Feed Monitor

[Daniel Dimovski]

Hey!

Just started using Feed Monitor.
It seems the feeds sends notifications for all the items in the feed
everytime it checks for updates in the feed.
So every 5 minutes my screen is filled with notifications, no matter
that they items has been displayed before.

This happens for all my feeds.

This one for instance.. http://images.apple.com/trailers/home/rss/newtrailers.rss

[Brian Dunnington]

it was getting tripped up on the timezone (PST) of the pubDate
element. the DateTime parsing code that i was using assumed the format
was going to use GMT, so it was falling back to the current date time,
which is obviously constantly changing.

i uploaded a corrected version (at the same download link as the
original - should now be v1.0.5), so give that a shot and let me know
if it fixes it. (i tried the sample feed you listed and it is working
properly for me now).

thanks for reporting this.

[Daniel Dimovski]

Thanks, that solved the problem with apples trailers feed.

But the same problem is still happening with the google groups rss
feed for me..
http://groups.google.com/group/growl-for-windows/feed/rss_v2_0_msgs.xml

[Brian Dunnington]

Feed Monitor is choking on the pubDate again, but this time because of
an extra \n (newline) character. i forgot to trim off whitespace after
parsing the xml elements, so the datetime parser that handles RFC822
dates was getting tripped up.

anyway, i uploaded a new version (1.0.6) at the same url as the
original. try that out and let me know what problems you find next =)

[Daniel Dimovski]

Great, thank you..

*goes off hunting for new feeds to break it with* =D

[Daniel Dimovski]

Found more feeds that have the same problem.. :)

http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&cf=all&ned=sv_se&hl=sv&output=rss
and
https://github.com/aegnor.private.atom?token=b993f8b86936acfd1459fd1c938093de

On 5 Nov, 17:14, Brian Dunnington <briandunning...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Brian Dunnington]

alrighty, i got these date formats working now as well. however, i
think i will change the way it works so that the list of supported
formats is configurable so i dont have to release a new binary every
single time someone - you =) - finds a feed with yet another format.

i will put out a new build tomorrow with all of the changes. thanks
for reporting these. speaking of which, does anyone know where i could
get a large list of RSS feeds to test the date parsing routine? it
shouldnt just be popular feeds, but feeds from a range of sites. if
anybody has any ideas, lemme know.

> --
>
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "growl for windows" group.
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>
>
>

[Brian Dunnington]

i updated the app to v1.0.8 and it now includes support for both of
those feeds you mentioned. it also separates out the valid date
formats into an .xml file so in the future, an enterprising user could
update the file if they encountered a date format that the app didnt
understand (and if they alert me to it, i can put out an updated xml
file as well and not require a full application update).

http://www.growlforwindows.com/gfw/plugins/feedmonitor

thanks for finding those and letting me know about them. let me know
when you find some more.

[Young Lee]

i tried feed monitor and i was having the same problem as the people
above for the following feeds:

http://www.appleinsider.com/appleinsider.rss
http://www.appleinsider.com/rss/every_blog.rss

i didn't realize there were so many formats...

On Nov 20, 1:47 am, Brian Dunnington <briandunning...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> >>https://github.com/aegnor.private.atom?token=b993f8b86936acfd1459fd1c...

> >> For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/growl-for-windows?hl=.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Brian Dunnington]

did you upgrade to the latest version (1.0.8) of Feed Monitor? i tried
the two feeds you listed and they both worked for me with the latest
version.

[Young Lee]

I'm not sure what the version it is but I downloaded it last night. I
can try reinstalling it.
Thanks for the response. Keep up the good work. I'm really enjoying
this with Prowl.

Cheers

On Nov 23, 12:15 pm, Brian Dunnington <briandunning...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> >> >> For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/growl-for-windows?hl=.-Hide quoted text -

[iks...@googlemail.com]

I just downloaded FeedMonitor it looks like it will be great to use
with trac timelines:
http://trac.edgewall.org/timeline?ticket=on&changeset=on&milestone=on&wiki=on&max=50&daysback=90&format=rss


this is the tool I would have written if time allowed!

However, it just keeps comming back with an error like was happening
above(?)

How can I find out the error with a feed?
Also, how can I tell what version I have downloaded? The file is dated
19/11 so should it work?

thanks in advance

col

> > >> >> For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/growl-for-windows?hl=.-Hidequoted text -

[Brian Dunnington]

hmmm. the file dated November 19th is the correct version. i just
tried it with the Trac RSS url you provided and it seemed to work fine
for me. what behavior exactly are you seeing?

> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/growl-for-windows?hl=en.
>
>
>

[Boris]

Feed monitor is great, though it is not apparent how it works from the
download page. Now, it is why I use Growl rather than Snarl (Snarl
doesn't even have a direct feed notification extension).

I really would like to use a version of feed monitor tailored to
Google News, because now the similar titles from various sources is
just repeating and giving too many notifications (information
overload). Google News clusters similar news under 1 item in the RSS
identified by the ncl= number. The title of the item constantly
changes depending on the current ranking of the news article, but the
news are very similar within the cluster no matter what title is
displayed.

So if feed monitor can have an option to ignore subsequent news
article in the same cluster (forever or for some time), that will
greatly reduce repetitive news notifications. With Google News'
ranking of different clusters, we can truly get the most important
news updates 'pushed' to our screens without missing any.

Another thing is to change the feed icon to the news image Google News
put in corresponding to the news. "A picture is worth a thousand
words".

I find no current applications can be like an automatic personal news
secretary, so this should be something new and unseen. To make this
innovation possible, I can help with the coding if I am instructed how
and the syntax. :)

On Dec 16, 4:05 pm, Brian Dunnington <briandunning...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> hmmm. the file dated November 19th is the correct version. i just
> tried it with the Trac RSS url you provided and it seemed to work fine
> for me. what behavior exactly are you seeing?
>
> On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 10:04 AM, iks...@googlemail.com
>
>
>
> <iks...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > I just downloaded FeedMonitor it looks like it will be great to use
> > with trac timelines:

> >http://trac.edgewall.org/timeline?ticket=on&changeset=on&milestone=on...

>
> > this is the tool I would have written if time allowed!
>
> > However, it just keeps comming back with an error like was happening
> > above(?)
>
> > How can I find out the error with afeed?
> > Also, how can I tell what version I have downloaded? The file is dated
> > 19/11 so should it work?
>
> > thanks in advance
>
> > col
>
> > On Nov 24, 5:00 am, Young Lee <helloyo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I'm not sure what the version it is but I downloaded it last night. I
> >> can try reinstalling it.
> >> Thanks for the response. Keep up the good work. I'm really enjoying
> >> this with Prowl.
>
> >> Cheers
>
> >> On Nov 23, 12:15 pm, Brian Dunnington <briandunning...@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
>

> >> > did you upgrade to the latest version (1.0.8) ofFeedMonitor? i tried

> >> > the two feeds you listed and they both worked for me with the latest
> >> > version.
>
> >> > On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 9:00 PM, Young Lee <helloyo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

> >> > > i triedfeedmonitorand i was having the same problem as the people

> >> > > above for the following feeds:
>
> >> > >http://www.appleinsider.com/appleinsider.rss
> >> > >http://www.appleinsider.com/rss/every_blog.rss
>
> >> > > i didn't realize there were so many formats...
>
> >> > > On Nov 20, 1:47 am, Brian Dunnington <briandunning...@gmail.com>
> >> > > wrote:
> >> > >> i updated the app to v1.0.8 and it now includes support for both of
> >> > >> those feeds you mentioned. it also separates out the valid date
> >> > >> formats into an .xml file so in the future, an enterprising user could
> >> > >> update the file if they encountered a date format that the app didnt
> >> > >> understand (and if they alert me to it, i can put out an updated xml
> >> > >> file as well and not require a full application update).
>
> >> > >>http://www.growlforwindows.com/gfw/plugins/feedmonitor
>
> >> > >> thanks for finding those and letting me know about them. let me know
> >> > >> when you find some more.
>
> >> > >> On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 6:11 PM, Brian Dunnington
>
> >> > >> <briandunning...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > >> > alrighty, i got these date formats working now as well. however, i
> >> > >> > think i will change the way it works so that the list of supported
> >> > >> > formats is configurable so i dont have to release a new binary every

> >> > >> > single time someone - you =) - finds afeedwith yet another format.

>
> >> > >> > i will put out a new build tomorrow with all of the changes. thanks
> >> > >> > for reporting these. speaking of which, does anyone know where i could
> >> > >> > get a large list of RSS feeds to test the date parsing routine? it
> >> > >> > shouldnt just be popular feeds, but feeds from a range of sites. if
> >> > >> > anybody has any ideas, lemme know.
>
> >> > >> > On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 5:06 PM, Daniel Dimovski
> >> > >> > <daniel.k.dimov...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > >> >> Found more feeds that have the same problem.. :)
>
> >> > >> >>http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&cf=all&ned=sv_se&hl=sv&output=rss
> >> > >> >> and
> >> > >> >>https://github.com/aegnor.private.atom?token=b993f8b86936acfd1459fd1c...
>
> >> > >> >> On 5 Nov, 17:14, Brian Dunnington <briandunning...@gmail.com> wrote:

> >> > >> >>>FeedMonitoris choking on the pubDate again, but this time because of

> >> > >> >>> an extra \n (newline) character. i forgot to trim off whitespace after
> >> > >> >>> parsing the xml elements, so the datetime parser that handles RFC822
> >> > >> >>> dates was getting tripped up.
>
> >> > >> >>> anyway, i uploaded a new version (1.0.6) at the same url as the
> >> > >> >>> original. try that out and let me know what problems you find next =)
>
> >> > >> >>> On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 4:19 AM, Daniel Dimovski
>
> >> > >> >>> <daniel.k.dimov...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> > >> >>> > Thanks, that solved the problem with apples trailersfeed.
>
> >> > >> >>> > But the same problem is still happening with the google groups rss

> >> > >> >>> >feedfor me..

> >> > >> >>> >http://groups.google.com/group/growl-for-windows/feed/rss_v2_0_msgs.xml
>
> >> > >> >>> > On 2 Nov, 21:19, Brian Dunnington <briandunning...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > >> >>> >> it was getting tripped up on the timezone (PST) of the pubDate
> >> > >> >>> >> element. the DateTime parsing code that i was using assumed the format
> >> > >> >>> >> was going to use GMT, so it was falling back to the current date time,
> >> > >> >>> >> which is obviously constantly changing.
>
> >> > >> >>> >> i uploaded a corrected version (at the same download link as the
> >> > >> >>> >> original - should now be v1.0.5), so give that a shot and let me know

> >> > >> >>> >> if it fixes it. (i tried the samplefeedyou listed and it is working

> >> > >> >>> >> properly for me now).
>
> >> > >> >>> >> thanks for reporting this.
>
> >> > >> >>> >> On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Daniel Dimovski
>
> >> > >> >>> >> <daniel.k.dimov...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> > >> >>> >> > Hey!
>
> >> > >> >>> >> > Just started usingFeedMonitor.
> >> > >> >>> >> > It seems the feeds sends notifications for all the items in thefeed
> >> > >> >>> >> > everytime it checks for updates in thefeed.
> >> > >> >>> >> > So every 5 minutes my screen is filled with notifications, no matter
> >> > >> >>> >> > that they items has been displayed before.
>
> >> > >> >>> >> > This happens for all my feeds.
>
> >> > >> >>> >> > This one for instance..http://images.apple.com/trailers/home/rss/newtrailers.rss
>
> >> > >> >> --
>
> >> > >> >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "growl for windows" group.
> >> > >> >> To post to this group, send email to growl-fo...@googlegroups.com.
> >> > >> >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to growl-for-wind...@googlegroups.com.

> >> > >> >> For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/growl-for-windows?hl=.-Hidequotedtext -

[iks...@googlemail.com]

Brian,

Sorry for the big delay in replying work and holidays have got in the
way of the interesting stuff!

I just tried FeedMonitor on my home PC and all seems to work just
fine. I wonder if the problem could be to do with proxy settings?

On Dec 16 2009, 9:05 pm, Brian Dunnington <briandunning...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> hmmm. the file dated November 19th is the correct version. i just
> tried it with the Trac RSS url you provided and it seemed to work fine
> for me. what behavior exactly are you seeing?

For any given feed I see the message :
title :"Feed Error"
Text: The feed '<feed url>' was not able to be parsed

[Brian Dunnington]

On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 7:27 PM, Boris <bori...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Feed monitor is great, though it is not apparent how it works from the
> download page. Now, it is why I use Growl rather than Snarl (Snarl
> doesn't even have a direct feed notification extension).
>
> I really would like to use a version of feed monitor tailored to
> Google News, because now the similar titles from various sources is
> just repeating and giving too many notifications (information
> overload). Google News clusters similar news under 1 item in the RSS
> identified by the ncl= number. The title of the item constantly
> changes depending on the current ranking of the news article, but the
> news are very similar within the cluster no matter what title is
> displayed.
>
> So if feed monitor can have an option to ignore subsequent news
> article in the same cluster (forever or for some time), that will
> greatly reduce repetitive news notifications. With Google News'
> ranking of different clusters, we can truly get the most important
> news  updates 'pushed' to our screens without missing any.

i took another look at this and am not sure it is going to be very
easy. here is an example item from an RSS feed i just pulled from
Google News:

<item>
<title>Google&apos;s mobile hopes go beyond Nexus One - CNET News</title>
<link>http://news.google.com/news/url?fd=R&amp;sa=T&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.cnet.com%2F8301-1035_3-10425935-94.html&amp;usg=AFQjCNES7AeIr5p3yTjYJDQAlPf7mYShlg</link>
<guid isPermaLink="false">tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=17593685844960</guid>
<category>Sci/Tech</category>
<pubDate>Wed, 06 Jan 2010 01:31:01 GMT+00:00</pubDate>
<description>[article text/snippet here]</description>
</item>

nothing in the <link> tag specifies the ncl= value that you mentioned.
i am not sure how another story about the Nexus One would show up and
whether or not it could be related in any way to this story. there is
the cluster= bit in the <guid> element, so perhaps that is somehow
controlling the relationship, but it doesnt appear to be related to
the ncl= value at all.

(the 'More stories like this' link in the actual description contains:
ncl=dm3AomeTFwj-VkMhIG36-fNsLFklM
but the cluster id in the <guid> is:
cluster=17593685844960)

i am not sure that Feed Monitor is the right tool for monitoring
Google News if you are looking for advanced filtering capabilities.
Feed Monitor simply reports what it is fed, so if a new (related)
story is published to the feed, Feed Monitor treats it just like any
other new item. if there was some easy way to do this and i
implemented it, then someone else would report it as a bug that
stories were not being shown (maybe they want to read every article
about a certain topic).

> Another thing is to change the feed icon to the news image Google News
> put in corresponding to the news. "A picture is worth a thousand
> words".

as you can see from the <item> element above, Google News does not
publish the image in a standard <enclosure> tag. the image is just
output as part of the html that is included in the description, so
there would have to be some custom html-parsing logic to figure it
out, and if Google News changed its format at all, it would break.

all that is not suppose to discourage you , though. the entire code
base for Feed Monitor is open source and available for anyone to
modify as they see fit. all of the ideas you suggest are doable, so
maybe this is your chance to dive into the code and take a stab at it.

[Boris]

Thanks for taking the time. Right, the 'ncl' is under <description>
but not <link>. I haven't checked if 'cluster' or 'ncl' is the
grouping identifier, but either way we can. I am guessing the 'ncl'
is, so for each incoming item just look under description and extract
the 'ncl' value, then feed monitor can know if it's the same as any
previous news.

The reason I suggested that to Feed Monitor is I have not found any
other way to do that. If you know the right tool please let us know,
or it would be very much appreciated if Feed Monitor can do that,
becuase we have no other choice.

Feed Monitor can continue do act like what is it doing, since the
Google News customization shall be an option turned off by default. So
Feed Monitor can be the right tool for both, and nobody will report it
as a bug as it is off by default.

For images, we indeed need to go deeper to the <img src>, but hey if
Google changes it we can change too. Things just change and improve.
Getting the pic into the notification makes things much better.

If you think it's worth implementing, great. Even if not, would you
point me to which file one can implement the filter logic in? I'm not
sure what languages the code is in too.

I also found Feed Monitor not working: it is mixing up the feed's
title and often changes. Not sure if it's becuase the subscribed list
is too long or the config file can't handle foreign characters. I can
send you the config file which is strangely still under the version
1.0.0.0 folder.

On Jan 5, 9:02 pm, Brian Dunnington <briandunning...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 7:27 PM, Boris <boris...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Feed monitor is great, though it is not apparent how it works from the
> > download page. Now, it is why I use Growl rather than Snarl (Snarl
> > doesn't even have a direct feed notification extension).
>
> > I really would like to use a version of feed monitor tailored to
> > Google News, because now the similar titles from various sources is
> > just repeating and giving too many notifications (information
> > overload). Google News clusters similar news under 1 item in the RSS
> > identified by the ncl= number. The title of the item constantly
> > changes depending on the current ranking of the news article, but the
> > news are very similar within the cluster no matter what title is
> > displayed.
>
> > So if feed monitor can have an option to ignore subsequent news
> > article in the same cluster (forever or for some time), that will
> > greatly reduce repetitive news notifications. With Google News'
> > ranking of different clusters, we can truly get the most important
> > news  updates 'pushed' to our screens without missing any.
>
> i took another look at this and am not sure it is going to be very
> easy. here is an example item from an RSS feed i just pulled from
> Google News:
>
> <item>
> <title>Google&apos;s mobile hopes go beyond Nexus One - CNET News</title>

> <link>http://news.google.com/news/url?fd=R&sa=T&url=http%3A%2F%2Fne...</link>

[Boris]

Some Google News should be in <enclosure>, esp those in custom
sections like
http://news.google.com/news/section?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&csid=81fd56484d395619
At least this gadget can extract the pictures in the news feed:
http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=d6e50b62-0ec5-452f-b1da-5f89e321f4fa&bt=1
So can Desktop Google Reader with enclosures:
http://desktopgooglereader.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=35544

On Jan 5, 9:02 pm, Brian Dunnington <briandunning...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 7:27 PM, Boris <boris...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >Feedmonitoris great, though it is not apparent how it works from the

> > download page. Now, it is why I use Growl rather than Snarl (Snarl

> > doesn't even have a directfeednotification extension).
>
> > I really would like to use a version offeedmonitortailored to

> > Google News, because now the similar titles from various sources is
> > just repeating and giving too many notifications (information
> > overload). Google News clusters similar news under 1 item in the RSS
> > identified by the ncl= number. The title of the item constantly
> > changes depending on the current ranking of the news article, but the
> > news are very similar within the cluster no matter what title is
> > displayed.
>

> > So iffeedmonitorcan have an option to ignore subsequent news

> > article in the same cluster (forever or for some time), that will
> > greatly reduce repetitive news notifications. With Google News'
> > ranking of different clusters, we can truly get the most important
> > news  updates 'pushed' to our screens without missing any.
>
> i took another look at this and am not sure it is going to be very

> easy. here is an example item from an RSSfeedi just pulled from

> Google News:
>
> <item>
> <title>Google&apos;s mobile hopes go beyond Nexus One - CNET News</title>

> <link>http://news.google.com/news/url?fd=R&sa=T&url=http%3A%2F%2Fne...</link>

> <guid isPermaLink="false">tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=17593685844960</guid>
> <category>Sci/Tech</category>
> <pubDate>Wed, 06 Jan 2010 01:31:01 GMT+00:00</pubDate>
> <description>[article text/snippet here]</description>
> </item>
>
> nothing in the <link> tag specifies the ncl= value that you mentioned.
> i am not sure how another story about the Nexus One would show up and
> whether or not it could be related in any way to this story. there is
> the cluster= bit in the <guid> element, so perhaps that is somehow
> controlling the relationship, but it doesnt appear to be related to
> the ncl= value at all.
>
> (the 'More stories like this' link in the actual description contains:
> ncl=dm3AomeTFwj-VkMhIG36-fNsLFklM
> but the cluster id in the <guid> is:
> cluster=17593685844960)
>

> i am not sure thatFeedMonitoris the right tool for monitoring
> Google News if you are looking for advanced filtering capabilities.FeedMonitorsimply reports what it is fed, so if a new (related)
> story is published to thefeed,FeedMonitortreats it just like any

> other new item. if there was some easy way to do this and i
> implemented it, then someone else would report it as a bug that
> stories were not being shown (maybe they want to read every article
> about a certain topic).
>

> > Another thing is to change thefeedicon to the news image Google News

> > put in corresponding to the news. "A picture is worth a thousand
> > words".
>
> as you can see from the <item> element above, Google News does not
> publish the image in a standard <enclosure> tag. the image is just
> output as part of the html that is included in the description, so
> there would have to be some custom html-parsing logic to figure it
> out, and if Google News changed its format at all, it would break.
>
> all that is not suppose to discourage you , though. the entire code

> base forFeedMonitoris open source and available for anyone to