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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: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Windows Mobile, Google

Gmail brings photos to contacts, sound to chat


Since I've dumped Apple's email client for Gmail, I've come to miss a few minor features like having images accompany contacts in my address book and the emails I receive from them in the email app itself. As of yesterday, this is one feature I can scratch off my Gmail wishlist, as Google announced they are now rolling out contact pictures to Gmail, with some special sauce to boot. Not only will you be able to add pictures to contacts and see them in their emails you receive, but users can suggest pictures for each other. If you don't see these features in your Gmail account yet, have patience, grasshopper. Google said they're rolling these out to accounts over time, though they didn't specify an ETA for when they'll be done.

Another handy but less whiz-bang feature Gmail rolled out is sound for chat windows. You'll receive a ping for new chat messages now, and this feature is enabled by default (you can toggle it in the prefs). Oddly, you need to have Flash enabled in order to hear the ping.

[via Hawk Wings]

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