Happy Mardi Gras, reporters! I’ve been aware of a tool called Distill for a while, but I finally found a feature that made me really want to share it.
Distill is one of a few websites that can track other websites and lets you know when they change. But here’s where it’s better: Distill also tracks PDFs.
For instance, the USDA tracks grain prices (fascinating), but instead of having a website like a normal person, they update a PDF every single day. Madness.
Distill can let you know when that PDF changes, and show you what changed. It watches websites too, of course, and you can have it check as often as every 5 seconds. 😮 One thing to note: the alerts are not exactly instantaneous. If the USDA updated their PDF on Tuesday, I got an email Wednesday morning.
Distill gives you 25 free trackers a month before you have to upgrade to the paid version. Get ahead of other reporters, reporters!