Many of the sky's most interesting objects, like gamma-ray bursts and supernovae, change within days or even hours. It's very difficult for traditional observatories to dedicate the kind of time required to watch the evolution of these objects, but a new class of instruments will help astronomers stay on top of them. ULTRACAM will track changes in brightness that last only a thousandths of a second, while Super WASP can watch an area of sky 1000x the size of the Moon, looking for anything unusual. And a new network of robotic telescopes could be the best tool for spotting Earth-like planets around other stars until big space observatories are launched in the next decade.