Ask HN: Too much online stuff to follow for updates?

1 pointscactucy10y ago6 comments

I constantly watch several web pages: reddits, job listings, kickstarter, or things like ebay search results. It's becoming time consuming to repeatedly check every page that I want to create some app that turns any listing pages to a news stream/RSS feed.

But I'm not sure if it worths the effort --- is there a market for that? Anybody or any profession who might need such service a lot?

6 comments

greenyoda10y ago

There's a site that has been around for a long time, http://www.changedetection.com, which will give you an RSS and/or e-mail update if a web page changes.

cactucyOP10y ago

Thanks and good reference, greenyoda! It seems they just show diffs between the old and updated page, which has lots of false positive (e.g., change of some ad text or date, etc) and is user-unfriendly. If I could create a cleaner app that detects and notifies not "any changes", but "any new records", would that be a good step forward and help lots of people? Wish I know who are using such services so I could possibly get an idea about potential customers...

andre3310y ago

Check this out: https://ifttt.com/ebay

cactucyOP10y ago

Nice recipe! It works only for ebay though... Is there a general one that works for other pages?

andre3310y ago

Dunno, it does a lot of other things though, ebay is only one feature. :)

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6 comments

greenyoda10y ago

There's a site that has been around for a long time, http://www.changedetection.com, which will give you an RSS and/or e-mail update if a web page changes.

cactucyOP10y ago

andre3310y ago

Check this out: https://ifttt.com/ebay

cactucyOP10y ago

Nice recipe! It works only for ebay though... Is there a general one that works for other pages?

andre3310y ago

Dunno, it does a lot of other things though, ebay is only one feature. :)

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