Dejal Systems, LLC has released Dejal Simon 2.5.7 (http://www.dejal.com/simon/), a site monitoring tool for Mac OS X. 7 The new version includes a couple of important fixes, and may be the last release before version 2.6, which drops Mac OS X 10.4 support.
Dejal Simon checks web pages, FTP and DNS servers, local or remote ports or volumes, and other services for changes or failures, and notifies you via e-mail, sound, speech, Twitter, HTML reports, and other means. You can add tests to Simon to track updated sites, to alert you when an important server goes down or recovers, check on Samba SMB, take periodic screenshots of the system, track posts and new comments on your or friends’ blogs, check for web mail, make sure a key application is running, get notifications of updates to favorite news and entertainment web sites, keep an eye on auctions, and other uses.
Services include Web (HTTP) to check web pages (including secure ones, and supporting POST and cookies), FTP files and directory listings, DNS, Ping servers, see Twitter updates, watch a local Application, capture periodic Screenshots, watch for System Log Errors, and more. Plus, you can easily add your own services via custom port connections, AppleScripts, shell scripts, or Perl, PHP, Python, etc.
Receive notification of changes, failures, and/or recoveries via various Actions, auto-generated E-mail messages (including to your pager or cellphone), Growl notifications, Twitter updates or direct messages, an audible Sound, or customizable Speech. You can use custom scripts and port sessions for notifiers too.
HTML reports allow remote viewing of a summary and/or details of Simon monitoring. Reports can be saved to a local web server, or uploaded remotely. Customizable templates (with several examples provided) allow embedding in a web page, using a compact format suitable for viewing on PDAs and cellphones, creating a RSS feed, and more.
Dejal Simon requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher. It costs US$29.95; version 2.5.7 is a free update for registered users of version 2.x. It’s a free update for Simon 2.x users.