Information about the software programs are directly taken from the process list and the data is stored in text files. This means that system administrators who want to analyse the traffic need to either do it manually or use a software program to do that.

The Internet logger does not provide any options which is a bit unfortunate because of the following reasons. The first reason is that there is no way of filtering applications that should not be logged by the application, the second that the logs can grow quickly. The Internet monitoring logs are saved in text files which grow depending on the traffic of the software applications. It can happen that the log file of a heavy traffic application (like utorrent or another bittorrent application) grows to a few hundred Megabytes after less than an hour. That’s obviously problematic if the Internet monitoring software has been configured to run all day long.

SoftX Internet Logger is a free Internet monitoring software that is available at the developer’s website.

SpyMe Tools is a software program that can monitor both file and registry changes caused by software installations. This is done by creating snapshots before and after the software installation. These snapshots are then compared to each other and the differences are shown to the user. The program does require some manual work before it can be used effectively. The first step is to create a snapshot of the Windows Registry before the software installation.

After that it is necessary to switch to file mode and select the hard drives that should be monitored for changes. This usually includes the partition with the Windows operating system and the partition that the software gets installed to. The program will create another snapshot of the hard drives which also has to be saved to the local hard drive.

After both snapshots have been created start the software installation normally. Once the software installation has been completed run a second scan of both the file system and Windows Registry. A click on the Compare button makes it then possible to compare both snapshots with each other to display the changes to both the file system and the Windows Registry that the installation has caused.

The software installation monitor will display the information in a tree like view in the left window of the software program. If you compare the file system it will list all folders that have been changed in the file system since the creation of the first and second snapshot. The right window will contain the actual file information including name, type and size.

SpyMe Tools are also providing access to a real time monitor that can either monitor the Windows Registry or the file system in specified locations. The real time mode is a bit harder to work with as all changes will be listed in one quickly growing table.

The software Application Monitor can come in handy for users who run servers of any kind on their computer or who like to download files when they are sleeping or not near the computer. Nothing’s worse than to wake up to realize that the application that controlled the download crashed ten minutes after going to bed.

Application Monitor will monitor applications added by the user in selected intervals. If the software program notices that an application is not running anymore – because of a crash, program termination or other reasons – it will restart it automatically.

All that needs to be done to monitor a new application is to enter a name and point the Application Monitor to the application’s path. It is possible to add arguments that will be executed when the program starts and to change the interval from 2 minutes to a different one.

The system administrator can be notified by email regularly and all events will be logged on the system’s hard drive by default.

Application Monitor is a portable software that requires the Microsoft .net Framework 1.1 to run.

Update: Application Monitor has not been updated in a long time. The program is still listed on the developer website though. A test under Windows 7 confirmed however that it is running fine under the new operating system. The project seems to have been abandoned though.

Ketarin on the other hand does not keep the software on a specific computer system up to date. The difference is that Ketarin checks if a software installer has been updated on a specified location and downloads the new installer to a location defined by the user of the software.

The main purpose of the software is therefor similar to the concept of those automatic updaters but with the difference that it only downloads the new program versions so that they can be distributed to a network of computers. It can naturally be used to install the new version on the computer that Ketarin is running as well.

Ketarin can monitor software installers in three different ways.

• Monitoring URLs for changes
• Monitoring and using the FileHippo service
• Using placeholders to watch webpages for changes

The software developers have created a short documentation that gives examples for all three ways of monitoring software installers.

Applications that are monitored can be grouped into categories. There is also the possibility to run commands after downloading an updated software installer and to import or export applications to XML files.

The software program is Open Source and portable. Some would say it is not as it requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0.

Application Monitor is a portable application that can monitor software programs in intervals. If a monitored application stopped running Application Monitor will start it anew. The setup does not provide any difficulties even for inexperienced users.

It basically comes down to selecting applications from the computer, adding a descriptive name, selecting the interval for the checks and optional parameters for the application start. Every added application is listed in the main program interface and has to be checked before the monitoring process starts.

Several options are available that can change some of the default parameters of the software. The default interval for application checks is set to 2 minutes which can be changed individually when a new application is added to the software program or in the options.

Application Monitor can be configured to check if the added applications are started during software startup. There is also an option to send error reports to an email address that can be configured in the software options.

The downside of using the application monitoring program is the rather high, and unusual, memory consumption.