Nice. There's http://feedity.com too.
Show HN: Monitorbook – Easily track anything on the web
41–50 of 56 posts
Re: Show HN: Monitorbook – Easily track anything on the web
#42Very cool.. but what's the implication on the legal side? Many of the sites forbid "automated" scraping of their sites.(sure they can be all circumvented). On that note, what about sites like kimonolabs ( http://www.kimonolabs.com ), they also let you create an API on top of an existing webiste. I imagine it's done by scraping. Would love to hear some thoughts.
On the topic of legality/forbidding scraping, Kimono offers webmasters analytics and control of the scraping users do through its service. I'm not sure if this service is actually live, or forthcoming.
Re: Show HN: Monitorbook – Easily track anything on the web
#43"Receive real time nofitications"
Gentle suggestion to spell check.
Re: Show HN: Monitorbook – Easily track anything on the web
#44Very cool.. but what's the implication on the legal side? Many of the sites forbid "automated" scraping of their sites.(sure they can be all circumvented). On that note, what about sites like kimonolabs ( http://www.kimonolabs.com ), they also let you create an API on top of an existing webiste. I imagine it's done by scraping. Would love to hear some thoughts.
Scraping Amazon might be illegal, or at least not specifically allowed, otherwise there would have been an API. However reading 'robots.txt' I guess that their policy is 'open to scrapping' by search engines. Because what google spiders do to virtually everyone, can be considered web scrapping.
Re: Show HN: Monitorbook – Easily track anything on the web
#45Result of a quick try:
Tracking YouTube views doesn't work (shows "null")
Tracking HN points doesn't work (shows "null")
Tracking Reddit comment count works.
Re: Show HN: Monitorbook – Easily track anything on the web
#46How does this handle HTML changes over time ? I believe this will store a URL + Selector , then periodically scrap the page over time. just curious what happens if the page changes later.
You probably some sort of notification and you have to go the web page and match the item again.
Re: Show HN: Monitorbook – Easily track anything on the web
#47Here's a business case for how this could be useful and why I'm going to try it. I operate a string of ~60 local businesses that have physical storefronts. On average each store has 5 local competitors. Our customers are VERY price sensitive - they will almost always call the "lowest price" guy in the area first. As a result we currently have a duct-tape system to monitor competitor pricing and tweak ours as fast as…
What happens if your competitors realize you are using the service and devise some way to trick MontorBook into reporting the wrong prices? [Edit: related link, which was the inspiration for my question: http://mailinator.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-get-gmailcom-b... ]
You change your strategy :-) It's like Cryptonomicon "The most advanced technology, usually wins the war".
If they can do that, you'll have to figure out quickly and adapt... But to my personal experience, there are way more what if(s) flying around than what actually happens.
Re: Show HN: Monitorbook – Easily track anything on the web
#48copy of https://visualping.io :-) :-)
Re: Show HN: Monitorbook – Easily track anything on the web
#49Very cool, I like it. Only comment is that you should try and get the video zooming in on where the mouse is or do some close-ups of the screen. It was hard to see exactly what was going on and it felt closer to a techie screencast than to a customer product demo.
Is it possible to track the price of an ipad mini on craigslist? ;p
Re: Show HN: Monitorbook – Easily track anything on the web
#50Wow, seems like everyone has built a version of this. I've been working on something similar as well, and really went for nailing down the element selection. Seems to be a basic duplicate of what you have done. Best of luck.
Really? I couldn't seem to find anything other than webnumbr (which doesn't seem to work anymore).