Roll your own bot

Assuming I’ve grasped the concept of Web 2.0 correctly part of it’s brief involves automating processes thus enabling us to cram even more ‘stuff’ into our daily routines in less time than before using simple web tools. We don’t need to know anything about programming, be tied to a particular device, understand HTML, scripts or absurd acronyms, we just need to know where to look for the information, what tools to use and how to click a mouse.

A feature I often use is eBay’s Search facility, but how to automate it? Once you’ve performed a normal eBay search if you look to the right hand side of the page there’s an Add to favourites link. Following this link through to the next page displays an option where eBay’s servers will perform that same search every day for you and, will email you if anything new listings appear, so you now you no longer need to log on to eBay, ebay comes to you.

But wait, there’s more, if you’ve got your head around the rss thing there’s actually an rss button tucked away at the bottom of the original search page that’ll mean your rss reader can perform that same search when your reader trots off to update all your other chosen feeds (and if you haven’t got your head around the rss thing click on the Google screenshot below to view a short screencast about it).

An example – for years I’ve been looking a recording of the Frost lane Album which features my old Chemistry Teacher Rick Keeling, – et voila ….

I’ve noticed rss buttons are starting to appear in the most unlikely places these days.. so for Web 3.0 we should be aiming to throw away our keyboard, mice and computers away and just talk to our TV set or mobile phone Star Trek fashion.