Something a little different.

[Dagastino]

Problem: You have a target you want to keep tabs on but you know nothing about their profile. No images, albumids, nothing, it's completely locked down and the person is a paranoid JUNKIE PIECE OF CRAP.

Enter:
http://feed43.com
They take any web page and let you scrap it's contents then turn the page into an rss feed.

How to use:
http://feed43.com/step-by-step.html

Under, "Item (repeatable) Search Pattern"

I've put

<img border="0" alt="" src="{%}" />{*}
<span class="searchMonkey-lastLogin">{%}</span>{*}
<span class="searchMonkey-mood">{%}</span>{*}
<span id="ctl00_cpMain_ctl02_UserNetwork1_ctrlMessage" class="searchMonkey-standardUserStatus">{%}</span>

Then, under;
"Item Link Template"

Last Login: {%2} Mood: {%3} Quote: {%4}

and finally in, "Item Content Template:"
{%1}

Voila, nice feed. You don't even have to sign up for this.

You can use something like, http://www.feedmyinbox.com or http://www.rssfwd.com after that to mail you when changes are detected. Use a mail redirecting service like http://spamgourmet.com or http://spambox.us for the rss signup.

[E]

sounds really nice but i have no idea how to do this. kinda looks complicated. i've heard of rss feed before but don't really know what it's about.

[Likes spiders]

I think I understand how this works--but, you can't mine any info that isn't available for public viewing, right? You can only get the info that pops up on the private page. Or can you?

[freezey]

sounds really interesting but like ej said sounds complacated
Mods what do you think will this work and give you info an o private page?

[Jewels]

It works, and it's not complicated. The feed output in google reader looks a bit different than it appears in feed43. But hovering exposes the title. My GR is modified so that could be why.

No it doesn't give you info you can't find on the private page manually. This is set up (if you follow Dagastino's instructions)so that you don't have to constantly check the page to see when the viewable info has changed. You can just peek in your feed reader-or set it up to send you an email whenever there is a change. So it's useful for those that check on target daily.

A while back-private info was able to be pulled via unprotected rss. Since MS is constantly changing things, there may be another rss hole that can be used to grab info. It would be worth testing this service out with urls for comments, pics etc. Dagastino has likely already performed these tests, so hopefully he'll weigh back in on the topic today. I don't have time this morning to do further checking with it, but if anyone does play around with trying to pull other info plz let us know how it goes.

Also, after you create the feed, look a little further down on the page and select the option to password protect the feed to make it private. You don't want it getting picked up by search engines.

[Dagastino]

Yes you can password protect the feed and if your readers supports credentials it's a good idea but not all of them do. The url is sufficiently random that I think protection only against editing is enough. Opera's builtin RSS reader is nice. So is http://www.feedmyinbox.com using Gmail. If you use a desktop client like Feedreader you can hammer myspace. See if you get some random goodie in the middle of the night. You can monitor anything you want like the tagged photos page of people.

[CornellWeasel]

I've asked this before (somewhere else), but was not satisfied with the answer: Does an rss feed add hits to the target profile?

And if not using feedmyinbox or rssfwd, where would the rss feed go?? Somewhere on the computer itself? (never used rss feed before)

Finally, what exactly does the mail redirecting services do? (In other words, why would I want to use them?)

Apologies if I sound incredibly ignorant.

[Jewels]

1) not sure on that one yet-but I'm thinking no since it's only pulling specific info not the whole page. (but I could be wrong on that)
2) to your feed reader, google reader, yahoo, etc or a desktop standalone reader
3) the mail service will send you an email whenever the feed updates (profile changes). Otherwise you would have to manually check your feed reader.

[Dagastino]

Some accounts are, ctl00_cpMain_ctl01_UserNetwork1_ctrlMessage and others it's ctl02.

For those I've made a cosmetic change in the output to;

Item Title Template*:
Last Login: {%2}

Item Link Template*:
Mood:{%3}

Item Content Template*:
Quote: {%4}
{%1}

Being a private profile they won't notice but still use a proxy in the client.

If your using a standalone reader like FeedDemon (new version soon, should be quite good) then it's just like a browser with a cache folder. Probably where IE stores it's files.