Ask HN: Software release alerts?
I purchased the StackUpdates.io domain name last year. I am now figuring out what can be created to broadcast software version releases to the world.
PROBLEM: "Wait? What? Bootstrap 3.3.3 was released last week? Drupal released a security patch yesterday?"
Corporations and individuals who rely on software releases for their tech stacks have no easy way to know when new versions are available. Users are left to hunt down software release pages across the web, find where the download links are located within individual sites, then realize they have fallen way behind on keeping up with the latest & greatest versions. Let’s not forget about the occasional misses on urgent security patches or high-priority bug fixes that impact live websites and apps. With companies and brands needing to keep their websites and applications up to date, knowing when, where, and what to download is critical.
PROPOSED SOLUTION: Online Dashboard + Email/SMS Alerts
If we can make it easy for software users to receive alerts when updates are available, we hope to solve this "I didn't know" problem. We want to build a one-view dashboard showing the current available version #s for today's popular software (databases, build tools, programming languages, front-end frameworks, etc). Also, we want to setup email alerts for new releases and possibly text/sms alerts for critical software patch releases. The plan is to either (a) automatically pull latest software updates from sites (scraping), or (b) provide mechanism for software maintainers to announce releases.
So, what do you think? Would you be interested in receiving software alerts regularly? Would this help in your day-to-day work duties?