By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

KnowNow today introduced its "eLerts" RSS service to the general public which pops up an alert that new content has been published.

And users don't need a news aggregator or a portal to read and manage RSS feeds. It is all done through the tool bar.

The free service is based on an enterprise IT system KnowNow already sells to corporations, except that this one runs on KnowNow servers.

Okay, it does require yet another Explorer tool bar to be installed, but it is worth giving up the screen real-estate because of its simplicity of use.

I downloaded the Beta of eLerts and played around with it and it was pretty much effortless. Drag and drop and click are *all* users should have to know in order to subscribe to an RSS feed.

Enabling such simplicity is a service to the entire community of RSS feed publishers.

. . .

RSS is still an unspoiled communications channel. It is spam filter and virus free, highly personalized and it is opt-in too. Let's hope RSS stays unspoilt because those qualities I just described are what online marketeers dream about :-)