1. Newsletter Editorial

Greetings everyone and welcome to yet another edition of the DC newsletter.  It's been 40 days since the last newsletter -- well off of our goal of getting a newsletter out at least once a month (preferably twice a month).  So go make yourself a hot cup of tea and prepare to spend some time going through this edition, because it's big and full of some real gems.

Because of the large number of items in the newsletter this time, I'll try to keep the editorial short.  I did want to mention a few things, though.  First, long time members of the forum know about the big event on the site that gets the most attention each year: NANY (New Apps for the New Year).  NANY is really a celebration of software and programming -- we ask all coders who hang out at the forum (new coders are welcome!) to release a brand new freeware/donationware program on January 1st.  Actually, most of the activity happens in December as coders pledge to release something and we try to coordinate all of the participants.  Keeping with the spirit of the site, there are no winners or prizes, but we do try to make sure every coder gets some exposure and a commemorative mug celebrating the event.  It's great fun for new and old coders alike.  We've just started the NANY 2010 section on the forum and I encourage you to stop by and get a good seat for the show.

Second, I wanted to mention a new and very cool website created by longtime DC member Chris Hanscom.  It's called Plarker, a site where people can create maps of their favorite places and share them.  The main thing I want to say is that we want to hear from more of you about projects that you are working on, computer-related or not.  In a world in which corporations buy their way into people's consciousness with marketing dollars, we need to support the small and lesser known projects in which DC members and friends are engaged.  Don't be shy to post about stuff that you are working on and to ask for feedback.

Third, in that spirit, I want to tell you about a new website that I just finished and am opening to the public. It's called "The Tree Form Machine" and is based on a desktop application that I wrote quite a while ago called "The Form letter Machine."  The basic idea of the website is to make it possible for users to create interactive forms that people can use to prepare documents by simply marking checkboxes and mixing and matching paragraphs.  I'm hoping that it will be useful for people who want to create easily-customizable legal documents, form letters, support replies, etc.  The desktop program was pretty much a niche product and judging from the near unanimous yawns of disinterest in the website I expect nothing different from the website.  But if it sounds like something you might be interested in, please please do drop by and see if you can create something interesting with it.  Nothing would make me happier than to see someone create a cool form or two that actually has some value to someone.

Fourth, I just want to highlight a nice blog entry I stumbled across, written by someone who discovered the Coding Snacks section of our forum and wrote about his experience of requesting a custom program and having DC member Skwire code it for him.  It brought a smile to my face.

this seemed kind of dumb, then geeky, then quite moving...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc

The Coding Snacks section of the DC forum can be a kind of magical place.  People post requests for small utilities and if they are lucky, wake up in the morning to find a free brand new sparkling program written to do what they asked.

If you talk to the coders that participate in that section you'll find that their motivation is really about the enjoyment of programming.  But part of the enjoyment is also related to knowing that you are making something that someone needs and appreciates.

That's why it's so satisfying and reinvigorating to read blog entries like this one..


http://drfrog.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/mat/

I'm proud to announce the public beta opening of my latest project, The Tree Form Machine website (http://www.tfdocs.com).

This is a website based on my windows desktop application known as "The Form Letter Machine"

It's a site where people can create and share interactive forms -- forms that can be used by others to assemble detailed output documents with just a few clicks of the mouse.

The Tree Form Machine makes it easy to create:

• Legal documents -- by mixing and matching relevant paragraphs.
• Business form letters -- tailored to your customers.
• Software licenses and EULAs -- with just the terms you care about.

---

There's no content to speak of on the site (yet), and there are lot's of areas that could use improvement, but i'm hoping to get some feedback and hear from people who think it might be useful to them.

Visite website:

• http://www.tfdocs.com

Good sample TF doc that combines the MIT+BSD+ZLIB Open Source Licenses:

• http://www.tfdocs.com/for...pen-source-license-combo1

This brought such a smile to my face.. Yet another reminder that to simply walk along the well-trodden paths in life is to miss out on all the fun.


http://www.youtube.com/wa...M&feature=player_embedded

Just tried this free drive backup tool and was very impressed.  I normally use Acronis but that's becoming a very bloated expensive tool.  This paragon tool did a very good job, was easy to use, and has a nice bootable rescue cd builder in the program.  Was fast too.

If you don't yet have a drive imaging tool, or especially if you have family members with desktop/laptop/netbook computers, and want a legal free good drive imaging tool to install on their computer, i highly recommend this  

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/

Stumbled onto this yesterday on TIGSource, realized it could be interesting today

So, Unity Technologies released a free, limited version of its Unity Game Engine, a game development tool similar to Torque Game Builder. Targeted at independent developers, it lacks a bunch of the advanced features the paid version has, but still looks interesting enough for those interested in game creation.

http://unity3d.com/unity/

For those interested in what you can achieve with it, Off-Road Velociraptor Safari

Everyone knows that I (and DC in general) love the tower defense game genre, where you place defensive towers on a map to defend against wave after wave of attacking forces.  It's just the right level of interactivity and attention for my tastes.

And now comes the 4th in a series of 3 increasingly well done tower defense games based on the "Bloons" series, which is notable for it's high production values and excellent cartoony graphics.

You can read about the first three releases here on DC, or jump to the review of Bloons Tower Defense 4 on JayIsGames.com:


http://www.ninjakiwi.com/...oons-Tower-Defense-4.html

Last year, Microsoft's Channel 9 interviewed Windows expert Mark Russinovich to discuss many of the refinements and new features introduced in Windows 7 to ensure it would run and scale better with newer hardware that previous versions of Windows. To celebrate Windows 7 release, Channel 9 has interviewed Mark again to talk about the rest of the new technologies and changes that, due to time constraints, were not discussed in the first interview.

http://channel9.msdn.com/...h-Inside-Windows-7-Redux/

It's a pretty long video, but if it's like the first one (which I advise you to watch prior this one), it's worth the time. Specially interesting is the demo showing Windows 7 running on a machine with an astounding 256 processors. User machines won't be hitting that ceiling anytime soon.

Are you sure that the backup procedure you use will save you when (not if) the time comes that you need it?
I thought I would start a thread about how to test it and make sure it will.

First let's set the ground rules:

• This thread is about whole-system (entire hard drive) backup and restore, not about backing up only your personal documents.
• As I described in my old backup guide, I firmly believe that the best approach involves both periodic whole-system backup combined with more frequent and incremental (preserving multiple versions) personal document backup, but this thread is about testing your full-system recovery procedure.
• This discussion is about *testing* your backup procedure -- not about actually using the software and hardware to do a backup in the first place.

---

Ok, so let's get started:

You can now play all of the entries to the JayIsGames Casual Gameplay Design Competition #6!

http://jayisgames.com/cgdc6/

A DC member asks:

The latest edition of Tech News Weekly is out:

• 1. Google Shares Malware Samples With Hacked Site Admins
• 2. EFF Challenges Texas Instruments Over Calculator Mods
• 3. Wi-Fi Direct Protocol to Ease Peer-to-peer WiFi Connections
• 4. Secret ACTA Treaty Can't Be Shown to Public, Just 42 Lawyers
• 5. Microsoft's Danger SideKick and Cloud Computing
• 6. Illegal Downloads 150x More Profitable Than Legal Sales
• 7. Facebook Now Has 30,000 Servers
• 8. Judge: Ringtones Aren't Performances, So No Royalties
• 9. Checking Twitter/Facebook: the New Post-coital Cigarette?
• 10. WarGames: Alternate Ending