Productivity Sauce

Checking whether a specific Web server is up and running is as easy as issuing the ping command in the terminal, but if you are looking for a more versatile tool that you can use while on the move, try httpmon for Android. For starters, this nifty tool lets you set up multiple monitoring profiles, which can come in handy when you want to keep an eye on several servers. Besides ping, httpmon supports other monitoring options, such as response time, response code, and specific header and content strings. Better yet, you can specify multiple criteria; for example, you can configure httpmon to ping a specific server and check its response time in one go.

Creating a monitoring profile is as easy as it gets. Launch httpmon on your Android device, press the Menu button and tap on New Monitor. Give the new profile a name, press the Edit button, and specify the server's URL and the polling interval. In the Conditions section, select the Ping item from the drop-down list and press the Add button.

To alert you about server failures, httpmon can use notifications and text messages. To set up a notification, select Send Notifications from the drop-down list in the Actions section and press Add. Specify the desired options, and your profile is ready to go. Press the Menu | Start All button to activate the created profile or profiles and let httpmon do its job.

Finally, if you want to tweak httpmon's settings, press the Menu | Preferences button. Here you can enable automatic start-up and background notifications as well as specify connection and read timeouts.

Comments