Web page tracking

ALL OF us have favourite web sites and we visit them at least once a day to find out what is new in these sites. Since we have no way to know whether any change has taken place in our favourite pages of a site, we keep on visiting the sites' pages and most of the time we fail to find anything new. There are many occasions in our web life that demand watching changes in others' sites on a daily basis- for example a business firm cannot afford to ignore the site of its competitor; a researcher has to be up- to-date on the developments in his/her field and these have to visit the related sites in a ritualistic fashion. On such occasions, the need is felt for a mechanism that automatically notifies a user whenever there is updation of the web pages. NetSpeak features some free services/programs that help you track web page changes.

URLy Warning

URLy Warning (pronounced as 'early warning') is a program that helps you track changes that take place in your favourite web pages. To make the program operational, you have to provide the necessary information regarding the web pages that are to watched. Suppose you are browsing the Net and came across a site that will be worth watching for changes in its contents. To monitor this web page, just click at the 'URLy Warning' icon which will present with the program's interface. Now, provide the inputs such as name, URL (address of the web page to be monitored), and the frequency of checking the site. The utility that operates in the background will then keep on watching the page periodically. If it finds any change in the web page, it immediately alerts you and keeps on flashing the system tray icon.

One interesting feature of the software is that it not only alerts you but also enables you to see the page before the changes. This will thus give you an idea on what was available at the page earlier. To view the page with changes, you can use the button 'View changes' in the program's main window.

Apart from this, the utility features a tool that lets webmasters to implement the 'URLy Warning' functionality into their web sites. A web developer can use the 'URLy Warning e-mail service' by inserting an e-mail form on all the pages for which he/she wants the customers to be provided with the page monitoring facility. To implement the service in your web page, copy the HTML code available at the 'URLy' site and paste it in your web page. Whenever a visitor comes to your site, he will see the e- mail form, requesting the visitor to fill-in with his e-mail address if he intends to be informed of the changes that take place in the web page. The service, which is free, will certainly add value to your web site. The program (615 kB) can be downloaded from www.urlywarning.com/main.htm.

Mind-it

Another popular service of this kind is the URL-minder featured by Netmind.com. The service works as an agent that informs you of the changes in specified web pages. Access the site at mindit.netmind.com, click at the 'Minder Wizard' or 'Quick Add' and type in the address of the web page to be monitored for changes. Once the site is registered with the service, it periodically checks the page for possible updations/alterations and sends you an e-mail if changes are found. If you want to monitor more than a page, you have to register each of them separately. Apart from e-mail notification, the service allows you to have web-based notification of the changes. To know the information regarding the web page updations of your favourite web page (posted by the service in its web site), click the 'View/Edit ' button available under the 'My Mind-it' option. This will take you to the service's 'My Mind-it' page, where details regarding the 'URLs' are published. The company also features a service for webmasters but it is not free.

ChangeDetection

ChangeDetection is another service that helps you keep abreast of the latest developments in a web page. To access the service, visit the site at www.changedetection.com, click at the link labelled 'monitor any web page for changes'; the rest of the process is as usual.

The service has a facility that helps webmasters incorporate a signing-up option for their visitors to send them e-mail notifications whenever some changes take place in the page. To plant this e-mail form into the web page, the webmaster has to provide his e-mail address in the box specified and submit the request. Within a few seconds, the webmaster will receive the code (through e-mail) that has to be pasted into his/her page to implement the e-mail notification form.

Keystroke recorder

There are certain repeated typing tasks in the digital life. Take the case of accessing a site: you invoke the browser, type in the address of the site and then press the 'Go' button. Next time when you access the same site you have to repeat this process. Another example is the case when you type some text materials. For example, you find several instances where you have to type your postal address. Typing the whole address repeatedly is certainly a waste of time and energy.

What you have seen is just a few cases where you need to repeat the same keystrokes again and again. One solution to this unavoidable menace is to have a tool that can assign a block of text, paragraph or certain key combinations or even a full document to a keyword and later invoke this keyword whenever you need to bring in the complete text (or the commands to invoke a program) represented by the keyword. The program 'Macro Anywhere' is a fitting answer to these kinds of needs, which you face in e- life. The program once installed puts its icon in the system tray.

Now, lest us see how to record a macro. Suppose you use the name 'Internet Explorer' several times when you write an article and instead of typing the whole text always, you want to use a keyword say (.i). To record a macro of this kind, right-click at the program's icon, access the 'Start Macro Recorder'. Enter the keyword (here '. i') in the upper window and the text (here 'Internet Explorer') in the bottom 'Phrase window' and press the 'OK' button. Now onwards, whenever you type something in Word or send e-mail, and want to enter 'Internet Explorer', just type '. i', the macro program running in the background will expand it to 'Internet Explorer'. This is just one of the ways of using this powerful program that can also be used to create macros for launching programs and invoking web pages. If interested in the program (4.6 MB) check the site: www.dynawares.com/macro/.

J. Murali

(The author can be contacted at: murali27@satyam.net.in)

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