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Newsletter for February 4th - Codename "The Winners' Circle"

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Darwin:
Newsletter for February 4th, 2008Codename "The Winners' Circle"

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1. Newsletter Editorial

Darwin here welcoming you to the February 4th edition of the newsletter. We're highlighting threads from the past six weeks and anticipate this being a slightly longer than usual newsletter. It's been an exciting period since the last full newsletter with a huge software draw. Congratulations to all of January's Software Draw winners.

There was a lot of press about our NANY 2008 programm challenge, including a Nice little write-up of DonationCoder in usa today "tech_space" blog and other press comments about the NANY 2008 challenge in InformationWeek, Lifehacker.com, and more.  Find and Run Robor (FARR) was also mentioned in several prominent places recently, including a nice mention in lifehacker.


* Donationcoder's NANY 2008 Press
* Write-up of DonationCoder in usa today "tech_space" blog
* Launcher Roundup Featuring FARR and others

2. Software Releases by DonationCoder.com Members

Some fun new releases by members on our site in the recent weeks, including a bunch of FARR plugins, and a really fun and challenging puzzle game called Deductoid by member timns.


* Deductoid puzzle game
* New FARR Plugin: FARRGoogleSuggest
* New FARR Plugin: Google Translation
* New FARR Plugin: FARRTunes - iTunes control plugin
* New FARR Plugin: FARREnviormentVariables

3. February Discounts and Giveaways

This month we are focusing on the products of Metaproducts.com, who make a variety of truly excellent programs. Mouser says that several of their programs are at the top of their respective classes, and he recommends Offline Explorer, Mass Downloader, and Startup Organizer, among others.  We have 33% discounts on all of their programs, plus we're giving away one of each on February 14th.

We had a TON of discounts in January and some of them are still active for another few days; and due to late posting in January, the following discounts are running through February: xplorer^2, SyncBackSE, and PerfectDisk Pro.  So check out the Specials Page before these offers expire.

All of these applications are available in February's draw, so if you haven't won anything recently visit the specials page and enter to win!

* Visit Specials Page to Enter to Win
* February 2008 Discounts and Shareware Giveaway Announcement
* January 2008 Software Drawing Winners
* View Discount Code Section (members only)

4. Your input requested

A warm welcome to all the members that have joined over the last six weeks. In the fall of 2007 we reached a milestone 100,000 members. We've added almost 10,000 more since that time! We're looking forward to interacting with as many of you as possible on the forum. If you haven't already introduced yourself, please post a brief note on the OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from? board. You'll find Donationcoder to be a welcoming community. Also visit the following threads, we'd love to see your participation in them:


* This coming year, I am SOO looking forward to... ?
* What's Your Favorite Smilie?
* Computer/PC Users Groups - Membership at DonationCoder? Other Ideas?
* Best forums for... ?
* How much email do you keep?and why?
* Digital ink/tablet pc: worth the effort?
* OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

5. Mini-Reviews by Members

Mini-reviews are a great resource for people researching software solutions and may be found on a dedicated Mini-Review Board. A bunch of new mini-reviews have been posted recently. Please remember to acknowledge the efforts of the reviewers with a few donationcredits if you find their reviews interesting and/or helpful.


* WikidPad - an IDE for your thoughts
* Mini How-To: How to make your PC go to silent standby (S3 mode)
* Mini-HowTo: Handling Cookie Privacy the Right Way
* Quick Web Creations - Professional 2.0 Images
* Recipe Manager / Shopping List Generator: CookingAction 2005
* PhotoLine - Advanced Image Editor
* FastStone MaxView Mini-Review
* Psychonauts Game Mini-Review
* MixMeister Express 6

6. Living Room

J-Mac wrote an interesting post about the modern office and the problems associated with our power and port hungry peripherals - Power and Ports - The Ever Diminishing Resources in My Office! He received a number of responses and suggestions. How do YOU deal with this increasingly irritating issue?


* Follow-up Articles Explaining the Debacle of Corrupt Game Reviews
* Power and Ports - The Ever Diminishing Resources in My Office!
* Pagebull - the Visual Search Engine
* Why I left Apple
* Suffering over USB
* 64 Bit CPU - Is it worth it?
* Tip if router won't connect properly to cable modem: Clone the MAC address
* PPcalc - Online Paypal Fee/Conversion Calculator and More
* Forum analyzer. Is there such a thing? Techorati for forums.

7. Fun and Leisure

Ever bang your head against a wall trying to remember the name of your favourite TSR-80 game? Relief is in sight. Find names for old games...


* The Best Games You've Never Played
* Tarnation: Innovative pikmin-defense type flash game
* Cursor * 10 Flash Game of the Day
* How far can you throw a paper airplane
* Cat on a Dolphin - physics driven flash game
* 18 Undiscovered Websites Every Gamer Should Know
* POWDER - A Roguelike RPG
* Flash Tower Defense Game of the Week: Strategy Defense 3
* Find names for old games...

8. General Software Discussion

Once again the General Software Discussion board has seen an enormous amount of activity over the past six weeks.


* Deleting Files From the ..\Local Settings\Temp\ Folder?
* Time to Wipe this Machine! Clean install? Or XP Repair?
* Windows security - what's really necessary?
* Audio format (batch) convert/transcode
* Word processors, wikis and other tools for writing business reports
* Gizmo's year-end round-up
* Shell City'S Top 25 Programs, Tips, And Tweaks: 2007
* Dailyfreeware.net - freeware mini blog
* bladedthoth.com 15 minute software reviews

9. Specific Software Discussions

Postings made to the General Software Discussion board often relate to specific applications. Here are some highlights.


* Windows XP Pro x64 (64-bit) Edition - Favorite Software Compatibility Thread
* Vista-SP1 available today (Feb.4th)
* A Firefox Lover's Guide to Opera
* SysInternals auto-installler & auto-updater!
* Is Vista Creating Duplicate Files of Everything?
* Replace Windows Explorer [SOLUTION]
* Fusemail - The email service that goes above and beyond
* FeedDemon going free
* TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations
* GPG4win - a GnuPG (PGP clone) package for MS Windows
* 'Number of days to date' program?
* ControlSS - very nice free screensaver controller for yoursystem tray - BUT..

10. Software Advice and Solutions Requested

The General Software board receives a LOT of posts, everything from pointers to web content discussing the software industry to people posting with their experiences with particular software applications, good and bad. Often people post asking for opinions about specific software or categories of software. A recent thread saw mouser asking What's the best program for cooking and recipe management? Two other threads request advice on Dealing with spam and Spam filtering.


* Dealing with spam
* Spam filtering
* Number of days to date program?
* Print Calender on Desktop Wallpaper?
* Office suite for my mom?
* Could a web application dial your phone for you?
* Wanted: Calendar/to-do manager with special repeat patterns (for students)
* Really simple clipboard extender/note taking software?
* Need to limit all but a few applications to keep my kids focused on homework!
* Plain text editor for writers
* photo duplicate scanner
* Inventory Software?
* Online Content Editor?

11. Coding Snacks

If you're looking for a software solution and can't find anything that quite fits your requirements, why not post a coding snack request? Donationcoder has lots of expert and willing coders who might just find your request interesting enough to take on. Frequently, someone will post a link to an existing solution to your request. For an example check out the discussion surrounding FreewareFan's IDEA: Program to print 4 small text files as one page, 4-up.

Read on for some more examples of recent requests, the solutions suggested, and the coding snacks completed:


* DONE: File Search and Replace
* DONE: MiniMe (aka MaxiMe)
* DONE: Monitor Dimmer
* IDEA: Program to print 4 small text files as one page, 4-up
* IDEA: Write on Windows Desktop
* IDEA: Application to turn off a laptop's display.
* IDEA: automatic card reader drive letter assignment/removal
* IDEA: TCP/IP Configuration Save/Restore
* REQUEST: (Email) Extractor With Options

12. Developer's Corner

The Developer's Corner section of the forum is not *just* for developers! For example, mahesh2k compares three of (the four) mainstream webbrowsers and asks if developers should Bow to the browser? The thread becomes an interesting discussion of web browsers in general. Well worth a read by anyone who is "on-line".


* Bow to the browser
* Source control systems: what's the best?
* JayIsGames.com Flash Game Programming Competition #5 Starts
* Want to develop the greatest alarm clock software of all time.
* Comments That Make You Smile
* Microsoft's "Rich Signature" ?

13. Member Site Spotlight

I'm pleased to highlight sri's new webpage in this newsletter. He offers "tutorials for web masters on how to install PHP scripts and also link to/aggregate useful how-tos on all topics like Technology, Health, Lifestyle, Cooking from other web sites around the internet." A little something for everyone and all presented with a clean, economical front-end that makes browsing and reading a pleasure. Visit Sri at Sri's How To Tuts.


* Sri's How To Tuts
* DonationCoder Reviews at "My Free Review" Blog
* academicproductivity.com (urlwolf's blog on productivity)
14. Thank you

That's it for the February 4th edition of the newsletter. Thank you to the entire Donationcoder community for your participation and a BIG "thank you" to both mouser and jgpaiva, who provided much needed proofreading and LOTS of advice about the content of this newsletter.

housetier:
Thanks for writing the newsletter!

Again, I found threads that had escaped me even though I subscribed to the feed...

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