News Alerts via Instant Messaging

This would be cool: if Reuters (pick your favourite news outlet) could send me an instant message to tell me about a breaking story.

I would know instantly if the Leafs scored.  I would know immediately if an airplane crashed into a major city.  I would know automatically if a major news story broke.

With IM making E-mail less important, I think news updates are the natural extension.  This is already done with text alerts on cell phones...IM clients would simply make it free.

Oh, and the first phones to use free IM are going o be awesome.  Internet voip calls (free), IM (free), browsing (free).  Just pay the hefty internet connection fee.  There's a market for this...

By the way: I now use Miranda IM (to aggregate my MSN, Skype, Yahoo, Google Talk friends into a nice, neat package).

If you want to add me to your IM collection, send me an e-mail: semperlepidus at gmail dot com.