Just a little project I whipped together now that I don't have time to read TechCrunch every day. You just add any startup you're interested in using an autocomplete form hooked into the CrunchBase API, and it emails you daily if there are new posts on TechCrunch about any of the startups you're following. Just an experiment right now, but would love any feedback you have.
one of the best uses of the crunchbase api i've seen... something related & useful you could offer is a daily digest of TC articles minus 15+ per day related to Foursquare, Apple, Twitter, Zynga, Google & Facebook...
I like the UI. any advantages over google alerts?
It's a bit easier to add and edit which startups you're following using StartupFollower, and it should work more consistently; Google alerts often sends the same article over and over as it gets syndicated to different sites (you could get around this using a more specific search but I bet most people don't). Google also sends any page that even mentions your term, regardless of whether the article is actually about it or not. For example, if someone mentions your term in the comments, you might not want an alert about it. StartupFollower only return posts that the TC author tagged with one of the companies you're following. But yes, they have similar functionality.