Appatic

Domain monitoring is a the kind of very useful tool to have if you have blog where you are constantly posting about sites and apps, as it is with Appatic. And so it is for other blogging gigs I happen to do in my case.  The way I do that right now is a bit messy. I use AM-Deadlink, a tool I posted about quite awhile ago here in Appatic. This tool detects dead links from your bookmarks, and it is messy because it has to check every single thing I have bookmarked, and trust me, I bookmark a hell of a lot of things on a daily basis.  

So, on and off I had been looking for a simple but pleasant looking Domain Monitoring Tool that can track only the links I want to track.  I used to use one for many years that was actually developed for windows 95 and up to XP it still worked ok.

Then in the move to Windows 7 it just stopped working and it refuses to work even if put on a XP compatibility mode. Technically, I know i could still be running it.  just that using a XP Mode instance for a super old 1mb app from the mid 90’s is kind of a overkill doesn't it? But I think I may have finally found something just like it, I could want to use from now on.

URLtestr is a FREE Adobe AIR based domain monitoring tool by Rich Tretola.  That gives you a very simple table board where you can add links to track and monitor their uptime. This way you will know when a site goes down and if a site stays down and it is no longer available.

URLtestr is very simple to use and got no limit for as how many links you can track, can be used in the desktop on Windows (XP, Vista & 7), Mac (Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard), Linux (Any current Ubuntu or Suse related distro) and it also can be used in a mobile device running Android 2.2 or later. As a plus it should also available for Blackberry’s The Playbook Slate, as soon it comes out.

App Screenshots

(If you view/edit a link, you will see a preview of the site for the link you are tracking. you can then completely change or correct any link.  Full links as in http//www.site.com are the best case in order to track a link properly when adding or editing a link)

(If a domain is no longer resolving to a page or the site is giving a 404 error, the link for the domain will get highlighted in read showing a warning sign instead of the green check mark)

(If you decided to erase a dead link or a any link, a warning confirm dialog will first appear so there is no accidental erases)

Some Notes

Overall, must say I really like URLtestr, it is simple, clean and easy to use. It  also looks good and I know that as long Adobe AIR is installed, I will be getting updates to the app right away and the app will work.

The only problem with the app right now is  that it lacks some features I would like and I think it should have:

• 1.-Importing links from .txt or Bookmark files. Since I find having to add links one by one quite a bother.
• 2.-Export to .txt. Currently it lets you export to .CVS, but why not also to a .txt file since that is the norm with most log reports?
• 3.-Controlling the monitoring schedule. Let me decide how often I want the site to be pinged from a set of parameters.
• 4.-Desktop Notifications. Maybe they didn’t work while I was testing the app, but I didn’t see any desktop notification while using it.
• 5.-Multiple Deletion. Let me select more than one link for deletion at the same time. 

Lets hope that Rich can add those features for the 1.0 release of URLtestr to make it something truly great. In the meantime I can say it is a good app, well worth a download and a keeper if you were looking for something like it.

Linkage

URLtestr for Desktop

URLtestr for Android

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