The free software Websites Cop can monitor contents hosted on one web server. Configuration is not that comfortable which is the biggest let down, apart from the inability to use the freeware to monitor multiple ftp servers.

The program interface is divided into three tabs. You add local files and their remote location under the Main setting. The biggest issue here is that you can only pick one file at a time which is not very comfortable if you need to add dozens or even hundreds of web files.

Webmasters configure the ftp server under Settings. Here they need to add the ftp server’s address, port and the required username and password to access the entered server.

Additional settings are listed on the right side of the window. This includes the monitoring interval (set to 60 minutes by default), whether files should be automatically repaired if checks revealed that files on the ftp server are not identical to local files, and whether the program should be started with Windows.

The notify tab finally holds configuration options for email notifications. The program will send emails to the email address or addresses whenever files need repairing (when they are not identical anymore).

Errors can be displayed in the program interface as well. This option is listed under the File menu in the application window. Other options there include opening the log file and the list of different files.

Websites Cop is limited to one ftp server and the ftp protocol. This limitation along with the rather cumbersome way of adding files are holding the program back.

Webmasters can download Websites Cop from the developer’s website. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. The program needs to be running in the background continuously to monitor the files on the ftp server. (via)

The free monitoring software is a sophisticated program with lots of options. Each web page that you want to monitor is configured as an alert in the program.

The application supports three different monitoring types.

• Monitor the website (or webpage) availability – Checks if a website is up or down
• Monitor the webpage update – Checks if updates have been posted on the selected website
• Monitor the appearance of specific words – Just like the standard monitoring option, but will only post alerts if content on the web page matches or does not match specific words.

The first two options should be self-explanatory. The third can be used for some interesting things. I for one use something similar to monitor the Ghacks database. I run a script on the site that returns ok or down on the page, depending on the status of the database. I then use a monitoring software to check for the word ok or down on the page. This way I can check if the database is up and running.

It does not have to be something as sophisticated than this, obviously. You could use the option to monitor a web page for new posts from a specific writer or topics, or to get a notification if a price drops on an online shopping website.

The monitoring rate can be set to specific hourly and minutely intervals, e.g. once per hour, or once per day.

All alerts show up in the main program window where they can be paused, edited or deleted easily.

It is possible to open a web page in the program directly, for instance to find specific words that you monitor the page for.

Notifications show up as popups on the desktop. It is optionally possible to add sound notifications for each alert individually. The web page monitor will automatically load the changed web page in its interface to highlight the changes

Notipage is a handy web page monitoring software. You can download the program’s latest version from the developer website. It is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

AlertBox is a free Firefox add-on that can be used to monitor any changes on Internet web pages. You can use it to monitor price changes on Amazon, new replies or posts on your favorite web site or new public photos on a user’s Flickr photo stream.

Configuration of elements that you want to monitor is simple and straightforward. All you need to do is to select the element on the page that you want to monitor, right-click and select AlertBox > Add alert for changes in clicked element.

The extension can not only monitor specific elements on a page, but also the page as a whole. This is done with a right-click anywhere on the page and the selection of the option under the Alertbox context menu entry.

The Firefox add-on displays a notification whenever one of the tracked elements or web pages gets updated. The notification leads directly to a page where the changes are highlighted. These changes are displayed as a history on a local page in the browser.

Another option to configure the monitoring comes in the form of the Alert Config Panel. This panel can be opened with the shortcut Ctrl-Shift-z or via Tools > Alert Config Panel. It opens at the bottom of the all pages that are currently open in the web browser.

All page elements become selectable right away on left-click for as long as the panel is open in Firefox. The panel offers more options, including one to select the default interval in which the select page is checked for updated contents.

Experienced users can switch to an advanced view which allows them to select any script, CSS or HTML code in the source code of the page and combine that with content filters for advanced tracking operations.

The extension’s settings are only linked on the monitoring page where all tracked pages and page elements are displayed. Here it is possible to configure different notification types, e.g. sound notifications, and to register an account to enable email notifications.

Users can last but not least configure the update check interval on the page for all tracked elements and web pages they have previously added, check the most recent version of the web pages that they monitor.

Firefox users who are looking for an easy to use extension that is offering them advanced feature if needed should take a closer look at AlertBox. The extension can be installed from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

But it is not only webmasters who have an interest in monitoring pages, domains and servers. Regular users sometimes may also be interested in website monitoring solutions, for instance to receive notifications if their favorite website is down, and when it is back up again.

Server Monitor for the Google Chrome web browser is a website monitoring solution for both situations.

The extension adds an icon to the Chrome address bar that offers several features. It first and foremost displays all monitored websites and their status when it is clicked on. The second feature is the ability to initiate manual update checks for every website, and to open the options page of the extension to add servers to the list of monitored properties, or edit or delete existing entries.

Icons in front of each website or server indicate the availability. Green indicates that the site responded with the expected content, yellow that the content was different, and red that the site failed to respond at all.

New servers and notification settings are configured in the extension’s options, which are accessible with a right-click on the address bar icon and the selection of Options.

The notification settings on top are all enabled by default. A popup notification is therefor displayed when the following events occur.

• unexpected responses
• connection errors
• server or website is restored

Some or all of the notifications can be disabled in the options. Server Monitor runs automatic checks every minute by default with the possibility to change the interval.

New servers and websites are added in the lower half of the options page. Each site is identified by a unique name (that appears if the address bar icon is clicked) and a url.

No specific contents or responses are expected by default. A user can change that in the “This Response” field. I was not able to find out which responses are accepted by the extension, since the “UseCurrent response” link did return a blank page, and the extension’s description did not reveal details either.

Google Chrome users who would like to monitor websites or web pages can install the Chrome extension directly from its page over at the Google Chrome Extensions gallery. (via)

There are three options on how to stay informed about downtimes. The first two options are managed by the webmaster or system administrator. Online services and computer programs are available to check a website regularly to see if it positively responds to those checks. The third option is a hosting company that does the monitoring for the webmaster.

Karen’s Net Monitor is a website monitor for the Windows operating system that can check websites, email servers and IP addresses.

Two websites are configured on startup that are checked regularly. Websites are displayed with a checkbox that indicates if they are being monitored. A check log is displayed at the bottom of the main screen as well as overall stats and stats for individual jobs that are selected.

The testing interval can also be configured in the screen.

New websites and properties can be added by clicking on the Edit Settings button. Here it is possible to add new websites, email servers and ping checks.

The program has no options to test services that run on a web server or to check responses on a site. A common check in many monitoring programs is to see if a previously defined text is returned on the website or server that is being checked.

Karen’s Net Monitor can be used for basic network monitoring tasks. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows and available for download at the developer’s website.

The program offers two options of monitoring a website after installation. The first is a global update check which will monitor the page as a whole and notify the user if content has changed on it. This can be done with two simple clicks and is generally the easiest way of monitoring a website.

The same page contains a link to the program’s options which lists all the pages that are monitored by the extension. The options’s page provides configuration settings, namely the check interval in which the extension scans the monitored pages and the badge color which will inform the user if the content has been changed.

The extension will automatically ignore some modules on a website including advertisement as those change regularly and would result in numerous notifications.

The second option to monitor websites is more sophisticated but requires knowledge of regular expressions. These can be used to monitor specific elements on a website, like the price on an Amazon page, the first search results in a Google search or the temperature on a weather report website.

This is a very powerful feature that takes longer to setup. The user first needs to find the exact location of the information in the code on the website. This code then needs to be modified through the use of regular expressions.

This ensures that the extension will only monitor the part that has been specified by the user and not the rest of the website.

Page Monitor is compatible with Google Chrome 4. It can be installed directly from the extension’s website at the Google Chrome extension’s repository.

Pingdom has recently released a desktop application that will display the status of all websites and servers that are monitored by a specific Pingdom account. The Pingdom notifier is currently only available for the Windows operating system. It will query the status of the Pingdom account regularly and notify the user if a check of a website, server or service failed. This can be handy depending on the notification settings of each service in the Pingdom account.

You might recall that Pingdom offers email, SMS, iPhone and Twitter notifications with SMS being limited to a specific amount that can be raised by buying additional SMS packages. Not every web service, server or website will therefor be configured to notify the user by SMS if the service fails. The Pingdom desktop notifier is therefor mostly an additional option to monitor their websites while working on the computer.

The notifier will display a popup on the computer desktop if one of the website checks fails. All options in the notifier lead directly to the Pingdom control panel on the Internet.

The Pingdom Desktop Notifier complements the other notification options. It might be useful in this regard but has the severe disadvantage that the webmaster needs to be in front of the computer to notice the notifications. The software program is available for download at the Pingdom website. It is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Big companies usually have IT staff that is monitoring the server infrastructure 24/7, something that most website and server owners cannot (and do not have the desire to) afford. Some webhosting companies provide 24/7 monitoring of their dedicated servers, virtual servers and web hosting packages but the effectiveness varies a lot and the account owner is usually not informed at once if something goes down (and back up again).

A third alternative are so called web monitoring services. These services are web based and offer a set of tools to monitor web servers and websites. Most of these services offer email, sms and even phone notifications as soon as the server goes down.

Pingdom is one of those services. The web monitoring service offers various http, network and email checks that can be configured easily. The number of services that are monitored depends on the user’s account level. Pingdom offers a free account that is good for monitoring one web service on one domain. The basic and business accounts raise those limits to 5 respectively 30 checks with the option to buy extra checks if needed.

Website Monitoring Setup

Pingdom does not require any installations or configurations on the web server or website that the user wants to monitor. All monitoring services are setup on the Pingdom website.

It starts by selecting one of the available check types.

This ranges from http checks over network checks that test the DNS, TCP port or UDP to email checks that can check Pop3, SMTP and IMAP connections. The check resolution, that is the interval in which the check is performed can be selected in this step as well. The interval ranges from every minute to every 60 minutes.

The next options differ depending on the choice in the first step. A http check for instance requires only the url of the website that should be checked. Entering the url completes this step which does provide optional settings which can help a user in performing specific tasks.

The Check For String On Page parameter for instance can easily be used to check if a database is up and running. To do that the webmaster needs to write (or copy and paste) a small script that displays certain text on a custom url if the website is up or down. This can for instance be UP if it is up and DOWN if it is down. The string check can be configured to report downtime if the DOWN string appeared on the page of the website or server.

Other optional settings in this step include configuring a username and password for websites that require authentication and changing the user-agent of the Pingdom service (which might make sense if third-party websites are monitored).

The final step of the process configured the notification options. Pingdom uses a contact database that can be filled with contacts that should be notified if a check fails. This can always be the same user or individual webmasters or system administrators depending on the website or even check that is performed.

Pingdom supports four types of notifications: SMS, Email, Twitter and iPhone. The number of available SMS depends on the account type. The free account comes with 20 SMS with the option to buy additional SMS if needed. An option that is missing is phone support which is offered by some other website monitoring services.

Reporting

Pingdom starts monitoring the configured services as soon as they have been created by the user. Reporting is one of the strengths of Pingdom.

The overview displays the most important data at a glance including the uptime, downtime and response time. This report can be filtered by data to provide an overview of a specific time frame.

Detailed reports are available for each website that is listed in the overview and from the sidebar menu.

Pingdom operates servers in many countries in the world that are used to monitor the configured websites, servers and services. Successful and failed attempts to connect will be written to an extensive log file that provides error analysis for some failed attempts. This includes information like the date and time of the operation, the datacenter used to perform the check and a traceroute which can be very helpful for the error analysis.

Pingdom Review Verdict

Pingdom offers a sophisticated web monitoring service with excellent reporting. The service is aimed at webmasters, system administrators and professionals mainly which is reflected in the interface which could use additional help overlays to guide the user through the creation. It would also be nice if they would add an option to receive phone notifications and if they would provide basic scripts to test specific services like MySQL databases.

But those are marginal and the overall experience and service lives up to its promises. The free basic account should be enough for many users who only run one website. Professionals on the other hand can use the basic and business account along with the optional services to monitor all their servers and websites.

Christmas Giveaway

We are giving away 10 Pingdom Basic Accounts that are paid for for one year. Please let us know if you currently use a website monitoring service and if so which to enter the draw for the accounts.

Raju is giving away two programs today: Corel Digital Studio 2010 and Corel Painter Essentials 4.

Beecher is giving away a copy of Team Fortress 2, best online fps game since UT99.

The second option is a script to automatically reload a website periodically. And one of these scripts is the Greasemonkey script Auto F5 which can automatically reload websites.

Auto Reload can be activated with the keyboard shortcut [Shift t]. This will bring up the configuration menu where the web user can configure the automatic reload on the active website. Configurable settings include the reload interval with the default being 5 minutes, a random value that is added to the timeout and the following options that require more explanation:

• The option “Ignore everything after these symbols in URL” is a little bit difficult to explain: if there are session id´s in the URL the timeout would only work for this session, but if one wants this page to be refreshed in every session one can enter separators that determine sessions and other things. Another example would be that one wants to store a refresh value for a whole site with its subfolders etc.. Therefor one could enter the “/” as a separator.
• “Include the separators in the URL saved” as an additional option for the separators: imagine one wants to have a timeout for all subfolders of /topics/21456/ (discussion of this script) and puts it in the list of separators. Then the URL saved by this script would be http://userscripts.org/ which may not be what one wants, because the main page is to have its own timeout value. Then this option should be activated so the URL is http://userscripts.org/topics/21456/ which is different to http://userscripts.org/, so it can be refreshed independently.
• The “Hide menu”-option is to hide the menu when one clicks somewhere that is not the menu.
• The “Prolong timeouts”-option is to prevent an unintentional page reload, while working on that page.
• Option to relaod all pages with standard timeout when no timeout is set for that page. What else to say? Ok this option is like a wildcard. If checked it reloads every single page (!) with default timeout, unless an individual timeout is setup for that page.

Most users can keep the default settings except for the page reload timeout which might be to high in certain situations. The script will automatically deactivate the hotkey in web forms. Users who want to use the automatic refresh on pages with web forms need to click outside of the web form before the keyboard shortcut becomes active.

Auto F5 Reload is available at the script’s Userscript page. The web browser needs to be restarted after downloading and installing the script.

The following list contains five tools for monitoring websites. Three of the tools are Firefox add-ons, one is a online service and the last a software program for the Windows operating system. We encourage readers to add additional tools (should be a free website monitor software, service or add-on) in the comments.

Check 4 Change

Check 4 Change is a Firefox add-on. It is probably the most basic tools to monitor websites that are reviewed in this article. The user can select text on websites and open the Check 4 Change context menu after right-clicking. It is there possible to define the interval for monitoring the website changes. Website Updates are then displayed in the tab of the website that is being monitored. This outlines one of the biggest weaknesses of this add-on. The website has to be open to be monitored by the Firefox add-on.

A few options are provided by the add-on. It is possible to change the intervals and configure several notification options that include playing sounds, popups or bringing the window to the front. The add-on is best used for monitoring websites that require authentication. It could for example be interesting for monitoring web email accounts.

Update Scanner

Update Scanner uses a different approach than Check 4 Change. The program will automatically monitor the complete website for changes with the option to ignore numbers and minor changes. Another benefit of using this website monitor is that the websites that are monitored do not have to be open for it to perform the update checks.

The interval of the checks for website changes is set to once a day by default. This value can be changed to a minimum of every 5 minutes or set to manual scan on the other end of the scale. The add-on will place an icon in the Firefox status bar. A left-click on that icon will open a sidebar that is displaying all websites that are monitored by the add-on. This sidebar contains buttons to perform a manual scan, open one of the monitored websites and to access the preferences of the add-on that allow the user to configure notifications.

Available are sound and popup notifications.

Site Delta

Site Delta is the third (and last) Firefox add-on for monitoring websites. The add-on is a little bit confusing at the beginning as there is no apparent way to add websites that should be monitored to it. The add-on begins to monitor websites for changes if the user presses its icon in the Firefox status bar. The active url will then be added to the list of pages that are monitored by the add-on. The icon will glow green if the active website is monitored by it. A right-click opens a context menu that can be used to configure the monitoring in detail.

Users can configure the scan options in two tabs. The add-on will by default check for text and image changes. It is furthermore possible to ignore case or numbers and to create a backup copy of the page whenever changes are recognized.

The when to scan tab can be used to configure the intervals of the scans. It is possible to set a specific frequency or let the add-on handle it. It seems to use an algorithm that reduces the checks if the website that is monitored is not updated frequently.

Change Detection

Change Detection is a free online service that can monitor websites for changes. An account is required before websites can be monitored by the service. The website url and an email address are provided in the first step of the process. The service will then try to scan the website. If the scan is successful step 2 is displayed.

The notifications and type of changes to trigger notifications can be configured in the second step. Notifications can either be provided by sending emails to an email account or by offering an RSS feed that is being updated with website changes.

It is possible to configure the online monitoring service to only send out notifications if sizable changes have happened on the monitored websites. It is furthermore possible to define text that should trigger notifications (either if it is added or removed from the page which could be interesting for link building purposes).

WebMon

WebMon is the only software program in this review that can be used to monitor websites. The website monitoring software has a few advantages over the Firefox add-ons. It can be run in the background even if all web browser windows are closed. The Firefox add-ons can only perform checks for updated websites if the web browser is running.

The program comes with an easy to use interface. It begins by adding an url to the program. Any url that is currently in the Windows clipboard will automatically be pasted into the form right away. It is then possible to configure the intervals of the checks using the minutes, hours and days slider in the interface. The process is complete if everything on the page should be monitored. Users who want to specify certain text or elements on a website can do so by clicking on the “specify content for check” button in the configuration window.

It basically allows the user to specify the range of content on a website that should be included in the checks. The website monitoring software notifies the user with popup alerts or sounds. It can furthermore run a command if an update is found.

Many additional options are provided that include proxy server support, logging or to import and export the list of monitored websites.

Verdict

The right website monitoring software, add-on or service depends highly on the usage scenario. Users who work with their web browser all the time might prefer the add-on solution to monitor website changes. The online service on the other hand will monitor websites remotely so that the computer system of the user does not need to be turned on at all to monitor changes (could be send to a smartphone per example).

The website monitoring software on the other hand is the most flexible tool that provides options to execute commands if changes have been detected.

Which do you prefer?

The last step in the configuration configures the capturing depths which can be set to first page, first page plus links or whole site. The same menu contains options to allow popups and to set the scanning to be careful which deactivates certain scripts and other potentially malicious contents. The download will start immediately after the last step. The program will display the download progress of all objects on the website.

Experienced users can define objects that should not be downloaded. Among them files like videos, cookies or scripts. Once the website or page has been downloaded it can be browsed in the program interface up to the level it was downloaded from the server.

The website downloader will display all pages that have been downloaded in the sidebar sorted by project name. A download will be initiated for every link pointing to a page that has not been downloaded before. The download speed depends on several factors including the connection speed of the computer system the application runs on.

Different view modes are available that differ from the default html view mode. It is possible to take a look at the contents, attached files (e.g. videos or images) or information (modification date, allowed objects, site and so on). Properties can be accessed for each downloaded website differently or combined for a project. They make it possible to set very specific rules for downloading contents including the number of page revisions to keep or the contents that should be downloaded.

Wysigot is not only a website downloader but also a website monitor. It can be set to monitor websites for changes and notify the user about those changes. Change verifications can be automatic, periodical or manual depending on the user’s choice. Alarms can be set to notify the user if a website has been updated.

The website monitor and downloader uses the rendering engine of Internet Explorer to display the website’s contents. It contains options to import Internet Explorer favorites which is convenient if several of those should be downloaded.

An alternative is the excellent Httrack which runs on Windows, Linux and OSX

This might sound confusing and difficulty at first but it is not. I use it to check that the http and mysql services are running on my servers. The http connection can be checked with a php script that they offer on their website. Just download and upload it to your web server and make them observe the path that links to the script.

Users get notified in numerous ways if a service fails. They can receive emails, SMS, instant messenger notifications and even phone calls depending on the subscribed plan.

Livewatch is offering one free plan that is good for observing one element of a server, for example the http connection. Each account is getting a certain amount of free SMS and phone calls per month. The free account gets one free SMS per month and unlimited email notifications while the Premium account receives 30 SMS, 15 phone calls and unlimited emails as well.

If you manage multiple servers or want to check on various services running on the server you could subscribe to a paid plan (like I did).

The intervals that are used to check the services are lower in the paid plans as well. The services on a free account are checked every 10 minutes and every 5 minutes if an error was found while the Gold premium services are checked every minute.

SMS are send into foreign countries as well (the service is based in Germany) but are charged double the amount of a single SMS which means that two SMS are subtracted for every single SMS that is send out.

Take a look at the in depth feature list that compares the free and premium accounts.

Here is the database php checker that I’m using in combination with regular expressions to make sure my database is up and running:


$dbhost = 'localhost';
$dbuser = 'enter database user';
$dbpass = 'enter database password;
$conn = mysql_connect($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpass) or die ('Error');
$dbname = 'enter database name';
mysql_select_db($dbname);
if ($conn) {echo "ok";}
else {echo "fehler";}
?>

This simple script tries to connect to the MySQL database and prints ok if the connection was successful and Error if it was not. I’m using the regular expression /ok/ on the Livewatch website to check if ok is returned which means that the database is up. If ok is not returned the Livewatch service assumes the database is down and will notify me.

I recently had a chat with their excellent support and they offered a bonus for Ghacks readers. If you signup for an account you get an additional 50 cents in your account which is good for 3 SMS. (And no, this is not a referral link, I’m not getting anything if you signup for free or premium accounts. I just like the service very much)

After installing the Update Checker extension you will see a new icon in your status bar. This icon will be gray if there are no updates and change its color if there are updates. A small balloon text will also be displayed right above the arrow.

There are two ways to add new sites that should be constantly monitored for changes. Right-click a website and select Scan Page for Update to add it to the list of monitored sites.

The second option would be to click on the icon in the status bar which opens a sidebar with all the sites that are currently monitored. If you click on New Entry in that menu you have come to the same menu.

The url and the title of the web page are filled out automatically and you only need to decide about the Change Threshold and the time between Autoscans.

The Change Threshold can be set to recognize any changes on the website as an update or only recognize them if a certain character limit has been reached. (10,50,100,500 and 1000)

The Autoscan option defines the interval in which each website is checked for updates. The lowest value is 15 minutes while the highest is once per day / manual scan.

I personally like this extension. I use it to monitor websites that I visit often to see if they updated their pages. Especially great for blogs and sites like digg or delicious.

Once you have grown your traffic to a fairly decent amount, however, downtimes that affect your site are a complete different story, a nuisance that can mean that hundreds of people are unable to get to your site, most of whom are likely to never come back again. In my experience, even when my hosting company promised 99.8% uptime, this began to increasingly seem like meaningless marketing hype when I started getting emails from friends and strangers alike informing me that my site was down at such and such an hour (many of which downtimes occurred in the early am hours when I wouldn’t have been online anyway).

I also noticed that the net effect of this was that I was becoming a bit paranoid; if my traffic seemed lower than it usually is I immediately wondered if me site had been down. I started looking for a resource that would monitor my site for downtimes and inform me automatically so I didn’t have to spend time wondering about it. This is when I found Montastic.

Montastic is a very simple service: create an account then enter in the URLs of the sites you would like it to monitor (up to a limit of 100 sites). It will then check the sites on your list within 10 minute intervals and from 2 locations. If and when it detects that any of the sites are down, it will immediately report this by email or through RSS. Once the site is back up it will report that as well.

What’s interesting about Montastic is that you are not limited to just your sites. After listing my 3 websites I decided to include 2 blogs that are similar to my main blog just for benchmarking purposes. To my surprise I discovered that while my site went down for about 2 hours once this week, these other sites seemed to be down for a few hours at least every other day, which was interesting to know, and made me think that perhaps my hosting company isn’t so bad after all.

Montastic was created by a team of “open source fanatics” that developed it for their own use and decided to make it available to everyone as a 100% free service.

Update: The program is no longer available on the developer website. We have uploaded the latest official version of Nettools Web Alert to our servers. You can download the program with a click on the following link: Nettools Web Alert (3)

When you first start the program you will notice that it displays a – very small – program window on the desktop. You can move that window around via drag and drop, or click on the V icon to display a context menu with available options. One of those options is Web Alert, which opens a new menu where you can add web pages that you want to track.

You can add multiple pages and configure notification settings for each. The program supports playing a sound or displaying a notification dialog when content on a monitored web page changes. Once you are done configuring the sites that you want to track, you can close the menu again.

Web Alert from that moment on monitors the site in regular intervals to notify you when contents change. No options are provided to change the notification interval or type of changes that trigger a notification.

The program threw an error message on a 64-bit Windows 7 test system whenever sites were added to it for monitoring purposes. This can be an incompatibility with 64-bit systems or with all recent Microsoft operating systems. It should work fine under Windows XP though.

An alternative is the web monitoring software Notipage which is compatible with all versions of Windows.