Java-monitor.com has released a new, free Openfire plugin that allows you to monitor your Openfire instance remotely. The plugin will notify you if your server goes off-line. It also allows you to keep a close eye on a number of important health indicators, such as the usage pattern of the Openfire worker threads, JVM memory usage and garbage collection statistics, JVM thread and Openfire's database connection pool usage.

Unlike most monitoring tools, you don't have to set up a monitoring server yourself for this to work. Java-monitor.com provides the infrastructure to do the monitoring for you. The probe that's integrated in the Openfire plugin sends statistics to java-monitor.com. Everything else is handled there. You can view the data from their website, as shown below.

To get started, register an account at http://java-monitor.com/install.html. After you've registered, you'll be able to download a personalized Java-Monitor probe package, which includes an Openfire plugin. Add this plugin to your Openfire installation, and you're done! The plugin will automatically start collecting data. Java-monitor allows you to monitor Openfire from anywhere - all you need is a javascript enabled browser.

When SparkWeb became open-source, I took a look at the source code and found it had more features than the Flex-based XMPP client I was co-developing for the Red5 Plugin. It therefore made sense to migrate the Flash audio and video features we had developed for our client to SparkWeb and make it compatible with the Spark and Openfire Red5 Plugins and package it as part of the Red5 plugin. The downside to this that the modifications to the Red5 version of SparkWeb makes it out of sync with the official SVN and it could possibly become a fork requiring a name change later on.

So what does the Red5 SparkWeb offer?

1. A plugin container for SparkWeb. I noticed  that quite a number of users are asking for a plugin to deploy SparkWeb. My advice would be to try the Red5 Plugin.
   
   Configure  Index.html and point your users at
   
   http://your_server:nnnn/red5_webapp_name/sparkweb
   
   Where nnnn is your HTTP-BIND port number (default 7070) and red5_webapp_name is your default red5 web application name (default red5)
   
   
2. Enables use of the Red5 plugin audio and video features with both Spark and SparkWeb. You can't do video messaging and the video roster is replaced with visual presence (see below). You can make audio/video calls and share your desktop with your contacts. Each call record is logged in openfire and can be queried by the administrator with the Openfire SIP plugin.
   
   
3. Makes SIP phone calls between Spark and SparkWeb users. All SparkWeb SIP calls are logged with the Openfire SIP plugin as well.
   
   
4. Provides webcam support. If you have a webcam installed on your PC, it will be automatically detected and will be used instead of your vcard photo. You can disable this in index.html. You can add or replace your vcard photo with a snapshot of your webcam when you edit your profile. You can also publish snapshots from your webcam as visual presence to all your contacts. What this means is that all your contacts will have  a snapshot of your webcam in their rosters. The interval between snapshots is 60 secs by default and can be modified in index.html. See a draft copy of my proposal to extend XMPP with visual presence. Please feel free to post comments at the bottom of the document.
   
   

I also made a few cosmetic changes to my taste and added sound effects for incoming calls and instant messaging. I added some code to improve the loss of focus detection by tracking Flash application activation/deactivation messages and mouse movement. If you use Internet explorer and enable pop-ups, you will get a pop-up in the bottom right corner of the screen with a photo, name and first line of the incoming messaging if you are outside of SparkWeb when a new message arrives.

I am hoping to add fastpath support and a calendar to SparkWeb next.