Summary: Summary: Got a web page to look after? Set its URL address, set expected search phrases and News Watch will monitor the web page for you at regular intervals and notify you when there's a match. Organize web pages in categories. Never miss a thing on the web.

Internet is to be thanked we all have the chance to be well informed like never before. On the other hand we are also getting more and more overwhelmed with flood of information coming to our PCs literary every minute. The obvious question we are facing is: how to manage this situation with success? We at XemiComputers Ltd. believe our News Watch can help in search for the ultimate answer.

The concept we have adopted to begin with is quite simple. There is always some characteristic search phrase we keep special interest in. It could be our company's name, our competitor's name, some product, person, favorite actor/actress, just anything people find important in business or personal life. Ok, we can check a site or two on regular basis, but who can be sure some important information is not sitting on another web page, just one click away, in that very moment? Well, it's apparently one click too far away…

So why not make a program that can watch all those web sites for all those search phrases instead of us and we get notified whenever something really important shows up? We have decided to give it a try and make one such program. What's said is done and News Watch was born.

How to use News Watch

This is truly an easy part. As long as you know URLs of web pages to watch and search phrases to be looked for you are ready to go. Start News Watch and open New URL Item dialog (Watch menu, Add New URL Item). Give that URL Item (web page, in fact) some name, enter its URL address, choose or create suitable category to hold it, put in relevant search phrases, select appropriate check interval and that's it, News Watch is already working for you.

Default set of categories is there only as something to start with. You can rename them, delete them and create new categories as you like. In any case, each URL Item has to belong to some category. Why categories are so important? Because they allow you to manipulate with search phrases on multiple URL Items simultaneously. You can easily add or remove a search phrase from all URL Items within a category at once.

As for the notification, you will be notified whenever News Watch finds search phrase on some web page and detects changes in page contents from last check. There are three different notification types available under Settings/General dialog tab. When search phrase is found News Watch can play a short sound signal, show small pop-up dialog with some additional info and automatically open URL Item in new browser window.

What's happening behind the scenes?

On a technical side there are a couple of steps taken by News Watch in each web page check cycle. Without going into too many details those steps are:

We are aware this procedure can not work well enough for all web pages out there. We are already planning various improvements in the future. However, one thing here is of special importance to us - your feedback!

Please send us your suggestions what we should do in the future to make News Watch better. Tell us what kind of new functionality you would like to see in the program. After all tell us what we did wrong and should change in this version. Your e-mails are welcome at info@xemico.com