Not so long ago I got an email from one of the readers asking if
there is a way to be notified about site updates when the site doesn’t
offer RSS feeds. And since there are plenty of popular sites that don’t
provide any feeds I thought it may be a good idea to write about it. So
if you’re interested here are some free tools that can do the job.
Monitor Webpages for Changes
If you’re a Firefox user then you can try Update Scanner.
It’s an extension that lets you monitor webpages for changes. You have
an option to choose how often the website should be checked for
changes, and whether it should ignore the minor ones, such as the
changes to numbers.
When the page changes it shows a notification alert. If you monitor
multiple webpages then you can get a quick overview of pages using the
arrow button located at the right bottom corner of the screen. Web
pages that have been updated will be shown in bold with an arrow next
to them.
If you don’t use Firefox then you can try ChangeNotes or ChangeDetection. Both of these websites can monitor requested webpages and will send you an email when something changes.
Monitor Error Pages
Mr. Uptime is a bit
different but serves a similar purpose. It’s another Firefox extension
that comes in handy when you come across a website that’s experiencing
down time. With Mr.Uptime you are able to add such a website to the
watchlist and get notified as soon as the website is back online. The
following image sums up the whole idea pretty well:
There is also an option to specify the interval at which the page should be monitored. Check out Mr. Uptime video screencast here.
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