URL Minder

Keeping Track of Page Updates

The URL-Minder is almost as good as a secretary. It keeps track of any internet resources you ask it to and sends you e-mail when those resources change. In essence, it does what needs to be done, but doesn't use your time to do it.

Registering to use the URL-Minder is as easy as filling out a brief form. The pain of registration comes when you need to enter each and every page you want to keep track of. Of course, once you've done it, you need not do it again. Ever. Unless of course you find additional pages you'd like to know about or if you change your mind about the ones you've already registered. Yes, you can unregister.

And if you forget which pages you've already entered, never fear. Use the list service to find out. URL-Minder will check your registrations for you and email you a complete set of all the pages you've registered.

The drawback to URL-minder is that it only looks at a page, not the whole site. Thus, if there's a site with lots of pages you're interested in, you need to register each of those pages. It might be easier just to visit the site yourself on a periodic basis.

For those of you who are interested in only certain sections of web pages, try the NetMind Highlighter program. This program allows you to let NetMind know which links or keywords you want them to be on the lookout for. If something on the page changes that has nothing to do with your highlighted requests, you won't be notified. A good idea for those with already bulging mailboxes.

The URL-Minder also serves another purpose. Do you want people to return to your pages? You can add a link on your page to the URL-minder. If visitors to your site register, they can get email whenever an update occurs on the page on which they registered. You can even bypass the middleperson so the email notice of your updates reaches them quicker.

Netscape's SmartMarks

A couple of year's ago when Netscape and First Floor came out with SmartMarks, people were thrilled--for a while. It allowed you to collect, organize, and monitor sites that were important to you. It would automatically notify you when updates occurred.

We tried it.

Then the power went out during one of those quick passing storms. We lost all our bookmarks. Apparently, there was a bug in SmartMarks that responded unkindly to power outages.

The program has been updated since then.

The newer releases have the ability to manage thousands of bookmarks, monitor and track page changes, and search the more common databases on the web. The most interesting feature is the ability to receive updated HTML bulletins from sites that change frequently. (Web designers can code new information and enclose it as bulletins that summarize the changes.) And, SmartMarks has plenty of the popular web site's URLs already installed.

You can download one of the newer versions of SmartMarks.

However, the program is still quite slow and it requires 6 Megs of RAM. We thought we'd wait a bit.