Per your requests, we’ve just added the ability for multiple users to be notified for each stack within a Dispatch account. Previously, it was set up so that one person got all of the notifications for a stack, but now you can pick both the users that get notifications for a stack, and what type of notifications they get.
This notification settings box replaces the old one, and can be found on the settings page for each stack.
Not long ago, a few pieces of a puzzle came together, and I had to act. Here at Sense Labs, we are writing new apps all the time and they all have server processes and statistics that we want to keep track of. I had a RedPost/Kit lying around. It’s the very first version of a digital sign platform that can be found here http://theredpost.com/kit. They don’t make the Kit anymore but its younger brother, the Sign is an even more capable successor: http://www.theredpost.com/sign#sign It had a Mini-PC built in, but as time went on and websites got more complex, it turned out to be more and more underpowered. I decided that I wanted to build a status board so that I could easily keep track of all these things, Then, Apple came out with their new Apple TV, we replaced the old one with the new one, and all of a sudden I had an extra Apple machine that I could make into what I needed, as the original Apple TV is very hackable.
So, first I installed Mac OS X on my Apple TV. The Apple TV isn’t really made to be a general purpose computer, so it’s not super fast and it doesn’t have a lot of memory, but it does run Safari okay, and since I just want to use the Apple TV to pull up the Geckoboard website and not do much else, it works great.
There are 2 schools of thought when it comes to Apple TV hacking, and the one that I went with is the one that doesn’t require you to even open the Apple TV up. The basic overview is that you set up a USB hard drive, copy a special version of Mac OS X to it, and then set it up so that it can only be booted by the Apple TV.
The instructions that I followed to get Mac OS X working on the Apple TV are here: http://www.hackint0sh.org/f98/70835.htm
If you’re going to connect the Apple TV to a monitor, you’ll need a HDMI to DVI cable. I happened to have one lying around, so I used that one, but you can find a great one for about $4 at MonoPrice here.
Then, once I installed OS X on the hard drive, I upgraded Safari to the latest version, fired up Geckoboard, and now it runs all day and shows the metrics that we want to see about our web apps. The best thing is, I didn’t spend a dime out of my pocket to get it working! Good stuff.
I’ve been using Rdio to stream music from the internet during the workday a good bit lately, and the other day it occurred to me that it’d be nice if I could have my music stop when I left the office and start playing when I get back to the office.
I already use Airlock to lock and unlock my Mac based on my phone’s proximity to it, and it supports running applications or commands when you enter/leave an area, so that part was all taken care of. All I needed to do was write some scripts to play/pause Rdio and add them to Airlock. So, I rolled up my sleeves and whipped up a couple of AppleScripts.
There is one for playing and one for pausing, but they are pretty much identical, and I tried to be smart about the code, so if you aren’t running Rdio and you leave, it won’t launch and catch you by surprise when you get back.
The code and compiled applications are available for download here. You can just use the compiled applications if you want, or feel free to modify the Applescripts for your own needs.
To briefly explain the code:
I check to see if Rdio is running. If it is, I activate it and then programmatically click the Play or Pause menu item, depending on which script I’m running. Then, I switch back to the previous app that you were using.
if appIsRunning("Rdio") then tell application "System Events" tell application "Rdio" to activate tell process "Rdio" to click menu item "Pause" of menu "Controls" of menu bar 1 keystroke tab using command down end tell end if on appIsRunning(appName) tell application "System Events" to (name of processes) contains appName end appIsRunning
We’re starting to bring up servers in the UK, so if you need to open up a block in your firewall for us to get to your sites, you’ll want to unblock 178.79.155.200/210. Thanks!
We just added the ability to easily view the last 3 months of stats that we have for your site to AMSUWL, and the ability to type in any custom date range that you want to see stats for that span of time. Hope this gives you better visibility into the overall health of your sites!
Well, we built it! We’ve been tracking uptime/downtime stats and response times on Are My Sites Up White Label in the background for months now, but it took us a little while to build the graphs into the system. They are in there now. David did a great job with them, and we’re both pretty excited to get this out the door, as it’s been a much requested feature. Just click on any site in your list and you’ll be taken to a detail page for it, where you’ll be able to see the last 2 weeks of stats, graphed out so you can more easily see how your site behaves over time. If you hover over any data point, you can see the exact value for that date.
Next, we’re going to be adding the ability to pass in a date range so you can get more customized views of your site data, and of course at any time you can export a CSV of all historical data that we have for your site.
Hope you guys enjoy it! Thanks for using AMSUWL.
Pushed a BalanceBar 1.0.1 out just now, with support for any currency marker. Just set whatever you want in the Preferences, and it’ll be used from then on.
Sometimes a server isn’t really down, but it’s responding slowly. Normally, AMSUWL notifies you of those kinds of issues, called Timeout errors. Some of our customers don’t want to know every single time their site is slow, they just want to know when it is fully down, so we’ve added the ability to adjust Timeout settings for each client.
When adding or editing a client, just check or uncheck the given box, depending on what your preference is.
So the other day I was using a web app and all of a sudden this little window slid up from the bottom corner of my screen and asked for some feedback on it. I answered the question it asked, and it happily slid away. “That’s a pretty awesome way to get feedback from people on my web apps!”, I thought. So, I tracked down the widget that made it all possible. It’s Kissinsights, by internet maven Neil Patel‘s company. So I decided to give it a go. I get to the plans page, and there are only 2 options: Free and $29 a month. That’s a little bit of a jump in price, I think. Even the feature that they do offer on both the free and paid plans (Unlimited surveys) is limited immediately because you can only have 30 responses, and it’s not clear from the table if that’s per survey or overall.) Also, what happens when you hit the limit? Are your responses saved for you to see when you upgrade? Does the form just shut down?
I believe that products like this are best sold to users once they have had the ability to see if it actually makes a difference and helps them to better serve their customers. The free plan is so hobbled that you can’t realistically use it to get any useful feedback, and the difference between the premium and free plan is so great that I think that some people (including myself) get immediately turned off. For startups like mine who are building web apps, we’d love to buy into something like this, but you have to prove your value to us before we’re going to start giving you what is at least one customer per month for us. However, if you convert just one new customer per month for us, you’re paying for yourself.
So, what I suggest is that Kissinsights move to a 30 day free trial with one survey, and unlimited responses to that survey. This would give people 30 days to install it and start using it. If I could get insight into why people aren’t buying my product, iterate and start getting new customers because of it, I (and certainly many more people) would gladly pay $29 a month for it.
Or, maybe the pricing is a genius, calculated move. Maybe it’s just meant to inspire posts like these, which get people talking about the product. Neil is a smart guy, I wouldn’t put it past him!
In response to customer requests, we’ve just added the ability to limit the number of sites per client. When adding or editing a client, just type the limit that you want for them into the given form field, save, and you’ll be all set. This limit only applies to users under that client. The master account, of course can freely add sites to any client.