ping posts

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

Monitor websites in Firefox with Pingdom's Mr. Uptime

by Lee Mathews Jan 7th 2009

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 ]

Tags: addons, firefox, monitoring, ping, uptime

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

Gmail brings photos to contacts, sound to chat

by David Chartier May 12th 2006

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]

Tags: add, adds, chat, contact, contacts, flash, Gmail, images, photos, pictures, ping, share, sound, suggest

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

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