Last weekend we added support for a real-time feed notification protocol called pubsubhubbub. What does this mean for you? It means that real-time notifications for Feed My Inbox just got a little more "real-time".

Real-time notification protocols are able to "push" feed updates as they happen to feed readers like Feed My Inbox, instead of us having to check the feed manually every few minutes. Usually feeds that are enabled with a real-time protocol take 1-5 minutes to be delivered, while other feeds can take 5-25 minutes on average.

The two big real-time protocols are RSS Cloud (which we started supporting last October) and pubsubhubbub. While RSS Cloud has the much better name, pubsubhubbub is more popular because all Feedburner-hosted feeds use it. We are currently monitoring nearly 18,000 feeds and growing that are pubsubhubbub-enabled. You can watch this video for more information on how it works:

A possible bug

One thing we have noticed since deploying this update is that some folks are getting duplicate emails. We're working on a fix and made an update as late as today that will hopefully take care of it. Don't hesitate to let us know if you are having duplicate email issues. We'll post any updates if necessary here. Thanks!

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Have you ever wanted to receive an email when new events are added to a calendar? We sure have! In the office we keep a vacation/out of office calendar, but no one was being notified when someone added to it. Since we use Google Calendar and Feed My Inbox (of course), it was easy to setup email notifications. Here's how it works:

1. Login to Google Calendar and click the "Settings" link on the top right. Then click the "Calendars" tab like so ...

2. Click on the calendar you would like to subscribe to, which can be your calendar or one that you are subscribed to.

3. Scroll to the bottom and you will see a series of calendar address buttons. What we need is the XML address. So click on the XML button that applies to you, whether the calendar is public or private:

4. A window will popup with the calendar XML address in it. Copy/paste that URL into FeedMyInbox.com along with your email address like so:

5. If necessary, confirm the subscription and you are all set!

One thing to keep in mind is that items are added to the feed based on the time they are ADDED, not the time they OCCUR. So this makes the most sense when you want to be notified of new items added to a calendar.

Pretty easy, huh? Let us know if you have any questions about it.

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