Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with monitoring

Diabetic cat question

markcmyers — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:47:31 -0800

My diabetic cat has an off-again-on-again pancreas, so his insulin needs vary. I asked my vet about home monitoring using a glucometer. The vet said no one she knows who's tried it with a cat has succeeded. I tried it following this excellent video and found it was a piece of cake. Now we adjust his insulin based on twice-a-day readings, just as humans do (three times a day). I'm considering offering free home-monitoring training to owners of diabetic pets in my community who might benefit from home testing, as a public service. Do you think this would be useful?

When I'm rubber and your glue doesn't work....

Mastercheddaar — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 06:59:35 -0800

Boss wants me to find an online reputation monitor. It turns out that a couple bloggers have posts some not nice things about his business. He heard of companies being able to push these blogs back and told me to investigate them. I used some google fu but the results are overwhelming. There are tons of them and no real way of knowing which ones are goods. Does anyone here have any personal experiences in this area?

Policy monitoring for families with kids with special needs

greta simone — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 10:22:49 -0800

In search of website, blogs, etc that keep up with federal and state (specifically NC) policies that affect families with children with developmental and physical disabilities? I'm interning for an agency that provides support to families with children with special needs (developmental/intellectual/physical/behavioral/etc disabilities), and I am looking for a way to keep the staff up-to-date on current policies affecting the population we serve. I'm hoping to simply find a few comprehensive sites and blogs to whose RSS feeds we can subscribe and review when necessary. This agency serves all of North Carolina, so NC-specific sites would also be helpful. Thanks in advance!

looking for an iPhone "microphone amp" application

helios — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:11:49 -0800

Is there an iPhone app (jailbroken or legit) that simply outputs the sound from the microphone directly to the headphones with no delay, as if it were an amp? I tried searching google and the iPhone store with no success.

They're totally watching you... right?

smalls — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:20:53 -0800

I am having a debate with someone about privacy whilst using a work laptop at home, using your own internet connection. Help settle this! Excuse me if I sound a little dumb about this but my understanding of computer networking is limited to one undergraduate MIS course (which I hated).

The scenario: User is browsing the internet via a work laptop at home, using his own internet connection (no VPN). In this particular situation, web pages that would normally be blocked from work are not blocked. However, google chat in gmail is not functional at work or at home. I'm super paranoid so I think this is indicative of something. But I'm not sure what. He thinks this is irrelevant, and that it is highly unlikely the company will find out what you are doing if you are not connected to their network.

So, am I right? Please give me specific scenarios that would give evidence to the employer being able to monitor or review activities at some point. For the purposes of the debate, let's assume that cookies/cache/internet history are getting cleared, and also that there is no spyware installed locally on the machine.

Baby Monitoring Troubles

orsonet — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:59:43 -0800

How can I monitor my babies without a baby monitor? I have two babies who sleep in the same room in our house. I also have an office in our garage which is about 30 feet from the house. I need a way to monitor them when they are sleeping and I am working, but all the baby monitors I've tried have failed (including the ones that have extended range). The best I've gotten is being able to kind of hear them but having to tolerate loud white noise the entire time the monitor is on. I know the white noise is common in monitors, but in my office it really has to be loud for me to hear the kids (I don't have this problem in the house).

Is there some wireless way I can hear them that will 1) work and 2) be quiet (silent?) when monitoring? I have tried searching online and have come across the idea of using a Walkie Talkie, but the ones that specifically say they can be used to monitor are not for sale in the US and I can't tell if the ones sold in the US will work. I don't know if this is a good solution.

I keep thinking there must be some way to mic their room and have it "play" on my computer (I use a PC) but I'm way out of my league in understanding what possible solutions there might be or how to even frame the issue for searching. Any help/ideas would be appreciated.

What are the squat metal cylinders I see sitting on range-land fence posts?

dolface — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:12:01 -0800

What are the (sensors, recorders?) things that look like metal cake covers (short, wide cylinders) sitting on fence-posts, mostly in rangeland in the Western USA? I've only seen them on fence lines along roads, and they tend to sit on little shelves on the posts. They're usually almost as wide as they are tall, but sometimes taller than they are wide, and tend to be painted light green or grey, but I've seen them in stainless steel. They are always cylindrical.

They don't have a visible power source.

I don't think I've seen them east of the Rockies, but I'm not ready to swear to that.

Seismaphones? Something else? I'd love to know!

Is Big Brother listening?

Jase — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:57:35 -0800

Can FaceTime IM monitoring read the traffic on googletalk when it's being run via the browser? My employer is using FaceTime IM Monitoring and I'm curious whether it can monitor GoogleTalk when it's being run in the browser with SSL encryption running.

Central monitoring software needed. Does it exist?

dyerfr — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:24:12 -0800

There has to be a program that does this - user configurable Service Level monitoring of other systems, with 'actionable' events ... caution... non-technical guy trying to talk about technical stuff...

Here's what I am looking for... a software package (to be integrated with my company's software) that, either via push or pull, collects information (likely quantifiable numerical data, but not necessarily) from other systems deployed at a customer site. We could define the package I am looking for as a 'central' system and the others as 'input' systems.

The central system would then, based on user-definable metrics, invoke actions (e-mails, pager alerts, etc) when measurements/thresholds from the input systems reach a certain level - the rub is that it (the threshold) would often be based on a combination of inputs from more than one system.

Easy (potentially nonsensical) example: there's a thermostat and a humidity detector in a rooom - each has a 'system' attached to it that monitors the temperature and the humidity. Those individual systems could easily tell me when the temperature reaches X OR the humidity leve reaches Y, respectively. But what I am looking for is central a system that would tell me when both events occur at the same time - that is, when the temperature reaches X AND the humidity reaches Y - something that each individual input system cannot do.

This central system I am referring to could allow the user to define what X and Y (and Z, etc) would need to be and how often the threshold would need to be reached over a given time period - that is, the user defines what is important and how he wants to be alerted. To continue the example above, maybe the user is only interested if the conditions are met twice in a 24 hour period, and so the central system would only define an 'action' when the condition(s) is/are met a second time in the past 24 hours...

Are there any companies that have something like this? I'm trying to be somewhat generic, because there's a wide variety of input systems that could be hanging off of this central system...

Network monitoring SLM systems come close, but not certain that's the right approach.

How to Keep a Critical Program Running 24/7 in 3 Easy Steps

SparkyPine — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 07:48:14 -0800

I want to monitor a running program on an XP box to make sure it stays running. If the program should quit for whatever reason, I'd like a way to attempt to restart the program after xx - minutes/seconds, for xx - attempts. Specifically, I want a Citrix/terminal application session to restart when I reboot the Citrix server without having to do it manually. This would preclude setting up an application to run as a service I presume.

The Citrix server needs bounced a couple times per week and the particular remote application session will be running a time and attendance program...so it needs to always be available.

This would also fix any intermittent network failures so I don't get called at 5:30 AM saying people have no way to punch the clock.

My Google-fu is failing me on this one.

What are appropriate rates for computer surveillance work?

Jack Feschuk — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:37:08 -0800

I'm currently running a business where I monitor computers for people. I use custom made software that gets by all the anti-malware scanners and through the firewalls. I have been charging $40/hr for the first hour, and $45 for each hour after that. Since most of work may only take 1-4 hours per client I've been told that I'm charging too little. Figures have been thrown at me by friends, family and even clients that I should charge $60, $75 or even $100. What is a fair amount in this business. Yes this involves spying on people at the workplace, churches and spouses. My first question. I've searched mefi for similar stuff and came up empty.

I can hear you typing...

disillusioned — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:42:54 -0800

Hi-tech key and datalogging: What crazy methods for remotely monitoring datastreams have you heard of? I was talking to a friend about something related to keystroke monitoring, and I remembered hearing that some people had developed a proof of concept on monitoring keystrokes by their auditory signature—the sound of the user typing could be correlated to their keystokes based on frequency.

I also have heard of users being able to monitor LED light activity on an Ethernet interface to decode the data being sent...

And I think I saw something about being able to tap the EMI signal from a VGA cable, but I think the last two are nearly complete bullshit.

Can anyone cite any sources for those three methods? Or list any other crazy methods?

Many thanks!

Best software to monitor internet usage?

miqueltegler — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 08:52:03 -0800

What's the best software to monitor internet usage on specific desktop computers? I've been tasked to monitor the internet usage of a few individuals at work. I need to do this without their knowledge. So stealth is key. Also I need to be able to see what sites they are visiting and how long they spend on the sites.

Checking if my work PC is connected from home.

tomble — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:34:34 -0800

I have a work PC and a home PC, both running XP. It's fairly important that my work PC stays connected, as the router has a habit of sometimes locking up. Since I'm away from the office for the next two weeks, I need to keep an eye on the computer to make sure it stays connected, or at least lets me know if it isn't so I can go in and power cycle the router. I am thinking maybe automatic emailing on the hour? I don't think I can just ping it because my IP changes if it reboots. I was thinking more like something that would, say, send an email every hour, so if I don't get the email I know something is wrong.

I don't need to connect to the desktop or anything like that, ideally I would just have a green light in the taskbar that lets me know that my work computer is up and running.

So in short, software that would email automatically every hour or so, or something that would send a ping from my work PC to my home one via whatever software. Searching has lead me to a lot of spam and VNC type software.

Bandwidth monitoring per IP device?

doomtop — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:39:48 -0800

Bandwidth monitoring per IP device? I'm looking for a way to monitor bandwidth on a wireless LAN. I need to be able to see how much bandwidth any particular device on the LAN is using at any given time. This can be shown by IP address or MAC address.

Ideally, it would break down like...

192.168.1.a is using 654kbit
192.168.1.b is using 322kbit
192.168.1.c is using 12kbit
192.168.1.d is using 0kbit

How could I accomplish this? Would the router need any special features/logging/etc?

Bear in mind that most devices on the network will not be able to run an SNMP client.

I can has pretty graphs?

bkudria — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:48:36 -0800

What is a cool-looking realtime pluggable visualization program for Linux? I'm on a team working on building a cluster, and we'd like some nice real-time visualization of CPU load, and other things. Right now we are using KDE's ksysguard which gives us nice bar graphs and plots CPU usage - but it won't let us monitor custom things, like, for example, the number of files in a specified directory.

We would like something that is realtime, which kinda rules out all the web-based tools, and something that allows us to easily modify it to monitor anything we want. Furthermore, we need it to be able to monitor remote hosts, like ksysguard does (it does it with a daemon, or over ssh).

Turn off the internet!

barnone — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 10:24:58 -0800

We need to turn off the internet! What is the best program for temporarily disabling our access? We need one solution for a Mac and one for Windows. Ideally we'd like something with a timer (where the internet is turned off for x number of hours) or something that requires a difficult process to unlock it. We can't simply remove all internet functionality from our computers, but we would like to make it more difficult to "check this one thing" while writing or check our inboxes to "send this one quick email." Just turning off the WiFi detectors helps for a while, but we need something more drastic.

Sure, the best thing would be to reform practices. But right now we need a bit more of a taskmaster. Extra bonus for free programs, but I'd consider paying for extra functionality. This is mostly about WiFi because we're often out in public or at school, so hiding the plug isn't the way to go here.

Any ideas?

Test harness for SNMP traps?

kaydo — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:13:18 -0800

Is there a freeware or light weight tool (e.g. perl script) we can use to show us that the SNMP traps are received successfully? I'm implementing IBM Tivoli Omegamon XE for Messages within a Windows 2003 environment. One of our challenges is to integrate with other monitoring tools already within the environment, we've chosen to send SNMP traps. While we appear to be sending these traps successfully, the consuming application isn't quite ready to receive them (i.e. they havent installed it yet).

Is there a freeware or light weight tool (e.g. perl script) we can use to show us that the SNMP traps are received successfully?

I'm already investigating Net-SNMP (ref: sourceforge), but I was looking for recommendations. This is quite a restricted environment, so I'd prefer not to try to introduce new tools, but scripts etc are a-ok.

looking for Online real time webbased share monitoring services

complience — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 06:19:12 -0800

looking for Online real time webbased share monitoring services specifically for the footise Im looking for a free service that will allow me to monitor the performance of my share options on the FTSE 100.

Ideally it will be real time and webbased, but i don't mind installing 3rd party software if needed.

I also want some analysis performed on the data, graphs, charts things like that..

I'm also looking for a google gadget for the FTSE that will let me monitor my shares from the desktop.

free please folks im half Scottish.

tried quote.com didn't seem to be every good and ive got an account at the londonstockexchange.com but you have to pay to get the good analysis stuff.

What good monitoring tools for JBoss are there?

gsteff — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:42:22 -0800

Anyone know popular/easy tools for monitoring JBoss server performance? I need to diagnose some performance problems on a webapp that runs on JBoss. Unfortunately, I have little to no knowledge about JBoss (or java webapp monitoring). Are there any tools that would help trace what parts of individual requests are hanging? Text mode, GUI or web interfaces are acceptable. We have lots of tools for testing and monitoring during development, but are getting unexpected behavior in production with real data, and thus need to monitor a production system. Anyone familiar with this?

I always feel like, somebody's watching meeeeee

papercake — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:20:07 -0800

When a corporation says they're monitoring email and internet access, what does that mean? Specifically, what about Instant Messaging? Or other Mail programs?

I just started a new job at Big Company. I've been working at Tiny Upstart Company for years. We were able to install software, use whatever mail program we wanted, and Instant Message. I don't use it a lot (honest!) but it's good for when I have a question for my IT friend, or if my wife wants to jump on and ask me when I'm going to be home, etc.

So, the Big Company says they monitor email and internet useage... can they detect if I'm using an IM client? Or if I use Mail to check my home mail, etc. (BC uses Lotus Notes.)

(I'm on a Mac, btw)

Tracking out of hours printer usage.

tomble — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:31:27 -0800

I want to keep an eye on out of hours printer usage. I have someone who comes into work out of hours, and while I am fine with a bit of light printer use, browsing, use of the CD burner etc., I seem to be going through an awful lot of paper and toner. I suspect bulk printing is happening, and that's not okay.

I need to find a utility to keep track of how much is being printed, when it is being printed etc. I haven't had much luck with google. This utility should also be fairly invisible.

Freeware is good, but I'm not scared of paying for something like this as it will be useful in general tracking of consumables.

Thanks!

Does a reliable credit monitoring service exist?

drstein — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 13:33:28 -0800

For a variety of reasons, I've decided to look into a credit monitoring service. Help me find a reputable one. Basically, I want to be able to go to one place and pull copies of my reports from each of the big three credit bureaus. If I go to one at a time, it's a pain in the ass and I get charged $$ each time I do it.
I am well aware of the yearly free report. I want to pull the reports much more often than that.
I am also aware that each bureau seems to own their own credit monitoring services. I want to know if you lazyweb residents have used a particular service and found it to be better than the others. Yes, I have searched Google, but I don't have time to sift through the 15,000,000 results. I'm looking for personal experiences with credit monitoring services.

Oh, and Mac friendly services get bonus points.

Hey, watch this!

JParker — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 18:57:36 -0800

Is there a way to monitor internal (i.e. behind the firewall) web pages for changes? I’m looking for a piece of software that works like WatchThatPage, but running from my PC (which is on the corporate LAN via VPN) instead of as an external service. This would be a nifty utility if it exists. I use information aggregation services (like MileageManager to track my frequent flyer miles) but they require me to put in my username and password for each site, and I’m not comfortable doing that with, for example, financial info (or risking getting fired for putting my corporate login info out on third party provider). I have cookies enabled so I can login to lots of sites automatically and such a service, running from my own PC, ought to enable me to access such sites (and check for changes to specific web pages) as well, something WatchThatPage can't do.

who watches the watchees?

luriete — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 12:07:52 -0800

Can anyone recommend easy to install, cross platform monitoring software for Mac OS X - that is, something that would allow a parent, employer or teacher to, from their PC, monitor the screen of a Macintosh? Will remote desktop do this? Is it relatively easy to install?