stackexchange api - Watching for new Mathematica questions using Mathematica and the StackOverflow API

Question

Unless Mr.Wizard is on vacation, it is pretty difficult to beat this phenomenon which seems to be gifted with omnipresence and omniscience. How can we outdo him using Mathematica and the StackOverflow API?

Answer 1

Here's a variation on Sjoerd's solution.

The main difference is to use a docked cell instead of a popup dialog. The cell has a link to the new post, as well as a button that will clear the docked cell to the previous state.

The other difference is to use the question ID instead of the title for determining new posts. I know that titles get edited sometimes, so this trigger as a new post in that case.

storedTitle = "";
storedID = 0;
mySOWatchTask = 
  CreateScheduledTask[{lastTitle, 
     lastID} = {"title", 
      "question_id"} /. ("questions" /. 
        Import["http://api.stackoverflow.com/1.1/questions?key=       
         QEpjCjsXYE6s_kZEkFr4Lw&page=1&pagesize=1&sort=creation&
tagged=                mathematica", "JSON"])[[1]];
   If[lastID != storedID,
    storedTitle = lastTitle;
    storedID = lastID;
    SetOptions[$FrontEndSession, 
     DockedCells -> 
      Cell[BoxData[
        ToBoxes[Style[
          With[{dock = Options[$FrontEndSession, DockedCells]}, 
           Grid[{{Button[Style["[CircleTimes]", 16], 
               SetOptions[$FrontEndSession, dock], 
               Appearance -> None], "New StackOverflow question: ", 
              Hyperlink[lastTitle, 
               "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/" <> 
                ToString[lastID]]}}, 
            Alignment -> {{Left, Left, Left}}, 
            ItemSize -> {{2, 14, Scaled[0.7]}}]], 
          FontFamily -> "Times"]]], "DockedCell", 
       Background -> Orange]]; EmitSound[Sound[SoundNote[]]]];, 60];