Is it possible to automatically nofity for update of manually installed packages?

Question

If having installed some packages downloaded from website , I was wondering if it is possible to have auto notification when its update is available, just as those packages in Ubuntu repositories.

Can the packages downloaded be in deb form, or even in source code?

For example,

1. nevernote maintained in sourceforge, http://nevernote.sourceforge.net/index.htm, downloadable from http://sourceforge.net/projects/nevernote/files/Current/nevernote-0.99_i386.deb/download
2. packages from Ubuntu PPA https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppas.

Answer 1

If you add a PPA, rather than just downloading the deb, it will be automatically updated as its within the scope of the package manager.

Manaually added packages (i.e. from debs,) and source downloaded from soureforge are not, however, and the only way I can think of getting these to update in a similar kin is to write a script.

Answer 2

Since NeverNote was noted in the original post, and @thomas michael wallace's answer pertained to PPAs as a way to automatically update, I wanted to present the following:

From a terminal (CTRL+ALT+T), issue the commands below.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vincent-c/nevernote
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nevernote

This will install NeverNote from the PPA and, more important, allow for automatic updates.

NOTE - As of March 11, 2011 this PPA was only serving updates for Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10. I have not taken a look to see if this has changed and whether or not it works for 11.04.