Topics

26

Found Deals and Discounts / Scrivener for Windows Discounts for November 2011

« on: November 13, 2011, 03:57 PM »

Anyone interested in using Scrivener for Windows for their NaNoWrMo entry - or for that matter anyone who just wants to purchase Scrivener for Windows at a discount - Literature and Latte is offering a 50% discount to NaNoWrMo winners and a 20% discount for anyone at all during NaNoWrMo 2011. For the 20% discount you just have to enter "NANOWRMO" - without the quotes naturally - in the coupon box during checkout. That brings Scrivener for Windows down from $40.00 USD to $32.00.

Jim

27

General Software Discussion / Firefox Extension "Download Statusbar" Now Adware - Maybe Malware

« on: October 28, 2011, 09:58 AM »

Oh well. I have used this extension since I installed my first Firefox beta, way back whenever the heck that was... my initial post at the Mozillazine Firefox forum was in July 2004! But one of my "must have" extensions has finally gone rogue: Download Statusbar.

When I started Firefox today a new tab opened announcing an update to Download Statusbar had been silently installed and, oh yeah - it nonchalantly mentioned in the body of the update notice that there is a "new sponsorship supported" option. But it's not really an option; if you don’t enable it, it enables itself after a few days. It apparently also adds a referrer string to certain URLs plus something to do with Yahoo and YouTube. No explanation; the developer's home page - which had been located on the MozDev web site - is gone without a trace. There is a new home page that is a one-page site with only a link to install the extension; nothing else there. Bad news all around. Better to ditch this extension before you get bit!

Another user posted the following at the Download Statusbar page at Mozilla Add-Ons:

I am not a Javascript expert, but I looked at the source code and
* If you have the sponsorship enabled, it does something with Yahoo and YouTube (couldn't figure out what exactly, looks like displaying ads).
* If you haven't, it will be automatically enabled again after 7 days.

Edit: it also looks like the add-on adds a referrer string to the URLs of certain websites.
I found the following comment in the code:
"Determines if this is the first run of the day, if so the calling function appends the request with a querystring variable." (pluginnetwork/pluginnetwork.js:450)

I don’t understand all of that post, but I get enough of it to know I don’t want any part of Download Statusbar anymore! Gotta find me a safer replacement. Anyone know of one?

Thanks!

Jim

28

Living Room / What Happened to Genie Backup Manager?

« on: August 22, 2011, 11:18 AM »

Genie-Soft, the developers of Genie Backup Manager, have apparently abandoned that program and have changed their name to "Genie9". Not sure why since they don’t offer any products with that name. Anyway I found out about the name chage when I received some spam from them today and tried to go change/cancel my subscription with them - the one that once sent me info about Genie Backup Manager Pro releases. I found the Genie-Soft site abandoned except for their now defunct forums, and a new site called Genie9.com. And to think, I never even received any notification about the name or website address changes! (Their junk email still comes from the Genie-soft.com domain).

I used Genie Backup Manager Pro 8 for a few years. Then I started finding errors after one of their updates and I checked their forum and found that a number of users were reporting the same things there, but Genie wasn’t saying much. For a while they kept stating that this would all be fixed with Genie BU Manager 9 but the ETA for that slipped out over a year. Then they just stopped replying, in the forum and to support inquiries. I finally had to stop using Genie because of the problems. In August 2009 I found out why nothing was going on with Genie BU Manager: They had apparently been working on a new product, Genie Timeline. That's an automatic backup utility. Most GBM Pro users refused to switch because Timeline didn't offer much configurability; most settings were pre-configured and not changeable. I received occasional emails from Genie-Soft pushing Timeline; maybe every month or three.

Now today I received an email pushing "Tune-Up Utilities"! Which is not a Genie product BTW. Plus that's when I discovered that Genie-Soft is now "Genie9". Their forum is down and has been for a long time now, even though the emails still come from Genie-Soft addresses. Looks like they still offer Genie BU Manager 8 Pro and Home but no updates have been released since 2009 - the last one I had installed. So I guess that this is now officially "abandonware", since they haven't updated it in 3 years, have not responded to support inquiries in 3 years, and killed off their forum. All they want to do now is sell you a newer product and/or Tune-Up Utilities! If I can't "unsubscribe" I guess I'll be setting up a Sieve rule to send their junk mail to the spam folder.

Hate it when this happens!

Jim

29

Living Room / A Cat and Dolphin Love Story

« on: August 02, 2011, 09:13 PM »

OK, I'm not a cat person; not really a dolphin person either...  I am a lifelong dog person! But this was cute anyway so take a look:

http://www.wimp.com/catdolphins/

Cat on a boat, dolphins swim up to the boat, and well, take a look!

Jim

30

Living Room / Dropbox Left User Accounts Unlocked for 4 Hours Sunday

« on: June 20, 2011, 11:20 PM »

Oh well, so much for my Dropbox account. I was looking hard at Spider Oak recently; no question now as to what I will do. Here's  a link:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/dropbox/

And here is a link to some comments by security researcher Christopher Soghoian at Pastebin, though I haven't been able to get to the site all day; too much traffic.

http://pastebin.com/yBKwDY6T

Might just be the end of good times for Dropbox...

Jim

31

Living Room / Was DC Down Yesterday? And Very Slow Today?

« on: April 19, 2011, 12:37 PM »

I can't find a status thread - thought we once had something like that here - but most of yesterday afternoon/evening I couldn't connect with the site here. And today navigation is excruciatingly slow. E.g., it took over two minutes from the time I clicked on "New Thread" until the post submission page appeared.

Is it the site? Or is Comcast "doing Xfinity" to me again?!?   

Thanks!

Jim

32

Living Room / Japan Earthquake and Tsunami - Before & After Pics

« on: March 21, 2011, 11:51 PM »

Take a look at this page:   http://www.abc.net.a...2011/beforeafter.htm


All the photos have a mouse-over before & after feature. I've seen a lot of images and videos of the devastation there but these images in particular struck a chord.

Jim

33

Living Room / Truly Stupid Email from Companies! Show Us Yours...

« on: March 01, 2011, 10:39 PM »

OK, granted this email from ACD Systems, the developer of ACDSee photo organization software, is old - from 2006 - but it is still a classic in my book! Apparently they either really thought that the Yahoo Toolbar was all that, or they are incurably stupid enough to have thought that they could convince their customers that it is...

Jim

[attachthumb=#1][/attachthumb]

34

Found Deals and Discounts / ExifCleaner at GiveAwayofTheDay 25 Feb 2011

« on: February 25, 2011, 10:44 AM »

ExifCleaner 1.5 from SuperUtils.com is available at GAOTD today, 25 Feb 2011. Sounds pretty decent. Believe it or not it has a bunch more Thumbs-up ratings than Thumbs-down, which is a rarity anymore at GAOTD. It cleans out the Exif tags, geotags, IPTC and Adobe XMP from JPEG images. Works on individual photos or in batch mode. I haven't installed it yet but according to some users there who have it does not require any special registration or serial codes; the version downloaded will work from the start. Of course the usual GAOTD limitations apply: No tech support and no free upgrades to future versions, and it is strictly for personal use.

Has anyone here used ExifCleaner or any of SuperUtils.com's applications? I am going to try this one but as always I am interested in comments from other users.

Thanks!

Jim

35

ProcessTamer / "hello world!"

« on: February 08, 2011, 02:06 AM »

Continually repeating in the log. Cute!   

Jim

36

Screenshot Captor / Settings Not Saved When SSC is Updated in 2.89.01

« on: February 02, 2011, 11:41 AM »

mouser,

After the last Screenshot Captor update to 2.89.01 I noticed that my settings were not saved from the installed version that SSC updated. E.g., all my "Move To..." folder settings were wiped, the display/UI settings were all dumped, and the setting that creates folders by date and auto-moves screenshots into them was reset (I usually have this feature disabled, never liked it at all!!) SSC has a LOT of settings and so resetting them all manually is not necessarily a small task.

So how come the installer is now wiping all the settings, requiring a manual redo of them one-by-one? If this is to continue I'm going to have to save all my settings before updating from now on. Or just stop updating till I see if it's worth the trouble.

I'm using Screenshot Captor 2.89.01 on Windows 7 Home Premium.

Thanks!

Jim

Edit: OK, I located a backup of the file ScreenshotCaptor.ini and replaced the newer file with it. All settings have now gone back to what they were. Any problems with using the prior version's .INI file with 2.89.01?

37

Living Room / Binary Registry Keys.... Editable? Readable? How?

« on: January 24, 2011, 02:37 PM »

Title says it all, if you are presently frothing at the mouth, staring at RegEdit!

I have a little problem with the latest Pre-Release version of Evernote: After it installed over the previous pre-release the Evernote main window opens off-screen. Right after I updated Evernote it opened and I could not find the doggone thing! Taskbar button was there but it didn't bring anything up when clicked. Plus the thumbnail image that Win 7 shows when hovering your mouse over a taskbar button only showed about a 50 px x 200 px section of the Evernote main toolbar instead of the main window itself. I could right-click the taskbar button and then click "Maximize" and the maximized window would appear but there was no way to restore the "normal" window; instead it would just jump back off-screen again. Frustrating, to say the least.

So every time Evernote starts up I have been pressing Alt+Space+M to get into the Move function, and then I use the arrow keys to move this tiny Evernote onto the monitor. Of course I also have to resize the window. However there doesn’t seem to be anyway to make the window placement stick. Using File>Exit while the correct window is showing doesn’t stay that way; the next time Evernote starts it is back off-screen in a tiny window!!

Evernote Support said to uninstall/reinstall the app. (Have you ever heard that before?! Hate it?). Though actually it probably will fix the problem, as I am guessing that something went weird during the last update installation and hopefully reinstalling it fresh has a damn good chance of getting it right this time. Maybe. Fingers crossed. But I got a bug under my bonnet now. I want to know where the hell the Window Placement setting is stored for Evernote now. And no one will tell me. (Or can tell me...) No INI file, no DAT file, no config file. All that is left is the registry. So I looked and there it is: a whole key under HK Current User with a subkey named WindowPlacement! But... all the keys in it are Binary keys. I cannot read this key with anything. Hex Editor just shows me the Hex and makes it editable, but still doesn’t translate it into human-readable material.

Does anyone know how I can see what is listed there for WindowPlacement? I haven't reinstalled the update yet just because this is bugging me and I would like to understand where the setting is for Evernote and how to change it without uninstalling and reinstalling - because I still hate that damn answer!!

Thanks!

Jim

[attachthumb=#1][/attachthumb]

Current binary key value for Evernote MainFrameWindow Placement.

38

Screenshot Captor / New Captures Not Showing in SSC Right Away

« on: January 22, 2011, 06:09 PM »

With the latest release of Screenshot Captor new captures are not showing up in the main interface right away. If I go back in later - after the next capture - it is there most of the time. Sometimes it takes longer than that. The image is in the Screenshots folder; just not showing up in the sidebar pane of SSC.

Thanks!

Jim

Should have included: SSC 2.89.01 on Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit.

39

Found Deals and Discounts / Timeline Maker Professional On Sale at Bits du Jour Today

« on: November 02, 2010, 11:31 PM »

I just noticed this at Bits. I know I've looked at this one a few times and it looks really interesting, but the regular price of $149 has always chased me away. They sometimes offer a special sale at their site for $99 but that's still high for me since I wouldn’t use this very often. But there are a few projects where I really could use this program! Now $49.95 is definitely a much more reasonable price - but I would still love to get some feedback from any existing users here at DC.

Anyone using this?

Thanks!

Jim

40

General Software Discussion / Any Way to Manually Edit a *.adu Spell Check File?

« on: September 16, 2010, 01:40 PM »

Spell Check files can be a PITA at times. Most software allows you to edit or add to the user or custom spell check file, but one word at a time. I currently have one master Custom.dic ll my own custom entries: family and friend's names, place names, slang words, cuss words, and any other words not normally found in a Spell Check dictionary file. I update the Custom.dic file of any new software by copying the contents of my "master" file into the new program's Custom.dic file. Works well for me.

However some programs use a *.adu/*.adm file for their spell checker, and that can't be edited in a standard text editor. There use to be a utility available free from Addictive Software that let me add bulk text manually to *.adu files but that does not appear to be available anymore. I have a program now that uses *.adu files for both the main and user's custom spell check dictionaries and I would like to add my "master" list of words to the custom or user's dictionary but I can't find a program that will let me edit - or even read - the *.adu file.

Anyone know of something that would help?

Thanks!

Jim

41

Living Room / Microsoft Quashed Effort to Boost Online Privacy

« on: August 03, 2010, 03:22 PM »

The thread title is the headline on a Wall Street Journal article published yesterday. Interesting piece on Microsoft's internal battle over customer privacy vs. ad revenue. Guess who won?   

Here's the link:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467304575383530439838568.html

Jim

42

Living Room / Looking for a Decent Contacts Manager

« on: June 14, 2010, 03:15 PM »

Anyone like to recommend a contact manager for personal use?

First of all, I am not using Outlook so please don’t bother recommending it. Gmail's contacts are terrible IMO. Google insists on adding any address I Send mail to, plus they require me to add any contacts that keep getting sent to spam, so it is always cluttered up with crap I don’t really wish to keep as contacts. Postbox, which I am currently using for email, has a really lousy address book. Can't add much in the way of details, minimal sorting/filtering, and if a contact has only address or phone number but no email address it cannot be added. I have a free Highrise account but that is actually very limited also. Wouldn’t help if I paid either - the interface/layout is just not that good IMO.

I have looked at a few stand-alone programs: Efficient Address Book and Contact Wolf. Anyone familiar with either? Or any others you know of that are good specifically for managing personal contacts? What I want to do is fairly simple:

• Add contacts with ability to add details, like spouse, children, birthdays, anniversaries, etc.
• Able to add notes and if possible, links to associated files.
• Ability to slice and dice the data in many ways.
• This one I have had difficulty finding: Ability to print the address book without having to print them as a series of separate cards.

Thanks for any ideas.

Jim

43

Living Room / Must Login to BDJ to See All Future Deals Now

« on: May 10, 2010, 12:30 AM »

Hmm... I just dropped in at Bits duJour earlier to see what deals are coming up for the next week and - I could only see a couple days of deals. They just put a lock on their Future Deals page and you must register and log in to see more than two days of deals now. No explanation given that I can find. There is a link for "more info" but it just took me to their forum where a thread about this was filled with a lot of folks complaining about having to log in and allow cookies. The admin there, Nico, mentioned that he wants to "…incentivize people to sign up and log in". Why the hell would he want to motivate people to have to log in to see his Future Deals??  (I'm not going to use that neologism Nico used!).

Jim

44

Found Deals and Discounts / Database Oasis for $21 on Bits duJour Wed, 4/14/2010

« on: April 14, 2010, 02:33 AM »

A "point-and-click" database program is how it's billed. Looks pretty nice, especially to me. I was pretty decent using dBase III+ way back but I have given up on Microsoft Access several times. Every time I want to do anything in Access that VB Editor window opens and it all kinda falls apart - all downhill from there!

If anyone has used or is using Database Oasis please let me know what you think of it. I am considering giving it a try but I respect the views of my DC friends here and would really like some info from people who know the product.

Thanks!

Jim

45

Found Deals and Discounts / Ad Muncher On Sale at Bits duJor Wednesday, March 31, 2010

« on: March 30, 2010, 11:48 PM »

Ad Muncher is available at Bits today for $10.82.

I have seen Ad Muncher mentioned in a very positive light here by many DC members, so I think that I'll get me a copy of it! Comments about Ad Muncher are welcome to help me know if I am getting a winner - or not.   

Thanks!

Jim

46

Found Deals and Discounts / Sothink SWF Quicker 4.7 on GAOTD January 6

« on: January 06, 2010, 05:47 PM »

Has anyone used this program? Or anything from Sothink?

This program apparently is sold for $84.95 normally - or at least the GAOTD page and Sothink's website claim. Looks like SWF Quicker 5.0 is released and this version is 4.7. Still, heck of a deal IF it is a good, reliable program.

Any comments?

Thanks!

Jim

47

Find And Run Robot / FARR Won't Run Anymore - Error Messages Galore

« on: November 17, 2009, 01:58 AM »

FARR seem to have died here. I was in the Settings and I opened the Plugins dialog - and immediately FARR crashed. Upon reopening, I keep getting a series of Error Dialogs for several plugins - one for each - and then after clicking OK for each one, if I try to run FARR again I get another Error message saying that FARR generated an exception that cannot be handles and must be terminated. Tough running without FARR after all this time. I tried reinstalling FARR but get the same errors. I attached some of the errors below.

Jim

[attachthumb=#1][/attachthumb]

[attachthumb=#2][/attachthumb]

[attachthumb=#3][/attachthumb]

[attachthumb=#4][/attachthumb]

48

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Please - How Can I Update FARR Plugins?

« on: November 12, 2009, 11:08 PM »

OK, After a flurry (granted a very small flurry) of discussions about FARR and the difficulties updating its plugins, I finally thought I was OK. It looked like all my plugins were properly updated. This was only about 6 or 8 months ago.

And now, my FARR plugins are a mess again. How in the heck can the plugins be kept up to date? They shouldn't be in such bad shape this fast! Isn't DCUpdater working right anymore? Or is it the plugins themselves that are not written so that DCUpdater can update them?

From "All OK" about 6 - 8 months ago, here's what is happeningm in my DCUpdater currently:

Installed but not updated - Update failed:

• Data Generator
• KlipKeeper
• PopQuotes
• Service Control Plugin

Available for Installation - Update Failed:

• Character Table
• Console
• Definr
• Dicts Thesaurus
• Gcal quicadd
• Google Translate
• Timer

 

Are those "Available" plugins for real? Or is there a DCUpdater "cache" that needs to be emptied? Should I trash it all and start over again? I never thought anything here would be this difficult to keep updated!   

Thanks for any help with this. 

Jim

49

Found Deals and Discounts / Chameleon Startup Manager Coming to Bits duJour 13 Niv 2009

« on: November 08, 2009, 11:40 PM »

I just noticed that Chameleon Startup Manager is coming to Bits on 13 Nov - this coming Friday. I used Chameleon Startup Manager 2.x up until Version 3 was released in May, and then I upgraded to Chameleon 3. Some new features, a completely new UI, and greatly improved utility and performance. I was at first put off by a number of the UI changes - mostly all due to my personal preferences - and I wrote to Evgeni, the developer, and told him. I was blowing off some steam and I figured I was just venting; after all, what developer is going to make significant user interface changes to a freshly released new version of his flagship software? Ha! Didn't he reply a couple of days later with a brand new build with all my wishes granted? Truly amazing performance by this developer!

Chameleon Startup Manager is a great program, a utility I don't ever want to do without. And, no - I am not paid or otherwise compensated for saying so. But since I'm very pleased with both the program and the developer, when I saw it coming up at Bits I thought I should post about it here.

Thanks!

Jim

50

Living Room / Play Media Files on my Network House-wide?

« on: October 02, 2009, 01:33 AM »

OK. I have a wireless network. Had one for some years now. Excellent for roaming around my property with my notebook. Also just perfect that I can wire my own desktop along with my wife's and we can share the high speed cable internet connection, as well as share files among these computers. After all, I guess that was my primary purpose in setting up the network. However.....

I have a load of media files stored on my desktop computer and also on external drives, both USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 (Firewire). I keep hearing and reading all about how great it is - running an NAS or especially a home media server - that I can enjoy my media files all over my house. But can I? I mean, practically? I realize that I can access and play any of my media files on the network via my wirelessly connected notebook. Heck, I do that all the time. But let's face it: music sucks big time when it's trying to blare out of the tiny speakers that most notebooks have.

I would like to be able to play my music in any room in the house I like. From my network storage. And on something that is made for listening to music! I finally developed enough interest in this to start roaming the web, looking high and low for receivers of some kind that will play my music from my network. Without, that is, having to outfit the house with another, new-fangled "system". Without dishing out several hundred or a couple thousand dollars of new equipment.

Alas, I don't think that I can. 

All my searching keeps bringing me to sites selling great and wonderful "systems"; basically meaning linked, proprietary servers and receivers, that will only work with each other. All naturally claim to be the latest and best out there on the market. Yeah, right. I'm talking about systems like Popcorn Hour which is now owned by Logitech. (Which means that they will very soon have drivers that will confound your computer to no end!).

Is there really no way to listen to my music over my network using just a media server, like maybe an HP Media Server, and some sort of standard receiver? Not a personal media player. Something that has speakers and can be heard throughout a room? Am I really required to purchase a bunch of new equipment to send and receive the files which I already have the ability to send? Just no way to receive and play them...

I recently read a ton of forums and blogs that all had a lot about house-wide A/V options, but didn't really give me a clue as to how to do that without getting a new, proprietary set of equipment. Aaarrgghh!

I'm hoping that we have some experts - or even pure amateurs - here at DC who can advise me about this. Or at least point me in a direction where I can learn without being bombarded with ads/advice about new whole-house systems.

Thanks!

Jim