I've been trying to get a CRM in place at my company for years. We're a small software business, specializing in logistics, and in the past we have not had a very coherent strategy for tracking leads, scheduling appointments, tracking customer requests or bug reports. Each of us used different approaches. To be fair, for the most part we got away with it. But as customer base grows, you suddenly reach that "tipping point" where there's just too much to track using an ad hoc approach. This year I finally sat down and really focused on trying to get something that would fix it.

After trialling quite a few low-end and mid-end systems, I settled on Centerbase. Please read this review for why.

Ok it's Day 2 of the Fundraiser and we are doing well!  Over $2,000 donated by 105 people(!)  However we need to remember that this initial pace will not survive much longer -- these represent the "true believers" in DC -- people who have supported the site in the past and are responding to the initial email call for donations.

I'm going to break up today's fundraiser update into a couple of posts because I have a few things to update and talk about today.

And first up I want to talk a little bit about the giveaway we are going to do at the end of this month, open to everyone who has donated to the site.  We do giveaways pretty frequently on the site for supporting members, but it's usually in the form of giving away 5-10 copies of a commercial software program.  This year we are going to try to spice things up a little.

We will start with a big collection of commercial software to give away of course -- some site favorites and some new stuff.  But we will also be giving away some unique gifts that are being donated by other forum members, including:

One ridiculously cool Optimus Maximus keyboard (too expensive for any human to buy):


Custom Coding Time on a project of your choosing/design:

• I will be personally donating 10-25 hours of my time to code anything (legal) that you want.
• We'll probably have a couple more coders and website designers do the same.
• You design it, we'll create it -- and you can do with it what you want (give it away, sell it, whatever).
• Or maybe you want us to spend the hours improving an existing program of ours adding custom features of your choice.  It's up to you!

And a lot more -- I'll be updating this page with more items in the giveaway as the month goes on.  We should have a few more surprises up our sleeve before it's all said and done, and we'll try to have some strange and unusual things for those of you who are strange and unusual.

---

The entry form will be put up near the end of the month, when you will be able to enter and rank what you would like to win most. The giveaway will be open to all donators, new and old -- and in keeping with the spirit of the site we will pick winners randomly without regard to how much they have donated.

Greetings and salutations!  My name is Jesse Reichler and I've been helping to run the DonationCoder.com website since its opening 6 years ago in 2005. I'm writing today to ask you to reach into your pockets and make a financial contribution to the site.

Now don't get all grumpy and close this page just yet.. This fundraiser is a cause for celebration.

Why should you make a donation now? DonationCoder is a small site. For 6 years it has thrived, supported exclusively by small direct contributions made by normal users just like you. Unlike most of the internet, we have resisted trying to fund the site using advertisements. We enjoy the idea that all of our funding comes directly from our users.

But it hasn't been easy. We've recently upgraded to a bigger server to support the demands of our software downloads and discussion community, and to allow us to provide webspace for member projects.

We have worked hard over the years to earn your support. Much of what we do revolves around creating free software to share, and with our server costs at nearly $500 a month, we need your help now to raise funds for the upcoming year.

Will you please consider making a donation today to the site? You'll be joining over 8,000 other people who have donated to the site since our opening in 2005, and you'll be a part of something fun and different. You choose the amount -- no amount is too small or too large.

And while it's easiest to donate using a credit card, through paypal, amazon.com, or one of several shareware payment services -- we will accept donations of any form: cash, cookies, rare gems, precious metals, oil paintings, knitted cat socks, etc. Even just a postcard from across the globe saying good job.

We just ask that you do something, anything, to let us know that you want to see the site keep going.

And to try to sweeten the pot a little this year, we will be running a special giveaway at the end of the month for everyone who has donated, and we'll be giving away some things that we've never tried before -- including custom coding time on a project of your own invention, and some very sweet computer hardware. Stay tuned to the website for more details in the days that follow!

Ready to make that leap of faith and send us a few bucks? Just click the Donate button at the top of the page and you'll be done and feeling good in no time!

-jesse

Application Name	Stoic Joker's (File & Folder) Fix When
Short Description	Utility for modifying File or Folder Dates & Attributes
Supported OSes	Windows NT4/2000/XP/2k3/Vista/2k8/7
Author	Stoic Joker

Description
One of the in-House (work) projects required me to modify the file dates of several hundred files on a semi-regular basis while a new system was being implemented. Obviously this had to be automated....

All of the then available utilities for this were in the $50 range, so I decided to take a stab at writing my own utility (because I'm cheap and had free time back then).

This actually started as a CodeProject.com code sample which was posted as an example of how to programmatically change file dates. Being that that was exactly what I was looking for, I used it as a starting point, dressed up the GUI, added a few features, and re-factored the existing code to increase the applications speed (x20) dramatically.

Features
Change Created, Modified, and Last accessed dates on a File or Folder.
Change the Read Only, Hidden, or System Attribute on a File or Folder.
Change the above on All Filed & Folders in a given Target Folder.
Bypass (Read Only or System) Attributes to effect changes as necessary.
Will also Display if target File of Folder is (NTFS) Compressed or Encrypted.

ReadWriteWeb has a better question:  Do E-Book Users Need a Bill of Rights? (Librarians Think So.)
http://www.readwrite...hts_librarians_t.php

Publishers like HarperCollins are already jumping in and setting limits to what users can and cannot do with ebooks, viz., a lot less than you ever could with paper books! This includes broad DRM schemes that tie books to specific devices, composing them in proprietary formats, limiting the number of times they can be read, limited whether they can be shared, and if so, for how long, and whether a distributor like Amazon can remotely delete your ebooks without your approval. Put simply, ebook consumers want to be treated with respect rather than as a pre-criminal. They suggest not buying DRM books in any form, which includes Google not letting you download the ePub file of purchased books.

I found out about Bookmark Docs through a thread here. 

From the site:

Bookmark Docs lets you precisely "bookmark" any places in various documents and then quickly return to them whenever you need, and do all that in a unified manner.  Add bookmarks and hyperlinks to Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, CHM, and MSDN documents, and to Web pages.

I've seen many bookmark managers over the years (and have bought more than a few), and haven't found anything that really satisfied my needs, so the idea was interesting to me.  The installation was professional and seamless, though you will want to pay attention to the options at the end; Bookmark Docs by default does not put an icon on the desktop, but does want to run at startup, so set your options accordingly.

...

I foresee that this will become one of those applications that I come to rely on heavily.  Though there are a few niggling areas that could be enhanced, it does what it sets out to do, and really is a timesaver.  I give it my recommendation.