ZapTXT! vs FeedRinse

Since writing about FeedRinse earlier this week I’ve had a few people point me towards ZapTXT! as a possible alternate or competitor. On the surface the two appear to more or less do the same thing, both advertise that they can help “filter your RSS”. ZapTXT! watches your feeds and alerts you via SMS, IM or email whenever something you’re looking for appears in the feeds you add to the service. FeedRinse on the other hand imports your entire OPML file and then allows you to filter out what you don’t want to see. In both cases you still view your feed in whatever reader you are using.

ZapTXT! lets you know right away that there is something to read you’re keeping an eye on. FeedRinse lets you reduce the overall amount of information overload in your reader.

The ZapTXT! FAQ explains best why you might use it.

Let’s say I am looking to buy a Powerbook on craigslist.org. Of course, since it’s so popular, there might be 100 other people looking for Powerbook at the same time, so it becomes crucial to be able to reply first when you see an appropriate post. However, I don’t want to stay at my computer all day long and refresh the craigslist page to check for new posts every couple of minutes. So, I can define a task at ZapTXT that will check all new RSS posts on craigslist every couple of minutes. If one of them contains the keyword “Powerbook”, it will immediately send me an SMS alert.

Together FeedRinse and ZapTXT! compliment each other nicely if you have some feeds that you watch closely for particular items or topics. I don’t see how they can be compared though as they offer quite different functions.