Something like that - parsing and scraping have come a long way right? Plenty of different ways that are available. The adoption of various LLMs have given more options definitely. We use both traditional and LLM methods.
My latest is Marvelogs (https://www.marvelogs.com) - always wanted to build a price tracker (or tracking any values on a regular basis) - it's nearly there.
I missed Yahoo Pipes a lot so I built something similar recently for myself :) I know there are a few alternatives out there, but had to scratch my own itch.
Haven't released properly yet - not sure if it's stable but oh well.
I don't like using my personal email to sign up for things. But there are definitely things that I do want to sign up for - newsletters, try out some services.
I know there are temporary email services, but I actually want to use these services. Of course there is Apple email that forwards to your real email.
But, I also don't want to flood my inbox.
Anyway, I wanted to receive these transactional emails in my personal Slack.
For those who remember... :) man I miss when things are simpler, slower, maybe more manual, more tedious, but more configurable, more buggy, but more creative. I understand we got here through multiple step changes of improvements, but I'm just nostalgic - good memories!
I don't think there is a hope when it comes to our privacy and ads and our data being sold - none. Even if I'm somewhat off the grid or low in activities, the indirect way of targeting me still exists, by my family members, friends, people associated with me. I surrender.
I looked into Purelymail when searching around for good email solution. Google Workspace was getting a bit costly and there were too many things I did not need.
Zoho Mail provides another option - $1.95 per month I think for my use where I am (AU) and has all the features I need for my small indie business.
One other option I tried was to actually run mail myself with Linode VPS - https://mailinabox.email/
I know it sounds a little scary at the start running your own thing, but so far it's been working out great - zero issues so far. I may turn off Zoho one day and go fully into self-hosted option.
I absolutely love RSS format. It's one of the easiest ways for devs to get data and do something quickly with it.
If you remember, Yahoo Pipies allowed devs & others quickly build something with RSS feeds. I've recently rebuilt and launched my own Yahoo Pipes clone
Along the way of building this tool, I came across a plenty of major websites that do not provide RSS feeds and indie devs who maintain niche tools to provide these feeds.
And using the tool, I've been filtering, changing and tweaking various RSS feeds along the way.
I absolutely love RSS and absolutely loved Yahoo Pipes. For me, that got me into mashing up stuff on the web.
For devs, RSS feeds also provide a very easy way to source data. No need to get API keys and tokens, it gives you real life dataset immediately and easily. And from there, you can create tools.
But this IS the strategy. One thing after another, giving perception that SF is "leading" the way and enterprise customers continue to listen to the SF sales reps who just need to tell the story, so on and on it goes. :)