For those who are familiar with the Microsoft Vista sidebar would know that the title is a widget for it. isAlive.Gadget is a simple widget that basically pings your server on a regular basis to keep you informed on it’s reachability.

It is a simple tool to install, not very intrusive to your desktop and useful.

The main drawback is that you need to be online and you need to be watching your screen regularly.  One thing to note about this is that, it only informs you whether you can connect to the specified server but it does not actually tell you whether the server is down, unreachable from other sites nor whether it’s actually you PC network connection.

The gadget can be downloaded here.

Ian Tan is a blogger that blogs about life, camera, photography and everything under the sun. You can find out more about him at his blog, Iantan dot net