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Filed under: Productivity, Web services

A few days later, a better notifier: Ding, It's Up


It seems like only yesterday that I was writing about Notify Me When It's Up, a site that lets you know by email when a website comes back online. Actually, it was a few days ago, but someone has already built a fancier version of Notify Me. It's called Ding, It's Up, and it adds SMS and Twitter notification options, and tells you when a site goes either up or down. Despite my praise of Notify Me's minimal approach, I am forced to concede that Ding outdoes it.

I previously commented that it was nice that Notify Me keeps things simple, even though it could have added more features, or incorporated the functionality of Down For Everyone Just Me. I guess the creators of Ding, It's Up are basically sticking their tongues out at me, because they've done just that, and it's actually pretty neat. Just don't use it to sign up to receive updates by Twitter about when Twitter is down. You might want to use Is Twitter Down? for that.

UPDATE: No more Notify Me When It's Up! Now the URL just redirects to Ding. Thanks, Sanjay.

Filed under: Internet, E-mail, Productivity, Web services

Notify.me: get site updates via IM, SMS or email


If you're not a power-user of RSS feeds, or if you are, but RSS just isn't fast enough for you, notify.me might be just what you're looking for. Notify.me sends updates from any site with an RSS feed directly to your IM, SMS, or email. Facebook, Twitter and Craigslist are just a few of the popular use cases.

To make notify.me even easier to use, there's a browser bookmarklet you can add, to avoid any copy, pasting or typing when you want to add notifications. You also get a username@notify.me email address, which you can sign up to various email lists with, and then use notify.me to direct those messages whereever you want to receive them. A desktop app that will catch all your notifications is coming soon, and you can already see it in action in the notify.me demo video.

Filed under: Fun, Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware

Torment (or help) your users with MsgBoxToy's Windows alert boxes


While there are certainly some good ways to put MsgBoxToy to use - say, prompting users to save their work or take a computing break - it's also a lot of fun to create dialog boxes simply to mess with your co-workers.

The program's interface is incredibly simple: choose a title, enter up to four lines of text, and enter button labels. You can also select the type of icon to display: stop, alert, question, or information. Click the make button to preview your work, and then save it to a file.

Running [the path to MsgBoxToy]\msgboxtoy.exe /text.txt launches your message. Make sure to give your message a test run, as Windows' security may ask you to confirm the run command. Just untick the always ask box and that will be the end of that.

Because MsgBox uses a command line switch to display alerts, it plays well with the Windows Task Scheduler. With Vista and Windows 7's support for on event tasks, MsgBoxToy can actually be put to very good use in a workplace setting.

It's a quick, easy way to create Windows message boxes. Whether you use your new software powers for good or evil is entirely up to you.

Filed under: Internet, E-mail, Web services

Alerts sends you email and SMS alerts for practically anything

Alerts
Have a hard time keeping up on stocks, sports scores, birthdays, gas prices, and pretty much everything? Alerts is a new service launching at DEMO that will send you email or SMS alerts for a wide range of items so you can get updates without remembering to check a calendar or visit a web page.

While there are a number of other services out there that offer email alerts for news items, stock updates or other information, Alerts aims to bring everything together in one tidy package. You can manage all of your alerts by visiting the alerts web site which looks a bit like a personalized homepage like iGoogle or Netvibes. Except all of the widgets are alerts you've set for yourself.

You can choose to have alerts sent once or on a recurring basis. You can either choose from a set of custom alerts or write a note that you can have delivered as a text message to your phone at a later time. You can even set a wakeup call for yourself. There's also a "do not disturb" option that lets you temporarily pause all alerts.

[via VentureBeat]

Filed under: Macintosh, E-mail, Productivity

Mail Badger - why stop at just one badge?



Although Mail Badger sounds like a small woodland creature trained to deliver packages, it's actually an OS X app that allows you to add extra badges to the Apple Mail dock icon. For some people, it's good enough to have one single red badge, proudly displaying the number of unread messages from all their email accounts. The developers of Mail Badger didn't want to stop there: why not have a different badge for each account?

Once installed, Mail Badger lives in your Apple Mail preferences. There are a few preset shapes - hearts, stars, circles and the default starburst. You can adjust the color, size and font on these easily, and even upload your own. For power users, Mail Badger will assign a badge for messages that meet search criteria you specify, and it will also badge the results of an AppleScript. This app is definitely worth installing for anyone who keeps mail across more than one folder or account.

Filed under: E-mail, Productivity, Web services

YourLi.st: e-mail reminder service sans registration

Your List
YourLi.st is a simple web service that sends you an e-mail reminder on the day and time you specify (with an option to have a pre-reminder). The site does not require registering with them, so you can have a reminder set up in seconds.

Events can have a title and summary, and the reminder can be set to repeat. A bookmarklet is available to set up reminders even more quickly. When you create a reminder, you'll receive an initial e-mail telling you that your reminder is configured (and you can delete the alert if you want). YouLi.st claims that after the actual reminder e-mail (and the pre-reminder e-mail if you choose that option), they will remove all traces of your e-mail address from their system.

We hope they decide to add selectable time zones since they only support GMT now, which can be confusing when setting up your reminder. For more overall functionality, try Remember the Milk (although that site requires registration).

Filed under: Design, Fun, Internet, Blogging, E-mail, Productivity, Web services, Google, Beta, Search

Google Video Alerts

Google Video Alerts

Google Alerts is a handy service that allows you to get emails for the latest relevant Google results that hit the web or news based on the query of your choice. It's extremely handy when you're trying to stay on top of a subject and want every piece of related news to hit your inbox.

Text is one thing, but what about online video? It is a major part of our lives now. Well, Google has added 'video' to the Alerts dropdown. Allowing users to grab notifications for videos as they happen. As with standard news alerts, videos come from a variety of sources, but and are served with a Google Video frame.

The Google Alerts service is still in Beta format. Users can also choose to receive alerts in HTML format, or plain text to save on data if you choose to grab these alerts with a handheld wherever you are.

Filed under: Internet, Blogging, Web services, Google

Google Blog Alerts

google blog alertsIn the gigantic world of blogs, there are so many important ones to keep up with, and sometimes the information they provide might not be what you want to read. You might want to search out blogs just to read one specific topic--how on earth can you keep up? Our friends at Google have come up with an answer, Google Blog Alerts. Its at the same address as their regular Google Alert application, and works the same way. Just choose your search term, and under the Type, choose Blog, and how often Google should check for your results. Simple as that. No more surfing aimlessly looking for blog content.

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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