This website reports via an RSS feed instead of a mailing list. This is just because an RSS feed is easier to run than an email server, but furthermore, no information—not even an email address—is collected by revRSS. On the other hand, there’s no obvious way to get push notifications like how there is for emails, and push notifications are critical for catching announcements that come out on the same day as the reverse split itself.

To achieve this, you’d need a third-party service that can read RSS feeds and can interface with the Android and iOS notifications systems. Most services that check both boxes also demand a subscription fee, but two that offer a free tier are:

  • IFTTT—the easiest to get started with, but limited to checking once an hour for free users (every five minutes for paying users)—and
  • NewsBlur—offering true real-time checking for absolutely free, but also advertising their paid tier a bit aggressively (they’re open-source though, so I personally don’t mind).

With that said, you’re also free to try other RSS services.

IFTTT

Setting up push notifications with IFTTT could not be any simpler. Their name is an abbreviation of the phrase “if this then that”, the “this”-es being their “triggers” and the “that”s being their “actions”. Their “triggers” and “actions” are either connections to other third parties or built-in features of the IFTTT platform itself. In our case, we’re not relying on any more third parties, and instead we’re instructing IFTTT to do two things: monitor the revRSS feed and then push a “rich” notification.

We use their rich notifications service instead of their basic notifications because tapping on them take us directly to the press release on a web browser!

NewsBlur

NewsBlur is not as simple to set up, but critically, it offers real-time push notifications for absolutely free. In fact, this is even better than IFTTT’s paid tier! This is possible because revRSS and NewsBlur both support a protocol called “WebSub” (formerly “PubSubHubbub”). Setting up NewsBlur is two steps that are just like for any other feed: we need to (1) connect NewsBlur to revRSS, and…

… then (2) instruct NewsBlur to deliver push notifications.