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Author Topic: Mar. 2007 Giveaway/Discounts: Website Watcher,Local Website Archive,AM-Notebook  (Read 16805 times)

mouser

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March 2007 Giveaway and Discounts

Supporting Members, you've got until March 15th to enter this month's Free Shareware Giveaway.  The Discounts run until March 31st.

This Month's Special Discounts and Giveaways:



Be sure to read our review of Website Watcher here -- it's one of my favorite programs in the entire world, and I can't imagine living without it.  If you spend any time at all surfing the web then you need this program, or one like it.  The author of the program has been very generous to DonationCoder and at a 50% discount it really is an incredible bargain.  I use it every day and it saves me huge amounts of time.
« Last Edit: March 02, 2007, 07:05 AM by mouser »

mouser

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ps.  The author of all of these programs also makes a very good and very popular freeware program for checking your bookmarks for dead and invalid bookmarks, called AM-Deadlink.  Definitely worth checking out  :up:

tinjaw

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By all means, please read the review.

However, I wanted to add a comment. I was not interested in Website Watcher, even after reading the review. I felt that between RSS feeds and most forums having some form of "Show Unread Posts" that WW would be wasted money. Boy was I wrong.

What got me to try the demo version was a web forum that did not have a "Show Unread Posts" function that worked in a manner I wanted it to. So I decided to try the demo version of WW to see if it could handle the forums in a manner I wanted. Not only did it do that, but it showed me just how wrong I was about WW as a whole. Not only does the basic edition do more than I expected, the scripting capabilities make the personal version a "must upgrade".

I suggest that, even if you don't think you "need" Website Watcher, do yourself a favor and try out the demo this month so you can take advantage of the discount before March ends.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that before the 30-day demo expired I purchased a license for the personal version.
« Last Edit: March 02, 2007, 12:33 PM by tinjaw »

aignes

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I suggest that, even if you don't think you "need" Website Watcher, do yourself a favor and try out the demo this month

Downloading now...  ;)

tinjaw, glad that you like WebSite-Watcher. Great post, thanks...
- Martin Aignesberger,  author of WebSite-Watcher

iphigenie

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I never quite got "into" WsW but LWA is one of my most used programs.

With WsW I can tell it could probably save me time one it's all set up like I would like it, but it costs time to figure out, and I simply never spent that time. I did try since i had LWA and i thought it'd be nice to have WsW to check and update pages snapped in LWA. But it turned out to be time consuming so I gave up. This was 2005 or even 2004 so it's probably smooth and wonderful now, and I'm more patient, so I will listen and try it again.

I have said before I trial lots of software and realise halfway through the trial that I don't use it... But with LWA things worked differently - i was surprised one day within 2-3 weeks of install to be told "you have have hit the 100 documents limit" (not a limitation of the free version anymore) - needless to say I registered it and have been moving it from PC to PC since. It's one of the first things I reinstall after the security and utilities, along with a browser (which has changed from mozilla to slimbrowser to kmeleon to opera over the years - all of which happily worked with lwa), email (poco, which happily worked with lwa, and now opera, which alas doesn't at the email level), and text editor.

LWA is worth a try because it gives you a place to save web documents but also other documents which is independent of the tools you use. I don't know about you guys but I have used 6 or more different browsers in the last 2 years (ie, ie based slim browser, kmeleon, netscape, mozilla, firefox,seamonkey,opera), and several email clients. All other tools I know of either work on cut-and-paste, or only work in one or two browsers. When you switch browsers, you either lose your archive or have to cut/paste it all over...

Things I have done with LWA:
* keep a snapshot copy of order confirmations on ecommerce websites
* keep a (temporary) snapshot copy of ebay item description pages for items bid on, in case the description is amended later, so I can complain if needed
* keep a snapshot copy of T&Cs from companies I do business with, so if they change I have the one I "signed" to on record. For example a deal offered by an energy supplier, or a subscription based website etc.
* keep a copy of maps and itineraries so I can take them with me offline if necessary (I had a 9" subnotebook)
* keep a snapshot of sofware description pages with a note with the executable name (so when a month later I'm "what was this download again?" I have a quick way to check) and opinion notes after i try it
* keep recipes
* save key emails outside the email program, just in case, or to store them together with a snapshot the website/pages they refer to.
* snapshot of website visuals and web projects at different stages. Again, mostly useful to remember or if the client tries to be silly.
* snapshot of product pages when doing research for projects - it's much better than just a bookmark. I have folders on ecological paints, multi room sound systems, hotels in X, or topics from work
* snapshot of technical tutorials and reference information - again those sites disappear from the web sometimes and bookmarks don't help much. There are some key perl sites which have disappeared and I wish I'd snapped more pages there.

It's not perfect, but it's much more useful than you'd imagine.
« Last Edit: March 02, 2007, 10:03 AM by iphigenie »

Darwin

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Can't speak to WSW, but I use a similar product, Check&Get 3 and setting it up was effortless - you set it to import your bookmarks/favourites and (if you want to streamline things) then select which it will watch and which it won't and you're done. I set it up to watch all of my Maxthon groups rather than importing my favourites. Looking at WSW, I suspect it is much the same. There really isn't much of a learning curve and I urge you to give either a try!

aignes

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With WsW I can tell it could probably save me time one it's all set up like I would like it, but it costs time to figure out, and I simply never spent that time. I did try since i had LWA and i thought it'd be nice to have WsW to check and update pages snapped in LWA. But it turned out to be time consuming so I gave up. This was 2005 or even 2004 so it's probably smooth and wonderful now, and I'm more patient, so I will listen and try it again.

@iphigenie, WSW has many options, but initially all options have typical default values. So you should be able to start working immediately after you have installed WSW.

Since 2005, several Wizards have been implemented (especially for web forums or newsgroups).

For normal web pages, simply create a new bookmark, add the URL and click the "Check Now" button, that's all. You can also import bookmarks from IE, Firefox or Opera.

For a quick start, you can also watch the videos at http://www.aignes.com/support.htm where you can see how to work with the forum wizard, the filter wizard or how to use the AutoFilter functionality.
- Martin Aignesberger,  author of WebSite-Watcher

tinyvillager

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 Yoink!

 Just purchased the Website Watcher basic.Great stuff.I won Copernics Tracker through
donationcoder a year or so back.While it's not "bad" and i didn't have to pay for it  :D i
can't slam it to much.But it's looking more and more like abandon-ware,thank you for
creating a (my) replacement and thanks for the discount.

P.S.
Among the many features that's not in Copernic,i like the fact that Website Watcher
can check text files,i.e. changelogs
http://www.slysoft.c...d/changes_anydvd.txt
http://www.collector...m/movie/WhatsNew.txt
etc.
Copernic can't do that and it always annoyed me.

Keep up the great work.You make great products. :Thmbsup:



iphigenie

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yes, looking at the feature list seems it does newsgroups and feeds too? I currently have all that in opera but it might be a good thing to move this out of my email program so i don't get distracted all the time by feed / newsgroup updates

TucknDar

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I'll definitely give WsW a run on my computer. I procrastinate far too much by checking a ton of websites all the time :(

Hopefully WsW will free up some of that time.

Lashiec

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AM-Notebook?! Crap! I need to donate NOW (if I only had money...)

urlwolf

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Trying to figure out what LWA does...

I'd normally do:
wget --convert-links -r http://www.anysite.org/
and the maybe search it using and indexer, such as X 1 (thanks wordzilla!).

Is LWA giving you any extra capabilities? Which ones?

urlwolf

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Here is a way to backup locally all your delicious bookmarks (change username to yours):
wget -H -r --level=1 -k -p -erobots=off -np -N --exclude-directories=urlwolf --exclude-domains= delicious.com,doubleclick.net http://delicious.com...?setcount=100?page=1 http://delicious.com...?setcount=100?page=2 http://delicious.com...?setcount=100?page=3 http://delicious.com...?setcount=100?page=4 http://delicious.com...?setcount=100?page=5

You may have more/less pages. wget can be run at timed intervals so you have always the latest versions. keeping numbered versions + comparing them using a visual diff program may do kind of like what WSW does, but a bit clumpsy.
« Last Edit: October 27, 2014, 04:55 PM by mouser »

tinjaw

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I'm not going to provide a better description of LWA then the developer does on his own site, but I can tell you my number one use for it.

I often teach informal classes as "brown bag lunches". I spend some time before the class surfing websites that I frequent on the topic. I store those using LWA. Then create a zip file with the runtime LWA and the LWA database I just created. I use that on my laptop during my class, since there is no internet connection at that time. I then pass around a USB stick with the zip file to anybody who wants it. This has met with much success and I plan on doing it for other presentations I give.

As a side note, there are a few (D)(X)HTML-based PowerPoint "replacements" available out around the Net. I am planning on creating my presentions using one of those tools and then combining my lecture slides with the archived web pages in a single zip file.

patthecat

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Any advantage of using LWA over other offline browsers such as WinHTTrack/HTTrack.  I see that HTTrack can include/exclude certain portions of a site but I'm not sure if LWA can do this.  HTTrack also has incomplete support for flash sites according to its FAQ.