This was a package I came across while researching notification methods and options for Nagios to improve ease of information filtering for colleagues (more about that in later posts) but the name of the psoftware is Growl. Based on an OS/X package Growl has been ported for windows and comes with a range of plugins and other tools to allow you to create a notification system for glueing together disparate systems into one focal point for notifications . For example I’ve used the addin for gmail to allow me to monitor a remote gmail account.
The developers describe the port of the application as
Ok, so what is Growl?
Put simply, Growl lets you know when things happen. Files finished downloading, friends came online, new email has arrived – Growl can let you know when any event occurs with a subtle notification. The rest of the time, Growl stays out of your way.
Along with letting you know when things happen, Growl also gives you full control over how you are notified and what action (if any) you want to take in response to the notification. You can choose to be alerted with a visual indicator or an audible alert, both, or neither. You can choose the type of display that is shown, whether the display remains on the screen, the importance of the notification, and even if the notification should be forwarded to another computer. You can have notifications that trigger an email, run a script, launch a program, or are read out loud.
So hopefully that should be enough choices for you !!
A commandline tool for Windows machines was my first port of call to allow me to bundle some other testing I have to do without coding. Its part of the installation of Growl for windows and is called GrowlNotify. You’ll get more info here on the options http://www.growlforwindows.com/gfw/help/growlnotify.aspx
You can access Growl here
So go get some growly goodness and I’m sure there will be more on this topic before long …..
TIP
On Vista 64 Bit I had to make a change to the c:windowssystem32driversetchosts file before the growlnotify test would work.
A simple grownotify “hello” failed with
Notifcation failed:201 – The destination server was not reachable
Specifically
::1 localhost
After I changed that to:
127.0.0.1 localhost
the notifcation worked