| Monitoring Web Pages with FeedWhip |
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| Friday, 02 February 2007 | |
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As more web sites are competing for your attention, people are looking for smarter ways to monitor sites. They prefer being informed of a change rather than going to the site to check it out. This is one reason I prefer to get info using RSS. Others prefer getting email alerts. Either way, you’ll benefit from a free service called Feedwhip that monitors and detects web sites changes. What appeals to me is it can create a RSS feed from just about any web page. Now, I can take advantage of RSS even if the site doesn’t offer a feed.
There are services that create RSS feeds from web pages, but I’ve not had success with them. They work with some sites, but not all. The benchmark I’ve always used for testing was Walt Mossberg’s Personal Technology column. Either the services I tried couldn’t create the RSS feed or the process was too complicated. Several weeks ago, I started using Feedwhip and was delighted when I could get Walt’s column as a web feed and email. Uses for FeedwhipAs much as I like how Feedwhip made a RSS feed for me, it does much more. It’s a web monitoring service that allows you to customize what to watch and how to receive the notifications. For example, you might use the service to:
How to Create a Feedwhip SubscriptionThe free account allows you to monitor fives subscriptions. A subscription is a monitor you create for a specific web page. You can upgrade to a premium account for 90 days, which allows up to a 1000 subscriptions and multiple email addresses. To create a Feedwhip subscription, 1. Go to http://www.feedwhip.com/ 2. In the Web page: text box enter the web page you’d like to monitor. 3. In the Email: text box, enter your email address. 4. In the Feed name: text box provide a descriptive name for the page. 5. Click the Whip this web page button.  Click to enlarge The service starts downloading and processing the web page. You’ll then see a message that the email address you provided has an unconfirmed subscription request. You must click the link in the email to complete the process. At this stage, you’re subscribed to the feed and will get email alerts when the page content changes. In my case, the email contained the full content of Walt Mossberg’s latest article. I can also log into my account and grab the URL for the RSS feed.  Click to enlarge Fine Tuning Your Feedwhip Subscription
The service allows you to refine your subscriptions. Once you log into your account, you’ll see other options are available such as the ability to set Delivery and Frequency options.  Click to enlarge The item that is most appealing is the Filter option. Using this panel, you can fine-tune the monitor so you get only the items you want. As example, some similar services don’t differentiate between the type of changes on a website. This would mean that the change in our Random Tip section would trigger an alert on these services. With Feedwhip, you can set the size of the change before an alert is sent. Another appealing aspect is you can include or exclude keywords. This helps if you’re monitoring a busy site, but looking for a specific item. You don’t want an alert each time the page changes, but only when your keyword is detected. A similar ignore feature can be used if you need to ignore items. I’ve been pleased with the results to date. I did have an issue early on where line breaks were missing. I dropped the developer, Steve Leroux, a note and the problem appears to be gone. If you have web sites you’d like to monitor, I’d suggest you try Feedwhip. For me, it’s been valuable monitoring sites that don’t have RSS feeds. I can opt to get the content as a new feed or use email. URL: http://www.feedwhip.com/
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| Last Updated ( Friday, 02 February 2007 ) |
