WhoisUP monitors hosts via ICMP and shows the status in a webpage. When a host is down, it can send mail, write a syslog message, open a popup message, or play a sound. It uses Nmap to check hosts continuously.
RecupNews is a utility to easily retrieve information from RSS feeds. More than just recovery, it will extract the data contained in the title and description of each item, also in the Web page linked to the article.