Pingie! Free RSS to SMS

RSS is great for when you're at your computer or actively reading feeds on your mobile device but it's not as pervasive and intrusive as SMS text messages. That may seem great, I mean who would want to be constantly bombarded by RSS updates on their phone? But for the very important feed or two, a new RSS to SMS service dubbed Pingie hopes to ensure you don't get left behind.

Pingie is a service from the folks at UNEASYsilence and a number of real uses for it already come to mind. Want to make sure you don't miss out on the latest Slickdeal, or better yet PSTAM post? Pingie can help. However, those uses are a bit more pedestrian than potential uses such as sending campus news/emergency alerts to your phone.

Once you create an account on Pingie you can add feeds and later login to change settings. Don't worry about becoming flooded with SMS messages though - you must reply to a text with "PING ME" to start the service and you can stop at any time by replying with "STOP PING". Here's what a Pingie SMS notification looks like:

FRM:pingie@pingie.com SUBJ:Pingie: 2008 PSTAM Reader Roll Call MSG: 2008 PSTAM Reader Roll Call

By default Pingie also sends email notifications, but I don't care for that too much so I disabled it in my account settings. If Pingie had to change one thing, I would say the format of the actual SMS. There's too much info in there that is superfluous and redundant. A simple "Pingie: [POST NAME] on [Website Name]" would suffice, with perhaps a link for iPhone users to tap on.

Do you think Pingie could come in handy for you?