Skip to Content

Submit your nominations for the Luxist Awards' Best in Decor
AOL Tech

notification posts

Filed under: Utilities, Apple

Snarl: Growl-like notification system for Windows

Mac users love Growl, a global alert system that displays notifications from your favorite apps for various events (like a new email message or a completed download). Now Windows users can get in on the fun, with Snarl. While Snarl isn't a straight-up Growl clone, it provides a lot of the same features, like customizable notification styles.

Snarl isn't completely new, but the last time Download Squad covered it (in 2007), it wasn't ready for the bigtime. The only notifications available were for iTunes and a clock app. Now it works on apps like Firefox, Pidgin, iTunes, and Windows Live Messenger. Some of the available notification styles are also quite nice, rivaling even Growl's selection.

[via InstantFundas]

Filed under: E-mail, Productivity, Web services

Heycraig!: get alerts when Craigslist has what you're looking for

Finding a particular item you want on Craigslist can be a matter of actively checking back every day to see if somebody has listed one in your area, but for the lazy amongst us, there might be a better way. Check out Heycraig!, a site that watches Craigslist for you, and sends you an email alert when a new post matches your search terms. It's city-specific, and kind of tricky to fine-tune, but if you want to know every time someone lists a new bike in your area, it's the site for you.

To use Heycraig!, just put in a search term and your email address, and specify your local Craiglist site. Heycraig! could benefit from a multi-city option, but Craiglist is notorious for cracking down on sites that offer systemwide functionality, so it's unlikely to happen. If you're looking across more than one local network, you'll have to take a little time to set up more than one search. Some advanced search options to narrow down the results on Heycraig! would also be helpful, particularly to specify a neighborhood or area in larger cities. If you're casting a wide net, though, Heycraig! could prove very useful.



Notify me when it's up!


Download Squad has written before about the humorous-but-sometimes-useful site Down For Everyone or Just Me. It comes in handy if you need to figure out whether the problem is with a site, or if it's on your end. But if the site really is down, it's out of your control, and that's kind of frustrating. Instead of futilely hitting refresh, try Notify Me When It's Up. True to its name, it will send you an email when the site you specify comes back up.

I love these simple one-purpose sites. There's no clutter, no learning curve, and they just do what they say. You might argue that Notify Me When It's Up should be combined with Down For Everyone, but where will it all end? A comprehensive desktop app with stats displays, accounts and iPhone support? Ok, probably not. But in a complicated world, it's nice to find someone who just wants to notify you when it's up.

Filed under: Design, Developer, Utilities

jGrowl: Growl-like notifications in your browser window

A lot of OS X users are familiar with Growl, a customizable notification system with all kinds of uses. New e-mail, iTunes track changes, new instant messages -- Growl handles all of this stuff. Now there's a Growl-like jQuery plugin called jGrowl that lets you apply the same sort of notification in your browser window.

jGrowl supports different animation settings, as well as sticky messages that need to be clicked to close. The styling appears to be done with CSS, so plenty of customization should be available. If you're looking for a way to notify that's not obtrusive and doesn't require a pop-up window that steals attention from your site, give jGrowl a try.

Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Shareware

OmniGrowl: Growl notifications for practically everything.

OmniGrowl
If you're a devotee of Growl, the slick pop-up notification system for OS X, then you've probably got a wishlist of apps that need Growl support. Even some of the ubiquitous Apple apps like iCal and Address Book don't work well with Growl. No need to fret about that, though, just download OmniGrowl, and you can set Growl notifications for practically everything.

When we say practically everything, we mean OmniGrowl will give you Growl popups for traffic alerts, flight stats, weather, new RSS stories, daily deals on Woot, words of the day from the Oxford English Dictionary, and any potential leaks in your kitchen sink. Ok, we're just kidding about that last one, but OmniGrowl covers an impressive list of apps and functions. You don't have to go overboard, though: if you just want Growl for your iCal events and Address Book birthdays, OmniGrowl can handle that, too.

Filed under: Internet, E-mail, Web services, web 2.0

LinkBlip: Get email notifications when someone clicks a link

LinkBlip
You spend the day scouring the web for funny, interesting, and gross articles to send to your friends, family, and colleagues. But is it really worth it? Do they even click the links you email them? LinkBlip provides an easy way to find out.

All you have to do is enter your email address and the URL you want people to click on. LinkBlip will spit out a TinyURL-style shortened link that you can share with anyone. When they click on the link, you'll receive an email. You also get a link to a site that will let you know how many times people have clicked on your link. In theory, you can also see the geographic location of those who click on your links, but we found that the results weren't particularly accurate.

[via Lifehacker]

Filed under: Internet, Features, Blogging, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Manage blog comments with Disqus

DisqusIf you only read one website every day, it's probably not too difficult to keep on the conversation around various posts. Just leave a comment with your two cents and keep checking back to see if anyone's responded. Some sites will even let you subscribe to blog comments by e-mail.

But if you read and comment on dozens or hundreds of blogs on a regular basis, this can get a bit tedious. A few months ago we reported on Intense Debate, a new startup that tackles this problem by providing a unified commenting platform. Sign up for an account, and you can easily track all of your conversations on various blogs. You can even syndicate your blog comments as an RSS feed.

Now it looks like Intense Debate has some competition from Disqus, a company launching a similar service today. Like Intense Debate, Disqus has several components. Web publishers can incorporate Disqus into their blog or website to offer advanced commenting features like threading and avatars. And users can create profiles to track their comments across various sites.

Gallery: Disqus

Read more →

Filed under: Blogging, E-mail, Google

Blogger adds comment email notification

Blogger email notificationGoogle's Blogger platform makes blogging about as simple as it gets. You can start writing your blog a few seconds after signing up for an account and choosing a template. But Blogger has long been a few steps behind other popular blog clients like WordPress and TypePad when it comes to enabling new features.

For example, Google has just added the ability to subscribe to post comments via email. Up until now, if you left a comment on a blog post and wanted to keep up on the conversation, you had to keep checking back with the page. While this might seem great if you're trying to generate more traffic for your site, the truth is most people will forget they ever left a comment and move on.

So it's great to see Google add this feature to Blogger. On the other hand, you can only subscribe to comments if you have a Google account. No Gmail? No e-mail notification for you.

[via Googlified]

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, E-mail, Web services, Google

Gmail Chat Alert: Audio notification for Gmail IMs

Gmail ChatGmail's built-in Chat feature, which lets you use Google Talk within your web browser, is pretty handy, but I often find that a message has been waiting me for a long time before I notice the tab blinking at me. Gmail Chat Alert is an extension for Firefox that fixes that by sounding an audio notification when you get an IM in Gmail. Simple and effective.

Featured Time Waster

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures
Microsoft Security Essentials
Chromium Pre-Alpha on CrunchBang Linux
Safari 4 Beta
10 Firefox themes that don't suck
IE8 RC1
Download Squad at the Crunchies After-Party
Download Squad at the Crunchies
WordPress 2.7
Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals
Windows 7 Hands On
Comodo Internet Security
Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store
Android First-look: Twitroid
Google Reader Android
Android Hands-On
Twine 1.0
Photoshop Express Beta
Mozilla Birthday Cake
Palm stuff
Adobe Lightroom 1.1

 


Follow us on Twitter!

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

More Tech Coverage

AOL Radio