14 DAY TRIAL // RSS feed reading is the most popular way to retrieve information from the Internet nowadays. The instrument is easy to use, some of them are highly configurable and can be scheduled to retrieve the headlines and most of them come equipped with a sort of pre-historic web browser to flip the pages.
It would all be nice and cheery if our needs would not grow every second and we wouldn't ask more from technology and software developers. Our thirst for information is so great that some of the users wish to get their eyes on the latest information published by the favorite websites. Thus, a new category of softwares emerged and its purpose is solely monitoring the links you feed it and alert you when a change occurs.
A week or so ago, I presented you Update Patrol, the former Delta Spy. The application is nifty looking and its core is formed of regular expressions. Once you harness them you can practically become one of the most informed and up-to-date members of your group. You will no longer waste your time searching the same page over and over again looking for a change, but you will go straight to learning the new content as it is highlighted by the application.
Right Web Monitor is a similar in purpose application that runs a bit differently and sports various features and options. Easy to use and configure, Right Web Monitor has only $39.95 on the price tag and the 30 days trial period allows you full use of the program, with no restrictions whatsoever.
Looking at the interface there is nothing outstanding about it and functionality is more like its defining trait. For more comfort, the developer created an Explorer-like display of the panels. In the left side there are the categories sheltering the web links, beneath it there are the details of the web link (status, last check time, last modification recorded and a brief description of the link). The upper right side of the main window is reserved to links.
They are not presented in the raw web format and can be renamed to whatever the user wants. The information included in this window comprises the status of the link (has been modified or not), the time of the last visit and of the last modification and the time taken to perform the update job.
Getting your logs for each page is supported by the application. They are displayed in the lower right hand window. This last screen has multiple functions as besides presenting the log for each selected link, it also consists of a web browser and what should be a presentation of the link with highlighted changes.
This last option seems to be out of order for a neophyte, but actually it is just because the software's page analysis setting is not fixed on Smart Content Analysis but on Exact Content Analysis (modify the link's properties in Analysis tab).
As soon as you decide to add a new link to be monitored, a wizard will guide you through all the steps of adding it. Done with the location of the link you can now set the auto-check interval (set a value and the unit of time - second, minute, hour, day, week or month).
Right Web Monitor has very interesting notification options that really baffled me. The notification can take place in three ways: bring up the notification dialog, play a sound or set the application to send messages to the desired email address. A fourth option in this dialog is to automatically download the modified web page to a user defined location.
For configuring the SMTP settings you will have to go to the options menu to the corresponding section and provide the necessary details. In this section the dark side of Right Web Monitor is shown as you can set whatever sender name and an email address wishes. During our testing we used a random email address and a fictitious name just to see if the application goes all the way. Futile to say that it did.
General options of the application allow proper configuration of the software to meet your needs. Thus loading Right Web Monitor at Windows Startup and hiding it to system tray for non-intrusive reasons or making the tray icon blink when changes are detected, opening the URL in a new browser window are all possible by simply pressing the F10 keyboard shortcut to invoke the Options menu.
Among the changes for the latest version, there is the ability to read RSS feeds and the support for XML files. There is no visible option to get this feature going. However, I gave the software a shot and added a RSS feed as a regular link. Big surprise as the application did its job and alerted me whenever a change occurred. But the major drawback is the presentation form of the feeds.
Actually, for web syndication to work in Right Web Monitor you will have to mess with the properties of the link (again), more precisely to change the way the software should analyze the link and set it to RSS feed processing. Now the Local Copy tab should change its name into Syndication and all you have to do is wait.
Monitoring the web pages can be manipulated by the user in various ways and due to the use of variables you can even monitor only a certain fragment of the page or even add keywords to monitoring properties. The downside of this operation is that the variables are not too well explained in the help file and many users may feel overwhelmed by the avalanche of information.
The importing and exporting features of the application are well known as they are the first ones in the File menu. The user can import links from Internet Explorer's Favorites folder or directly from the computer. The drag&drop function will definitely help you in the task.
The Good
The software proves to be an effective tool if text is exclusively what you are interested in. The notification options are simply baffling and you can send the notification message even via email.
The Bad
The one option that really tortured me was the fact that for importing the links from your computer the user has to load them into the software one by one. There is no way to make a multiple selection and add them to the desired category in Right Web Monitor.
Some other baddies include the fact that the user has to do a lot of checking of the software in order to realize that each link can be configured differently (RSS feeds for instance). Also, the default settings will not make any highlighting in the changed page (personally I thought that it will not highlight the changes at all and it took me some time to discover the fix).
I added some feeds from Softpedia and it's been three hours since then. They are not updated and the new information is not retrieved.
There is not an option to monitor the numeric characters that change in a web page. Some users simply want to be up to date with the latest stock market values or the release of a new software version.
The Truth
The price is pretty low, considering that similar applications are about $10 more expensive. There are however a lot of issues to be fixed. It's a pity that the developer does not put more effort in this application as it could become the best one in its category.
In my case, Right Web Monitor ate a little too much of my CPU whenever I gave it a task, but testing it on a different machine everything went smooth and the system felt absolutely no load.
There are multiple bugs in the application that need to be taken care of (RSS feed handling included).
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
