Using Page Monitor - Installation to Advanced Usage

Discussion in 'Scripts' started by Cowfin, Mar 28, 2013.

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  1. Cowfin

    Cowfin Community Manager
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    What is Page Monitor?
    Page Monitor is an extension for Google Chrome. It functions by scanning webpages, searching for changes to the site. The unique part about Page Monitor when compared to other extensions, such as Mozilla Firefox's Check4Change is that it runs in the background, requiring no tabs or windows to run in, freeing up your computer's resources as well as allowing you to keep your digital workstation organized. Page Monitor can be downloaded in the Chrome Web Store, and can be accessed here.

    How can Page Monitor Help Me Turk?
    Page Monitor can serve as a replacement for TurkAlert, providing instant alerts when a requester posts new HITs. It is faster, more reliable, and provides you with a head start over other turkers. This is especially useful for the HITs that go up and disappear in a matter of minutes, such as those from the requester Two Lakes Research.

    The Installation/Set Up
    In Chrome, navigate to this link. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/...emhgklkefakciniebenbfclihhmmfcd/related?hl=en. Once there, click the blue "Add to Chrome" button, then click "Add" in the next window that appears. From there, a logo similar to a heartbeat monitor will appear next to the address bar in Chrome.

    To set up Page Monitor, navigate to a requester's search link (Many can be found here, or by clicking "HIT Group" within a requester's Turkopticon page. click the Page Monitor button in the address bar, and click "Monitor This Page," which will be in the bottom right corner.

    Next, right click on the Page Monitor Icon in the address bar, and select "Options." This brings you to the Page Monitor settings, where you can rename the links and change the search intervals. By default, the links are all displayed as "Amazon Mechanical Turk", the easiest option is to change them to the name of the requester each link represents. In order to take advantage of Page Monitor you must reduce the search interval. This option is in the bottom right corner of the settings page, and is set at 3 hours. In order to be effective, it should be set to around one minute. Any higher and you risk missing HITs, any lower and you may have server issues with mTurk. You should also enable desktop notifications and /or sound alerts, which are to the left of the search interval. (This is personal preference, but having these on, especially sound, makes the alert more prominent) By clicking the advanced options for each link, you can customize the check times for each requesters, so higher priority ones can be scanned for more frequently.

    General Usage
    If you have the proper settings, when a requester posts a HIT, there will be a noise alert, as well as a visual popup if you are in Chrome. From there, you can choose to ignore the alert, or view the page.

    Interference with HIT Database
    If you have a lot of requesters set up in Page Monitor and you try to update the HIT Database extension, you will easily run into Amazon's server request limit. If you find this happening, you can go into Chrome's extensions manager and temporarily disable Page Monitor. This will probably only happen if you have 20 or more requesters.

    Too Many Requesters
    If you have too many requesters and they are all set on the same interval check, you may run into Amazon's server request limit. In this case, you can either remove some requesters from being monitored or vary the interval check time so that not all refresh at the same time.

    Page Monitor is an excellent extension, but must be set up properly in order to be effective. With proper links, search intervals and notifications, you can be ahead of the curve and be among the first to work on a quickly moving batch.

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    Written by Cowfin, additional information provided by aphotic
     
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