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Monday, April 14, 2003 |
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The next front[ier] in the disruption of traditional media. (SOURCE:"inessential")-Yet another great intro to RSS and a prod to get everybody to generate RSS. <quote> So why create RSS feeds from your site if there's no immediate ROI? A few thoughts: * It's emergent. RSS feeds and news aggregators are today what Web browsers were in 1996. It's a new publishing platform, and it's already the de-facto format used by the Web's early adopters. * It's effortless. Any database-publishing system that can output Web pages can output RSS feeds. No staff time beyond creating a basic template = very little expense. * It's migrating. RSS feeds now find their way onto Web pages and news aggregators. Apple's new calendar application, iCal, allows users to syndicate events </quote> [Roland Tanglao: WebCMS] 10:31:25 PM 
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Web Page Change Detection Tools - WatchThatPage. (Below is the first of hopefully a few posts on tools I use to do research online that I thought might be of general interest.) WatchThatPage belongs to a general class of software sometimes called "Web Page Change Detection Tools" or services (cf. http://staff.philau.edu/bells/keepup/detectit.htm - although WatchThatPage is, ironically, not on that list). The tools offer a way to be notified when content from a specific source, typically at a specific URL, has changed. In the case of WatchThatPage, it allows you to create lists of URLs and set up a reporting schedule, and then generates an email detailing the changes to these pages since the last report. This particular package only reports on those pages where changes have been noted. This is particularly useful for things like watching job postings pages from companies you'd like to work for, or else (the way I use it in the edutools project) watching product news pages to be alerted to new releases and other time sensitive information useful to one's research. I have tried most of the software listed on the above referenced page, and this one has emerged as my personal favourite, in no small part because it is free. What I've found with these services is that there is a trust factor with such applications. At first you're not sure it will actually catch the changes and alert you in time, so there is some reluctance to depend on the tool. I've found this particular tool to work very reliably and have yet to catch it out or get too many bad results, the other main peril with these applications. But if you do have such concerns, my suggestion would be to start small and do it only for a few URLS in parallel with your own other efforts, and as you start to see that the system is in fact alerting you to the things you want to look out for, then start to add more sites for it to monitor and roll back one's manual efforts. - SWL A few additional webpage change detection tools not contained on the above referenced list:
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Last update: 12/10/2003; 8:06:17 PM .
