Messages

1

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: pandora.com - Internet radio for EVERY taste! FREE!

« on: April 30, 2006, 12:33 AM »

Pandora is awesome. I am huge fan of Launcast on yahoo but Pandora does such and incredible job of finding me new stuff I have never heard. I tend to listen to Pandora 99% of the time and go to Yahoo music for which I have a subscription when I hear something and want the whole album. Lately I am constantly going to yahoo. I cant keep up with all the stuff Pandora is pointing me to that I want to hear more of. Tonight I am really getting into "Collide"

2

Living Room / Re: Keeping track of software license/serial keys

« on: April 05, 2006, 09:15 AM »

Yeah I do keep a copy of my gmail offline. As good as I am about doing backups trust gmail more.

3

Living Room / Re: Keeping track of software license/serial keys

« on: April 04, 2006, 09:20 PM »

I used to palm notes. Now I keep all this stuff categorized as "serials" in gmail.

4

Living Room / Re: Why Macs Suck

« on: April 04, 2006, 08:15 AM »

Well I just bought a new MacBook Pro a couple of weeks ago. I'm really a PC person although till the mid 90s I was much more Mac.  I think most criticisms of either platform is based on what people know and not on any well thought out argument. I would say both platforms are just as capable. In the stability dept. I would give the Mac an edge. This mostly has to do with third party drivers on the PC over which MS has no control And the fact that apple knows what is in those machines and can optimize heavily. I do agree that second mouse button is preferable but the new Apple mouse has that. In general on the Mac you will find that crtl-click (second mouse button) stuff is used much less in favor of selecting things from menus. Given that I am very keyboard centric that suite me just fine. I know that many of my clients are not very computer knowledgable and the concept of right clicking has got to be one of the hardest concepts to get across to somebody that does not live on computers as I do. Given that our world is becoming so much more browser centric I think the Mac has a very bright future. All things being equal I prefer living in the Mac way of doing things. Once your world is browser centric all things do become equal.

5

Living Room / Re: How long will it take you to adopt Windows Vista as your OS?

« on: March 24, 2006, 06:04 AM »

For some reason I'm just not all that excited my Vista. I'm sure the new look will be cool but I really want my OS to be functional but for the most part stay out of the way. For me the big step forward was win2000 when suddenly most directx stuff started working under NT. I use XP and it is fine but what could possible be in vista that is going to really make me want to switch? No doubt I will eventually and I'm sure I'll play with it on day one but I bet I hold off on upgrading.

I just bought a MacBook Pro and so far I'm really liking OS X.

6

General Software Discussion / Re: Some great browsing keyboard shortcut suggestions

« on: March 22, 2006, 06:53 PM »

There are a couple of great things you can do with mouseless browsing. You should turn on automatic execution and change the delay from 500 to maybe 750. You also should set it to no show ids only on demand. Finally change the key used to toggle visibility of keys. The numpad0 key is great but the real benefit of this extension is on laptops where you may not want to use the cursor to select a link. I’m currently on the Mac and I am using the single quote key next to the enter key to toggle visibility of the keys.

7

General Software Discussion / Some great browsing keyboard shortcut suggestions

« on: March 18, 2006, 08:43 AM »

I was thinking of posting this in the AutoHotkey but there is nothing specific to AutoHotkey about this.  I'm not much for using the mouse if I can avoid it. I always find that what I use the most in a browser is back, forward and close active tab or the browser. When browsing you rarely if ever need the `, Esc and F1 keys. What I have done is assigned ` to do an alt-LeftArrow, Esc to do a crtl-w and F1 to do an alt-RightArrow. Whats cool about using these keys is that it is a natural place to have your hand on a laptop and while browsing you can quickly accomplish most of what you do beyond clicking on links. I actually have AutoHotkey to be a little more sophisticated since if I am not in firefox I have ESC issue and alt-F4 with some exceptions. In firefox the crt-w will close the browser if it is the last open tab.

I highly recommend this setup. Once you get used to it it really cuts down on your use of the mouse and quickness with which you can move around in the browser. Using the firefox extension mouseless browsing http://www.rudolf-noe.de/MouselessBrowsing.htm is another great trick especially if you tie it to the capslock key but I'll through that tip into the favorite firefox extensions thread.

Steve

8

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows XP boots on Macbook Pro

« on: March 10, 2006, 01:12 PM »

It was always a matter of time before somebody figured out how to do it.

9

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« on: February 18, 2006, 06:09 AM »

I own X1 and like it but the ability in GDS of indexing all web browsing and sharing it amongst multiple computers is just awesome. Now we will surely see a ton of posts about the security issues of storing data on google's servers.

10

Find And Run Robot / Searching the control panels

« on: February 10, 2006, 05:47 AM »

Is there any way to set FAR up to search the control panels? Control panels don't live in a directory do they?

11

Find And Run Robot / More V2 feedback

« on: January 28, 2006, 07:37 AM »

I keep seeing lots of interesting suggestions for V2. I hope that V2 does not end up getting bloated. The main reason I prefer FAR to other launchers (approcket comes to mind) is its simplicity, speed and low resource overhead. An app like far I mainly want to use very quickly and just as quickly have it get out of the way. I do have some ideas but they mostly have to do with the mechanics of how it runs and not all that much with wanting new whiz bang features.

Suggestions:

1. somehow precache stuff so that when I do a search it does not acutely go searching.

2. I don't like that as it searches it changes the order of found items. If 1 is what I want I don't want 1 to become 3 before I press the button. I cant think of a case where this happened but I do think it changes the list order as it finds new items?

3. Look at the UI of colibri of quicksilver for a nicer way of presenting choices.

12

Find And Run Robot / Re: All these F+R ideas are wonderful

« on: January 28, 2006, 06:28 AM »

I landed at this site because of far and it is the reason I donated.

13

General Software Discussion / Re: Living without AutoHotkey - possible?

« on: January 28, 2006, 06:25 AM »

I learned hotkey by taking a pretty fancy pocomail script I had and converting it to AutoHotKey. It basically takes text logs received in email and parses them, looks up stuff in other text file tables, modifies those tables and finally sends out a condensed email report. I now also use it to replace some QuickKey scripts I had for entering data into quickbooks from some excel spreadsheets. I also use it for some simple keyboard remapping such as uing esc to close programs with some exceptions and using the tilda key to move me back if I am in the browser.

Steve

14

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Opera goes FREE!

« on: September 21, 2005, 06:28 AM »

I Love opera but since I cant get support of RoboForm I just stopped using it. Amazing how a simple little add on is more important to me then the browser which I do consider superior.

15

Unfinished Requests / Re: [IDEA] Simply Desktop Calendar & To-Do List

« on: September 19, 2005, 08:19 PM »

I really like Agenda At Once:

http://datalandsoftware.com/agenda/

16

Image Manager Shootout / Re: AcdSee like program

« on: September 15, 2005, 06:39 AM »

Given that  any compressed image (jpg, gif) etc is already compressed and putting it in a zip will probably not reduce its size why bother?

Is there another program witch can display pictures from a zip file?

-Nuri (September 06, 2005, 07:07 AM)

17

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use a password manager? if not, maybe you should

« on: August 31, 2005, 07:41 AM »

I have so many passcards that the other day I was looking for one that I was not sure I had/existed. I figured it must have a search function although I did not see it (it's right there on the toolbar in the form of a searc box). Thanks for the pointer You just made me feel really dumb...

I totaly agree about opera which I bought, used it allot and loved it till I discovered roboform. Add to roboforms virtues that it seems to work with any program that uses the ie engine to display pages. After antivirus, roboform tends to be the second app I install after I reinstall a machine.

Another vote for RoboForm - it also gets better all the time with new bits and bobs added (like its customisable search engine in the current version).

Actually the application is so good it is one reason why Opera will never become a regular use browser for me (however good it is).

RoboForm works great in Internet Explorer and Mozilla based browsers (inc. Firefox and Netscape).

Also so far updates and upgrades have been free after the initial purchase of the Pro version.

-CarolHaynes (August 31, 2005, 03:11 AM)

18

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use a password manager? if not, maybe you should

« on: August 30, 2005, 11:07 PM »

Roboform is just so powerful in this area. I have never seen anything that even gets close. Aside from all it features it keeps each login it saves in an individual file. This means that if you need to sync several pc's (laptop, desktop etc) with the same roboform data it is trivial since it is not all kept in one big file that may change on both ends before the next sync happens. Add to that palm compatability, pocket pc compatability. Easily maintains numerous identities on and on and on.....

19

General Software Discussion / Re: Favorite ZIP/RAR application?

« on: August 30, 2005, 11:02 PM »

For some programs this can be a real problem. I am thinking of installers that are looking for their zip files and are told by the OS that they are not there and instead those names it is looking for are folders. I remember I put zipmagic on a clients machine and he ended up going through hell trying to install soemthing. Never put it on another machine since.

powerdesk and directory opus both also display zips as folders.
maybe all file explorers do this?

-mouser (August 23, 2005, 02:06 PM)

20

General Software Discussion / Re: Managing Favourites

« on: August 30, 2005, 10:55 PM »

I used to love powermarks but this has been the year that I am switching more and more to doing everything online. Gmail is the first web based email interface that I consider fast enough to use for all my email. For bookmarking I just love www.furl.net .

21

Living Room / Re: Yahoo Power Tools Forum Group

« on: August 28, 2005, 09:56 PM »

Somebody in that group by the name of vampire made a post praising donationcoder back in July. Wonder who that could be. 

http://groups.yahoo....ftware/message/14554

an active yahoo group where people share ideas about the best software to do various things - definitely a group worth checking out, with some knowledgable people:

http://groups.yahoo..../powertoolssoftware/

-mouser (August 28, 2005, 07:20 AM)

22

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Titlebar Clock

« on: August 07, 2005, 07:23 AM »

This scripts convinced me to sit down and learn AutoHotkey. I'm a heavy user of Quickeys but something like this if possible in QuickKeys (doubt it) would take over the cpu.

Steve

23

Backup Guide / Ease Backup is another great alternative

« on: August 04, 2005, 04:50 PM »

I do several backups over FTP. A backup program I see get little mention is Ease Backups ( www.kiesoft.com ). I have tried all the backups programs mentioned and I find Easy Backup to be by far the best if you intend to backup to an ftp site:

Why:

1. It can do patch backups which will reduce the size of the backup greatly especially if it involves large files that change little.

2. It can handle slow unreliable links. It just keeps trying. Anything that it cannot upload will get quede up for the next attempt.

3. It can handle having a time limit so that you can say backup from 10pm to 6am and if you cannot complete continue in the next session.

4. The log file it sends it not the most human readable but it has all the info you would need to figure out what happened. I have a script that parses it in pocomail to produce a simple report of what got backed up and what was skipped for lack of time or because it was in use.

5. It brings a driver to handle open files although the driver cannot overcome files that are locked because of network access.

6. It can handle unlimited version backups and because it uses patch backups as an option keeping those versions does not consume nearly as much space as a traditional "keep another copy" type backup

7. The UI is pretty good. Some of these backup solutions I find try to get too cute in the UI department.

24

ProcessTamer / Re: Option to set CPU usage trigger app-individually?

« on: August 04, 2005, 06:21 AM »

The program I intend to lower the trigger time on is iTunes. I use the new iTunes 4.9 and I subscribe to 8-9 podcasts. When iTunes once and hour checks for new episodes to download it for some reason for 1-2 sec per podcast takes up 100% CPU. When it has found a new  episode(or not) and started downloading it goes down to below 3% or so again..

-akaidiot (July 28, 2005, 03:44 PM)

Does the fact that it's priority gets lowered cause any kind of problems to itunes?