Messages

201

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommendations for project/schedule management software (besides MS Project

« on: July 02, 2007, 12:37 PM »

I've looked at some of the "Web 2.0" project management solutions, especially Basecamp: http://www.basecamphq.com. Great little app, but a bit light for real project management IMHO.

One of our departments here also uses dotProject. It's web-based and we host it internally, but I HATED using it. Klunky, hard to use, more confusing than MS Project though I wouldn't have thought it possible. The IT guys seem to like it though.

Zoho also has a project management component of their suite, but I haven't really tried it yet. Free (for now) for one project, >1 starts @ $5.

202

General Software Discussion / Re: ZoneLabs makes the worst garbage ever!

« on: July 02, 2007, 12:28 PM »

I've used the free ZoneAlarm firewall for years, without any incident. It does have a few flaky things, such as I 've seen it block things even when it wasn't supposed to. But I've never had anything like the problems described.

My chief complaint these days is that they bundled their anit-spam product in the latest upgrade to the free version. This thing was dog slow and crashed Outlook frequently, but it wasn't to tough to get rid of it, and it's hard to complain too much about a free program.

But yeah, ZA is definitely slow, especially when starting up. Once running it's pretty trouble free though, at least for me.

Whether I actually need it or not is another question. 

203

General Software Discussion / Re: The GIMP/PhotoFiltre/Paint.net/etc., thoughts...

« on: June 26, 2007, 12:27 PM »

Plus stability. I have never gotten GIMPshop to run successfully, but GIMP runs just fine.

I wondered if it would have a parent window with pallets (instead of 3 separate windows that they use for some ungodly reason in normal The GIMP).

Hirudin, I guess you are not a MAC user! I think GIMP was initially intended to be a Linux clone of the Mac version of Photoshop, and when it jumped the fence to Windows, it brought its Mac-style UI with it. Unlike in the Windows world, not everything is contained inside of a top-level window on the Mac.

204

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Grab contents of an on-screen list

« on: June 20, 2007, 03:27 PM »

Thank you both JoTo and Skrommel!

I'll use the AHK script first, then check out SysExporter when I have some time. Sounds like a good one to keep in the toolkit.

I appreciate the script because I am trying to learn AHK and it helps to see how the "pros" do it! 

205

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Grab contents of an on-screen list

« on: June 20, 2007, 09:29 AM »

Thanks for the replies, Mouser & Boxer!

Kleptomania uses OCR to recognize the contents of window regions. That really seems like the long way around! It's definitely the most flexible solution, since many programs will use custom text display methods and not necessarily the Windows controls. It would work even with a Flash application, for example.

But for a simple windows app using a simple Windows list box, I'd think simply accessing the list through the Windows API would be much simpler. AutoHotKey has this capability - I've played around with it a bit - I just haven't had time to really dig in and get it working. I'm a very occasional dabbler in AHK, so I just thought that what might take me many hours of dev time to work through would probably be fairly trivial for a wiz like Skrommel.

It's neat that SnagIt can do this, too, but SnagIt is definitely overkill for this one task. Plus it's $$$. Hmmm... maybe this could be a future enhancement to Screenshot Captor?

206

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Grab contents of an on-screen list

« on: June 19, 2007, 02:59 PM »

I know this one is pretty simple, but I haven't been able to work it out in AHK myself yet, so I thought I'd post it.

I have several programs that display information in a standard list view, but make it difficult to get at that information in a format I can work with. I'm working with a couple of programs that use a binary format when they save the list data to disk. I can manually go through and scrape the list data out of the binary file, but it's drudgery.

It would be nice to have a tool that would let you click on a visible list view, and would "suck up" the entire list and place it on the clipboard. You could then paste it into a text editor and do whatever was needed to it.

Options might include whether to separate list columns with commas, tabs, or a custom character.

207

Site/Forum Features / Re: ReadMe: Find out and rant about bad companies

« on: June 18, 2007, 03:53 PM »

Just to add to the link list, Ed Foster's GripeLog at http://www.gripe2ed.com is a terrific resource for problems with software and hardware vendors. Ed's been doing this for years (first with InfoWorld magazine, then on his own, and now back with InfoWorld again.)

What's better is that Ed is actually an advocate for his readers, often getting involved and talking directly to the companies on the receiving end of a gripe. (You may find it hard to believe, but some companies will actually respond more snappily to a reporter from a nationally syndicated magazine than they will to one of their own paying customers! Shocking but true!!  )

Ed also fights the good fight for all software users by blowing the whistle on shady licensing schemes and marshalling opposition to bad laws like the UCITA amendments "big software" tried to enact into law without anyone noticing. He also maintains a list of the most griped-about companies.

A great read, even if you don't have a rant. People should be required to spend an hour at his site before they're issued a software buyer's license. 

208

General Software Discussion / Re: The GIMP/PhotoFiltre/Paint.net/etc., thoughts...

« on: June 15, 2007, 03:05 PM »

I feel like I can't let this opportunity go by to mention MediaChance: http://www.mediachance.com. This is a neat company and they make some great software (and a number of nice freebies.  )

They make an app called PhotoBrush that is reasonably priced @ $45. From their website:

PhotoBrush is...
Image Editor - Photo-Brush has all the necessary tools for editing and adjusting digital images: Adjusting levels, Gamma, RGB curves, Hue/Saturation, Brightness/Contrast and more..

Photo Retouch - With its special brushes and tools you can remove unwanted parts of your images, clean scratches, remove Red-Eyes, Clean skin of portraits, Cloning with Rubber stamp and more...

Painting Program - Photo-Brush is also an excellent painting program with its Pressure Sensitive tablet support. With texture painting, Artistic, Natural or 3D brushes you can create any work of art. With Cloning you can turn your photos into paintings.

Filter Heaven - There are many filters already build-in, but Photo-Brush can also use Adobe PhotoShop (tm) compatible Plug-Ins as well. It can run the plug-ins from anywhere in your computer, even from network drives.

Texture Generator - Create amazing seamless textures from any part of your photographs or paint your own. Use them on your web page, or retouch your images with them.

A lot of Fun - Try Warping or add a great touch with Image Nozzle! Add Lens Flare, Sparkles, Age the picture, Replace colors or Colorize black & white pictures; Add cool text in 2D, 3D, and drop shadow.

They also make a very cool drawing/painting hybrid program similar to Micrografx's Picture Publisher called RealDraw Pro.

Although I've known about them for years, I've never really bought any of their software, which is kind of inexcusable. It was aways some combination of reluctance to give up what I was already using and indecision about whether to buy one program or spring for one of their excellent bundles.

But if you're now in the market for a new photo editing tool, definitely give them a look. They have free trials of all their apps, and their store page kind of insists that you download a program and try it out before spending your money on it - which to me says a lot right there about the quality of their offerings.

209

General Software Discussion / Re: How to make a video from a sequence of images?

« on: June 14, 2007, 05:01 PM »

Checked at one of my favorite freeware sites, http://www.freewarehome.com, and came up with these:

ImagetoAVI -  ImageToAVI will quickly convert a list of image/picture files into an AVI video.  File formats supported: input: BMP, JPEG, and GIF, and AVI video --> output: standard AVI video and BMP picture ( AVI to BMP pictures ). --- Audio input supported: WAV audio (PCM format).

ImageToAVI is actually more geared to making a slideshow-style movie of your pictures, but you might finagle it into doing what you want.

Note: Version 1.0 is still free, version 1.1 is $6 shareware, make sure you download the correct file!

SoftCodez AVI Maker - AVI Maker is a simple, but Useful Video Creator, using AVI Maker you can create custom designed AVI Video Files. Just create Bitmap files and using AVI Maker convert it into AVI Video Files.

You'd have to convert your JPEGs to BMPs, but IrfanView can handle this in a trice.

Good luck!

210

General Software Discussion / Re: The GIMP/PhotoFiltre/Paint.net/etc., thoughts...

« on: June 14, 2007, 04:28 PM »

I've never been able to get Gimpshop to run either. GIMP by itself runs fine though.

I've tried to make GIMP my primary image editor, but I keep falling back to my old copy of Paint Shop Pro 7 just because it starts up so quickly and I know it so well. However GIMP has the one tool from Photoshop that I really love and that PSP7 lacks, which is the ability to paint on the mask layer.

GIMP has a little bit of that "all over the place" feel you get from OS apps sometimes. Like, effects are in two different menus based on whether they are binary filters or scripts. As a user, do I care how the effect works "behind the scenes"? No. But OS software is designed by techies for techies (what do you mean you're not a programmer?  ) and so the usability is not up to what you'd get from a commercial app like Photoshop. I still often find myself hunting through the GIMP menus for the function I want.

Also, the documentation is just sub-par. I want to punch my screen every time I see that "Eek! A help is missing!" message (which is all the time!) To me, it's like I can hear the developers saying "it is so humorous to us that you can't figure this out, you clueless noob" in some vaguely Scandinavian accent.

But rants aside, I like GIMP overall, and it has really progressed recently. If you haven't looked at it in a year or so, definitely check it out - it's grown up quite nicely. It is a decent competitor for Photoshop for certain things, such as web graphics and hobby photo editing. It's not really capable of professional work though, due to lack of stuff like color calibration tools and its lack of support for CMYK color.

211

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Microsoft OneNote 2007

« on: June 14, 2007, 03:19 PM »

More of an automated copy - create new page - paste - insert URL of origin job... 

But what more do you you want? It's two-click solution to move blocks of content or entire pages into OneNote from Firefox. I suppose if there was a toolbar button, you could save a click, but that's a bit nit-picky IMHO. (Not that there's anything wrong with that...  )

The need to setup the path to the OneNote EXE file was in the readme file or on the website as I recall.

212

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Microsoft OneNote 2007

« on: June 12, 2007, 04:34 PM »

Does OneNote have an extension for Firefox? I tried OneNote 2003 back in the day but uninstalled it because I couldn't clip from Firefox. I would rather give up OneNote than Firefox!

-edbro (June 02, 2007, 07:48 PM)

Yes, there is an add-in that lets you clip from Firefox and it works fine. It shows up on the context menu when you right-click on a page or text selection. Info comes into OneNote just as if you'd clipped it from IE.

One checkmark you can add to the "pro-MS" column is their developer base. Other note-taking programs may be extensible, but many are not, and even if they are, the number of developers targeting them is bound to be tiny. Since anyone who develops for MS Office is capable of writing add-ons for OneNote, the potential pool of developers (and available technology) is quite large. There is already a good number of plug-ins that extend the functionality of OneNote. The Firefox add in is just one example. Check out the list at the OneNote PowerToys list.

213

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Microsoft OneNote 2007

« on: June 01, 2007, 07:41 AM »

Thanks for this review, John. I'd been considering writing it myself but you beat me to the punch. I downloaded the trial of OneNote 2003 and although I really liked it, I decided it wasn't quite what I wanted. When they released ON2007 I got the trial again, and almost immediately bought the program. I feel like they've gotten it just about perfect, at least by my criteria.

What has changed? In a word: TABLES! ON2003 didn't really handle them, but ON2007 has them, and although it's no Excel or even Word, I think the implementation is good enough. No support for tabular data was a deal-breaker for me in 2003.

Zaine, thanks for the note about the "cut doom" problem. I hadn't noticed that  - I mostly put stuff into ON, & haven't done really been taking stuff out yet. Autosave is definitely a double-edged sword, but one that I happen to like. Not having to press the "Save" button every few minutes is a leap in usability as far as I'm concerned.

Tags are in OneNote, but the implementation is a little weird. You can have as many tags as you want, but you can't create them on the fly by just typing in keywords (which to me is the "right" way to do tags.) Instead, there is a task pane and a toolbar that are used to manage tags.

A tag consists of a keyword(s) combined with an icon and optional formatting options such as "red background, yellow text, underlined." The icon appears in a toolbar, and clicking it will apply the tag to the currently selected item or the item where the cursor is currently positioned. The tag's icon then appears in the margin next to the tagged item, and any tag formatting is applied to the text. The up side to this approach is that tags are not page-based, they are more like paragraph-based, which lets you tag info at a pretty fine level of detail.

You can modify the built-in tags, as well as create new ones, re-order them, etc. Ordering is kind of important, as the first nine tags in your list automatically get assigned non-configurable hotkeys. There's no way that I can see to assign hotkeys to any other tags than the first nine. If you have too many tags to fit on the toolbar, you'll need to keep the task pane open to apply them. Another task pane lets you view all the items in the notebook grouped by tag.

I always liked the free-form nature of OneNote and the ability to effortlessly mix and match different types of content on a single page. Although this is still not as seamless as it could be, and there is occasionally some funkiness when trying to combine text and graphics, I think OneNote does this more successfully than any of the other PIMs I've looked at.

I also find the ability to integrate OneNote to-do items with Outlook Tasks surprisingly useful. OneNote's linking capabilities are pretty terrific, too. I even have a shortcut on my desktop that links directly to a frequently-used OneNote page.

214

General Software Discussion / Re: Converting from FLV to AVI

« on: May 30, 2007, 03:47 PM »

Recently came across this one: http://www.smallvideosoft.com/

Look for Freez FLV to AVI converter (also handles FLV --> MPEG, FLV --> WMV).

Tried it out and it worked fine, but I didn't look for lip synch and I only ran it on a short clip.

They have other freebies too, like an iPod converter.  Yay freebies!

215

Developer's Corner / Re: Thriving Office: Background Sounds for Small Businesses

« on: May 24, 2007, 05:13 PM »

...boosts confidence, fosters concentration and increases productivity.

That's the first time I've ever heard these claims made for the noisy, distracting environment of the typical cube farm!

Still, I'd love to listen in on a call with someone at minute 40 when all the background noise suddenly goes dead. Hopefully this would coincide with some opportune moment in the conversation . . .

Freelancer: (on the phone with noisy office sounds in background) So it sounds like we have everything you're looking for, then.

Big Prospective Client: Yes! I'm glad I was given your number. I did have one more question, though. Can you be at all flexible on your price?

Freelancer: (sudden absolute dead silence)

216

Living Room / Re: Visual-syntactic text formatting - cool paper about optimally formatting text

« on: May 24, 2007, 04:51 PM »

When I see something like this, it makes me realize how superficially we have scratched the surface of the computer's potential. Deep changes are still waiting to be discovered.

Have you ever tried to read documents from the 17th century, with their arcane lettering, spelling, formatting and punctuation? Sometimes I think that's how our grandkids will view the books, newspapers and magazines we all grew up with.

Great find, Mouser. Thanks! 

217

General Software Discussion / Re: PIM's

« on: May 24, 2007, 04:39 PM »

Here's one that used to belong to Symantec I believe.
It's quite pricey-$200.00.
Probably the ultimate PIM.

http://www.act.com/

-cmpm (May 10, 2007, 10:48 AM)

Given that this forum is a bit skewed toward the freeware/shareware crowd, I don't know how seriously anyone would be looking into a $200 PIM. But if you are, you might want to keep looking.

ACT is in some ways a great PIM, especially for a small office that needs to share data. But the program has a troubled history and it frequently turns up in articles over at Ed Foster's Gripelog site. (http://www.gripe2ed.com). You might want to check out it out before shelling out the $$$. I know some people who use older versions of it, and I've always found it klunky and very counter-intuitive to use. At this point, probably the only people who should seriously consider ACT are the ones who have already bought into it as a platform.

An up-and-coming contender for best PIM might be the new Scrybe web application (that also runs when you aren't connected to the web!). They certainly have the best demo. http://www.iscrybe.com.

My vote for the "ultimate PIM that's too expensive" still goes to MicroLogic's InfoSelect, which costs a hefty $250 (Palm pilot version extra) but packs in so much functionality you might actually think it's worth it. Of course, I've never actually used Info Select. Too expensive. 

But I just now noticed that they offer a trial download, which for years they never did! Maybe I'll finally take it for a test run!

P.S. - Awesome summary table, crono!

218

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review of Print2Flash (Virtual Printer)

« on: April 26, 2007, 04:18 PM »

Just had to chime in with one more thing. I struggled for about an hour to get Print2Flash working properly on my machine with MS Publisher. I got it to print correctly exactly once. Word and "Print Test Page" both worked fine with it, but it just ignored Publisher's print jobs.

Or so I thought.

As I monkeyed around trying to get it to print from Publisher, I kept tweaking settings, printing, tweaking settings, printing. I tried printing to the driver and printing directly from the Print2Flash app, even printing from the context menu. Every time, the print dialog would display the progress bar saying it was printing to the Print2Flash Printer on port "ne09:" (or something like that) but when the progress dialog disappeared, the Print2Flash app window would not come up, or if already up, would not respond. The Print2Flash Printer control panel never showed any jobs pending.

The infuriating part came later. I am on a network, and after I printed something else, I walked over to the network printer, and there were dozens of identical print jobs there! Print2Flash was somehow passing all the print jobs through to the default printer! Since I had been toying with custom page sizes, the print queue had stalled while the printer waited for someone to load the custom paper. More time and paper wasted while I straightened out the mess. Thankfully no one else was waiting for a critical print job.

It is off my hard drive now. No thanks. 

219

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review of Print2Flash (Virtual Printer)

« on: April 26, 2007, 12:21 PM »

Good review, thanks for the heads up.

I somehow got the impression that the entire app went for US$20. (I guess my eyes just gravitated to the word "Starbucks"  ) When I found it it was actually $80 I was a bit surprised.

Adobe's own FlashPaper application is $79, which makes me wonder why you'd want this app over the one from the publishers of Flash. US$60 for a version with most of the functionality disabled is a bit of a wash for me, frankly.

Since this program really has only one competitor (FlashPaper) I'd have liked to see more of a head-to-head comparison. The whole PDF thing seems to me to be a bit of red herring. It's not really relevant to which app is better at creating Flash-based documents, the entire purpose of which is to avoid using PDF. PDF output is worth a mention maybe, as the two apps are almost identically priced and such a feature might tip the scales for one or the other, but it seems to have displaced any discussion of the real differences in the functionality between the two apps when used for their main intended purpose.

Also, the ability to remove a logo from my document is not really a feature or a benefit in this case. FlashPaper would let me create a document without logos to begin with! I see this more of a ding for Print2Flash than a benefit. Not letting you at least disable the company's logo spam in an app you've paid $60 for is really kind of inexcusable.

When I thought Print2Flash cost US$20, I was trying to figure out how soon I could afford to buy it. At $60, I might still be somewhat interested, if it weren't for the logo thing. But at $80, I'll probably just give it a pass.

220

General Software Discussion / Re: Software for planning wood bookcases/cabinets/tables etc?

« on: February 08, 2007, 11:06 AM »

For this kind of project, SketchUp is a great choice. MUCH simpler to use and faster to learn than a "regular" CAD program. There's a free version available from Google that you can try out.
http://sketchup.google.com/ It's supposed to be mostly for adding 3-D buildings to Google Earth but you can use it for anything.

Working with SketchUp is much more intuitive than slinging polygons as you must do in many 3-D apps, and much more like working with real objects. Want to cut a hole in a board? Draw the board (elongated cube) then use the circle tool to draw a circle on the board (the pencil automatically snaps to the board's surface) then cut out the circle. If you ever tried to do this in a traditional 3-D app, wrestling with triangulation or subdividing polygons or object intersections, you'll appreciate how radical this simple approach is.

In short, if you want to learn a CAD program, buy a CAD program, but if you want to quickly produce some useful 3-D drawings, check out SketchUp.

Before Google bought them, the company that actually wrote this app (@Last Software) seemed like a pretty cool outfit. I always liked SketchUp, but couldn't afford it at the $500 price point. The full version (now called Sketchup Pro) is still available from http://www.sketchup.com/?id=2. 

The main benefits for which you need the Pro version are:

• Export 3D models to CAD and other 3D formats.
• Export 2D vector images.
• Create multi-page design documents and presentations.
• Arrange and annotate multiple scaled images on a single-page.
• Create customized elements and symbols for your presentations using 2D Vector graphics toolset.
• Create, document and present your designs using a single software package.
• Receive professional email technical support.

221

General Software Discussion / Re: Good Freeware Video Editor?

« on: January 19, 2007, 02:34 PM »

Just a side note - ZS4 (ZweiStein 4) and Wax are both video compositors, rather than straight-on video editing programs, so the learning curve might be a bit steeper.

ZweiStein in particular shows some real promise - if you check out the videos on their website of what it can do, it's pretty impressive. Unfortunately, my main PC is too underpowered to run it, so I haven't really been able to play with it as much as I'd like.

I use Sony Movie Studio (Vegas Lite, really) and have been very happy with its capabilities.

222

Official Announcements / Re: Anyone feel like doing some semi-regular original blogging at donationcoder?

« on: January 08, 2007, 03:54 PM »

I'd also be interested. Were you thinking along the lines of a rotating spot, or hosted sub-blogs? Something like a regular column on the site?

I have a blog that I started on using older hardware/software, but it just kind of turned into my personal blog. I'd love to do something a bit more focused.

223

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Vista EULA to users: Go to hell!

« on: October 23, 2006, 03:24 PM »

NeilS, adopting software with a nasty EULA is like playing the backwards lottery. You are betting that you won't be the one to get the hammer dropped on you. But no matter how good the odds are, it's still a bet.

Josh said:

Heck, I bought the XP license I am using now for $25 and that covers a full copy of WinXP MCE 2005.

Oh, please share! How does one achieve such a remarkable feat? If it's part of your MSCE cert or requires you to register as an MS OEM, then it's hardly fair to tout it as a viable option for very many people. Unless you include the costs of meeting such requirements in the price.

...which is why OEM's get such a good discount for the software.

Hey, it's great that OEMs get such a good discount for Windows! Too bad they aren't the ones who have to USE that bargain basement copy of Windows. Jump over to Ed Foster's Gripelog at gripe2ed.com (or more to the point, to this specific article)  and you can read about the OEM cusotmer whose motherboard died, and when their local PC shop swapped in a new one, Windows wouldn't run due to product activation. MS woudn't help them - "OEM isue" dont'cha know - and the OEM wouldn't help them either. So because the OEM saved some money on the Windows license, the end user is looking at having to pony up for a full retail copy, in addition to the copy they have. Hardly a savings. And who makes the determination that the mobo is the piece of hardware that defined the "computer" the license was attached to? Is a computer with a different motherboard a different computer? This OEM said yes. And I'd bet the same argument could be made for a PC with a different hard disk or, these days, even a new video card, if a vendor were so inclined.

And it you say "well, doen't buy from that OEM," that's certainly easier said than done. Dell doesn't offer you the option of a full retail license if you buy a machine from them. Neither will any of the other major PC vendors. (It's my understanding theat MS does not ALLOW them to.) So where are you supposed to find this "other OEM" that will sell what you're seeking to buy, when all OEMs are goverened by the same central licensing policy, set by Microsoft? Can you point me to a single vendor who sells their computers with a pre-installed, full retail version of Windows, with appropriate disk and documentation, including the approriately installed drivers for the vendor's hardware?

At least with XP you have the option of installing a full retail license if you can swallow your indignation and spit up $100 or $200. Seems like with Vista that won't even be an option. This stuff is not just intended for what they say it's intended for. It's also cudgel marketing.

224

General Software Discussion / Re: Free 3D Box Shot Maker

« on: October 23, 2006, 02:41 PM »

...will make your software outstanding, and easily defeat your competitors at the start.

This is so cool - worrying about things like performance, stability, and a compelling feature set was always such a pain anyway...  now programmers can stop wasting time on such trivia!

225

DesktopCoral / Re: Multiple screens?

« on: October 17, 2006, 12:39 PM »

Just tried to use it for the first time on my newest multi-monitor setup. No love. (sniff). Guess I'll wait for the update liek the others.