I’m developing a new program called “StartWatch”. I had planned on adding features to VirtualVP for coordinating startup of programs that hook up to VirtualVP. I decided to make this a separate program with a more general usefulness. There are two parts to it. One part coordinates the startup of multiple applications. It allows program startups to be dependant on a time delay, the startup of other programs or the availability of a defined TCP/IP port. This part of the program satisfies the functionality I was going to add to VirtualVP, plus some more.
The second part is ongoing monitoring of the programs StartWatch started. It monitors them for hangs, lockups, crashes, inadvertant closure or loss of the program or TCP/IP port on which it depends. You can setup StartWatch to automatically restart crashed or hung programs. You can also specify that it close a program when the program or port on which it depends goes down, and then restart it when that comes back up.
The program will be shareware, but registration is only required for the monitoring features. The startup features will remain functional beyond the trial period. It’s like there is a freeware version and a shareware version, but they are the same exe. The registration will be $25 until the end of 2006. Like VirtualVP, registration gets you all future upgrades without any upgrade fee.
I have the startup part ready for testing, and have some of the monitoring features ready. This is a rough ALPHA version, but I’d like to get a few people to begin trying this out while I finish the remaining features for a general Beta release next week. If you’re interested in alpha testing, let me know. I have to limit this to 5 people, and I can’t give a lot of hand holding. There is no manual, so you’ll have to figure it most of it out for yourself. If this seems ok to you, let me know.
Steve
