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Re:Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated? by richev on Wednesday October 11, 2017 @07:56PM (#15454586)
https://visualping.io/ can do this, although it sends email alerts rather than SMS messages.

I used it to notify me of new Hololens events, listed on this page https://www.microsoftevents.com/profile/web/index.cfm?PKwebI...

Re:Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated? by jonah on Thursday October 12, 2017 @12:29AM (#15455678)
Other possible services include https://uptimerobot.com/ and https://www.pingdom.com/

Just set it to check for the presence of a word on the page, etc.

Re:Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated? by jcun4128 on Thursday October 12, 2017 @03:45AM (#15456329)
How do you deal with the legality of scraping?

I was hired to scrape some economic related pages and build an excel file and email it, I got that done but not sure if I should try to host this and turn it into a service or just set it up for the client and let them deal with it. It's just personal use on their part.

Re:Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated? by dotdi on Thursday October 12, 2017 @04:45AM (#15456558)
I would not equate scraping with periodic searching for a keyword.

The problematic part is when you scrape data off of websites, and the owners don't want you to do it; as in, they would not even be happy if you manually copied that stuff into an excel file for fun or profit.

Re:Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated? by jcun4128 on Thursday October 12, 2017 @05:13AM (#15456671)
I can see that, although automating to decrease views of a page(from checking by refresh)... I suppose the end result is sign up in this case.

So for me I'll set it up for them and them run it.

Re:Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated? by amelius on Thursday October 12, 2017 @05:36AM (#15456748)
> How do you deal with the legality of scraping?

How did Google deal with it, when they started their search engine business?

Re:Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated? by jcun4128 on Thursday October 12, 2017 @05:53AM (#15456818)
My counter to this is, without Google's "algorithm" the search results would not be great/find what you want. And in this case websites want to volunteer/agree to index their site for visibility but then you still have to visit the site because conveniently The site summary ends before the content that you want. I don't know how I would find websites unless referred on some website.

I kinda felt the same way about how Netflix started out but I think they probably had a deal to pay a portion of revenue from dvd's that they rented out.

Re:Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated? by benji-york on Thursday October 12, 2017 @09:04AM (#15457630)
robots.txt
Re:Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated? by gspetr on Thursday October 12, 2017 @09:23PM (#15462679)
Re:Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated? by t1o5 on Thursday October 12, 2017 @12:37AM (#15455708)
Because this was very important to me and my life forward, I thought it was better to roll my own custom notifier. Moreover, the phone call thing was the most important part which will get attention any time of the day than an email.
Re:Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated? by joho68 on Thursday October 12, 2017 @06:35AM (#15456963)
So bounce your (unique) e-mail to an SMS-forwarder :)
Re:Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated? by evook on Thursday October 12, 2017 @08:34AM (#15457492)
I like the telegram API :)
Re:Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated? by captaintacos on Wednesday October 11, 2017 @11:53PM (#15455547)
Cool! Thanks for that Already using it to track whenever a couple stores here in Japan put the Nintendo Switch back in inventory or lottery sale
Re:Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated? by mrhappyunhappy on Wednesday October 11, 2017 @08:09PM (#15454654)
This is awesome, thank you.
Re:Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated? by zeristor on Thursday October 12, 2017 @01:00AM (#15455781)
No Hololens events in London, is that by design?
Re:Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated? by richev on Thursday October 12, 2017 @06:12AM (#15456881)
Wait a while...it took about six months for one to happen here in Sydney. Well worth the wait - half an hour of exclusive use of a Hololens. All the while being recorded for market research purposes, but that seemed like a fair trade.