Well, they noticed my review, and i’m not sure if it was just a coincidence, but the next time i logged into their system – there were even more new features available to me.

For one thing, it looks like the number of protocols that Mon.itor.us can test has almost doubled.

You can now monitor the following 11 internet protocols:

http, ping, https, ftp, pop, smtp, dns, tcp, udp, imap, and sip (for VoIP).

I just wish they would add a way to monitor mysql servers. Not exactly sure how that would be done, but for now i suppose i can just try monitoring the URL (http) of the phpMyAdmin page for my database server. If that page doesn’t respond – but the URL for the webserver does – it’s like my database server is down.

The other thing i noticed was the addition of 3 new icons on the “Test” module that make it easier to switch between real-time table, bar chart, and line chart views. [ more screenshots ]

Now, if only Mon.itor.us would remember the view i was on the last time i logged in – i’d be set. See, the problem is, once i actually went ahead and setup a bunch of servers to monitor, i also decided to take the time to manually switch each “Test” module from table view to line view. i prefer the line view but then if i leave the Mon.itor.us site, the next time i come back and log in, all my views have been reset to table view again. Very frustrating. I wish it would just stay on line view.

Fortunately, the “Snapshot” module is always a quick way to see the status of all your servers – so that can definitely save you some time. But, in my opinion, the best way to see how your servers have been performing throughout the day, is to use the line view. i’m not exactly sure how hard it would be to impliment this kind of memory feature, but i think it might be worth considering. At the very least, offer a global “default” view in my settings, where i can choose between table, bar, or line view as my preference.

Another fix they seemed to have implimented solves the problem of “constant page refreshes” – something else that i had mentioned in my earlier review of Mon.itor.us – which was a real problem for me if you’re using Firefox and have a billion tabs open with one tab that just won stop refreshing. Now i can leave the tab open all day with no apparent performance issues.

The last thing i’d like to see from Mon.itor.us would be a way to make the google gadget (or rather the javascript used to put this gadget on any webpage) publicly viewable. That is, once i put the code on my website, i noticed that i had to be logged in to see the “Snapshot”. Meaning, nobody else could see the little green “online” lights but me. It would be a lot more useful to me to be able to show my clients (or anyone) that all my servers are online. It’s not exactly sensitive information (anyone could just ping the server to see if it’s online) and making this widget “publicly viewable” would likely make it more attractive to other webmasters, since it becomes a useful tool to share with all viewers, not just 1 person (yourself).

Anyway, i really like this service and i’m sure they’ll find a ton of ways to refine and expand it’s capabilities. I did happen to notice that there is a “Click to Start” button on the top-righthand side of the homepage, that if you click on it, remembers you from the last time you were logged in. This was something that i must have missed when i wrote my original review because i kept having to log in over and over again (every time i came back to the site). i’m going to go back and update that section on my ealier post as soon as i get a chance. i’ll definitely be using this service regularly from now on.

Both of these services still have their quirks, but such is the case with most things in life (and on the web) that are free. Still, i have been using them both for a few days now and together they have already proved to be quite useful. Here’s why..

I’ll start with Montastic, since it’s key feature is simplicity and ease of use.

1. after signup, you just need to click on the link that says: “Add a Web Server to Monitor”
2. then enter a URL to begin monitoring that web server (it takes a few seconds to start working)
3. a green “computer icon” means your server is online (red means offline)
4. optionally, set a “name” for this URL to make it easier for you to identify

that’s it. everything has a nice, clean ajaxy feel. the site is fast and relatively easy to navigate.
you can also get some extra details, like “last monitored” and “status change” by clicking on the “info” link next to the icon for the server you’re monitoring.

both of these services have an email notification system. but, so far, my experience has been that only this one (montastic) actually works. a recent server outage (not this site) proved that for me today. Both of these services also offer alerts in the form of feeds that seemed to work fine.

3 features that make this service unique:

1. they offer a yahoo widget that reports the status of your servers in real-time, right on your desktop
2. the offer a netvibes module which is slick as a brick (it’s not too pretty by it works great)
3. they offer: “the green page” (you’re totally going to have to see this page for yourself to understand)

On to Mon.itor.us – which is a slightly more complex service, allowing for a flood of potential awesomeness and quite a few annoyances as well. Basically, my biggest problem with this service so far is: “It’s Flaky”. By that, i mean, it’s plagued with all the same bugs and buggers that PageFlakes has, even burdoned by the same ajax desktop interface – it seems. Without going into too much detail (ie: constant page refreshes and a login that will never remember you), this would be another example of one of the reasons that i have been a strong supporter of Netvibes for so long.

That being said, Mon.itor.us has a lot of already working features that come packed in with it’s service.

From their site (and because i’m sometimes lazy), here are the ones that stood out the most for me:

• Site performance archive
• Inline site previews
• Personalized pages and tabbed views
• Drag and drop interactive interface
• Todo tasks with notification and ability to add notes
• Support these protocols for testing: http, https, ftp, smtp, pop3, and ping.
• Daily/weekly/monthly uptime reports and statistics

And in case that wasn’t enough for you.. here’s a few more things that i noticed mon.itor.us can do that wasn’t already mentioned in the previous list. These are the real clinchers for me.

6 more features that make this service unique:

1. there’s a cool Google Gadget for this service out there somewhere
2. you can tag each URL / server you are monitoring and then organize / view them by groups
3. you can switch between real-time table, bar chart, and line chart views.
4. view stats for each protocol, snapshots of all your servers
5. view from three seperate geographical locations (US, DE, AT)
6. there’s some javascript code that goes along with the google gadget that will let you put your “snapshot” on virtually any web page

All in all, i would say that it’s a little harder to setup each URL with mon.itor.us, when compared to montastic. But once you get all your servers setup for monitoring, there’s a lot more you can do with them too.

Still, as i mentioned earlier, i was quite pleased with both of these services and will continue to test each one more thoroughly in the coming months.

Here’s a breakdown of all the new features added or upgraded since my previous post:

1. Compatibility with Opera web browser [ December 12, 2005 ]
2. To Do list module – i love this one – [ December 30, 2005 ]
3. Yahoo mail module – similar to the Gmail module – [ January 2, 2006 ]
4. Gmail module upgrade – set a title and no. of items to display – [ January 2, 2006 ]
5. To Do list upgraded – set a title and color, and more – [ January 2, 2006 ]
6. POP IMAP module – secure connections, webmail URL, more – [ January 2, 2006 ]
7. RSS module upgraded – set a color for each feed – [ January 2, 2006 ]

You’ll notice that all but the first 2 features/upgrades were actually added on the same day. i am consistently impressed with the rate at which Netvibes puts out new modules. it seems they’re really on to something here. i’m sure that there’s definitely room for many more interesting modules in the near future.

On a side note, i remember when the Gmail module was first added to Netvibes. At the time, i didn’t even have a Gmail account yet. Back then i was thinking to myself, i wish Netvibes had that feature for Yahoo Mail. It’s funny, because now that they do offer the Yahoo Mail module, i realized that yahoo.com domains don’t get free POP access (although apparently many international yahoo domains do. – ie: yahoo.fr) – so i wouldn’t have been able to use the module even if it was available, and i still can’t use it. Here’s to hoping that Yahoo catches on to this problem, because this is not the first time i’ve had the opportunity to access my POP account from a different web based service/software and haven’t been able to. As i have mentioned before, i am slowly moving over to from Yahoo Mail to Gmail – and no POP access is one of my main reasons for doing this. i know that Yahoo Mail is in the process of getting a complete overhaul, but this is all happening behind the scenes and i’m just not sure how much longer i can wait.

Anyway, i’ll probably set up the POP IMAP module and test it out next. i’ve already been using the To Do list module for a little while and find that this is a great addition to the Netvibes content set. I’ve always felt that a full-blown desktop app for something as trivial as a To Do list was overkill. Here’s the perfect solution. Overall, there are probably a lot more situations like this involving bloated softwares, etc. And i think that if the folks at Netvibes can keep this in mind, they’ll likely find inspiration for many more modules. Nevertheless, from the looks of things, i get the impression they aren’t having too many problems in the inspiration department.

For more info and all the latest news you can visit the Netvibes blog.

Count ‘em, 4 new features added to NetVibes in the last 7 days – now that’s just impressive.

I’ve actually been casually using netvibes to for simple stuff like checking the weather and comparing prices between 2 similar products (like ipod nano vs. ipod mini prices). I also had a few RSS feeds loaded up just for convenience and a couple of notes in the “webnote” section.

But the following New Improvements finally got me to sign up:

1. Managing your Feeds (i wasn’t going to add feeds if i couldn’t move, rename, or delete them – it would just get too disorganized)
2. OPML import/export (i think the import feature may have been around all along but the export is new)
3. New Webnote features (being able to give each note a title makes them easy to spot and making hyperlinks clickable/live lets me add quick links to the side of my page)
4. The Bookmark Module (just added, this module lets you add or import your bookmarks as well as tag them for easy browsing later on)

I especially like the “alternative use” for the tag list area described on the netvibes blog. Using this technique you can pick from your existing tags instead of re-typing commonly used tags over and over again. This is similar to the way you can pick tags in del.icio.us and is a huge time saver for me.

Other Features in the Works to look out for include:

1. the Stock Quotes module
2. the Flickr module [ update: this feature was added on Dec. 8/05 and it looks pretty cool. ]
3. the ToDo List module [ update: this feature was added on Dec. 30/05 and is also cool. ]

There are a lot more features on the way that i haven’t even mentioned here but you can visit their blog to get more info.

The best part about netvibes is that you get an enormous amount of control over your personal page without ever having to register, fill in an email address, pick a username/password, or any of that jazz. The result is, you can’t help but customize it, reorganize it, and sort of grow attached to it. So much so, that i eventually begin to worry about accidentally clearing my browser cache and losing “all that work” in the blink of an eye. As soon as that happened, wouldn’t you know it.. i found myself right back on the sign up page looking to fill out that blasted registration form. doh.

On the upside, i can now login to my netvibes page from anywhere with an internet connection. Oh, and i can finally clear my cache.

[ For more on Netvibes, you can read my most recent article entitled: "Netvibes is on the move again." ]

On the down side, i noticed that the archives page takes a little longer to load initially (i don’t think it takes as long the second time). But the advantage of applying Ajax techniques to the archives is that it eliminates page refreshes, which means that browsing through the archives becomes a lot faster and easier as a whole.

Installing the plugin was fairly easy.

1. Upload the entire “af-extended-live-archive” folder to your wordpress plugins directory.
2. Add < ?php af_ela_super_archive(); ?> to your archives template.
3. Enable the plugin in the wordpress admin.
4. Navigate to the “Options » Ext. Live Archives” tab to recreate the cache.
5. Add the css file (or copy and paste the code) to your site.
6. Optionally, modify the css file to suit your needs.

So far, i’m really happy with it. The only potential problem that i saw was for people browsing the site with javascript disabled. These visitors would see nothing at all. Even though this is a pretty clean default result (as opposed to printing out some nasty error), i wanted everyone to be able to use the archives page.

As a quick solution, and because i had only hidden (commented out) the original code (xhtml) when i added the ajaxified archives code, i decide to simply add < noscript > < / noscript > tags around the old code that was commented out. This would effectively hide the old code from browsers with javascript enabled, while showing it only to visitors with javascript turned off. With the javascript fix in place, i think this plugin might be a keeper..

i guess..

but yesterday i stumbled onto something new. it represented a change in the way we have been made to think about search engines. it wasn’t focused on the usual stuff like rankings, and popularity which often overshadow things like relevence and useful content. but most importantly, it promises to give more power to the users..

they said it was an “Intent-driven Search Engine”.
they said more things like, “search sorted the way you like it”.
the project is called Yahoo! Mindset, by the way.

Although it is still in beta, the search engine is already quite functional. what it does first is give you the standard yahoo results page based on your search. but you also get a slider that you can drag to the left or right depending on your intent. right now, you can apparently only have 2 intentions, either commercial or informational. but still, it’s something..

ads.. no ads.. ads.. no ads..

also, because it uses what Yahoo calls “machine learning” technology, it will be getting smarter all the time. that is to say, right now, it is not very smart. you’re more likely to get something like:

ads.. less adds.. ads.. less adds.

to be fair though, using this search engine without moving the slider gives you the same results as a standard yahoo search. so i’d say it is safe to give it a try. and if i used the original Yahoo! search engine on a regular basis, i’d definitely switch to Yahoo! Mindset. but i don’t so..

well i’m still going to keep my eye on this one.

What makes it so smart (in my opinion)

1. it’s a new way to search, not just a new type of search
2. it uses a slider (who doesn’t like sliders?)
3. anything that gives me more ways to filter is ok in my books (ie: google’s advanced search needs to be more advanced)
4. it uses AJAX technology, always good to see new applications of this technique
5. there are no page refreshes (i think this i one of the biggest advantages of using AJAX, and i like the way it is used here)

For more information on AJAX, and it’s various implementations read » AJAX: A Closer look

As a follow up to the earlier post entitled AJAX: A Closer Look, i decided to dig deeper into this new technique and the trends in web design / programming that appear to be emerging. The term Web 2.0 is commonly used to refer to a new generation of web applications and systems.

From www.whatsweb20.com, “it’s going to enable a whole bunch of cool new things that we can’t even imagine yet”.

According to the Wikipedia:

A website could be said to be built using Web 2.0 technologies if it featured a number of the following techniques:

Technical:

• CSS and semantically valid XHTML markup
• Unobtrusive AJAX Techniques
• Syndication of data in RSS/ATOM
• Aggregation of RSS/ATOM data
• Clean and meaningful URLs
• Support posting to a weblog
• RESTian (preferred) or XML Webservice APIs
• Some social networking aspects (share your data with friends, etc)

General:

• The site should not act as a “walled garden” – it should be easy to get data in and out of the system.
• Users should own their own data on the site
• Purely web based – most successful web 2.0 sites can be used almost entirely through the browser

Other related technologies include:

• SOAP – Simple Object Access Protocol
• Ruby on Rails

Here a some sites with excellent resources:

• script.aculo.us provides you with easy-to-use, compatible and, ultimately, totally cool JavaScript libraries to make your web sites and web applications fly, Web 2.0 style.
• Behaviour is the missing link for your ajax apps.
• Prototype is an object-oriented Javascript library that aims to ease development of dynamic web applications.
• mir.aculo.us is a site with a collection of thoughts, links and other stuff related to web application development, RoR, AJAX, Web 2.0, and more.
• Rico provides a very simple interface for registering Ajax request handlers as well as HTML elements or JavaScript objects as Ajax response objects.
• Techcrunch is a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing every newly launched web 2.0 business, product and service.
• Tool-man.org has some good resources, including some examples such as: Drag & Drop Sortable Lists with JavaScript and CSS
• JPSpan provides tools to “hook up” PHP and Javascript, for the purpose of fetching data from PHP into a web page which has already loaded, without reloading the entire page.
• SAJAX – Simple Ajax Toolkit by ModernMethod – XMLHTTPRequest Toolkit for PHP.
• CPAINT – Cross-Platform Asynchronous INterface Toolkit. It provides the code required to implement AJAX and JSRS on the back-end, while using JavaScript on the front-end.

Even more resources:
1. Ruby is the interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming. It has many features to process text files and to do system management tasks (as in Perl). It is simple, straight-forward, extensible, portable, open, and free.
2. Snippets is a public code repository. You can easily add code to your personal collection of code snippets, categorize your code snippets with keywords (known as ‘tags’), and share your snippets via this site.
3. RubyForge is a home for open source Ruby projects.
4. Programming Ruby is a book complete with tutorials and reference for the Ruby programming language.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

“AJAX or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is a term describing a web development technique for creating interactive web applications using a combination of:

* HTML (or XHTML) and Cascading Style Sheets for presenting information
* The Document Object Model manipulated through JavaScript to dynamically display and interact with the information presented
* The XMLHttpRequest object to interchange and manipulate data asynchronously with the web server (commonly using XML and XSLT, although AJAX applications can use other technologies, including preformatted HTML, plain text, JSON and JSON-RPC as alternatives to XML/XSLT).

Like DHTML or LAMP, AJAX is not a technology in itself, but a term that refers to the use of a group of technologies together.”

The result is the ability to create highly interactive and dynamic webpages, with features that close the gap between the experiences we’ve come to expect from web applications and the experiences users can get from a desktop application.

Some example of sites using AJAX:

1. Google Suggest
2. Google Maps
3. Gmail
4. Flickr
5. A9.com (Amazon)
6. Yahoo Mindset

AJAX related information:

1. OpenAJAX
2. Cgisecurity.com
3. AJAX Web Blog
4. Ajaxian.com
5. Ajaxblog.com
6. AjaxDeveloper.org

[ Read the follow up to this article entitled Web 2.0 - Where Are You? » ]