RSS Web Page Watcher Services
It's now become a common practice for blogs and web sites in general to provide RSS feeds that notify subscribers when new information is published (or any other update). That way, visitors don't have to visit their favorites websites regularly ("PULL" fashion), instead they are notified ("PUSH" fashion) by their RSS feed aggregator as long as they subscribed to the corresponding feeds. That way, the aggregator watch for updates of visitor's favorite websites, and the visitor only has to read the updates using the aggregator.
The problem is that some websites don't have RSS feeds. Fortunately, there are a few services that will create that missing RSS feed for you by watching a web page regularly, thus notify you when updates occured.
On this page, I propose a quick review of the services I tried.
Conditions
For my experiment, I chose to watch a topic of a google group. You can find it there: http://groups.google.com/group/google-gears/browse_thread/thread/9999db207e30ca9b
I created RSS Feeds on wednesday 06/06/2007 around 3pm.
Then I posted a new message on the watched page at 3.20pm.
I use Google Reader to aggregate my RSS feeds.
Tests were made in France, timezone is GMT+1.
Contestants and results
Reaction time: 19 hours and 15 minutes (10.36am on thursday 07/06/2007)
Feed URL: http://www.feedwhip.com/rss/cz0yODA2OC5jPWZ1ZGFuYWpleQ/mobilegooglegears
Best reaction time, so far
Watching frequency is customizable, as a few other parameters
The RSS entry corresponding to the update contains the new information (content of my last post)
Updates are sent by email by default (email notifications can be disabled)
Need to create an account
Free account only allows up to 3 feeds
Reaction time: 25 hours and 15 minutes (4.37pm on thursday 07/06/2007)
Feed URL: http://www.page2rss.com/page/?url=groups.google.com/group/google-gears/browse_thread/thread/9999db207e30ca9b
Quick RSS feed creation (no need to create an account)
A first entry is sent through the feed to confirm that its creation is successful
A few update notifications (posts) contain no title/subject and no text
Reaction time: (no response without refinement => could not be evaluated)
Feed URL (without refinement, default): http://www.feedity.com/?http://groups.google.com/group/google-gears/... (without refinement)
Feed URL (with custom refinement): http://www.feedity.com/?ADVRWINQ9G%252bcjrzjthBV0GkKeIs6ujL83goQUrKHaRfq50neBvILv0D6f77u8siv41Tvd5G0OLiivo%253dhttp://groups.google.com/...
Quick RSS feed creation: bookmarklet, simple form or simple append to URL (when refinement is not needed)
Integration in google pipes
No need to register / create an account
Relies on "smart" item indexing instead of changes of time => the feed includes existing items, not only new ones
Some websites need refinement (needed to enter html elements manually for parsing to work with google groups...)
Appends ads in entries
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