Ever since I announced #blindtest, the user-based review for the steem dapps/projects, I had to keep a close eye on who and what was being posted about #blindtest. The easy way to keep track of #blindtest was, of course, **Ginabot**.

GINA stands for "General Instant Notification Automaton".

Just like the name, GINA is an instant notification service. Every single notification of the steem blockchain is directed to you. INSTANTLY. Discord is the go to and if not the most, then one of the highest used platforms for free interaction between steemians. Also, discord is compatible with every interface. So it makes complete sense why GINA gravitated towards discord. When I started out on steem, my first and foremost complain was not even of the SP limitations, it was that I completely dreaded the idea of not knowing what is going on. The fear of losing interaction, merely because steemit did not have a notification feature. GINA doesn't limit herself to just steemit. You can receive notifications steempeak, busy, yehey etc. I had to rigorously go through multiple steps to make sure I was in touch with everything. Then, GINA came to the rescue. I know there are tons of other ways to get to know your notifications. But most of them are a very basic level of notification services. GINABOT has taken the game to the next level.

Gina allows you to receive instant notifications of your choice. That is right, YOUR choice. GINA has a wide selection of things to notify you about, and you can select what you prefer to get notified about. ### Here is a list of notification services GINA provides to choose from:
* Select your proffered platform (steemit, steepeak, etc.) * Comments (by yourself, by others on your post, or deleted comments) * Transfers (by yourself or others) * Delegations (Incoming, outgoing and return of your cancelled delegations) * Curation rewards (instant notifications or scheduled as daily, weekly or monthly) * Author rewards (instant notifications or scheduled as daily, weekly or monthly) * Mentions (get notified when you and/or any user is mentioned) * Resteem (when someone resteems you and/or when you have resteemed someone) * Follow (when someone followed you and/or when you have followed someone) * Vote (when you have upvoted, downvoted or cancelled your vote and/or when someone has upvoted, downvoted or cancelled their vote on your post/comment) * New posts (select the users you want to get notified when they have published a new post.) * Blacklist user (If you want to mute and do not want to see or hear anything from a selected user) * Blacklist tag (the same as "blacklist user" but for tags) * Word watch (get notified when a specific word or phrase of your choice has been published) * Post watch (when you want to keep up with a post and all the conversation going on in it) * Tags (know when someone publishes a post with a specific tag) * Witness vote (if you want to receive a confirmation of the witness vote you have made)

### Why I love GINAbot:
It is simply to accessible, informative and handy. It is by far, my favorite notification service and nothing comes close to the superiority of GINA's services. Best of all is, it is 100% free to use. One of the main reasons for my likeness of GINA is that, not just I, but most of us steemians use discord to either stay in touch with our communities, use discord for post-promotion and so on; and discord being such a go-to for us steemians, GINA has brought her services to my most used platform. Since I am on discord most of the time to carry on activities for steem, I highly appreciate that I can also keep in touch with updates and notifications on discord. It doesn't matter if you use a mobile phone or PC, we still use discord and can avail the broad services of GINA on it. Another reason is that, GINA is not limited to regular users, but has services for discord communities and discord community leaders. Using the ``..whois`` command they can check the account associations and for privacy concerns the command only available in a public channel for the server management. Gina does not only show you the upvoted, comments etc, it also sends you a hyperlink of the post and/or specific comment, shows you the vote weight used for an upvote, the time, the number of upvotes that specific post has received and even POTENTIAL PAYOUT! GINAbot can also be used to validate and register users and/or yourself for services. Like SBI and it was also used to track voting activity for the working group in Steem Alliance. Going back to how GINAbot is a completely free to use service; registering yourself is pretty straight forward. All you need to do is join the minnow-power discord group and in the registration channel type in ``..reg (your steem username)``. You are then given a memo which is then used to send 0.001 SBD or STEEM to ``@ginabot`` for verification. After verification you are sent the SBD or STEEM BACK! From there your discord alias and steem account have been connected and you can use ``..set`` to access your settings. You can also type in ``..power (steem username)`` to get a detailed list of your or any other steemians steem power, VP and RC. The sophistication of simplicity, quality performance, functionality, ease and unparalleled features is what hooks me so tightly with GINABOT. The settings page is very simple and easy to use, too. ![Untitled.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmei2HTvJTxc3cRn5Tdu5J64YdXpoRcTm7YPLsQfpHALFe/Untitled.png)

### What I would like to see added:
* Get notified when Gina goes down. Even if it is rare and only has happened once to me, I would like to know that GINA is down. After all, my life depends on her, and I had a complete freakout the one time she went down. * Add steem chat notification option. * Add a real time steem/usd and sbd/usd price checker. * Reminder/ Schedule notification: an option to notify you at chosen specific times of the day as a reminder to publish a post. * Currently, ginabot is getting popular by word of mouth. I don't think a new and fresh approach towards marketing GINA would hurt. Especially because of how awesome she is. I am only saying this because I want EVERYONE to use GINA's services and enjoy steeming to it's peak.

### Conclusion:
In a nutshell, GINA is a life saver. I cannot imagine my steem world without GINA. Thank you @neander-squirrel for developing a game changing service. I would have to mention the minnow-power and buildteam teams for being super supportive and helpful, may it be to learn about gina, to clarify issues or even just having a chat. GINA has definitely raised the bar when it comes to notification services and I love her. I would give GINAbot 9.5/10. I have withdrawn 0.5 because I believe nothing in the world is perfect and everything has the scope to improve and be a better version of itself.