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Updated

Submitted by: jellydonut
Created: Apr 2, 2007, 12:43 am

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The Idea

My idea is called 'Updated', although other titles could potentially work as well.

Imagine a program that checks all your favorite websites for you without you having to log on and visit the sites them self. You would download this program, install it, set it your favorite websites, or the ones you specifically want to watch for updates/news etc., fill in a few keywords, and instead of you hitting refresh all day, it would alert you when one of those websites would update with the information you're looking for. This would be especially useful for a work setting or just when you're generally busy doing something else. It would be an absolutely wonderful time-saver.

Ideally, the program would cost $10-20 to download and would be located on a simple website based around the name of the program.

I thought of this idea when I was...

I always catch people idling the same websites, hitting refresh for new news, and generally wasting a lot of time trying to catch that one bit of news they're waiting for. Everyone has a daily routine when it comes to checking up on websites. When I realized that, the idea for this program came to mind.

Comments Posted

JimmyD Posted: April 2, 2007, 1:42 am

RSS?

micco Posted: April 2, 2007, 8:54 am

There are some apps out there that do this, but most of them are pretty old because this issue has been solved in other ways. A lot of these types of apps used a hash code on the page content to determine when new content had appeared, but because many pages have dynamic aspects unrelated to content, this isn't reliable any more. You don't want your app indicating new content is available when the copy it checks has different google ads or a weather widget changed temperature.

Like JimmyD says, mosts sites and users that care about fresh content are using RSS for this, and an RSS feed aggregator basically accomplishes exactly what you propose.

Brian_Allen Posted: April 2, 2007, 10:33 am

Yeah..is this not an RSS feed? Whats the difference?

gzep Posted: April 2, 2007, 5:37 pm

R.S.S. - Correct.

Really simple syndication does this already, and it's free...

in any case, you, or your program (bot?) have to exchange some data with the site, when an update happens. RSS is already there.

If you want updated data from a site that doesn't have an rss feed, tell them about the benefits of implementing rss.

JelmerBV Posted: April 5, 2007, 4:35 am

Nice idea; Not all sites can use RSS, like e-mail sites and sites on wich you have your personal updates.

micco Posted: April 5, 2007, 9:14 am

JelmerBV: any site can use RSS. From the site's standpoint, RSS publishing is just an XML file pointing to new content. A lot of blogging software and other content management systems build this automatically, but if you're building your site manually, you can easily update an RSS feed file manually too. While the XML may seem difficult, if you can understand even basic HTML you can understand enough XML to build an RSS feed.

Brenden Posted: April 17, 2007, 7:28 am

ok RSS. thats what it dose? i had no idea what RSS was

Rizal Posted: April 28, 2007, 10:29 am

RSS!!!!

Rizal Posted: April 28, 2007, 10:30 am

and its free!! 10-20 dollars for the program seems to much

Hello!

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