At AllStruck we’ve been developing websites and fixing computers for so long that sometimes we get great ideas from our customers. One day someone asked,
“You guys can make websites from scratch and fix any computer problem, so can you make custom software to fix this problem?”
Normally we don’t expect to answer yes to this sort of question, because often either a misdiagnosis by the customer has been made and we are able to easily describe and implement a solution without needing to create software, and our clients love us for this especially when it saves them time and money (custom software isn’t usually considered to be cheap to most people). This customer was different, a big-shot lawyer with tons of experience using his computer and software, he could probably perform a lot of the service tasks we are hired for by himself, this lawyer is a smart one and his deductive skills were able to find the best solution before even talking to us.
This lawyer described their problem, it was a fairly trivial and small problem but in the end it had robbed hours of their time and it had to stop if at all possible. Basically every day they would pull up the website for a particular court system, specifically the page where all updates about current cases are published. This lawyer like most others was always pressed for time and made their mark in this industry by remaining up-to-date, up-to-the-minute, and so even as tedious as it sometimes would be (checking all hours of the day and night many times) this website was constantly checked for updates, then scanned for the appropriate information once an update came.
Before coming to us this lawyer had to pull up the website, wait for it to load, then check the time-stamp to see if an update occurred. This alone could take up to one full minute, and once the update occurred an additional five minutes had to be spent searching the page for one or more particular cases, and since all case updates appeared on one page this wasn’t as easy as it might seem.
The day they came to us was the catalyst that sparked a change resulting in countless saved hours and dollars, and a more peaceful night’s rest. After only three days after describing the problem and agreeing to our proposed solution we built a complete solution, and they could not be happier.
Our solution worked by using the Firefox web browser and the GreaseMonkey add-on, allowing us to create a custom JavaScript application that would activate on the court website. First it would ask for a search phrase, this would be the name of the Plaintiff or Defendant in the case, or any other identifying text. After entering the search and clicking on the “Start Checking” button the program would begin refreshing the page every few seconds and each time would first see if the last update was after the current date/time, and once the update occurred it searched the page for what was entered, and play one of two sounds: One meaning that the search was found, and the other meaning that it wasn’t. At this time the program would also send an email message to the lawyer with this news, again letting them know not only if the page was updated but if the search term was found or not.