Originally posted:	2014-04-15
Last updated	2014-04-15

Basic Info

App Name	RIPT (shareable scrapbook-clipping program)
Thumbs-Up Rating
App URL	OBSOLETE http://www.ript.com
App Version Reviewed	RIPT v.0.5.0218 (Freeware, 2007)
Test System Specs	Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit
Supported OSes	Windows
Support Methods	None. (OBSOLETE product)
Upgrade Policy	Not applicable.
Trial Version Available?	Freeware
Pricing Scheme	Not applicable.

Intro and Overview:
RIPT is a shareable (with other RIPT users) scrapbook-clipping program.
I thought I'd publish a review of this forgotten, elegant program for those who (like me) might find an occasional - if not frequent - use for it. I don't really need it now, as I tend to use:

• (a) Microsoft OneNote (refer MS Office 2013 US$9.95 Corporate/Enterprise Home Use Program - Mini-Review) for most of my scrapbook-clipping and information collection and management,
  and
• (b) @mouser's Clipboard Help & Spell as the primary collection tool.

http://www.literatur...atte.com/scapple.php

I LOVE this program.  For me, it is the perfect brainstorming tool I've always been looking for.

It's easy to change the look of each element.  It's easy to put background shapes around a selection of elements.  It can export easily as images, pdf, whatever.  You don't need a "center" like most mindmaps.  It's easy to link things together with lines or arrows.  It's easy to do simple alignments of elements.

I've been looking for something like this for years.  I tried a whole bunch.  Things like Personal Brain are too fancy and complicated.  Mindmaps never worked for me at all.  Visio is too much and too hard to do simple things.  I settled on Edge Diagrammer (thanks mouser!) for a while because it was the easiest of those flowchart tools to use.  Regular notetakers and outliners are not freeform enough for brainstorming.

 

Zeus Edit Review

Basic Info:

App Name	Zeus for Windows Programmer's Editor
App URL	http://www.zeusedit.com/
App Version Reviewed	3.97o 32-bit
Test System Specs	Windows 7 64-bit/Visual Studio 2010
Supported OSes	Windows XP/Vista/7 32-bit and 64-bit/8 32-bit and 64-bit
Support Methods	E-mail, FAQ, Forums
Pricing Scheme	$89.95 - A lite version is also available for gratis
Trial Version Available?	Yes, 45-day no limitations.
Upgrade Policy	Point in time upgrade scheme, detailed below by the developer.  45% discount available for further upgrades.
Reviewer Donation Link	wraith808

Introduction
Zeus is billed as a programmer's editor, but that is selling it short.  It is a text based IDE in the vein of SlickEdit and UltraEdit Studio.  It is fully scriptable, keyboard centric, fully customizable, and includes throwbacks to hardcore programming like Brief, WordStar, Epsilon, and Emacs keyboard emulation.  It supports visual studio solutions (in addition to it's own workspace format), has built in source control integration for Subversion and TFS, and a variety of other features.  In fact, there are so many features, that I'm going to have to break this review up into separate parts.

Review Notes
Many people swear by Visual Studio as an IDE, and I do like what Microsoft has done with it.  But it takes a while to start up, uses a lot of memory, and is prone to crashes.  I love SlickEdit, but over time, I've had to pare down, and I just haven't been able to justify the extravagant expense to use such an editor.  So, I've stuck with Visual Studio, and just used text editors to support it.  I discovered Zeus, and the price is right, and the feature set is right- I'm just hoping that it lives up to the hype on the site.

Basic Info

App Name	(FREE version)
Thumbs-Up Rating
App URL	http://www.qiqqa.com/

Intro:
On 2012-11-04, I made this comment in a discussion thread Re: organize data for research

...[Reference Management software: There is good software in this category that could be seriously useful in research work. For example:

• Calibre: take a look at the review thread Calibre - e-Book (Personal Library/Document) Management - Mini-Review
  
• Qiqqa: I have been using this for a while now and should really do something about posting a review of it - the website is http://www.qiqqa.com/
  

-IainB (November 04, 2012, 03:49 PM)

- so this is the belated review of Qiqqa.

Summary description of Qiqqa:
Qiqqa contains everything you essentially need for the five stages of commercial or academic research work/projects:

• 1. Organize
• 2. Discover
• 3. Review
• 4. Collaborate
• 5. Create

Most of these projects require collecting and reading a large number of papers or "knowledge items" - sometimes thousands of documents. The sheer volume of these documents can sometimes make it difficult to work with them, sift through them, and keep things under control.
Qiqqa was designed with this task in mind, and it has these main features to help you keep those documents under control and to keep your knowledge expanding coherently:

• 1. Comprehensive PDF document management.
• 2. The ability to import documents to the Qiqqa library/database.
• 3. OCR of imaged documents, with capture of text contained in any imaged PDF documents.
• 4. Automatic collection/creation of metadata for the documents.
• 5. "Super Tag" functionality to categorise and cross-reference your document content.
• 6. Sophisticated Find/Search functionality.
• 7. Ability to export the contents of your Qiqqa library/database.
• 8. Knowledge analysis/discovery.
• 9. Research web browser.
• 10. Brainstorming (Mindmaps).
• 11. Knowledge-linking.

Originally posted:	2012-12-16
Last updated	N/A

Basic Info

App Name	Google Reader (Online RSS feed-reader or "news-reader".)
Thumbs-Up Rating
App URL	http://www.google.com/reader/
App Version Reviewed	This is a free online, browser-based, service, and the version is always "latest".
Test System Specs	MS Win 7-64 Home Premium, using latest Firefox browser.
Supported OSes	Any web browser.
Support Methods	Help: is via Google help forum.
Trial Version Available?	N/A
Pricing Scheme	N/A - is a $FREE service only.

Intro and Overview:
I thought it might be helpful/useful to post this review, as it could potentially save people a lot of time (if they were not already using a feed-reader).
There are some discussions in the DC Forum that refer to Google Reader, and these two seem most relevant:

• 1. Google Reader kills support for sites without RSS feeds
• 2. RSSOwl Alternative?

If you don't want to have to spend time wading through the often confusing mass or clutter on a website in order to read something of interest, then you can subscribe to posts on the website, or comments in a forum (e.g., including the DC Forum) without having to post something and requesting email notification of responses - as you normally would have to do.
To do this, you have to subscribe for yourself rather than expect the website to do it for you. For example, I have been doing this for several forums and blog sites for years, including the DC Forum.

Originally posted:	2012-11-16
Last updated	2012-11-16

Basic Info

App Name	SysExporter (Export data from Windows controls)
Thumbs-Up Rating
App URL	http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/sysexp.html
App Version Reviewed	$FREE 64-bit version (v1.61). There is also a 32-bit version (v1.61)
Test System Specs	MS Win 7-64 Home Premium
Supported OSes	Compatible with Win 64-bit/32-bit.
Support Methods	Download and Support: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/sysexp.html[/url] Help file: comes with the software.
Upgrade Policy	Upgrades are $FREE and loaded to the above website.
Trial Version Available?	$FREE - as reviewed in this review. (PayPal Donations accepted) There is no PAID version.
Pricing Scheme	$FREE version only.

Intro and Overview:
There is a general problem in Windows OSes - one that has been a continuing source of frustration to me and probably many others - that many System and application displays often contain really useful data that is effectively "protected" from being copied/used.
I had been looking for a way to capture the data from the Windows update history display (this is on a laptop with Win7-64), to put into a database, so that I could analyse the history for failed updates. Looking through the display manually was becoming a tedious experience due to its functional limitations, and I wanted to automate/filter the analysis as much as possible.