Change detection and notification: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:02, 20 September 2016

Revision as of 20:33, 20 September 2016

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In 1996, [[NetMind]] developed the first change detection and notification tool, known as Mind-it, which ran for six years. This spawned new services such as ChangeDetection (1999), ChangeDetect (2002) and [[Google Alerts]] (2003). Historically, change polling has been done either by a server which sent email notifications or a desktop program which audibly alerted the user to a change. Change alerting is also possible directly to mobile devices and through [[webhooks]] or HTTP callbacks for application integration.

Monitoring options vary by service or product and rangesrange from monitoring a single web page at a time to entire web sites. What is actually monitored also varies by service or product with the possibilities of monitoring text, links, documents, scripts, images or screen shots.

With the notable exception of Google's patent filings related to [[Google Alerts]], [[intellectual property]] activity by change detection and notification vendors is minimal.<ref>{{cite web |title=He created Google Alerts. Now he's an almond farmer |url=http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/04/smallbusiness/naga-kataru-google-alerts/ |publisher=[[CNN]] |accessdate=9 September 2016}}</ref> No one vendor has successfully leveraged exclusive rights to change detection and notification technology through patents or other legal means.{{Citation needed|reason=Just as one can not prove a negative, one can not cite sources that do not exist|date=September 2016}} This has resulted in significant functional overlap between products and services.