Obzrv.it

Hi Everyone,
As mentioned in the previous post, we've been working on another major upgrade - a Chrome plugin integrated with the service. So far, a user had to visit Obzrv.it, enter the url page in the service and then select the content they wanted to monitor.

One day we thought: Well, that's a lot of clicking! Why don't we just use browser's context menu to start monitoring?

Several weeks later - it's nearly done. Plus, one more cool feature - the plugin will also allow for "local monitoring", basically allowing users to use their own browsers to check pages. This will give you an unlimited, unrestricted and 100% free scraping solution, along with changes history and various notifications mechanisms like email or WhatsApp message, and a new one - local browser alert.

I described this in the Medium post, plus attached a couple of screenshots. We'll be releasing this soon and asking users to test the feature. Stay tuned!

https://medium.com/obzrv-it/one-click-web-scraping-is-almost-here-and-its-free-ddf3de0d40f4

It has been more than a month since I last wrote. I must admit I've been quite busy. My company laid off 6% of staff earlier this year, and those who left have more work than ever.
Also, the management insists on coming to the office at least 3 days / week, which means less time for side projects. To be clear, I'm not working on my project during business hours :) but commuting to the office means 1.5 hours less for anything else.

Anyway, enough complaining. In spite of above, we've been able to make some progress, and soon we'll be releasing some cool stuff. I say WE, because my colleague - Marcin - is working on this together with me. Thanks to him we're making progress even when I'm not very active.

Here's what we're working on

• Chrome plugin - it will allow users to select content to be monitored on a web page directly, instead of going to obzrv.it - just right click on the text you want to observe, and choose "Monitor with Obzrv.it" from the context menu. Easier, quicker, more natural.
• Additionally, the Chrome plugin will allow for "local monitoring", which means basically using your own browser to monitor your pages, instead of my cloud infrastructure. It will allow people to monitor unlimited amount of pages for free, on their own PCs. Cool, isn't it? On top of it, it makes it possible to monitor your private stuff, like password-protected social media content. That's theoretically possible with cloud monitoring as well, but sharing your passwords with any other website is always a huge security concern. Local monitoring fixes the problem. At least one competitor has this feature, but guess what - they aren't charging users for local monitoring, because why would they, but instead they're charging for sending email notifications. So greedy!
• Prices monitoring - I've noticed people monitor products prices and availability most of the time. I want to make it easier for them. Here's the idea: instead of web page address, you enter a product name - there will be a separate page for this. Press enter, and the service searches a number of online shops for this product, and all the findings appear dynamically on a single web page, ordered by price. And with screenshots so you can see we really did visit the site in real-time. Next to each finding, you'll have a button: "Observe the price". It will be a country-local feature and I'll be testing this in Poland to see how this works. (we'll localize the service to Polish)
• Webhooks & APIs - we'll also add webhooks, so users can integrate obzrv.it with their own code. Additionally, we'll expose APIs, so people can order service like screenshot capture of a web page, and use this in their own services. I hope to attract more professional users seeking such services for their own projects.

That's mostly it! I'm not listing all the small stuff we're working on - little, gradual improvements, etc. but there are plenty of them, trust me :)

So much work, so many ideas, so little time... not sure when to work on all this... do I really need 8 hours of sleep? :)

In case you missed it: I just launched on Product Hunt, a couple of hours ago!

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/obzrv-it-2

Give it a try! You can observe up to 10 pages with up to 6 hours frequency for free - no need to register.

And if it's not enough for you, choose one of paid plans, and use PHLAUNCH code for 30% off!

I must admit - I've been greedy.
I wanted to have everything, right here and right now. Yachts, private jets, Lambos. All of it.

But not any more. This is over. I checked the competition and decided that my users deserve more than what I initially offered. And more than what competition offers.

Starting from one beer/coffee (depending what's in the fridge) from now, I'll allow for monitoring of up to 10 pages with a max 6 hours frequency in a free plan - a bump from 5 pages & 24 hours frequency.

Give me a like if this made you happy. Or express how you feel about it in a comment.

Plus: I'll be offering 30% discount coupon on tommorrow's PH launch: https://www.producthunt.com/products/obzrv-it

#GreedyNoMore

:)

Hi All!
I finally made it and published new obzrv.it version. It is officially live :)

Product Hunt release this Friday: https://www.producthunt.com/products/obzrv-it

I'll be switching my focus more on promotion & marketing now, that the technical part is done. Will keep you posted - there will certainly be some interesting stories to share!

Meanwhile - have fun and keep observing!
https://obzrv.it/

New obzrv.it release is getting delayed because of this. Pretty annoying.

It'll be soon 2 weeks of my struggle with trying to make my Messenger bot public. Let me tell you the story: I had this idea a couple of months ago

Why not use Facebook Messenger to deliver notifications to users?

My service delivers notifications via email by default. Emails are slow. They get blocked by spam filters. It is an old technology - our grandparents used emails to communicate on front lines during Second World War. Old and not cool.
Mobile notifications are cool and sexy, on the other hand. People love them! (ok, until they become annoying) It would be great to send mobile notifications as well, next to emails.
So I implemented a Facebook Messenger bot. The technology is really nice and powerful. I had a lot of fun working on it. The bot replies to simple commands like "unsubscribe", "mute", or "history". It also sends action buttons, so a user can execute action easily. Overall, a great user experience.

All went well, until I decided to make the bot public.

First it turned out they need to verify my service, and how am I going to use the bot. They ask you to create a test account for them, so they can login and play with it. Describe the use-case step by step. And record a video demonstrating how to use it.
Ok, a bit of work but doable. I had to resubmit my request several times before it finally got approval. It was weird - the biggest issue they had was that the bot did not reply to their messages. Of course it did not reply, because it wasn't approved yet hence couldn't reply to other people's messages. How can testers not be aware of this?? They simply rejected my requests stating that "the bot is not responding". In the end, I had to create a fake Facebook account, grant it "Tester" role for my bot (which, btw, also isn't trivial: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37676494/why-cant-my-fb-test-users-created-via-dashboard-access-the-fb-page-that-hosts), and include credentials for that Facebook account in my request. That finally got approved.

But it wasn't enough.

Then it turned out they also need to "validate my business". They want to know a company name, address and phone number - all proved by legal documents. Now that's a bit crazy. I just integrated the service with Stripe, and can accept credit card payments with access to user's data like names and emails. They did not require me to start a company. Just a bank account, and whether I want weekly or montly payouts. Nice. But now I need to start a real company, just to send notification messages via Messenger, because it turns out my service is "processing other people's data".

That's it for now. I started the process, thankfully in Poland you can now start a company online and it takes 1 day. But I know it's not all, as in the next step Facebook also needs to verify that my company is a "Tech Provider". Whatever this means.

What was wrong with email notifications??

Thanks for reading!

The policy was introduced only recently and is described on their blog page: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2023/02/01/developer-platform-requiring-business-verification-for-advanced-access/

A lot of my colleagues lost their job recently. Many of the big tech & banking companies decided to let 5-10% of their employees go.
Google, Meta, Twitter, Stripe, Goldman Sachs, ... they used to be dream jobs for so many. Suddenly, they had to leave, after years of service they were given - in many cases - 30 minutes to pack their belongings and say goodbye to their peers.

Since obzrv.it is very useful for job hunting, I decided to write a short blog post about it. It will be visible in the new service version (coming soon, stay tuned!). I also recorded short YT video demonstrating how to use the service.

I'm sharing this below, so you can get familiar before it is published.

Enjoy the read, and let me know any remarks!

...

Looking for a job is a bit like hunting in the wild. When an interesting offer appears, you need to act quickly: send your resume, be among first candidates to reply.
It may sound silly, but this is the reality for so many companies: let's hire quickly, before they cut the budget!
First matching candidate gets the job, others often won't even get a "Thank You" message.

Also, many companies don't even use HR/headhunting agencies. Often they won't even post to LinkedIn. They'd just post an offer on their website and that's it. After all, if candidates are flowing in, why make the extra effort?
These are mostly government institutions, schools, universities, research facilities, non-profit organizations or various small to medium companies which utilize traditional recruiting channels like personal references or word-of-mouth.

In such cases - it pays to be fast. The one who spots the offer first, wins! Just go to https://obzrv.it, enter your dream company's website address - specifically the page listing current open positions, select piece of the page where offers are listed, and that's it.
Start preparing for the interview, and we'll let you know as soon as new offer appears on the page.

https://youtu.be/tpRAwLiAfO4

This video is pure madness. Here's the story:

I've been testing the service recently. Pretty intensive tests - I started 6 Ubuntu instances on AWS (that's almost $1/hour hence I had to be really quick ;-) ) to see how the service is doing under bigger load.
Normally I start Chromium browsers in headless mode, but for tests I started them in windowed mode - just to see how they're doing. I started VNC on each Ubuntu and used it to connect from my Arch Linux.
So, I had 6 windows opened, each of them with a Chromium browser opening web pages one after another like crazy. My first thought: that 43" wide screen monitor is a blessing! Then I thought the view of 6 browsers changing pages very quickly looks pretty cool and would make an awesome video. So I recorder this, then added a couple of effects, a logo with some catchy slogans and... voila, this is how first Obzrv.it promo video was borned!
Have a look, it is beautiful! It's made with OBS Studio on my Linux. Happy to share how I did it, if you're interested :)

https://youtu.be/vKUcwl8Grz8

My idea for promoting obzrv.it is to record a series of short screencasts - showing how people use the service to monitor interesting content.
There'll be different examples like:

• monitoring price of a product on eBay and Amazon
• monitoring new promo codes on www.promocodesforyou.com
• observing menu on a kindergarten's website, to receive new menu on mobile phone as soon as the kindergarten publishes
• observing job offers page of some company

While there are more possible use cases, these are our typical user's scenarios.
I already recorded one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_y9cRF3W88

Let me know if you like it!

I'm nearly done with development of the new obzrv.it release. I hope to publish it, if not in December, then January the latest.
It's a completely redesigned website, not even similar to the current service :)
It contains a lot more interesting content: demo videos, usage examples & user stories, improves user experience and delivers a couple of new features.
See previous posts for a full list, or check my Twitter for demo videos and screenshots.
Stay tuned!