Messages

51

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Finally perfected my download commenter after only 8 years

« on: February 13, 2009, 10:22 PM »

I am also a serial downloader and often I find myself trying to figure what is a particular file doing in my download folder.

After a long search, I thought I found the perfect solution in

http://www.filenotes.com/

What was unique about this Filenotes was that it did not matter where I subsequently moved the files to because the comments would follow the file.

Besides, even if I use another file manager such as Directory Opus or even the venerable Norton Commander, the comments would follow.

It achieved this through the use of a 3rd party software component. But this turned out to be the achilles heel as well, as it would also inexplicably cause my Laptop to have a Blue Screen of Death.

Moving the comments with the file is so important since I needed to be able to subsequently empty out my cluttered Download folder.

So I finally settled on using the Descript.ion system which is supported by Directory Opus - because it moves with the file - It's actually part of the file.

I noticed that if I add a comment with Tipoff and the file is moved to another directory, the file comments does not move along with the file and hence "lost".



 

52

General Software Discussion / Re: Any suggestions for a good freeware DBF to Excel and Excel to DBF converter

« on: February 08, 2009, 08:53 AM »

Opps. Thanks.

I use File-ex

"File-Ex makes Windows file dialogs what they should be!"
http://www.cottonwoodsw.com/fx3summ.html

However, because it enhances the Windows File Open and Save Dialogs, certain options like what you mentioned gets hidden although I can temporarily disable File-Ex to show the original Microsoft Office File dialogs.

In any case, if you are using Windows XP, File-Ex is an indispensable software.

53

General Software Discussion / Any suggestions for a good freeware DBF to Excel and Excel to DBF converter

« on: February 08, 2009, 04:37 AM »

I would like to convert an DBF file to Excel and after making some modifications convert it back to a DBF format.

Can anyone suggest a freeware converter for this purpose.

Thanks

54

General Software Discussion / Why Computers Can't Kill Post-Its - MIT research

« on: February 05, 2009, 10:54 AM »

"Why Computers Can't Kill Post-Its
Lee Gomes, 01.22.09, 12:01 AM EST
MIT researchers argue that computers need to become as easy to use as those yellow sticky notes."
http://www.forbes.co..._lg_0122postits.html

I thought this article may benefit all those To Do List & PIM fanatics that lurk around Donationcoder looking for the Ultimate Software to take care of this problem for them.

It is instructive that it mentions

""A lot of people spend a lot of time trying to figure out cool new things for computers to do," Karger says. "What's more interesting to me is figuring out how to get the computer out of the way.""
http://www.forbes.co..._lg_0122postits.html

It's even got a free Firefox extension (Oh dear another extension) :

"One stab at such a program is list.it, just released by Karger and his students. To the casual observer, the program looks like any of the legion of notepad programs on the market already--some of which are built into the Windows and Macintosh operating system."

Karger said, though, that list.it was written with the lessons learned from the Post-it study in mind, including the need for the program to be started with absolute minimal effort.

List.it is available at http://groups.csail....edu/haystack/listit/ and requires the latest version of the Firefox Web browser. Karger says he considers the program more of a research project than a finished product. It's free for the taking, though users are strongly encouraged to send in their reactions to the code after spending time with it. You can even write the comments on a Post-it and fax them in.

http://www.forbes.co..._lg_0122postits.html

I must add that I signed up but did not yet try it.

But it may interest some of you here.

55

JGPaiva's GridMove and Ahk Tools / Re: Small utility for quick prototyping GridMove layouts

« on: February 02, 2009, 11:40 AM »

Shades: put the lines inside a file, and pass that file as the second argument

-jgpaiva (August 26, 2008, 08:02 PM)

I guess I'm not that smart as well as I can't get it to work.

What does put the lines inside a file mean - like creating a batch file with the commands in it ?

e:\downloads\gridstack HStack ( Window 1 Window 2) e:\grid.grid

But that produces the same error message as well.

Or do you mean create a text file such as parameters.txt containing the text
HStack ( Window 1 Window 2) e:\grid.grid

Then I execute the command

e:\downloads\gridstack parameters.txt

----------
I just get the same error message
Use: gridstack input.stack output.grid

56

Multi Photo Quotes / Re: Commandline Helper Tool (Plugins) Coders Requested

« on: January 11, 2009, 11:55 AM »

I've successfully used the free commandline tool pscrape to fetch random quotes on demand from the www.quotesdaddy.com page 

It will be in the next release.  If anyone wants to try scraping other random info please post what you find.

(note that you can use this feature to show other info besides quotes).

-mouser (January 11, 2009, 08:41 AM)

Hi Mouser,

Could you share with us the commandline commands that you used for the to extract from www.quotesdaddy.com

I think at least one of the examples given on http://www.webscrape.com/ are broken due to changes in the urls.

This was also mentioned in

"Broken Examples
So it appears that some of the examples on the website are now broken I haven't been checking them lately and hadn't noticed! This is a fundamental problem encountered when screen scraping, when the target screen format changes your scrapes may well stop working."
http://pagescrape.blogspot.com/

The syntax was somewhat Greek to me also because I'm trying to get used to Regex syntax and there seems to be differing flavours of Regex too.

Thanks.

57

Found Deals and Discounts / Pocket Informant for Windows Mobile & for BlackBerry - 25% discount

« on: January 11, 2009, 01:36 AM »

Pocket Informant for Windows Mobile 8.51 and Pocket Informant for BlackBerry 1.02

Discount code is : 25OFF2008. It is good until January 14th 2009 and for the first 5000 customers to use it.

The code also works for other WEBIS products which I think also includes eWallet.

http://www.pocketinformant.com/

58

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Powerpoint shrinker

« on: January 08, 2009, 10:53 AM »

PS Does the key that you received feature a double # sign? Mine doesn't...

-Darwin (January 08, 2009, 10:40 AM)

Yep Darwin, it does feature a double # sign.

But what do you mean by your doesn't - does that mean yours still work ?
 

59

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Powerpoint shrinker

« on: January 08, 2009, 09:51 AM »

Just got this reply from Support when I asked them about the invalid keys.

"Thank you for your feedback. From the serial number, I can tell that you got a free license from a promotion which took place last summer with a IT magazine or similar. As the published links in these magazines are spread all over the Internet, the registration page generates automatically time-limited keys after this promotion expired. The generated keys after expiration are valid until end of 2008 and show a double pound sign "##".

If you like the software and wish to use it, please purchase a full license from our website: http://www.pptminimi...er.com/eng/order.php

Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any further questions."

What a bummer : the serial key which they were sending out made no mention that it had to be installed before the end of 2008. In fact I only received the keys a couple of days ago ie in 2009 itself. And if the promotion has expired, then why bother to generate keys right now when it is already 2009 and the keys only work in 2008 ?.

I put this reply here so no one need to waste time sending in a request for a "free" registration.

60

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Powerpoint shrinker

« on: January 07, 2009, 10:10 PM »

That is exactly the same error code I got.

61

Post New Requests Here / Free PPT Minimizer 4.0 license offer from Balesio website - but ?

« on: January 07, 2009, 08:08 AM »

You can get a free license for PPT Minimizer 4.0 via

http://www.balesio.c...x.aspx?CID=pcadvisor

I did that today, and they emailed me a license.

The only thing is that somehow the license does not seem to work.

Perhaps anyone interested can give it a try at the site and see if I'm missing something out.

62

General Software Discussion / Re: Please don't let me wrack my brain again: annotating Helpfiles in htm format

« on: January 06, 2009, 08:13 AM »

Thanks Curt.

I think the CHM Editor is only for those compiled into CHM files.

I have tentatively decided to just import them into Microsoft OneNote and use that to annotate the files until I find a html editor that I like.

Come to think of it, maybe I should get around to checking out some of these Firefox Addons relating to HTML.

63

General Software Discussion / Please don't let me wrack my brain again: annotating Helpfiles in htm format

« on: January 05, 2009, 02:02 AM »

When I learn a new program, I often find myself thinking, if only I can annotate the help file easily so that six months later (especially if it's a program I don't use regularly), I don't have to wrack my brain thinking, how did I solve that the previous time I had this problem.

Ideally this annotating utility should :

1. Enable me to highlight, bold, colorize (So I guess it sort of htm editor)
2. Be able to save the changes so that if I just hit F1 when using the program, I will see the annonated htm file.

Some programs I can think of do this are:
1. Microsoft Word,
2. AptEdit
3. EditPlus Pro

Other programs I can think of that does not quite fulfil criteria 2 are
1. Ultra Recall
2. Onenote
3. Surfulater
4. Evernote

How do others solve the "Please don't let me wrack my brain again problem".

Of course I recognize that if I install a program upgrade, the help files may be replaced - But that is another problem to solve.

64

General Software Discussion / Re: How do I get rid of hidden characters like †in text file ?

« on: January 04, 2009, 06:48 AM »

Thanks all you most helpful donationcoders for your suggestions.

I tried PureText and Plainpaste and Thornsoft Clipmate (the cleaning part of the utility)

But no luck - still the same problem.

Eventually, I tracked down the problem to either " and ' characters in this particular instance and when I deleted all of them, the problem went away.

I suspect it has something to do with UTF-8 encoding as well.

Well, I imagine that something like that would not be too hard to fix but it does take some trial and error.

65

General Software Discussion / How do I get rid of hidden characters like †in text file ?

« on: January 03, 2009, 09:55 AM »

I have clipped some text of a webpage and it appears to contain just text.

However, when I examine it with different utilities like AptEdit or Metapad, I notice that there are hidden characters like â€.

When I load the file into Windows Notepad, I cannot see them.

They are probably some hidden control codes.

Does anyone know of any utility that I can run the file through that will clean it of such hidden characters.

It would be nice if the utility accepts commandline commands as well so I need not open the file and can run it as a batch file as well.

66

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Phatware's award-winning PhatNotes, PhatPad, and CalliGrapher for $9.95 each

« on: January 01, 2009, 08:45 AM »

Of the 3, I use Calligrapher and Phatnotes the most.

Calligrapher is really indispensable if you take notes as it recognises cursive handwriting. Besides that, if you care to play around with the macros, you will find that you can automate quite a lot of stuff with the built-in commands - limited only by your imagination - at $9.95 it's quite a bargain.

67

Found Deals and Discounts / Phatware's award-winning PhatNotes, PhatPad, and CalliGrapher for $9.95 each

« on: December 31, 2008, 08:20 PM »

For 3 days only (until midnight January 2, 2009), we are pleased to offer a flat price of only $9.95 on all PhatWare products for Windows Mobile. This is the lowest price ever offered on such award-winning products as PhatNotes, PhatPad, and CalliGrapher in the 11-year history of PhatWare Corp. In addition, PenOffice 3.0 for Desktop and Tablet PC is available for only $29.95!

To take advantage of this offer, visit
http://www.phatware.com/store

I have personally used PhatNotes, PhatPad, and CalliGrapher and I find they them excellent products if you are on Windows Mobile and the offer price is really good.

68

General Software Discussion / Re: How do I get rid of MSN: check out these awesome pics from the awesome party LOL

« on: December 29, 2008, 10:55 PM »

She assured me she was not dumb enough to fill in her MSN email address and password, other than to click the link.

-patteo (December 29, 2008, 10:40 PM)

I would probably have been too embarrassed to admit having done so myself... but that's the way it works. That is, unless they've started feeding you malware that simply has the purpose of grabbing your msn login information - which would only work if you have auto-login enabled. And I somehow doubt that, since there would be much more interesting malware you could drop on the user's box then

Tell her that everybody makes mistakes, but that she should never again disclose any kind of login information except at official sites... and that an official site will never send emails asking for login information... and get her to use FireFox3 + AdblockPlus. Then she'll be in a lot safer world.

-f0dder (December 29, 2008, 10:47 PM)

Thanks:
She uses only Internet Explorer 7.

She is like most people who will not take the trouble to switch to Firefox ie, they ain't the Early Adopters type.

I suspect, many of us on Donationcoder.com would be on Firefox, with Noscript, Adblock Plus etc.

69

General Software Discussion / Re: How do I get rid of MSN: check out these awesome pics from the awesome party LOL

« on: December 29, 2008, 10:42 PM »

patteo: it doesn't matter that you changed the subdomain, the site has a catch-all so that anything.thatbadsite.com will go to their crapware - you better edit the URL some more, and make sure it's not hyperlinked here on the forum.

-f0dder (December 29, 2008, 10:39 PM)

OK Done - changed. Thanks for the warning

70

General Software Discussion / Re: How do I get rid of MSN: check out these awesome pics from the awesome party LOL

« on: December 29, 2008, 10:40 PM »

The problem is that your friend was probably stupid enough to fill in her MSN email-address and password, which the site says you have to do in order to view those "OMG AWESOME PARTY PICTURES!11! one one". When that is done, the "service" will from time to time log on with her msn account, fetch her contact list, and spam the pepole on the list.

Tell her to go to the MSN Live site (or whatever it's called) and change her MSN password - that's the only way to get rid of it. And educate her a bit about online security (AFAIK the sites don't install malware, or at least it's not the malware that's responsible for the spamming - my guess is the point of the crap is to drive traffic and gain advertisement money).

-f0dder (December 29, 2008, 10:35 PM)

She assured me she was not dumb enough to fill in her MSN email address and password, other than to click the link.

Anyway, she has gone to reset her password and if that does not solve it, I have asked her to go through the hassle of choosing a new MSN name.

71

General Software Discussion / Re: How do I get rid of MSN: check out these awesome pics from the awesome party LOL

« on: December 29, 2008, 10:36 PM »

I cannot veiw this link page.

-Mary101 (December 29, 2008, 10:30 PM)

That is not the actual link.

I changed it a bit so that no one actually gets to the "compromised" site by clicking on the link.

I wanted to know if someone has an answer to this problem - I'm not asking anyone to try the link.

72

General Software Discussion / How do I get rid of MSN: check out these awesome pics from the awesome party LOL

« on: December 29, 2008, 10:27 PM »

From time to time I would get a MSN message that goes somewhere along the line :

Irene said:
ireneslim check out these awesome pics from the awesome party LOL   http://patteo.abcdefgpr__ime-party-pics.com

Of course if I click the link, I will probably end up at a Malware site.

I asked my friend Irene whether she sent the link and she said no.

Then she remembered that she one day out of curiosity, clicked a similar link from a niece of hers and then after that I started receiving such messages from her MSN account.

She said she has scanned her computer thoroughly with avg but has not detected any malware.

Has anyone any clue on how my friend can get rid of what is obviously some infection somewhere ?

73

Found Deals and Discounts / NITRO PDF Professional for $49.95 after $30 discount

« on: December 29, 2008, 09:32 PM »

Just in case anyone is interested Nitro PDF Professional for $49.95 after applying Coupon: NITRO30

Nitro PDF Professional
   $49.95

Create, convert & edit PDF documents 300% Faster than Adobe Acrobat.
http://www.avanquest...tm_campaign=nitropdf
Tue Dec 30 2008 11:27:36 GMT+0800

74

General Software Discussion / Re: Editor for PDFs: recommendations, please?

« on: December 29, 2008, 09:30 PM »

A Spanner in the works - Just in case anyone is interested Nitro PDF Professional for $49.95 after applying Coupon: NITRO30

Nitro PDF Professional
   $49.95

Create, convert & edit PDF documents 300% Faster than Adobe Acrobat.
http://www.avanquest...tm_campaign=nitropdf
Tue Dec 30 2008 11:27:36 GMT+0800

75

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MiniReview of Linkman URL Organizer- 60% discount - 21 hour to go

« on: December 27, 2008, 01:32 AM »

"Linkman Pro    - The bookmark management tool

Today only: $10
Regular price: $ 25 , you save 60%"
http://www.fevodiscount.com/

Discount still has about 21 hours to run