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In cyberspace, the odds are slim-to-none you can keep pace with the breathless tempo of new information. This week sees the debut of a free alert service, Infogate, designed to give you a fighting chance.

Infogate 5.0 is a free, 790K downloadable toolbar utility that sends alert messages to your desktop, pager, ICQ instant messaging service, cell phone, or other in-box from a plethora of preselected sources. Its edge over competitors like America Online and Yahoo, which both have alert services, is a sharp focus on content, says Cliff Boro, executive chair of Infogate.

Through Infogate, you can request alerts for news, sports, stocks, and e-mail. News alerts, for example, can be customized with keywords that scour 90 news feeds, such as Reuters, CNN, and The New York Times, every five to ten minutes. When Infogate spots an article containing one of your designated keywords, it sends a message to your PC or mobile device.

You can even set a unique "find me, follow me" program so Infogate's alerts will hunt you down. For example, if you don't respond to an Infogate message sent to your desktop, Infogate can be programmed try to locate you on the instant messaging service ICQ. If Infogate still doesn't get a response, it will try your pager and then your cell phone.

"You can configure it to page you at the end of every [baseball] inning with the score if you want," Boro says.

Drawing on First Drafts

Infogate's core technology isn't entirely new. It's the product of two merged companies, EntryPoint and Internet Financial Network. EntryPoint in 2000 purchased the early Internet information firm PointCast, which pioneered "push" technology in the mid-90s.

PointCast, which automatically delivered Web content to PC according to predefined preferences, was criticized for being bandwidth-intensive and slow. The PointCast progeny Infogate client doesn't hog bandwidth and dump data on your PC as PointCast did. Rather, Infogate displays headlines and hyperlinks to content on a toolbar that sits at the top or bottom of your display.

For pagers and cell phones, Infogate sends the first 150 characters of a story or e-mail alert. The mobile alerts are compatible only with mobile devices and phones that support the Short Messaging Service. E-mail alerts work only with Infogate's own free e-mail service, called Hotline.

Infogate's services are well received, says Nancy Tubb, senior analyst with Delphi Group. She says its technology compares favorably with similar services offered by 800-pound-gorilla competitors like AOL and Yahoo. But good technology doesn't always guarantee success.

"In this economic climate, it's not the easiest time for a free service to succeed," Tubb says.

Infogate is privately held and isn't profitable. However, it has some heavy hitters in its major investors, including Citigroup, Idealab, and The Trump Group. IFN and EntryPoint raised $30 million in April 2000. "We have no immediate plans to charge money for the service," Boro says. However, he says he does not rule out the idea. Currently the company carries banner ads and markets its technology to several dot-coms.

Infogate's challenge is to expand its business, says Warren Wilson, analyst at Summit Strategies. In particular, it may need to expand the breadth of its content-provider partnerships, as well as pop up on more sites.

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