Cloudkick was one of the hottest startups of 2010 and was acquired by Rackspace in December. Their whole business model is system monitoring as a service, with a lightweight client installed on the server reporting back to their monitoring servers operating in several different datacenters in the U.S.

The Cloudkick platform works on Windows and Linux (Ubuntu, CentOS and Redhat) and also comes with easy configuration for several providers such as Amazon EC2, Linode, Rackspace and other VPS/Cloud providers.

Is Cloudkick a good option for you to monitor your system(s)? Let’s go over the setup and what you get from the Cloudkick platform.

Setting Up The Cloudkick Agent

The first thing you will do is sign up for a developer account on the Cloudkick website. They have several paid options available as well but the developer account will allow you to have one server with comprehensive monitoring: CPU, memory and more; and also unlimited basic checks on an unlimited number of servers which include HTTP/S checks, Ping, SSH, DNS and TCP Header check (regular expression check).

Installing the Cloudkick agent is detailed on their wiki for all platforms. We will go over the Redhat/CentOS platform for the purposes of this article, but it is mostly the same for all other operating systems.

First add the Cloudkick yum repository to /etc/yum.repos.d/cloudkick.repo:

[cloudkick]
name=Cloudkick
baseurl=http://packages.cloudkick.com/redhat/$basearch
gpgcheck=0

Install the Cloudkick packages:

yum check-update; yum install cloudkick-agent

and then run the configuration utility:

[07:38][root@server:~]$ cloudkick-config
Welcome to the Cloudkick configuration utility. This will securely
use your Cloudkick username and password to generate an API key
for the Cloudkick Agent.

Username: username
Password: **********
Writing configuration to /etc/cloudkick.conf
All done!

You will then probably want to edit /etc/cloudkick.conf to add your server name. Create a new line and add the following text, using your server name in place of serverXX:

name serverXX

Finally, enable the cloudkick agent to run on startup:

[07:41][root@server:~]$ chkconfig cloudkick-agent on
[07:42][root@server:~]$ service cloudkick-agent start
Starting cloudkick-agent: [  OK  ]

That is all you need to do from your end to install and register your system in the Cloudkick system.

Setting up Monitors

The next time you log into the Cloudkick dashboard, you will see that this new server has been added to the system automatically. You will then need to set up alerts (also called Monitors) to go along with your server.

For the free checks, we will add a basic availability check on our server(s). We will check SSH availability as well as PING response times just for demo purposes. You can use any of the ‘basic’ checks or one or more of the standard checks depending on what type of account that you have signed up for.

After adding these monitors, it will start collecting data for your system. The Cloudkick interface has a lot of graphing options, allowing you to monitor these services over time and give you an idea as to how responsive your server is.

In addition to the pretty graphs and charts, you will also have alerts sent to you if any of the services go down. You can set it up so that it will trigger an alert after 1-3 errors and can also have it alert you just once or on a continuing basis. For extra bonus points, you can set it up so that it will text you on outages or also pipe it to a push service such as Boxcar.

Will Cloudkick Work For You?

Cloudkick is great if you have a small number of servers and you are looking for basic monitoring. The pricetag is certainly right for this type of uptime and health monitoring. However once you start adding servers with full checks to your account, the price quickly goes up. There is some great free server monitoring software available out there which are open source and free such as Nagios and Zabbix, and both would be compelling alternatives if you are looking for more detailed checks on multiple servers and are willing and able to set up the infrastructure for doing so. But for a personal home server or even a couple of servers for businesses, Cloudkick is a useful service to sign up for and it is very easy to get started with. Check it out and let us know what you think!

However, when you consider how many thousands of website, blog and even comment RSS feeds there are on the net, the task of reading through all of those RSS information streams and extracting important information is a very daunting one. Information on the Internet is so vast that if you want to collect and analyze any meaningful information, you really need to have a system where you can add as many input data streams as possible, and then use a news filter to automatically analyze, sort and respond to only the relevant and important information.

I’ve found that the GreatNews “Intelligent RSS Reader” is just that – intelligent. With the amount of research and writing that I have to do on so many topics every month, I really don’t have time to “Google” the Internet and sift through thousands of search results. Instead, I create customized RSS feeds inside the GreatNews desktop application to aggregate all newly published information on a broad topic, and then configure GreatNews as a news filter to search through and isolate only those articles that matter to me.

Turn GreatNews Into Your Own Private Intelligence Analyst

Most major news organizations have folks back at the office who are “data miners.” These are people who specialize in digging through records and information and eventually turning up information that’s relevant to what you’re researching. If you are an expert in a given field and want to remain updating on specific niche topics that you’re interested in, I’m going to show you how you can transform GreatNews into your own private data-miner.

When you first install the GreatNews desktop app, it appears as shown above. There are default feeds and topics already on the left “feed” menu, and the center window is essentially your feed display – and it also doubles as a built-in browser that you can use to open the links and read the articles on their actual websites.

For your purpose of scouring the web for information, you’re not actually interested in subscribing to specific individual feeds as you would with a normal feed reader. Instead, you’re going to create “search feeds” that conducts Internet searches and returns the RSS feed of articles that match your query.

Adding Incoming Data Feeds For GreatNews

You set this up by clicking on “Feed” in the menu and then drilling down to Add -> Search Feed.

Let’s say you want to monitor all new Internet stories that are published on a specific person’s name. This may be a relative, a friend or someone that you’re investigating for a news story. Internet blogs are often a very valuable source of important information about any topic. Private citizens publish content every day on a huge assortment of topics, and being able to gather “public intelligence” on any keyword topic of your choice offers tremendous insight. It could also offer you a critical lead for a breaking story within your industry or field of study.

You can create “RSS Search Feeds” with MSN, Flickr, or Google Blogs as a source. You just trigger the feed to conduct the search and update the feed with any changes. Now, the data source list may feel somewhat limiting. What if you’d like to know about new articles published and appearing in a standard Google search? This is what Google Alerts is for. Abhijeet previously covered Google Alerts, and Saikat wrote up a fantastic review of the service. Within Google Alerts, you can set up search queries for specific keywords, and in the “Deliver to” field, you can change the delivery method from “Email” to “Feed.

When you do this and click “Create Alert,” Google Alerts creates a customized RSS search feed for you based on results from a standard Google search for that keyword phrase. Your feed will update anytime anything new appears within Google search listings for that keyword phrase. To add this as another valuable data stream to your GreatNews information analysis system, simply highlight and copy the feed URL from Alerts, and paste it into the Feed URL field when you create a new GreatNews feed.

It’s a very good idea to take the time to go through and set up as many search feeds as you can, so that you have as much incoming data as possible. Now that you’ve set up your data sources from throughout the Internet, it’s time to configure GreatNews to analyze and sort that information for you.

Turn GreatNews Into A News Filter

If you have a feed reader, than you’ve probably experienced “information overload” from all of the feeds you’ve set up. There’s so much information about things you don’t care about that it’s easy to miss the articles about the things you do. So, first you’re going to organize all of your feeds using the GreatNews news filter, based on the keyword topics you’re interested in monitoring.

In the left menu, right click “All Labels” and select Add -> Feed Group. Type in the topic or phrase that you are monitoring, and then click and drag all of the feeds you created into that Feed Group.

Now you’ve organized all of your incoming data feeds by search topic. When you left click on the group, you’ll see feed listings from all of the feeds you’ve added. If you wanted to, you could simply scan through these for titles that interest you and then click on “Label This” to pick off the specific stories that interest you.

You can create a new label for the sub-topic that title falls into. For example if you’re monitoring all articles about Microsoft, you may find a story about Bill Gates, so you’d create a label called “Microsoft: Bill Gates.”  This lets you click set aside important stories into “folders” that you can go back and read later.

The thing is – I’m much too busy to scroll through and pick off those topics manually. Wouldn’t it be better to have GreatNews do it for you? You can do this by right clicking on the Feed Group you created for a particular search term, and select Add -> News Watch.”

This is where it gets really cool. In this window, you can identify more specific keywords that you want GreatNews to use to pluck out stories that really interest you. For example, in a case we’re investigating, I’m looking for any new reports about a specific person that references the term “stolen valor.” So I will configure a “News Watch” that will flag all titles which cover that aspect of this topic.

Now, when you open up GreatNews, you can go directly to your special “News Watches” area and check those specific topics that you are monitoring for any new articles or news reports that were recently published.

In this example, I just had GreatNews automatically sift through hundreds of news articles on a general topic that I’m investigating, and then I had it pluck out specific articles that cover sub-topics I’ve defined as very important to me. Now, instead of scrolling through hundreds of titles, you can open up GreatNews and it will serve you the article that you wanted on a silver platter – no manual searching required on your part!

Have you ever tried using GreatNews to cut down on information overload? Give it a shot and report back what you think of the service in the comments section below.

This time, we’re bumping up the prize by giving out 20 copies of Widestep Security’s Elite Keylogger 4.7 PRO worth $1980 (Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 32-bit compatible).

This giveaway post and walkthrough is based on Elite Keylogger 4.6 PRO. But rest assured, the software will operate similiarly. So, let’s dive in and find out what you’ll be getting.

Have you ever wanted to ensure your children aren’t giving out personal information online? Even if you’ve had a lengthy discussion with them about staying safe online, a child may not realize just how much information they’re giving out. Or are you an employer who wants to monitor the work habits of your employees? These are possibly two of the most common uses for a keystroke recorder.

Before we begin, MakeUseOf would like to state that we do not condone the use of key-loggers for malicious purposes. This giveaway is to support its use in the business environment i.e. monitoring employees or supervising your child’s internet activity and the like.

Elite Keylogger 4.7 PRO comes with all the features you could need for monitoring a user’s actions on your computer and it does it with a simple interface. You can set it to record every keystroke typed, what programs were used, which web sites are visited and even take screenshots at a set interval.

Elite Keylogger hides from the user’s view completely. It doesn’t show in the taskbar, control panel, or processes. In my tests, it even bypassed virus scanners. If I didn’t install it myself, I wouldn’t know it was on my system. After installation, you are given instructions on how to unhide the program for configuration.

After following these instructions, the program loads for you to set the options.

On the right menu you can select the date for the logs you want to see. After that, you select which type of log (keystrokes, screenshots, etc.) to view. The keylogger can email the logs to you privately. The program logs all keystrokes, including passwords, so be aware of this when sending any information over email.

You’re able to select specific items to track and set it for specific users. Even when recording keystrokes and taking screen-shots every 20 seconds, I didn’t notice any drop in speed or extra RAM usage on my 3 year old laptop, so the software does a nice job of running efficiently.

As shown above, the software also keeps track of what applications are used and even the specific times they are launched and closed.

Screenshot tracking alone can tell you a lot about a person’s computer use. If you take frequent screenshots, I recommend lowering the snapshot quality to 8-bit to preserve disk space. All screenshots are shown in an easy-to-view thumbnail gallery and can be enlarged with a click.

If you’re looking for an undetectable, low resource, and easy to use keystroke tracker, I highly recommend Elite Keylogger 4.7 PRO. Download the fully-functional 7-day trial and check it out for yourself.

If you don’t mind your users knowing that they’re being watched, try out their free Quick Keylogger.

The free version is visible in the taskbar and easily detected by virus/trojan scanners. You can password-protect the logs, but users can shut down the program if they see it. The free keylogger has fewer options compared to its big brother, but if you’re just looking to record keystrokes then this can do the job.

How do I win a copy?

It’s simple, just follow the instructions.

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, 25th June at 2100hrs PST. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email the next day.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

MakeUseOf would like to thank Amy from WideStep for her generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.

Hazel is your Mac’s personal housekeeper. It works quietly and cleverly in the background, completing the tasks which were set for it; using hardly any resources at all. This week, we’re giving away 10 licenses worth USD$220 in total.

Find out how you can get one to make your life so much easier.

Once installed, Hazel finds its home in System Preferences. Here’s how it works. First, you need to add the folders which you’ll want to Hazel to monitor.

Then, for each folder and depending on their content; you will need to state a set of prerequisites that should be fulfilled. In the example below, I’ve set the pre-requisite to be video files. As long as a video file lands in this folder, it will automatically be transferred to my Movies folder.

I often download a tonne of RAR and segmented RAR files — and it’s a freaking hassle to extract them individually. Hazel takes all of that headache away. If a RAR file ever finds its way to the target folder, it will automatically be extracted — the original RAR files will be Trashed.

What if a target contains several folders? Do we need to add the same set of rules for every nested folder? Nope — Hazel is smart. All I need to do is add one more rule to dictate that if a folder is present, the rule should be run on its contents. As long as that rule is present, it doesn’t matter how many folder levels there are.

Besides that, Hazel can also keep your Mac spick and span by automatically emptying your Trash, removing associated files when you drag an application to the Trash, labelling and archiving old files, etc. To get a full list of Hazel’s features, visit its homepage.

I’ve used Hazel for a while now and I have to say that I’m glad I have it. Most of the menial task which I hate to do are already done for me. It’s perfect!

How do I win a copy?

We have just implemented a new giveaway form, please take the time to read the instructions. It’s still simple. Just follow the steps.

This giveaway begins now and will end on Friday, 21st May at 2100hrs PST. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

MakeUseOf would like to thank Paul from Noodlesoft for his generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.

But bookmarks by nature are static links. I was searching for a bookmarking web app that would let me know all of the changes in a site. I finally came across Diphur which makes bookmarks more active.

Diphur monitors all sites which you bookmark using it and it lets you know when new content gets added to the site. If Diphur’s core function is sounding more like what RSS feeds do, then take a pause here.

Diphur can be compared to RSS feeds but it is different in many other ways.

Just like RSS feeds, Diphur gives us the new stuff. But unlike a RSS feed which gives you everything that’s new, Diphur gives you lots of other controls to get what you want and when you want. Then there are many sites that do not have RSS feeds. With Diphur, you can cover them as well.

Diphur can be set up to grab any kind of updates. Think of the Giveaways you might be missing on our site. You can set up Diphur to notify you in real time when one gets announced. Just like an early bird, you can come and participate.

Looking out for any content that gets published with a specific tag; Diphur can get that for you. The same goes with any other data that you might be monitoring on a periodic basis.

Now let’s see how Diphur catches anything that changes on a website you have bookmarked and how you can set it up to hit the target.

Diphur Works Through ChangeUps

Diphur calls the webpage updates ChangeUp(s). It is the hourly difference in content that occurs on the webpage that you have bookmarked. While performing the check and bringing the ChangeUp to you, Diphur does not consider elements like ads which get regularly updated. Images and linked content are also given a miss.

There are two ways you can see the ChangeUps. First, you get notified with an email. Second, you can log into your Diphur account and click on the ChangeUp link below each bookmarked site.

Let’s See A ChangeUp In Action

I should warn you that the interface is nothing to write home about and is purely functional.

So let’s jump into the site with a registration and a log in. If you decide to add a fresh bookmark, the next page is where it all comes together.

All the fields are pretty well explained. Help is prompt with a click on the little blue query icon. For example, take the first field where you have to enter the URL of the site you want to bookmark. The explanation is concise and clear.

The first place where you can really fine tune the utility of this site is the field where you set the time range and size of the changes. You can set Diphur to monitor the website ““ hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly.

There are a few percentages to choose from in the adjoining dropdown. Percentages are about the number of updates you want to know about. For instance, 1 percent will let you know of that many changes and not all that have taken place. Any Change is the default option.

Keywords and Exact Phrase act like filters which allow you to get only the kind of content you are interested in. For instance, adding a keyword like technology will filter out those changes which do not have the word in them. You can take any of a site’s tags and put them in as keywords. Diphur will update you when the posts with that keyword or tag get published.

Your Bookmarks

The personal bookmarks page looks like this”¦

You can keep on adding fresh bookmarks or help yourself from the ones that are already there in the Popular section, or those you can get with a search.

Bookmarks can be arranged according to a few Views and also kept to be read later with a click on the Add to read later icon.

Now, What Does A ChangeUp Look Like?

You will receive the ChangeUp notification in your email. You can directly click from there or you can log on to your account.

The My ChangeUp page is where the motherlode of information comes in. You can see that the information gets arranged according to the level of changes in the individual articles. You can click on the links to go directly to the source page. The View filters again and lets you play around with what you want to display on this page.

Diphur could be a viable sidekick to your trusty RSS reader. I especially liked the keywords function which allows me to target information related to my interests. A good thing if you want to keep tabs on a huge website or blog and get selective information.

Of course, one thing I miss is a browser bookmarklet which can let me add a bookmark without visiting Diphur. Perhaps that’s around the corner.

But where do you place Diphur in your scheme of things? Is it a good webpage monitoring and update alert tool?