Messages

601

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Tidy Favorites Online

« on: July 16, 2010, 02:52 PM »

I think the biggest selling point would be the visual bookmarks, it reminds me a little of an online version of  the "Speed Dial" add-on for Firefox.

A couple of questions:

• Does it sync with the native browser favorites, too?
  
• Does it have a (delicious-like) list view?

602

Living Room / Re: Can Anonymous voting redefine social media?

« on: July 16, 2010, 02:10 PM »

I admit I didn't really read the quote.

Each website and tweep is hand-picked by our staff after laboriously researching, examining, poking, probing and dissecting it/them. Those that are consistantly the most interesting, the most relevant, that have the nicest photos and in-depth news or interesting speculations are preferred.

Rather ironic, since the articles that appear to be a random selection of internet crap that is somehow further refined by the voting.

I agree the content is not the best, but I was commenting on the presentation. I thought it was more or less trying to compete with Technorati (although I prefer the cleaner look of  that site). But it's scary to think these are the stories that were hand picked.

603

Post New Requests Here / Re: I Need, I Pay

« on: July 16, 2010, 01:57 PM »

This is called a metasearch engine. There was kind of a golden age of metasearches, maybe the 80's or 90's, and an actual site metasearch.com, although if you go there now, it just redirects your search terms to Google. So think about who is the Google of metasearch nowadays, and I think the answer is harder to answer today than it has ever been. Surfwax tries to do this but the results don't cut it for me. Perhaps metasearch fizzled out because most people figured out it's more efficient to figure out which search engine is best, and just use that instead of collecting all those results from different search engines. But that is just one man's opinion.

On the other hand, if you're offering the equivalent of the X Prize to create the Google of Metasearch, for that much money someone, or more likely a team of someones, might come up with something truly excellent.

But what I really think is that a lot of people tried already, and that the results you get back are not going to be as useful as you think they are, unless you are capable of recruiting Google-class talent to tackle the problem.

604

Living Room / Re: Can Anonymous voting redefine social media?

« on: July 16, 2010, 01:41 PM »

Now when you say social media, do you mean it's trying to be a digg thing? If so, the layout is all wrong, but I have to think about it some more. Hmmm.

605

Living Room / Re: Can Anonymous voting redefine social media?

« on: July 16, 2010, 01:36 PM »

I think web polls are generally anonymous anyway, or at least anonymous enough to let us pretend we are anonymous on the internet.

But for me, the layout draws me in, it looks a little like Feedly. Even though it's densely packed, the more article teasers it sticks in your face, the more likely one is to catch the eye.

606

Developer's Corner / Re: Style guidelines for how to structure helpfiles?

« on: July 14, 2010, 11:16 AM »

Much of what passes for Help these days (including screenshots) resembles a useless programming comment that merely echoes what you're already looking at, e.g.,
  i++ # increment the index

-davidqxo (July 14, 2010, 10:50 AM)

Took me a minute to get what you were saying here, but I guess the help file equivalent would be

Edit > Paste

This menu item pastes the contents of the clipboard.

I hate that too. I've seen help files structured that way, and I want to avoid that if possible.

607

Living Room / Re: Should Apple recall the iPhone4? Or should the user "Hold the phone the right"?

« on: July 14, 2010, 08:20 AM »

Haven't there been tons of cellphones with crappy antenna reception? How many of them got recalled?

-daddydave (July 14, 2010, 07:24 AM)

How many of them work only if you hold it "that special way"?

-Josh (July 14, 2010, 08:14 AM)

Some  of them don't have a special way! You just return it and get a superior product!

608

General Software Discussion / Re: PC Monitoring - Need Help

« on: July 14, 2010, 08:19 AM »

While I agree in a general way with 40hz's advice and don't think either arshadbh or 40hz was rude in the least, every parenting situation is different and I think arshadbh has to be given the benefit of a doubt.

From 40hz's response, I assume he is a parent. If not, I have another rant.

609

Living Room / Re: Should Apple recall the iPhone4? Or should the user "Hold the phone the right"?

« on: July 14, 2010, 07:24 AM »

Haven't there been tons of cellphones with crappy antenna reception? How many of them got recalled?

610

General Software Discussion / Re: how to monitor a website for changes? (moving from WebMon to web-based service)

« on: July 13, 2010, 02:09 PM »

Oh, I didn't think of this earlier, Google Reader has a fairly new feature that autogenerates RSS feeds for sites that don't have them. Try just putting in the URL for the web site where it is expecting an RSS URL if you use Google Reader. It works pretty well in my experience (hn.com for example). It also helps if there is a mobile version of the site to point it to.

611

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 4.0 Beta 1

« on: July 13, 2010, 12:44 PM »

Greasemonkey doesn't seem to work with beta 1.
Speed Dial works, but the Tab Context menu setting is not honored.

Your mileage or kilometrage may vary.

612

General Software Discussion / Re: how to monitor a website for changes? (moving from WebMon to web-based service)

« on: July 13, 2010, 12:37 PM »

Isn't this the problem for which RSS feeds were invented? I guess there's a few web sites still not on board.

613

Living Room / Re: A special gift from Veign.com to DonationCoder - thank you!

« on: July 13, 2010, 09:03 AM »

Awesomeness on all sides!

614

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Listary – search all lists in Windows

« on: July 11, 2010, 07:27 AM »

[...]
"/" is on the bottom left corner in the standardized layout, and I thought it was easy to press. I'll make this key configurable in future versions. (see attachment in previous post)
You can use hot keys to run commands as shown in the video if you really hate "Shift" . Everything mentioned in the video and the post is available in the freeware version of Listary, and you don't need to purchase the pro version if you use Listary only at home (not in your office).

-Channing (July 10, 2010, 02:44 PM)

"/" is above 7 on the german language keyboard as well...

-tomos (July 11, 2010, 04:49 AM)

It must be a real pain to type in web addresses, too, then.

615

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 4.0 Beta 1

« on: July 10, 2010, 04:07 PM »

I'm hoping it's just me, but I don't have an exit button. And Alt-F4 is not working either, even in safe mode with all the boxes checked to disable the addons and use all the defaults. So to close Firefox 4 beta 1, I actually have to resort to choosing Exit from the menu.

EDIT: It was just me. Stinking F Lock key. And the X in the title bar (what I was calling the exit button) has mysteriously reappeared.

616

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 4.0 Beta 1

« on: July 10, 2010, 06:46 AM »

I am finding that any add-on that does anything with the search bar engines (not keywords -- although since Firefox 3.5, you can store keywords within search bar engines, an unfortunately underhyped feature) is dead in the water.

• Omnibar
• Drag & DropZones
• Universal Search

617

Developer's Corner / Re: Style guidelines for how to structure helpfiles?

« on: July 09, 2010, 09:07 PM »

Even for advanced users, the flaw of many screencasts are that they are dealing with often basic subject matters. This is not so much the fault of screencasts but screencast makers. It is then unfair to say that a help file is superior when what you're basically saying is that an ideal help file is better than majority of screencasts.

Well of course it is. That's like comparing some cream of the crop apples with some rotten oranges. The inherent properties of video though can still apply to advanced topics - it just depends on how you want your advanced topics to be received.

-Paul Keith (July 09, 2010, 08:46 PM)

I can agree with this and was thinking along the same lines. There's a reason people don't RTFM and it's because there are a lot of crappy FMs. And likewise the reason people like me don't watch screencasts unless it is something fairly technical like LINQ or the Python programming language is, there are a lot of crappy screencasts.  The question I didn't ask, but worth asking, was "What are best practices for good screencasts?"  I do think making a good screencast takes more effort, planning, and rework than making a good help file, so you are very lucky when you find a good screencast, and there are some good ones out there, in particular some of the Microsoft ones.  And Microsoft is good about providing transcripts so that they in effect become searchable. I propose a new acronym: WTFSC (watch the fine screencast!)

618

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY 2011 Teaser: TaskDaddy

« on: July 09, 2010, 02:08 PM »

I didn't know this when I started but Quick Outlook Task by DC member jpijper is very similar what TaskDaddy aspires to be.

It's called a FARR alias there but it actually is a standalone program too, so it works with or without FARR.

It also has a lot of features TaskDaddy doesn't have yet, like calendar support and search, so I'll have to think about whether TaskDaddy is worth developing any further.

619

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Listary – search all lists in Windows

« on: July 09, 2010, 10:56 AM »

I'll have to give this a whirl soon, it looks like it does quite a lot, and the website you have for it is perfect as I am thinking of how to design a page for my NANY 2011 app (see sig). From the screencast I had the impression it takes up a lot of hotkeys but I'll assume it's customizable. Impressive that it interfaces so closely with the Windows UI and works with 64-bit as well (which I have).

620

Living Room / Re: Sitepoint is giving away a free ebook

« on: July 09, 2010, 08:07 AM »

I've read a couple of chapters from Simply Javascript (they were giving away two chapters as a PDF download a while back, it might be worth investigating if they still are), and from what I've seen it is a fantastic book for today's Javascript beginner, a necessary update to the pile of now-worthless Javascript books that popped up during the document.writeln era.

So does this mean the books are on are sale until they are eliminated, or does it mean when there is a winner, there is a sale? (EDIT: Never mind, I read the first post, and I see it is a little of both. And a freebie! )

621

Developer's Corner / Re: Style guidelines for how to structure helpfiles?

« on: July 09, 2010, 07:26 AM »

Interesting conversation -- probably has to do with different learning styles. I was trying to figure out iTunes for a relative's iPod shuffle and I noticed the first thing that appears when you install it is help screencasts, not the program itself. I of course said screw that, and hit Google and dug up lots of outdated information. If I had been in my right mind, I would have checked the help file, but I was too busy thinking that if you can't make a glorified file copy program intuitive, you shouldn't be in the software business.

Anyway there will be a both screencast and a help file for my NANY project, time permitting.

622

General Software Discussion / Re: Clipboard Managing-Which one?

« on: July 08, 2010, 01:33 PM »

@steeladept: CCCCtrlC may be a possibility for you. You might check it out if you haven't already.

623

Post New Requests Here / Re: Idea - Return *new* lines from a text file (w/ example)

« on: July 08, 2010, 12:10 PM »

You just need the common tail utility.

-CWuestefeld (July 08, 2010, 12:05 PM)

I thought of that, but I didn't think it was smart enough to only display the newest lines and not just the last N lines.

624

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Your Next Read - Book Discovery Search Engine (Warning Big Image)

« on: July 08, 2010, 10:16 AM »

With one button it will resize to your desired limits, put a nice border+shadow, copy the path to the clipboard for easy attaching to a post.

-mouser (July 08, 2010, 10:08 AM)

I really need to read that help file some day...

625

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 4.0 Beta 1

« on: July 08, 2010, 09:25 AM »

I installed it despite my instincts to wait for beta 2. And oh if this is the direction Firefox is going, it may finally kick me to Chrome. And oh my, it crawls, it hangs, it uses 100,000K of memory as soon as you open it (although the old one uses about 80,000K, but it was fast so I didn't care. I've got 8GB of memory, so really I don't care, just make it fast) It is slightly but perceptibly slower switching from tab to tab. When I install an add-on, it doesn't switch to the add-ons tab or prompt me to restart. All of which could be simply add-on incompatibilities, but I haven't tested yet.

The only positive sign is that the add-ons page seems to be a work in progress, that seems to be causing some problems. I can only see 5 add-ons at a time, though, maybe it's my settings.

Also as someone noted on Lifehacker, they got "tabs on top" wrong and it doesn't give as much web page real estate as Chrome gives you.

BUT.. this is a beta after all, but I remember the 3.5 betas being really good.