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Appget - user-run software update program

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justice:
I agree and uninstalled that too but they're looking for feedback so it might be worth sending feedback.

Darwin:
I agree and uninstalled that too but you're looking for feedback so that might be worth it.
-justice (August 28, 2007, 10:35 AM)
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Yeah, that thought has occurred to me - I should write to them about this - it's the whole point of the beta!

Curt:
 Create a custom software update notifier


One of the most common things that I’ve been getting asked is how people can stay up-to-date on the latest software. I got really excited about the free UpdateStar application which I mentioned last week, but it still didn’t have information on a lot of the software that I used.

There are hundreds of sites out there that provide RSS feeds for downloads, and I began to think to myself that there had to be a good way to use some of those feeds to my advantage. Then Yahoo! Pipes came to mind since I had just used that last week to show how to translate RSS feeds, and it works perfectly in this situation.

–Overview–
What we’re going to do with Yahoo! Pipes is combine several feeds from popular download sites into one central feed. I recommend a handful of sites at the end of this article that should offer exactly what you’re looking for.

Then we’re going to use Yahoo! Pipes to sift through every item in each of the feeds, and pull out only the items that interest us. Because of the nature of Yahoo! Pipes it will only take a second to go back and add more things to watch for, so don’t worry if you forget to put an app on the list to be monitored.

-CyberNotes
--- End quote ---

–Instructions–

CyberNet Technology Newsmail's instructions on Yahoo! Pipes, at:
>> http://cybernetnews.com/2007/10/11/cybernotes-create-a-custom-software-update-notifier/ <<

+ http://pipes.yahoo.com/ 
--- End quote ---

justice:
There's a lot to like about Appget.
It's listing of installed software is exhaustive, the developer is enthousiastic.
The program works well with good information!

However the quality of the information lets down Appget, users don't fill in download urls (which can only be added when software is up to date -- imho this is too late i am not interested in maintaining this info anymore at that point). Getting version info from product version strings proves unreliable.

According to the appget.nl website there's a new version coming sometime this month. It looks promising -- mor work is done on the server.
The problem I see on my system is unfortunately that it looks like appget will never get close to getting my pc up to date. This is because version numbering is not uniform and there are too much different systems around.

Vista versions being higher than xp versions of the same product
alpha / beta / release canditates
secret forum versions
registration only versions
version strings with languages in them
developers following 7.9 with 7.10
comparing 7.10 with 7.1.0

It's a nightmare. That's why DcUpdater works so well it not just looks at versions but also at release dates, with official information from the developer instead of guessing from version strings.

I'm not sure how it works behind the scene, there's definately scope to make this work.
Version system templates, then applying them to products, maybe with some intelligence comparison  / user voting -- could potentially solve it.
Allowing people to fill in download urls anytime.
Importing download info from download managers.

J-Mac:
Justice,

I just updated to AppGet 0.6.9 and it wasn't easy!  Kept telling me I had to update for it to work - I updated four times but the old version kept starting. I checked Program Files and the agrun.exe and apget.ini are not updated with the rest of the program. Even uninstalling AppGet does not remove those - and they run in the background. I had to delete them manually for the update to 0.6.9 to take.

Next, I now have 152 applications that need updating. Not really, but that's what this version of AppGet is reporting. It's claiming some really weird version numbers are available when there are no such versions. Also - in some cases - it is pulling version numbers for SDK versions instead of regular versions, and some I can't figure out where it got the "new" version numbers but they don't exist in a lot of cases. Many of the programs that the previous version of AppGet said were updated now say they are not and cite non-existent version numbers as available.

Something is definitely not working in the latest version.

Thanks.

Jim

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