Kamajii
"There's a war out there, old friend, a world war.
And
it's not about who's got the most bullets,
it's about who controls the information.
What we see and hear, how we work, what we think,
it's all about the information..."
- Ben Kingsley as Cosmo in Sneakers -
[Why do it yourself?]
Get updated when your favorite web site changes. Get news, quotes, grades and
more directly to your e-mail or cell-phone.
Quick
Links
Questions and Answers
What is Kamajii?
Kamajii is a program in
Perl that monitors web sites (even ones that require a lengthly login process)
and sends you informative updates via e-mail, SMS and more when the site's
contents change.
For example, instead of checking your grades every day
on your university's grades page, you could have Kamajii let you know what your
grade is when it arrives.
What operating
systems does Kamajii work on?
Kamajii is written in Perl, so it should
work on any OS in which Perl is installed.
More specifically, we have tested
Kamajii on Linux (RedHat 9) and on Windows 2000.
What web-sites does Kamajii work
with?
Kamajii can work with any web-site that you can configure for
it. It supports, for example, HTTPS (secure connections) and Cookies.
Why are you writing Kamajii?
Because
it seems like a fun project and might be useful for other people.
No, really, why?
Because we're too lazy to
check our grades the old fashioned
way.
Come on, why are you
really writing Kamajii?
If you insist.. We are
writing Kamajii for a Workshop
that we are taking in Tel-Aviv
University.
What's with the
name? Is it some kind of an Acronym?
Gott im himmel, NO! Fear not dear
Kamajii users! If there's one thing history has taught us, it is that acronym projects are doomed to fail (Look what ever happened to to
CCCP and DDR), and as the cliché goes: "The one who does not remember history is
bound to live through it again". Thus the idea of us using acronyms as program
names, would be absolutely, totally, and in all other ways, inconceivable, and
hence:
Kamajii is not GNU, Kamajii is not WINE, Kamajii is not SOX, and in
general Kamajii is not an acronym!
OK wiseguys,
so what's with the
name then?
Well, Kamajii is the name of one of the characters of the Japanese
movie "Spirited Away". He's
an old man who is responsible for the boiler room. He has many hands, which are
all constantly in use, receiving notes that ask for soap to be put in the bath
and sending the soap back to the rooms. Something about this reminded us of the
function of our program, which is always monitoring web sites and sending
notifications back to its users.
If that's your concept, why not naming it
Vishnu? or perhaps Hydra?
Been there, done that! At this stage of our
lives, we are kind of sick and tired of using over and over the same names taken
from Indian or Greek mythology. Indeed the world is full of Gods and other weird
creatures, as Thales has once taught us, so we could have also chosen to name
our program Octopus, Gorgons, Medusa or Ganesh, but to give it a fresh original
flavor we decided to go for the Japanese name (only 243 appearances in google!).
We hope that settles the name issue.
But...
No buts! and besides, if you got so involved with Kamajii issues, why not
helping us in developing Kamajii TNG? (TNG means the next generation...
oops, used an acronym! the jury will disregard this slip of the tongue). If
you'd like to help in future versions, don't hesitate to call us.
Cool, now where
do I get Kamajii?
Here.
Who are you, anyways?
We're Dror and
Netta.
How can I contact
you?
Dror can be contacted at dror_sherman (at) hotmail (dot) com, or
through
sourceforge.
Netta can be contacted at gavrieli (at) netvision (dot) net
(dot) il, or through
sourceforge.
Why all the (dot)s?
Can't you just write your e-mail addresses?
Not writing our addresses
explicitly is supposed to reduce the amount of spam we get.
Thanks
We would like to thank Nadav Har'El for helping us come up with
the idea for Kamajii and for his sendsms script.
We
would also like to thank Michael
Angeles for his mini
icons which we use in Kamajii's GUI.
