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The most common complaint we constantly
hear about is the problem of the information
overload. Many of you are monitoring several companies
or industries. Keeping track of changes on web sites or
specific searches take a large share of your day. We have
therefore surveyed some of the best tools available on the
market today to monitor
web pages and also specific searches on the web
(article continued below ...)
Our best tool: the Informant
The
Informant is a free service that will save your
favorite search engine queries and web sites, check them
periodically, and send you email whenever there are new or
updated web pages.
You can enter up to three
sets of keywords. At a periodic interval of 3, 7, 14, 30
or 60 days (which you specify), the Informant uses the Altavista,
Lycos, Excite,
and Infoseek
search engines (in addition to your local Internet search
engines) to find the ten Web pages that are most relevant to
your keywords. If a new page appears in the top ten, or if
one of the pages from your previous top ten list has been
updated, the Informant sends you an e-mail message.
You can enter up to
five URL's that are of particular interest to you. At a
periodic interval of 3, 7, 14, 30 or 60 days (which you
specify), the Informant checks these Web pages and sends you
e-mail if one or more of them have been updated.
Do
we like it? This is the user-friendliest tool we have
found on the market. It is easy to subscribe and easy to
update your profile. We only find the three sets of keywords
and 5 URLs very limited. We suggest you open several
accounts if you want to screen more keywords or web pages.
Monitoring web pages
Netmind
is a free service that notifies visitors of relevant changes
to your Web site via email and brings them back to view
these changes. Over 45,000 webmasters utilize Mind-it forms
on their Web pages to bring people back to their sites and
create a personal connection to their Web audience. Minder
Wizard lets you easily minds changes to Web pages at any
level of detail and sends updates to you automatically.
If you do not select something to track
within a particular page, Mind-it checks almost everything
that is displayed by your browser, but ignores changes in
the mark-up language. You can tell Mind-it to watch for
specific keywords, track sections or paragraphs, or track
specific numbers for you. Tracking works on any web page
that you can access with your browser. It was designed with
three original purposes in mind:
-
Eliminate any email notifications
for unimportant changes to a web page. By selecting the
specific content that you are interested in, Mind-it
then knows what to track within the page and will not
notify you about any other changes.
-
Monitor particular links on a page
to see if they change. The Images/Links option will
notify you if a link to a page or site that you publish
goes away.
-
Notify you if a particular word or
phrase ever shows up in a Web page. This is done with
the Keywords option. Monitor customized pages using the
Form Result option) those don’t have a unique URL.
A new feature of the product is the Highlighting
function which displays the changes found on a web page
by placing a color highlight over the changed content. This
premium feature is offered on a trial basis free of charge
until December 31, 1999. Please email Netmind with feedback
at support@netmind.com
Do
we like it? I find the interface complicated and the
multiplication of screen confusing for a non-specialist. But
we like the Highlighting function. Let's just hope it will
also be a free service.
Webspector
automatically navigates an unlimited number of user-defined
lists of web pages, either by button press or on a schedule.
In addition, Webspector allows instant display of
graphic-free versions of changed pages, completely
eliminating the time spent waiting for burdensome images to
load.
Webspector's integrated PageLighter™
technology highlights the exact areas of the pages that have
changed, allowing the user to get the information they need
in as little time as possible. For the advanced researcher,
Webspector can also mark specific keywords in each page.
Webspector also provides direct access to Netscape and
Internet Explorer, the ability to import web browser
bookmarks, and a built-in database of popular web sites.
For the user who needs to keep tabs on
many web pages throughout the day, the report feature
facilitates a connection with Webspector from any location.
On a flexible schedule, Webspector will automatically
e-mail-detailed reports to any Internet account.
Other tools
Victors
Valiant
WebTracker
Ingetech
from InGenius Technologies which was recently acquired by
Aeneid Corporation. Daily, javElink monitors the checklist
of any web pages you want. It measures how much changed,
reports changes to your secure account, highlights the
location of each change, and stores the history for you.
Your account holds a complete change
history for any page you monitor. Know who said what, and
when. The account is free up to 20 pages.
Do
we like it ? We like the way results are organized by
folders, and also the tracking on each changes by page
monitored. Updating your profile can take some time as the
commands to add a page or a search are difficult to find.
Boutell'
morning paper automatically visits your favorite web
sites every so often to find out what's new, and presents a
summary of what's new on each page as part of a
"newspaper" which it displays in your web browser.
Do
we like it ? Few relevant hits, but an interesting
concept. Be careful, you will receive numerous email
messages, even if there are no results from your monitoring.
Lots of bugs in the software, but new versions keep coming.
Monitoring newsgroups
Sonador's
Automated free Usenet Service searches Usenet newsgroups for
a set of keywords you specify. The header and body of each
newsgroup posting in your chosen newsgroup is scanned for
your keywords, and if a match is found, the article is
emailed to you. The integrity of attachments is maintained.
The Service searches your groups once each day, and
remembers the articles it has already sent you. You may
specify a maximum number of emails you will get in any one
day, to prevent your mailbox from getting mailbombed.
There is a limit of five separate
newsgroups you may include in your account, but there is no
limit to the number of separate accounts you may create.
Accounts may be easily and deleted with a simple email
command from your account specified email address to our
NewsBot. Posting a reply to the news post is as simple as
replying to the News Agent that sent you the email.
Do
we like it ? A nice alternative to Dejanews
which seem recently more interesting in pushing advertising
than useful new features. You will need to know in advance
the names of the newsgroups you want to screen. A nice
alternative to the incumbent
Dejanews
needs probably no introduction. We already mentioned it in
an earlier
issue . It allows you to search for specific newsgroups,
to search for a company's employees discussions on the Web,
or track a specific keyword. My
Deja feature allows you to automatically track what is
of interest to you. You can either view the results on your
browser, or receive the news discussions by email.
Discussions are logged for five years.
Do
we like it ? Dejanews is clearly the incumbent in the
field, but as mentioned above, the home page is become very
confusing and the search box is hard to find in the right
corner of the screen. I can't ceased to be amazed at how
much information is available though.
Monitoring specific searches
Yahoo:
when you do a specific search, on the top of the result
page, on the right, a little button called "Alert me
" allows you to repeat this search on a regular basis
and get the results by email.
Do
we like it ? Very simple to use to track press releases.
But don't forget: Yahoo only indexes about 6% of the Web, so
you will miss a lot of information !
Monitoring
industry news
We have publish in issue#2 an article
in our Small and Mid-sized companies on the ways to
screen industry news. These are some of the tools we
discussed then.
Search
engines individualized. These tools will create your own
home page. You can choose the categories you want to appear,
the companies you want to screen, etc. You are basically
creating your own portal. To obtain this, check My
Yahoo, or My Excite. Newspage
works slightly differently: it sends you, via e-mail, a
one-page summary of news items relating to the industry you
have selected.
Online
databases using alerts: Based on keywords you have
selected, Profound
or Dialog can alert you
when new documents appear. We regret, however, that these
alerts now have to be paid for per alert, whereas they used
to be free a few months ago. You can also use Dow Jones,
which is the only one that has the Wall
Street Journal archives. Finally, some of the sources
will have their own access:
Financial Times,
for example.
Monitoring
people
Egosurf
, also an InGenius Technology, is a search engine that will
search for information relating to a particular person.
About
the Author:
Estelle
Metayer is the Managing Editor of Competia Online
Magazine.The primary source for strategic analysts providing
practical and hands-on news, downloadable templates, tools
and analysis techniques specially designed to help those
involved in the fields of Market Analysis, Strategic
Planning and Competitive Intelligence.
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