Can I get more voices for the Speech Notifier, or voices in different languages?

Yes! A third-party company called Cepstral LLC supplies several high-quality voices, both in US English and several other languages. See the Narrator Voice Talent page to hear samples, and for links to download or buy the voices.

Can I get Simon to periodically e-mail me to reassure me it is still working?

Yes, you can do this by adding a test for a frequently-updating page, like http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/, which changes every second. Then check it at whatever frequency you want to be e-mailed, and have an E-mail notifier for changes. You can customize the e-mail message to say "I'm alive!" or whatever you like.

Can Simon check that an application is still running on a different computer?

The Application service can only check for applications running on your local machine. But if you enable the Remote Login option in the Sharing system preferences on the other computer, you can use the SSH service to log in to the other computer and execute commands on it by modifying the SSH service to issue the "ps -A" command after logging in, then use Smart Change Detection to look for the application you want.

You can try it in the Terminal to see what such a session might be like, or just use Simon's Capture Session feature to generate the session.

Can Simon give a success or failure based on essential text missing?

Yes! The Smart Change Detection feature looks for the text in the Start text box, then the End text, then compares the text between those two against what it had the last time it checked.

This is useful to detect changes in a portion of the page, but can also be used to detect unacceptable changes.

The usual way to do that is to just provide a Start text block, and not an End one. Then if the Start text isn't found, that is a failure.

So for example, if you do a telnet Script-based check, you'd want it to be considered a success only if this is output:

Escape character is '^]'

So you'd put that in the Start text block, and leave the End block empty.

Then if that text isn't found (as would occur if telnet couldn't connect to the server), Simon will log a failure.

How can I check that a Notifier is set up correctly?

You can quickly test any notifier by clicking the Notify Now toolbar button in the Notifiers window. It will perform the notification with placeholder variable values, so for the E-mail notifer, it will send the message, if set up correctly.

Is there a shortcut to enter URLs for Web (HTTP) tests?

Yes, you can enter URLs with very minimal text, and Simon will fill in the rest when you click OK. It automatically adds the default protocol ("http://") and the "www." and ".com" if necessary.

For example, typing "apple" (without the quotes) will be saved as "http://www.apple.com/". Similarly, entering "dejal/simon" will end up as "http://www.dejal.com/simon/".

Where is the Simon data stored on my computer?

The data is stored in a folder within your Application Support folder. The preferences are stored in your Preferences folder, naturally. The locations are as follows, where "~" means your home directory:

"~/Library/Application Support/Dejal/Simon/"
"~/Library/Preferences/com.dejal.simon2.plist".

Why isn't my E-mail Notifier working?

I seem to get more queries about the E-mail notifier than any other feature. Usually, it comes down to not filling in all of the fields, or setting the wrong authentication.

So the first thing I'd recommend is checking that both the To and From address fields are filled in with valid e-mail addresses.

If that doesn't help, check that the Outgoing Mail Server is correct in the E-mail Transport Options panel - if you use .Mac, make sure you enter just "smtp.mac.com" (without the quotes), and not the colon and username following.

If still not working, try each of the Authentication options in that panel, with the appropriate User Name and Password entered. Also try turning SSL off. It's not always easy to tell which will work.

Why isn't the Automatic transport for the E-mail Notifier working?

Firstly, you need to have set up a valid mail configuration in Apple Mail (or possibly other mailers). You also need to make sure that the From address you specify uses the same server as one of your Mail configuration, as it finds the configuration based on the server domain.

I have another question about Simon; where can I find out more information?

Check out the Simon User Guide; it includes lots of information about the application.