)
drury, markdrury
earthquakes, quakes
mebay [search term(s)]
pgagolf
rydercup
u2b, utube, youtube [search term(s)]
yahoonews [search term(s)]

4INFO offers four different service types, ranging from a Simple Menu Service, with static content, to XML Web Applications, that allow one to provide an XSL to parse and display the feed as desired (the mebay and youtube services are XML web applications).

4INFO's Open Platform site also has a number of example services to get you up and running quickly, and there's a developer forum if you have questions or comments that aren't addressed by 4INFO's content. Visit the site, create an account, and you, too, can have people following your blog or feed on their cell phones within minutes.