Monitor changes to an arbitrary web page, and subscribe to the changes via RSS.

Question

I've seen services like this before, where you give a URL and you're given an RSS feed of changes to the web page. But google is not turning up anything quite as simple/usable as what I'm remembering.

Please submit one such service or solution per answer so that as the landscape changes they can be voted up or down accordingly.

(Custom scripts and such are of course very welcome.)

Answer 1

No RSS, but will send you an email: http://www.changedetection.com/

Answer 2

Here's a somewhat torturous way to do it via google docs:

http://www.labnol.org/internet/monitor-web-pages-changes-with-google-docs/4536/

This may be the best solution for monitoring very specific bits of information on a web page.

Answer 3

IE8 has this built in. It's called Slices, IIRC.

Answer 4

This also seems to not support RSS and seems overly complicated:

http://watchthatpage.com/

Answer 5

"Is your favorite site missing an RSS feed? Now you can create one.

Ponyfish is a FREE web-based tool that allows you to create your own RSS feeds from almost any web page."

http://www.ponyfish.com/

It was easy to set up. Just enter the URL to the site, click some links to tell what content you want to make RSS-feeds from and then the site lets you fine tune the path to the articles and then its ready.

I made a rss-feed for stack overflow: http://www.ponyfish.com/feeds/47877FFRsMWqH

Answer 6

Safari lets you turn any portion of a web page into a dashboard widget. Right next to the reload button is a button with a dotted line box with scissors. This solution also fails to provide an RSS feed but may be a good way to monitor stuff you check obsessively.

Answer 7

Another one that looks overly complicated, wants you to register, and doesn't seem to offer RSS. I'll include a link in case they get their act together...

http://trackengine.com

Answer 8

Another one that doesn't do RSS yet:

http://www.followthatpage.com/

Answer 9

Another one that doesn't look that great currently:

http://www.thewebwatcher.com/

Answer 10

I can't say it works particularly reliably, but http://dapper.net probably does just about what you're looking for.

Answer 11

There's also http://diffbot.com which works pretty good