FAQs

ZapTXT is a free service that lets you monitor one or many RSS or Atom feeds for a set of keywords that interest you. We will monitor the feeds for you, and send you a notification whenever one of your feeds matches your criteria. You can choose to receive these notices via:

• Email
• Mobile device (SMS)
• Instant Messenger

People use ZapTXT to monitor newspapers, blogs, classifieds, jobs, events and millions of Web sites that support RSS. Click here to learn more about what people are doing with ZapTXT.

When you tell us to monitor a feed for a particular keyword, we create a "ZapTask" for you. Think of it as an agent out there on the network, watching the Web site(s) you specified for the criteria you indicated. When there is a posting that matches your criteria, the ZapTask will kick in to send you an alert via the delivery method you specified when you created the ZapTask (email, SMS or IM).

Just go to the ZapTXT home page (http://www.zaptxt.com/) and select either a "quick ZapTask" from feeds we have pre-selected, or create your own custom ZapTask with any RSS or Atom feed.
When you create your first ZapTask, we will ask you from some additional information (like your email address) so that we can register you use a user. Don't worry; we will never share this information with third parties.
You can also create ZapTasks quickly from directly within your browser by downloading the ZapTXT bookmarklet.

Here are two examples, SMS and email, for a ZapTask called "lego":
SMS Alert: Lego Blocks $5 08/15 21:40 anon-913311@craigslist.org lego#437
Email Alert: 08/15/2005 21:40 Lego Blocks $5 http://url_to_orginal_post.html anon-913311@craigslist.org
To see past alert results go to: http://www.zaptxt.com/alert/list/ ZapTXT - lego#437

Our Quick links have frequently used feeds already built in so you don't need to find feeds for Quick ZapTasks. To create a custom ZapTask using an RSS feed, you need to find the URL for the feed. Many Web sites feature buttons that look like this:

When you find one of these buttons on a Web site, click on the link and you will get a page displaying the RSS feed. Just copy the URL from your browser's address window, then paste it into the Custom ZapTask URL field.

That depends on the frequency you select when you set up your ZapTask. You can choose to receive notices: - Hourly (at one minute past the hour) - Daily (every day at 11:30 AM PST) - Hourly between 8AM - 10PM (PST) - Hourly between 6PM - 11PM (PST) - As they appear
As soon as one of your feeds gets updated to match your criteria, you will receive your first alert according to the schedule you have selected. If you need a different "frequency/schedule", for different time zones, email us and we'll set it up for you.

After you have registered and signed in, you can turn off your ZapTasks anytime by logging into ZapTXT (http://www.zaptxt.com/), and clicking on "Turn Off" next to the ZapTask you would like to turn off.

Yes. You can reactivate ZapTasks anytime by going to Inactive ZapTasks and clicking on "Turn On".

The ZapTXT Mobile Widget allows you to respond to posts from your mobile phone. Read all about it here.

We try to make it easy for you to find the original posts for all of your past alerts. All you have to do is log in to the ZapTXT home page (http://www.zaptxt.com/) and review your list of ZapTasks. You can also view results by time, by clicking on the Results by Time button at the top of the MyZapTasks page.

Yes, absolutely. One of the important features of this service is the ability to monitor information across your favorite, trusted content sources. When setting up a Custom ZapTask, click on 'add more sites' to add more feeds or URLs. If you are using one of the pre-selected feeds on specific subjects, simply check off the feeds that interest you and we will monitor all of them for your chosen keywords.

Once you set up a ZapTask, you can change just about any selections you made when you first created this task: delivery preferences, frequency, feed lists, key words and tags.

Email us the name of your mobile provider and we'll try to add it to our list.

ZapTXT works outside the U.S. for email and IM notifications only and for email, IM notifications and SMS in the US and Canada. For non-US users you can download the ZapTXT mobile widget and use that to receive and respond to alerts.

Yes, you have the option of specifying "frequency of alert delivery". If you don't want to receive alerts at night, select the "every hour between 8AM-10PM" frequency. If you need a different "frequency", email us and we'll set it up for you.

No problem. You have the option of specifying "frequency of alert delivery" for each ZapTask that you create. If you want to receive alerts every hour day or night, select the "every hour" frequency; if you want to receive alerts only in the evening, select the "every hour between 6PM and 11PM". If you need a different "frequency", email us and we'll set it up for you.

Yes, when you create a ZapTask, leave the keywords fields blank however we highly recommend that you use key words. Most media sites, classified sites such as Craigslist and many blogs post a few times an the hour so you may get inundated with posts. If you still choose to set up a ZapTasks without keywords, use "email delivery method" first (not SMS) to see how many alerts this ZapTask generates.

Some content sources have multiple feeds that they publish. In most cases, these feeds are duplicates for the same content (a RSS and an ATOM feed). In this case, you can pick either one and you will get the same content.
In some cases each feed might serve a different purpose. For example, one feed might point to the main posts and another might point to comments. When this is the case, the feed name usually describes what content comes with each feed. You can choose one or all feeds that are made available.

RSS is an XML standard which allows "readers" to keep track of what changes on a website. Read about it here.

ZapTXT supports most RSS versions and ATOM.
To ensure that we only send you NEW alerts, the RSS feed from a content provider has to include a date and time element. Most feeds to include these elements however, some publishers have not updated their RSS standard or choose not to include a data and time element.

Sometimes when setting up a ZapTask, the RSS link will not be valid. The RSS link is outside the scope of ZapTXT's control. You can tell that an RSS link is invalid if at Step 2 of setting up a new alert, you get an error message. Should this happen, try at a later time. Sometimes the RSS links are repaired after a short period of time. You can also try web based RSS validators such as http://www.feedvalidator.org/

OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is an XML format that lets you create lists of RSS feeds as a hierarchical, ordered list of arbitrary elements. If you have created an OPML URL, you can upload it to ZapTXT from the using the 'Advanced' link under the Custom ZapTask set-up section on the MyZapTask page.

If you want to monitor and filter several RSS feeds with the same keywords, you can define your search criteria for a single OPML and all feeds in the file will 'inherit' the search criteria. If ZapTXT didn't support OPML, you would have to define search criteria for each feed individually.

Yes. You can define search criteria for OPML just like you do for individual ZapTasks.

When you define search criteria and any other attributes (delivery frequency and method) for OPML, every feed in the OPML file will "inherit" the search criteria and attributes.

Yes. You can deactivate an OPML ZapTask just like you deactivate individual ZapTasks. When you deactivate an OPML, all feeds in the OPML will be deactivated.

Some OPML files can contain hundreds of feeds so the time it takes to process this task varies depending on how large your file is. We continue to optimize this process to lower the time it takes to import OPML.

At this time we only offer the ability to import an OPML URL. You need to host your OPML on a public server and bring that URL to ZapTXT.

Yes you can. Simply click on the 'Export' link next to each ZapTask on your MyZapTasks page and your browser will guide you from then on. If you use Flock, simply drag the file into your favorites.