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monitoring posts

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Open Source, Troubleshooting, Windows x64

Keep an eye on your system's vitals with Yet Another Process Monitor

Fans of the ribbon interface who want a full-featured alternative to task manager, check out Yet Another Process Monitor.

Apart from showing task manager-esque information about running processes, YAPM also provides details about Windows services and your network activity. The system information panel provides realtime monitoring of processor, memory, and disk activity. Service startup types can be managed, processor affinities specified, and there's a grayed-out option for limiting CPU usage that will likely be active in a future version.

Don't recognize a specific process (say, for example igfxpers.exe)? Highlight it and click the internet search button to be taken directly to Google's results for clarification. You can also put YAPM's Kung Fu to use monitoring remote machines on your network.

In all honesty, there's so much built in to YAPM that you really need to download it and give it a try - assuming you want a better system monitor.

YAPM is free, requires no installation, and open source to boot. I won't go so far as to call it completely portable (the .Net 2.0 framework is required), but I'm all for applications that don't make me click through a setup.

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Mozilla, Freeware, Browsers

Monitor websites in Firefox with Pingdom's Mr. Uptime


There are plenty of ways to be notified when a site comes back online, like previously mentioned Ding, It's Up and Notify Me. If you're a Firefox user, you may as well use an extension that's powered by the granddaddy of monitoring services, Pingdom's Mr. Uptime.

When you encounter a supported error on a page whlie browsing, the Mr. Uptime toolbar is displayed to allow you to monitor the current page.

Sites are monitored in the background while you continue surfing. Checks can be based on HTTP status messages or keywords on the page, and you can specify the length of time you want a site monitored. When a site comes back online, Mr. Uptime can either notify you or simply open the page in a new tab automatically.

You can find the addon in Mozilla's directory, or on the Pingdom website. It's now fully Firefox 3 compatible.

[ via LifeHacker ]

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Simple, Free Drive Space Monitoring With Tray Disk Free

Size isn't everything when it comes to useful downloads, and Tray Disk Free is a perfect example.

The 29k Windows only app goes resident in your system after launching and monitors the free space of any drive on your system. You'll barely notice the 1mb of ram it consumes.

Click the tray icon and Tray Disk opens its main window behind your other apps. Its taskbar button gives you a full display of free bytes on your drive and a percentage of total drive space.

Tray Disk supports command line arguments that allow you specify the drive to monitor, color of the display bar, and the number of seconds between updates. You can spawn multiple instances to keep tabs on other drives. It works well in the system tray but overwhelming on your taskbar. I'm guessing that the tray indicator will provide enough detail for most users.

Tray Disk is released under the GPL, and is for Windows only. Vista users will need to drop MSVBVM50.dll in the same folder as Tray Disk's executable.

Filed under: Windows, Freeware

Portable PC Wizard Analyzes, Benchmarks, Slices, & Dices

PC Wizard
We love kick-ass programs that run from our flash drives and don't take up a ton of space - especially when they come at us with a truckload of useful features.

CPUID's PC Wizard is a portable system analysis and benchmarking with tricks to spare. Apart from offering an incredible amount of information about the hardware and software in your computer (file associations, driver versions, hardware revisions, system uptime, etc.), it'll benchmark it, monitor sensors and voltages, and even stress-test it.

Benchmarking functions are surprisingly rich, testing everything from cpu, ram, drives, and even DirectX and MP3 performance. You won't get a huge assortment of systems to compare with, but you will get a good idea of how your rigs stacks up to some common configs.

We've had trouble with some portable system information apps missing the mark - especially on laptops - but PC Wizard worked like a charm, providing a ton of information about our test rig's proprietary mainboard. For an encore, PC Wizard can even figure out and display many MS application passwords and list them on the configuration screen. It's one more unexpected bonus feature that makes this program worth keeping on your flash drive.

Filed under: Security, E-mail, Web services, Google

Gmail adding log-in monitoring features

gmail log-in monitoring features
Have you ever asked yourself, "Is someone else using my email account?" Well, if you're the cautious type, Google just added a few log-in monitoring features to its email service, so such paranoid questions won't feel so pressing anymore.

Wondering if you're Gmail account is open in multiple locations? Just look at the very, very bottom of the main Gmail page. It'll say something to the sound of: "This account is open in one other location." Click on the "details" link next to it to get taken to, well, a details page.

It'll give you the deets on the most recent sessions including the access type and IP address. It's not the end-all for email hijacking, but at the very least it'll help you point-out intruders. And if you don't see the feature yet, sit tight, Google is slowly rolling out the feature to all accounts.

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Web services, Commercial

Mint 2.0: Web stats package gets major upgrade

Mint 2.0: web statistics package receives major upgrade
As I get more serious about the writing I'm doing on a couple of personal sites, I've also become more interested in finding a good web statistics tool to learn everything I can about my visitors. This is why a 2.0 upgrade to Mint, a powerful and stylish web-based monitoring package we found back in 2005, couldn't have come at a better time. Created by Shaun Inman, web designer extraordinaire, Mint has everything you need to keep track of, well, everything you need to, along with a flourishing plugin community called the Peppermill for adding just about anything you want.

Now Mint 2.0 costs $30 per domain (upgrades from version 1 are $19), but after checking out the screencasts and live demo, you can color me sold. I've been bouncing between using monthly services like SiteMeter and even FeedBurner's new StandardStats for websites, and neither of them hold a candle to the style, extensibility, power and gorgeous design of Shaun's Mint. Besides, I'm always happier paying a lump sum over subscribing, so Mint is going to pay for itself in just a few months anyway.

If you're looking for one of the most impressive web stats packages that you can run on your own servers, Mint looks like a fantastic option.

[via Daring Fireball]

Filed under: Business, Design, Developer, Internet, Web services

Live website monitoring with Site 24x7

website monitoringHave you ever owned a website and decide to log on to one day to check it out, but can't because it's down? I have, and it's not cool. Especially since you have no idea how long it was down for, or what exactly happened.

Enter Site 24x7, a website monitoring service that checks the online status of your web property 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This online tool makes HTTP/HTTPS requests at regular intervals to see if your website is online and operating properly. Through this feature you can also see the response time it takes for the connection to be made to your site. When your pages change, when your website is down, or response times are slow you can be notified instantly via SMS or email. The Site 24x7 service is currently free during their beta phase, and will have special commercial versions available when it is out of beta.

Check out some screenshots from the user control panel after the jump.

[Via GoogleSystem]

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