PC Magazine -- April 9, 1996

News Alert Inc.: Internet News Alert

Michael W. Muchmore

A Web-based news-searching service that allows you to set up a personal topic page, Internet News Alert comes from a company that specializes in creating custom news feeds for businesses.

News Alert's news sources are heavily skewed toward business, political, and public relations news wires such as BusinessWire, PC Quotes, and U.S. Newswire. Major services like AP, Reuters, and UPI are notably absent, but News Alert does offer Sports Network and plans to add more general coverage. The basic service, which includes headlines from limited sources and delayed financial quotes, is free, but you pay $1.95 for an article's full text after one full-text retrieval per source per day. For $3.95 a month, the Executive News option gives you headlines, quotes, three full-text retrievals, and selected reports.

On Internet News Alert's topic setup page, you can create five named topics and enter a search expression for each. The ten most recent headlines that match your search criteria are then displayed on your personal news page. Internet News Alert's searching tools include Boolean operators and wild cards for text strings. You can submit your saved search topics at any time or access your User's News screen from a link at the bottom of any Internet News Alert page to get the top ten stories for all your topics.

Clicking on a topic displays a summary page that shows ten relevance-ranked stories with news source, dateline, and a summary headline for each. A check box next to each story lets you select multiple articles to preview. A simple button click then generates a browsable preview page for all the stories you've marked. You can also view the full text of a story by clicking on an article headline; your keywords are shown in boldface in the text.

Our test topics immediately produced many hits. As with many other services, we got some irrelevant articles simply because they contained a given keyword.

Internet News Alert is a useful, well-designed customizable news service. It offers immediate results and a clear interface.

Internet News Alert. List price: Basic headline searches, free; Executive News, $3.95 per month; each additional full-text retrieval, $1.95. News Alert Inc., New York, NY; 212-843-6060; fax, 212-889-5281; http://www.newsalert.com/.

Suitability to Task

Internet News Alert

Ease of setup        Excellent
Customizability      Good
Quality of delivery  Good

Topic Strength

U.S. news            **
World news           ***
Business             ***
Sports               **
Arts & entertainment *
Technology           ***