Comments on: Comments on 13616

Post number 13616

elvissinatra — Tue, 08 Jan 2002 06:15:43 -0800

Netmind.com service no longer operational - Mind-it, the free personalized tracking service from NetMind, was a very handy tool to let people know when a web site's content changed. This was great for infrequently updated sites.

By: elvissinatra

elvissinatra — Tue, 08 Jan 2002 06:18:06 -0800

I'll be sad to see it go. Did anyone else use this, and are there any other free alternatives (other than manually checking every site every day)? There's no way I'm going to pay $20 per year for it though.

By: panopticon

panopticon — Tue, 08 Jan 2002 06:23:48 -0800

IE5 for Mac does it for you - why depend on a dotcom for something a browser can do?

By: sawks

sawks — Tue, 08 Jan 2002 06:25:46 -0800

your web browser probably has this sort of functionality built in - just bookmark/favorite the site and then check out the properties panel for the bookmark....

By: RoyalTS

RoyalTS — Tue, 08 Jan 2002 07:01:31 -0800

Why not use Spyonit instead?

By: mlang

mlang — Tue, 08 Jan 2002 07:19:42 -0800

you could go the browser subscription route, but that doesn't really work if you're splitting time between a work and a home computer or traveling or whatever. i have used spy on it in the past and, from what i remember, it was relatively reliable and spam-free. also, it's highly customizable and can be used to track additional events that are more complicated than simple website content updates. there used to be tons of these services around, but spyonit was the only one i could find in a quick google search that was still operational.

By: mlang

mlang — Tue, 08 Jan 2002 07:22:25 -0800

oops...late to the party, as always.

By: nobody_knose

nobody_knose — Tue, 08 Jan 2002 08:02:35 -0800

sawks: is this something that is in IE 5.50 for Windows? I looked in the properties panel, but didn't see anything that looked like it would let me know automatically if a page had been updated or not.

By: DBAPaul

DBAPaul — Tue, 08 Jan 2002 09:52:10 -0800

I believe Sawks and panopticon are referring to the Make available offline option in IE, which works well as long as you remember to manually synchronize regularly and then check the page for update. NetMind delivered the changed page via email with no user interaction. Users recieved a changed page when NeetMind visited user specified URLs and found new content there was no need to remember to synchronize and check the offlline page. This is the third free service I've lost in the last month, perhaps the end of free has arrived.

By: panopticon

panopticon — Tue, 08 Jan 2002 11:07:26 -0800

IE5 for Mac does it. I don't think IE5 for Windows does it.

By: adampsyche

adampsyche — Tue, 08 Jan 2002 11:12:23 -0800

Syponit. I like being sent an IM when a page updates. We use it at work to track a vendor's press page so we know when to log their news.

By: elvissinatra

elvissinatra — Tue, 08 Jan 2002 12:01:34 -0800

I just transferred all my netmind pages I track to spyonit. Seems pretty cool. Plus, I added some auction searches as well as a site monitor to check on my website to let me know if it goes down. It seems like you can do a lot of intricate stuff with it... Anybody set up any particularly clever spies that they're proud of?

By: elvissinatra

elvissinatra — Tue, 08 Jan 2002 12:09:12 -0800

By the way, does anybody know if spyonit has a decent business model that will allow them to stay in business for a while? I just hate to get my hopes up...

By: kindall

kindall — Tue, 08 Jan 2002 14:01:33 -0800

I'm not surprised they went out of business. Last time I tried Mind-It, their notification typically arrived days after the Web page changed. That is basically useless. Why would anyone use a service so lame?

By: jca

jca — Tue, 08 Jan 2002 16:09:10 -0800

Spyonit has a great interface, but is extremely unreliable. Spies mysteriously go "dead" (stop checking) all the time and constantly have to be re-saved to get them checking/working again.

By: smaugy

smaugy — Tue, 08 Jan 2002 17:56:14 -0800

I use a program called URLy Warning but I don't know if the web site is up or if the software is still available (I know tucows has it though) on Windows. I've used it for years, and it crashes sometimes, but it's perfect for me. I use it to only look at the new threads on mefi, the light BBC News pages, and a couple of other pages. Works great. (ok, I changed the program so that it didn't display any ads and had a de-clutterfied UI; great way to support shareware, i know). I really can't trust web services to remind me of changes. It's something that, for me, is best done on the desktop itself.