Inoreader Blog: Monitor Web Pages For Changes Using Web Feeds. “After months of beta testing, we can finally say that our new monitoring feature called ‘Track changes’, part of Web Feeds, is now ready for prime time! This feature is perfect if you want to track visual or textual changes on a web page, like monitoring price changes, product availability, or just following a change log for updates.”
Make Tech Easier: Five Websites for Keeping Tabs on the COVID-19 Pandemic. “COVID-19 has now dragged into its second year. It’s more important now than ever to take in accurate information that is verified and without bias. The current information environment has now transitioned from discovering resources about testing to information about vaccinations and variants. We have found five of the best websites for consuming the latest in pandemic news, testing information, tracking the spread of the virus, and more. As information updates at a rapid rate, it is more important now than ever to ensure that you are up to date on the latest.”
Search Engine Journal: 12 of the Best Tools to Monitor Your Online Reputation. “It’s crucial that you find out about (and deal with) problems before they become a major issue, and that you can provide timely feedback. Monitoring what people say about you online will help you maintain a good reputation. So, how do you keep track of what people are saying about you online? Here are some of the best online reputation monitoring tools for you to check out.”
Google Alerts does has a video option, but this might get more specific. Digital Inspiration: YouTube Email Alerts – Monitor Videos around your favorite Topics. “The YouTube Email Alerts service is similar to Google Alerts but instead of scanning the whole worldwide web, it limits the searches to videos uploaded on the YouTube website. It then sends automatic email notifications when new videos are uploaded on YouTube around your topics of interest.”
Mashable: How to get in-stock alerts for everything from toilet paper to a PS5 . “As coronavirus cases crippled the U.S. in the spring, cleaning wipes and soap were also hard to get online and in store. With store shelves left bare, Amazon prices surged. Then I was introduced to the stripped-down website that sends you alerts when a popular item is in stock.”
Yes, this article is from Awario, and the first tool suggested IS Awario, but the writeups for the rest of the resources are decent. So, from Awario: 7 best Google Alerts alternatives. “For the past… many years, mentions on social media have been getting a lot of attention. Communication between people and brands happens on social media all the time, and social media users often discuss brands without tagging the said brands. Of course, if you care about what the Internet says about you, ignoring social media is just not an option. So now we arrived at the most obvious conclusion the world has ever seen. If you care about your online presence, you need a Google Alert alternative. This is a list of such tools.” Let me add though while Google Alerts can be tedious and annoying, the last thing they are is useless.
PR Week: Not just listening: Podcast monitoring tools find their place in the dashboard. “Nearly 90 million Americans are listening to podcasts each week, according to Edison Research. And while the media type has been on the scene for more than a decade, monitoring capabilities have appeared much more recently amid growing demand.”
Inoreader: Convert Almost Any Webpage Into RSS Feed With Inoreader’s Web Feeds. “Whenever you see a web page with a series of updates, be it news articles, blog posts, classifieds, product updates, weather alerts, practically any series of HTML links, Inoreader should be able to present it as an RSS feed. This feed will then be continuously updated, and any new links added to the list will pop up as articles inside Inoreader. Just like any regular feed.”
Inoreader Blog: Get Free Local COVID-19 Alerts with Inoreader. “We have combined 3 of our best Pro features together for a custom solution that will keep you updated about new cases in your region, new measures from local government bodies, and other critical updates. To begin just click the new orange notification in the sidebar.” Great resource if you’re looking for news in a country you’re unfamiliar with.
Poynter: Need to monitor for arcane changes to Wikipedia entries? There’s an app for that.. “If you’ve got a stake in a Wikipedia page — whether it’s about your company, a topic you’re interested in or even about you, yourself — how do you keep track of the changes others make? How do you manage the site’s outsized influence through its confusing layers of editing? WikiWatch is the answer. WikiWatch tracks changes to articles across Wikipedia. It reports updates in real time, hosts them on a secure website and makes them shareable with others. It’s built for non-Wikipedia experts, AKA most of us.” This is a roundup article with a bunch of interesting stuff.
Interesting GitHub project that turned up in my RSS feeds: A Telegram Mass Surveillance Bot in Python. From the README.md page: “Informer (TGInformer) is a bot library that allows you to masquerade as multiple REAL users on telegram and spy on 500+ Telegram channels per account. Details are logged to a MySQL database, a private Google Sheet and your own private channel for analysis.”
Ubergizmo: Twitter Now Lets Users Follow Their Favorite Topics. “Twitter lets you follow users where you can get updates based on their tweets. However, not everyone posts things that you might be interested in, in which it would then be easier to try and sort news and topics through hashtags. However, the good news is that Twitter will be making some changes on that front.”
Bloomberg Law: Homeland Security to Compile Database of Journalists, Bloggers. “The U.S. Department of Homeland Security wants to monitor hundreds of thousands of news sources around the world and compile a database of journalists, editors, foreign correspondents, and bloggers to identify top ‘media influencers.’”
Buffer Blog: Are You Listening? The 20 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools. “How do you know if your customers (and potential customers) are talking about you on social media? If they tagged your social media profile in their posts, you could check your notifications. If they didn’t, maybe you could search on each social media platform every time you want to find out. Sounds tedious? Here’s a better way: Use social media monitoring tools.”
Last May I wrote an article about Nuzzel Pro, which I use to monitor links on Twitter and Facebook. I haven’t seen this on the Nuzzel Blog, but apparently Nuzzel Pro is now free. I got this e-mail this afternoon: We will no longer be charging for Nuzzel Pro. The features will continue to work for you, but you will not be billed further. If you receive a notice from Stripe, Apple or Google indicating your subscription is ending, note that only payment is ending, the features of Nuzzel pro will continue to be available to you.
