PubSub: beta testing upgrade to Sidebar

PubSub, whose "matching service that instantly notifies you when new content is created that matches your subscription," will "soon" release new versions of their sidebar (which shows your matches live in a sidebar in Internet Explorer or Firefox).

The improvements are said to be:

• Auto-reconnect support that reestablishes the session after a network interruption or when the user’s machine awakens from hibernation.
• An options menu for configuring user settings.
• A new option allows display of the PubSub LinkRank of the currently viewed page.
• Automatic detection of LAN proxy configuration, with automatic tunneling through the proxy on port 443, which should enable use of the Sidebar in many firewalled networks.
• Backend improvements to ensure faster and more reliable message delivery.
• Some bug fixes to improve stability.

Live matching is potentially very useful (though Pubsub now have the Technorati Mini to contend with, which can also be used in a Firefox sidebar and even Opera panel), but on my system Pubsub's sidebar has never worked properly in either IE or Firefox, with zero results even when their feed had content, or results that didn't quite make sense, so it will interesting to check out how much better the new version will be.

Pubsub are asking would-be volunteer beta testers to email them at sidebar@pubsub.com

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