Filed by Lance at 10:59 pm under General

Tip Your Waiter has the good sense to organize itself as an RSS feed. Some other groups, like New Colony, have an RSS feed built right in to the main page of the site, and broadcast news and information regularly. I’ve been wondering, though, if there’s an easy way to keep in touch with other groups on a regular basis. There are so many groups in Chicago to keep tabs on, some of which don’t regularly send out newsletters or don’t publicize smaller events as heavily. In a busy environment like Chicago, there’s a lot of stuff that gets glossed over if it isn’t screaming for attention.

Enter the world of ChangeDetection.com. There are a few sites like it, but this one is free, pretty versatile, and seems to have been around for a while. Previously, I would have to check, for example, Chicago Dramatists website every week to find out what their newest Saturday Series is going to be. I could get a flier from them about all of the different Saturday Series that take place almost 52 weeks a year, but considering the state of my apartment, the last thing I need is another piece of paper lying around for me to find in 2012 (right before the world ends) and throw out.

This way, whenever the content of http://www.chicagodramatists.org is changed, I get a nifty item in my Google Reader which looks like this:

ChangeDetection feed for Chicago Dramatists website

It’s not the most legible thing ever, but it’s a reminder that their website has changed, and that something new is going on. Best of all, it gets delivered to my RSS reader, just like they had a feed for me to subscribe to, anyway!