An Internet subscription system for alerting subscribers to changes in data
maintained at Internet sites has an input interface for a subscriber to
specify a data condition to be monitored and a condition for notification
and a gatherer for gathering data changes from one or more Internet sites.
A guard compares data changes with the condition for notification, and a
notification alert system notifies the subscriber of a change that meets
the condition for notification. The system is particularly suited to
notification requirements regarding metadata changes over multiple
sources. Users can configure the system to many different frequencies and
many different data and notification conditions. Alerts may be made to
many different devices in different ways as well, and may or may not
include specific data.