Play a sound when the screen changes?

[Mark Tangard]

A friend has asked me for the feature below, but it’s very much not my field.
If I’m asking the wrong group, what would be a good one? (On hearing her
description, I suddenly now crave it too.)

Is there a way to make a PC play a sound when the screen, or a portion of the
screen, changes?

She wants to hear a sound when her group’s website flashes its (silent)
self-updating graphic that says there's a new blog post, so she can reply
promptly but still do other things around the house. I figure if there’s a
utility that'll compare the current screen with the one 10 seconds ago and make
a noise if they differ, that’s what’s needed. But I’m not even sure what to
call it, let alone where to get it.

A software solution is preferred, but if there’s some external piece of
equipment that does this, that'd be fine too.

Grateful for any clues. WinXP SP2.

MT

 

[Bob I]

It's called "notification" and the IM software would be the trigger. A
sound that played when the video screen changed would bring the computer
to a halt waiting for the sounds to catch up with the video.

 

[Paul Randall]

If she accesses the website with IE, it would be easy to write a VBScript
that starts IE, navigates to the website, and creates an event handler
routine that plays a sound when the onBodyClose event is triggered. The M$
public scripting VBScript group might be able to help if you posted there.
Or groups.google, searching the scripting groups for event handler.

-Paul Randall

 

[Mark Tangard]

She does use IE. Thanks for the info, I'll ask over there.

MT