How to get notified when a web page changes
Use a fantastic set of Perl scripts called websec.
websec takes a list of web pages, and some basic parameters, and checks those pages for changes, highlights the changes, and optionally emails the changes. It stores the highlighted copy locally, so you can read it at your leisure.
It works fast, the setup is easy (add some lines in a single config file), it is smart (will ignore any changes you specify, like timestamps or Slashdot's Page X of X notices), and it is very portable - the data is saved in an archive/ folder below the program directory, no external changes needed. Perl is required, which comes standard on most modern Linux distributions.
Within minutes of downloading it I set it up to check my own web site for changes (to test), and to check a company's website for job postings (since that company, Web 2.0-enabled they may be, does not bother to make it easy to monitor for new openings).
Many thanks to Baruch Even for writing this very useful tool.
Links:
- websec's home page
- websec's Freshmeat page