PubSub

When I hear "PubSub," I get hungry. I call sub sandwichs from our local grocery store, Publix, "Pub Subs." In a way, that is fitting because PubSub is a new service that can feed my hunger…for information. PubSub is a matching service that instantly notifies you when new content is created that matches your subscription. Its custom Matching Engine matches millions of search queries against thousands of new pieces of information every second. PubSub currently reads 12 million+ weblogs, more than 50,000 internet newsgroups and all SEC (EDGAR) filings, and they will be adding more in the upcoming months. You can even install a PubSub sidebar right into your Firefox browser….and, oh yeah, Intenet Explorer, too.

As impressive as that all sounds, I’m not yet highly thrilled with the service just yet. I put in some very common queries like "Harry Potter," for example, and it brought back results that have nothing to do with "Harry Potter" at all. You can use Boolean expressions and quotes, but it didn’t seem to help. I had to edit the queries to be very specific, like "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," in order to get results that worked, and even then, I got a lot of garbage. I’m willing to wait and give the service a chance to work out the kinks though, because if it works, it would be great. PubSub, get it together.

Update: Since I’ve posted this, I’ve received not one, but two emails from the PubSub people trying to find out specifically what queries I’ve had problems with and attempting to help me resolve them. Now that’s proactive customer service!