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Newsletter For August 14th, 2008 - Codename "Software Summer Sizzle"

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mouser:
Newsletter for August 14th, 2008Codename "Summer Software Sizzle"

"If you read nothing else on our site, read our BLOG"
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1. Newsletter Editorial

It's clear that we have to make a concerted effort to get these newsletters out every two weeks, because with a month between them there is simply too much to write about.

The first item of news to report is that we have announced the winners of the DonationCoder/Veign Programming contest.  The three main entrants were each so different and interesting in their own way that we decided it would be wrong to choose a single winner.  So, we featured all of the entrants and awarded the main prize (a MSDN Visual Studio Developer license worth over $10k) after asking the three entrants to tell us how they would use the prize if they won it. Read the announcement for all the details and to find out who won the big prize! The winning entrants have even been featured on several big sites (we love to see them getting the attention they deserve!), including Eric Wong's "Circle Dock" -- an extremely cool non-traditional dock/launcher that he continues to improve each day, and Eoin O'Callaghan's ServiceProfiles -- a very professional tool for toggling groups of services on and off.

This month has also seen an abundance of new software releases and new websites by forum members.  I released new versions of some of my programs and we saw very cool new programs from other members of the forum, including a cool utility called LineByter that I actually ended up featuring in a mini-review.  Several members of our forum are also branching out with new websites, which we love to see.  In this newsletter you'll even see a section devoted to such announcements.

If you are new to the website please don't be shy. Just find a forum thread below that piques your interest and jump right into the discussion!


* DonationCoder/Veign Programming Contest Results Posted


2. Your Participation Requested

A warm welcome to all the new members who have joined over the last month.  Here are some great topics for you to make your debut post on -- don't be shy, we are always happy to hear from new people.  And for our long term members, you know what to do -- join in and make your voice heard.


* Skimp or splurge?
* Show us the View Outside Your Window
* Please share your favorite search engines
* DC Social Club Love-In
* What would your ideal Operating System be like?


3. August Shareware Discounts and Giveaway

This month we have discounts on two great programs that have been discussed on the donationcoder forums.

First up, and perhaps most exciting, is a huge 40% discount on the newly released Beyond Compare version 3!  This program is a favorite of many forum members including myself (mouser) -- and I even wrote a giant review of version 2 and its competition way back in 2005.  Second, is a discount on JungleDisk, a very cool program reviewed by DC Member Justice in June 2008.  As is our usual practice, we will also be giving away a few copies of each of these program.  The discounts run until the end of the month and the drawing ends on August 20th.  Both the discounts and the draw are available to supporting members only, but remember that you can become a supporting member with a donation of any amount.  Thanks to DC Member Carl Thorpe for arranging these.


* August 2008 Discount Announcement
* Beyond Compare 2 Mega-review
* Beyond Compare 3 Forum Discussion
* JungleDisk Mini-review
* Enter the August 2008 Giveaway
* Donate to become a supporting member of DC


4. DC Member New Software Releases

There were a ton of seriously good, brand-new software releases this month by DC forum members!  It's wonderful to see so much activity by the coders.  Let's let them know how much we appreciate their work.  One of the programs, LineByter, is a program I use to help me send out this newsletter, and I was so impressed with it that I wrote a little mini-review of it, which you can read below.


* LineByter - Find and Extract Patterns (emails,etc) from Text Files
* New App by Seedling: File/Folder Date Organizer
* CopyCap - a tool to copy caption text
* Mircryption-compatible script for irssi
* Tiny Watcher - a tool hosted at DC
* Nice youtube tutorial of how to use Flipbook Printer


5. Other DC Software Updates

I released some major updates to a few of my own programs on DC this month, including a long-awaited release of Screenshot Captor, marking the beginning of more regular updates for it.  It contains mainly bugfixes, but there are some big things too, such as a totally re-organized and significantly more useful options dialog, and a new feature that embeds web page urls in the text comments of browser screenshots. In addition, Find and Run Robot (FARR) got a major new feature that implements "fuzzy" (non-contiguous) word searching, which makes it much easier to find whatever it is that you are looking for.  The FARR plugin/alias writers have also been busy, releasing some very cool new plugins and alias packs.


* Find and Run Robot v2.30.01 Released - now with fuzzy searching
* ScreenshotCaptor v2.41.01 Released - with a few cool new features
* MiniCap 1.10.01 Released - more commandline options
* FARR Alias: Google Maps Directions
* New FARR Plugin: GooglePlus - View Google search results in FARR as you type
* Table Data Search Plugin for FARR - version 1.01.05 (July 24, 2008)
* FARR Screenshot aliases using MiniCap
* FARR alias: Quick Outlook Task


6a. DC Member Projects, Writings, and Reviews

Here's part one of my attempt to sneak in new little sections to the newsletter each month to spice up the organization of topics, a selection of threads where people on the forum wrote some new original content.


* Book Mini-review of "The Best of 2600: A Hacker Oddyssey"
* Advice: Never use your ISP provided email address
* Wikis, word processors, and the writing process
* Impressive list of outliners/note-taking apps
* Head in the Clouds: New birdy comic website from nudone and timns
* Digging for Snails...and the Hidden Internet
* Mini Review - DeVeDe
* Launching New Game development website


6b. DC Member Requests for Help

Here's part two of my attempt to sneak in new little sections to the newsletter each month to spice up the organization of topics, a selection of some of the more useful threads where people reply to a call for help or advice from a fellow forum member.


* Does anyone know a good "pet" game?
* What printer to buy?
* Transcutaneous Electric Nerve Stimulation Gadgets for Pain Relief?
* Dual operating systems 32- and 64-bit. Need advice on possible XP memory issues
* Intermediate 3D Modeller, Beginning photoshop artist available for work
* Announcing my new website and the story of the Manly Cup


7. Living Room

The Living Room section of the forum is where we discuss general issues that don't really belong in the "dedicated" sections.  It's kind of a catch-all section -- lots of website discoveries and recommendations, etc. This makes it a great place to explore - you never know what you're going to find!


* The Root of Game Piracy?
* Cybernetnews Looks at Wikimedia Projects: Wikiversity, Wikiquote, and more
* Kevin Kelly: Predicting the next 5,000 days of the web
* FCC finds Comcast in violation of net neutrality rules for BitTorrent blocking
* Strategies for international travellers regarding new US Customs seizure policy
* Linux needs more haters
* Linux is Not Windows
* Is your ISP throttling you? If so, check for it!
* 3 Technical vidoes worth watching
* LifeHacker: Debunking Common Windows Performance Tweaking Myths
* Talk about privacy and technology


8. General Software Discussion

Almost half the posts on the forum fall into the category of general software discussions, questions, recommendations, etc. This is one of the most active sections of the DC forum and a great resource if you're trying to solve a software or hardware related problem. We get so much traffic on this board that we've split the recent content into two sections in the newsletter - general software and specific software discussions.


* Turning a pc on and off remotely
* You tube downloader for a non techie?
* Which free burning software can you recommend?
* Is Whole Disk Encryption Just Wishful Thinking?
* Paragon Partition Manager 2005 or Easeus Partition Manager for Windows XP Pro
* Software Catalog - What Are You Using & How Do You Like It?
* Your most used SPECIAL programs
* Best Firefox security addons?
* Recommendation/Advice requested - synching two Outlook profiles


9. Specific Software Discussion

Noteworthy posts this month about specific programs include the release of a long-awaited successor to Beyond Compare 2 and the launch of Launchy for Linux.


* AccellMan and More now Free
* Split Browser: Cool Firefox Extension
* RUNDLL32 - cheat sheet
* QuickType - quickly toggle your ClearType status
* Frink - Multi skilled converter-math application
* BeyondCompare 3 Released
* HEXelon MAX 6 - free mathematical calculator currency converter units converter
* Launchy is now available for Linux (!)
* Chandler V1 is officially out - and it gets a rocky reception
* GalaXQL - Cool interactive sql tutorial toy


10. Developer's Corner

We were very pleased to see a real increase in activity in the Developer's corner section of the forum this month.  Remember that this section isn't just for computer programmers, it's a place for entrepreneurs of all kinds to discuss the issues involving creating things and running a small business.


* Ycombinator list of ideas they'd like to fund (!). Maybe some are within reach
* Blocking text-ads, no revenue left for web-writers?
* The Software Behind the Mars Phoenix Lander
* Shopping cart for php/mysql?
* Mini-review of Redmine: website tool for collaborative project todolist/wiki, bugtracking, etc
* Dictators in free and open source software?
* The D programming language - an interview with the author
* Article: Performance Comparison: C++, Java, Python, Ruby, Jython, JRuby, Groovy
* Fileupload with Browser and Progressbar
* Quantity Always Trumps Quality - Short But True Blog Post
* Essay: Why Free Software has poor usability, and how to improve it
* What do I need to do for Game Design?
* Anyone Know of a Multi-Monitor Simulator for Software Testing?
* New Linux Distro specifically designed for programmers


11. Site/Forum Features

In this forum section we invite everyone to discuss ideas for the site and forum -- new features we can add to improve the community, etc.  Have an idea, let us know.


* Privacy Page for DonationCoder.com Posted -- Suggestions Wanted
* Idea for our upcoming Fundraiser - Volunteer Stuff for Donators
* Request: "latest post of"-page with only thread titles and new post indication
* An Idea: Make it Easy For DC Users To Show A Page of Their Posts
* Is there a desire to open a Pocket PC/Windows Mobile forum here on DC?


12. Fun, Games, and Humour

One of the things that makes the forum a nice place to hang out is that there is a good balance between serious expert discussion and just plain silly fun (and everything in between).  There are always a few truly sublime discoveries posted by DC members each month, and this past month was no exception.


* Wordle: Create Beautiful Word Clouds - a MUST SEE.
* Flash Game of the Week: Typing Ninja Hunter
* Radiohead Nude - by Epson, Hp, Spectrum & harddrives
* Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (Joss Whedon fans look here)
* Flash game of the Month - Fantastic contraption
* Universe Sandbox
* Weird websites?
* Flash Game of the Week - Mr Coo
* GraphJam Humour
* A heartwarming video with a big kitty
* The InfoWorld Programming IQ Test

Thanks to Darwin for the help editing this!
-mouser

cranioscopical:
Another nice job!

You know, I hang around here an awful lot but the newsletter always points me to something that I missed.

Thanks!

josue549:
Thanks :p

zridling:
These newsletters make my week. I really appreciate mouser and Darwin for their hard work. I enjoy revisiting topics after a while and seeing things in the corners of the forum I never visit.

death0747:
Thanks .
Another nice job!

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