To create the Ron Paul Donations Firefox Extension, I wanted to host a web service for the extension here on ashlux.com (see http://www.ashlux.com/rp-donations/getdata.php).

Problem: I did not want to calculate all this information when it is already being calculated on RonPaulGraphs.com. So, I wanted to grab data from RonPaulGraphs.com every couple of minutes or so. BUT, my web service does not allow crontab to run more than one every 24 hours.

Solution: Use a company that offers to check your website's uptime.

So, I have an update script that can be ran by the uptime service which grabs the data from RonPaulGraphs.com and puts the info in the database. Nice, huh?

Best yet, I found an uptime service that seems to work very well - and it's free! That service is http://www.uptimedog.com/. It seems to work like a champ.