My Alerts on the iTunes Store has the potential to be a kick-ass service. As it is now, though, My Alerts is pretty weak. So weak, in fact, that I just don't understand why Apple took it live. My Alerts carries the distinct air of being "in development."

For one thing, it only applies to music and music videos. Currently, you can't add movies or TV shows to your My Alerts page. This was my first disappointment when I rushed to check out the feature after it was announced a couple weeks ago. As soon as I heard about it, I headed to the iTunes Store with big plans to add all my favorite TV shows, and maybe a few movies, to My Alerts. Not so much.

The only reason I know that Weeds Season 2 is available on iTunes is because I randomly visited the iTunes Store on Wednesday. But I really wish My Alerts could have actually, um, alerted me to this fact.

For that matter, the prompt you'll get in iTunes to "manage" My Alerts is a complete misnomer. The extent of management that's possible at this point is turning the feature on or off. Once you add artists to your list, you can then turn those alerts off by unchecking a box next to their names. Huh.

What the Manage My Alerts page should offer is the true ability to manage alerts, complete with the ability to add favorite artists, TV shows, movies - and even actors or directors - and a way to control when and how the alerts are emailed, one by one or on a weekly basis, for example. The way you add artists or music videos to My Alerts now is by clicking on an album title, then clicking on Alert Me. But why can't I set up the alerts just to receive notice of a specific forthcoming album? What if I only want a certain album, not an entire body of one artist's work?

Once you add artists under My Alerts, you "manage" their presence by checking or unchecking a box next to their name.

Apple prepopulated My Alerts with recs for songs and albums by artists whose work I've purchased in the past. OK, that's cool. But how come Irma Thomas's Ruler of My Heart shows up twice? And how come there are only eight recommendations (not counting duplicates)? I'm not going to win any medals, but I've purchased songs and albums by at least 25 different artists from the iTunes Store. Where are recommendations for other albums by Tom Petty, Rihanna, OutKast, or The Shins?

Eight whole recommendations, huh? My socks are still on.

Apple may have thought My Alerts was complete enough as is because very few sites do the alerts thing that well. Amazon Alerts (which you can manage by logging in and clicking the Your Account tab, then scrolling down to the E-Mail Notification and Subscriptions area) are about as feature-less as iTunes' My Alerts. The only way to add an item to your alerts list on Amazon is to get lucky enough to find a something that has been added to Amazon's catalog but that is not yet ready for presale - like the latest Will Ferrell flick Blades of Glory, which is still in theaters (and, incidentally, not as funny as Talladega Nights or Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy - I recommend waiting until Blades is out on DVD).

And Netflix doesn't even have an alert feature. Zero stars!

Can you recommend any websites that do a good job with alert services? Ping me in the comments.