Web page change monitoring for Mac OS X

Question

There is a site that I need to monitor for changes and pop an alarm if the change is over a certain threshold. Ideally it would use Growl to pop the notification but I'm open to alternatives.

If there is an application out there that does this for purchase, I'll just buy it. If not, pointers to any Linux / Java / other recompilables that I could just add Growl support to would be very helpful!

Solution 1

If I get your question correctly you're looking for an application that gives you a notification when a given web site changes. If I'm wrong, ignore this answer.

The widely accepted solution to this problem is RSS. Googling led me to an RSS Growler which might fulfill your needs.

If the site you want notifications for doesn't support RSS there isn't an easy way to monitor it other than polling it.

Solution 2

That would depend on what you define as the "change is over a certain threshold". I've used Firefox's Check4Change to monitor for website changes effectively in the past, which allows you specify which portion of the web page you'd like to monitor, and how frequently it should monitor the page. An additional feature includes sound or popup notifications.

Comments

[Admin]

I'm looking for something similar. I use Page Monitor for Chrome, and would love to get updates via the iPhone somehow. (I wanted to leave this as a comment, but I can't figure out how to leave comments, only answers. Sorry for my ignorance.)

[user12847]

This is looking MOST promising. In my case I'm monitoring a blog that has posts to items for sale. I need to be aware of the sale and make a purchase within a minute or I'll be beaten to the punch. I have setup rss growler, tied it into PROWL on my iPhone and will monitor over the next two days. I THINK this is just what I need! I wll accept the answer if it works as well as expected.

[user12847]

This combination worked WONDERFULLY. I just caught a sale that sold out in 2.5 minutes :) I ran RSS Growler on a 20 second refresh on my desktop at home keyed in to the web site where this artisan's sales are announced. I installed the Prowl plugin and set it up. I already had Prowl on my iPhone (love it). A few minutes ago I got a Prowl notification on my iPhone that a sale was afoot and I was able to get in and buy :) Thank you Ben!