Comment by its_down_again | Hacker News Reader

Comment by its_down_again | Hacker News Reader

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Hey there! Thanks a bunch for your input—it really helps to think through where this project is headed. Right now, I'm still in between a couple ideas on how to shape the project.

One thing I'm personally keen on is using it to peek at webapps like Teams or Slack without falling down the rabbit hole of distractions. e.g responding to a message without getting sidetracked by unread notifications. But to make that work right, I’d need to handle logins and authenticated sessions, which I know from experience is hard to get right.

Another scenario I’m looking at is for stuff like MX validator tools. When you tweak MX server settings, it takes a good day or two to take effect globally, and it’s crucial not to send out new emails until those new configuration changes are fully propagated.

I’ve also heard from a friend who works at an Amazon agency. They’re constantly refreshing product pages they manage waiting for updates to show up. They’ve tried existing tools, but reliability is often a toss-up. But even at $50 a seat, it feels like a bargain to them!

You're totally right about detecting changes-- making the app capable of reliably spotting updates and notifying users could really be key. I’m thinking about something like to a git commit history for the web. What's your opinion on a viable UI/UX for the notifications? Maybe a desktop notification that shows the new change?

Also really appreciate the tip about using GitHub releases for distribution! I was really overthinking it, but I'll get on that ASAP.

Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear more about the use case if the app could detect changes and signal the user from the background.

> I’ve also heard from a friend who works at an Amazon agency. They’re constantly refreshing product pages they manage waiting for updates to show up. They’ve tried existing tools, but reliability is often a toss-up. But even at $50 a seat, it feels like a bargain to them!

I suggest you first talk much more with this friend and then try to sell a solution to that agency.

Do you know visualping.io? It would also solve many of such cases. It can also watch a specific area. It uses emails to notify. I use it sometimes, so far those were in their free tier.

The main difference might be that visualping is a website, meaning a better solution for long term once a while changes. I would not use a local app for changes that are once per week or will happen next month.

An app for detecting changes seems to me for more high frequent changes, like several times per day. So local notifications are more appropriate. If it is high frequency then a quick response might be needed? Some kind of macro trigger might add value: `if value > 100 then ...`.

So I have some thoughts, but not a specific use case ;)

Thanks for sharing Visualping— can't believe I hadn’t heard of them yet! They seem to be class-leading in “web change detection notifications”, even serving some F500 clients. I checked out some third-party reviews and it seems they sometimes gets complaints around reliability and pricing. That might explain why people have spun up open-source alternatives like changedetection and Huginn, which are more powerful and flexible, but don't match Visualping's user-friendliness and customer support.

I’m definitely doubling down on the agency use case since I have a connection there. But based on what I’ve gathered, here are a few other potential uses:

- For tech marketing managers managing multiple products daily, ensuring everything’s purchase-ready. - For developers, monitoring forums for important updates, filtering out the noise. - For warehouse managers, keeping an eye on product pages for restocking purposes, maybe checking in about once an hour depending on demand. - For marketers, detecting website outages—this should run as often as possible without causing issues. - For academics, staying updated on relevant research grants to quickly apply. - For me personally, as a marathon runner who switches out training shoes every 300 miles or so, I want to catch discounts on last season’s models which perform just as well at half the price. - For everyday consumers, checking international shipping updates, which can sometimes require multiple form submissions.

It also appears perception of web clipping tools is "advanced mode" and not easy to use. I’m excited about making them simple enough for anyone to use. I'm imagining an interface where you can easily save what matters to you, record your activities, and keep those sessions safe and private on your own device for future replay. Also hoping that making it open source builds trust, but I'm still checking how well that works. The goal is a tool that "just works" out of the box while still keeping your data local, private, and secure.

Also noticing that notification filter setup can be complex, and require a lot of upkeep. I’m thinking about how to make that easier and more reliable. Currently plan to use a fine-tuned local LLM for parsing & interpreting HTML and JSON. This approach would help the AI be smarter about timing & sending notifications. For example it would ignore minor changes like a one-minute increase in your commute, but alert you about significant changes like a sudden 15-minute jump.

Let me know if you have any more thoughts on this! Also if you’re open to it, I’d be interested in learning more about how you use Visualping.

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