Topics

126

Mini-Reviews by Members / Google Mail Web Clips - RSS support for the email client I like best

« on: July 08, 2006, 03:18 AM »

Google Mail yet again added a nice feature, RSS feeds above your emails!

It's perfect for those you-don't-need-to-read-every-feed-item-feeds that you casually enjoy reading, I like this!

This is how it looks (I added the yellow highlighting) - by clicking the backwards/forward button you can easily browse through new feed items:

The settings are pretty self-explanatory also:

By using the search on that page you can easily add feeds that aren't in Google's standard lists (they added the most popular already for your convenience).


EDIT: How cool! When you switch from the Inbox to Spam, instead of RSS feed items Google will offer links to Spam recipes! I just saw Spam Breakfast Burritos, French Fry Spam Casserole and Vineyard Spam Salad!!

127

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: warn if IE has been running for too long

« on: July 05, 2006, 04:16 AM »

Hi,

I need a script that checks every 5 minutes if iexplore.exe is running - if iexplore.exe has been running non-stop for the last 48 hours, it should pop up a warning.

The script (which I want to add to my main AHK script) doesn't need to be extremely fancy, it's just that I can't come up with a good idea of how to approach this problem...

Reason why: if I let IE (typically several instances) run for several days, a "msiexec.exe" process will sooner or later show up. I'm not totally sure if it's my A/V trying to install something there or whatever, but if I don't close all IE instances, the existance of the "msiexec.exe" process will result in high(er) CPU loads, which result in more noise, more energy consumption and more heat.

I failed in monitoring the "msiexec.exe" process directly (no problem with other processes), Microsoft somehow keeps that info hidden from AHK.

128

General Software Discussion / Will you upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007?

« on: June 30, 2006, 04:12 AM »

I quote zridling to add this poll

If so, let us know. If not, tell us why and what you'll be using instead.

   

(I'm both curious and ambivalent.)

-zridling (June 30, 2006, 03:59 AM)

129

Living Room / Fetching Cody

« on: June 29, 2006, 10:58 AM »

There's a movie!! 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0475271/

130

Living Room / Birthday Calculator - really cool

« on: May 28, 2006, 10:32 AM »

http://www.paulsadowski.com/birthday.asp

Quoted output for a randomly chosen birthday:

As of 5/28/2006 11:28:36 AM EDT
You are 27 years old.
You are 328 months old.
You are 1,430 weeks old.
You are 10,007 days old.
You are 240,179 hours old.
You are 14,410,768 minutes old.
You are 864,646,116 seconds old.

Your age is the equivalent of a dog that is 3.91663405088063 years old. (Life's just a big chewy bone for you!)

There are 220 days till your next birthday
on which your cake will have 28 candles.

Those 28 candles produce 28 BTUs,
or 7,056 calories of heat (that's only 7.0560 food Calories!) .
You can boil 3.20 US ounces of water with that many candles.

Found through http://www.lifehacker.com/

131

General Software Discussion / Running a business on Web-based software

« on: May 13, 2006, 04:50 AM »

Since we had some web 2.0 discussions here (https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=3226.0 for example) I thought this fits in nicely:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=31

One premise of Enterprise Web 2.0 is that Web-based software is beginning to credibly encroach on many solution areas that traditional software previously addressed.  According to proponents, this maturing method of online software delivery provides more usability, convenience, and value.  The flexibility, mobility, and sheer connectedness of Web software is indeed increasingly hard to ignore.  And many of us, consciously or not, are doing more and more of our daily work in the browser, either using applications hosted on the Web, or inside our organizations using Web technology.

132

General Software Discussion / wanted: CLI tool to determine if Internet access yes/no

« on: April 25, 2006, 12:37 PM »

Hi,

I really could use such a small .exe, that maybe would just ping www.google.com and return the state so that I could use it in AutoHotkey. You know of anything?

133

General Software Discussion / not a miracle video, but a miracle regarding videos

« on: April 24, 2006, 03:13 PM »

Oh happy day!

After one of my apps started misbehaving last week for no apparent reason my long term problem with Windows Media video (I hate that format anyway) files fixed itself today!

Maybe a year ago Zoom Player suddenly stopped playing those (even the crappy Windows Media Player didn't play them anymore), and since I couldn't find a fix for that problem I started to use the VLC media player for those files (if I have to, I don't like that format at all!). Today I accidently tried to play a .wmv file in Zoom Player - and it suddenly worked again!

I have *NO* idea why this happened, but hope it will stay this way now

134

General Software Discussion / wget problem - how to download a html page correctly?

« on: April 22, 2006, 05:58 AM »

Hi,

I think we have a few wget (http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/ / http://www.interlog....charron/wgetwin.html) users here?

How do I get it to download a html page without killing all the non-letter characters? 

135

Living Room / wanted: thoughts and ideas about blogs - bloggers join in!

« on: April 20, 2006, 12:04 PM »

I know we have a few bloggers here, so let me ask you these questions:

- if one wants to start a blog, should one be using one of the free services or is there some huge disadvantage?

- if yes: which free services is the best?

- is there a way to easily move blog entries (including containing images) from one blog service to another? (for example when starting with a free service and then moving it to one's own homepage)

136

Living Room / Lifehacker - what, who, why, how?

« on: April 18, 2006, 06:59 AM »

http://www.current.tv/google/GC01153 has a nice interview video (3 minutes) for all of you who don't yet know Lifehacker.

http://www.lifehacker.com/

PS: Cat owners should pay special attention
PPS: Who here besides mouser and me visits their site at least weekly?

137

Living Room / Geek to Live: Develop your (digital) photographic memory

« on: April 18, 2006, 06:50 AM »

http://www.lifehacke...ic-memory-165731.php

I surely won't apply everything from that article, but it has some nice ideas what to use cameraphone or digicam pics for.

138

Living Room / Man Using Paper Clip to Barter for House

« on: April 18, 2006, 06:32 AM »

http://news.yahoo.co.../paper_clip_to_house

Kyle MacDonald had a red paper clip and a dream: Could he use the community power of the Internet to barter that paper clip for something better, and trade that thing for something else — and so on and so on until he had a house?

[...]

Funny idea, and quite astonishing what you can get for a paper clip!

139

General Software Discussion / Databionic MusicMiner - a browser for music

« on: April 15, 2006, 03:16 PM »

The Databionic MusicMiner is a browser for music based on data mining techniques. You can create MusicMaps to visualize the similarity of songs and artists. Explore your music and create playlists based on the paradigm of geographical maps!

http://musicminer.sourceforge.net/

Might be great for those with a big mp3 collection!

140

General Software Discussion / Keep your PC up to date with RadarSync

« on: April 15, 2006, 02:28 PM »

http://www.radarsync.com/

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to figure out which of the software/peripherals/various programs on your computer need to be updated, without a lot of fuss? Enter RadarSync [...]

Read more at http://www.lifehacke...radarsync-167174.php.

It really did find more than a handful of outdated stuff on my PC, nice tool! 

141

Living Room / VideoSift - the best videos from YouTube and GoogleVideo!

« on: April 15, 2006, 07:47 AM »

VideoSift puts the best videos from YouTube and GoogleVideo into a simple Digg-like interface. Good videos float to the top.

http://www.videosift.com/

I watched these:
Once you hear my audio demo, you'll just be blazed!
Clerks 2 Trailer
Pet Store Fun (mouser will love this!)
"Tick" - Global Warming TV Ad - Environmental Defense
Unnecessary Censorship - Jimmy Kimmel
Baseball Prank

Great fun!! 

142

Site/Forum Features / Help us by submitting interesting DonationCoder posts/articles/software to..

« on: April 13, 2006, 09:47 AM »

And if you are using any of these sites, please submit news about DC/the new DonationCredit system there too!

http://boingboing.net/suggest.html

http://news.com.com/2040-1096_3-0.html

http://www.artima.com/spotlight/add.jsp

http://slashdot.org/submit.pl

http://digg.com/submit

http://www.downloadsquad.com/tips/

http://www.betanews.com/submit

http://www.geeknewsc...al.com/geek/contact/

http://arstechnica.c...m/site/welcome.ars/2

http://www.informati....com/contactus.jhtml

http://www.lifehacker.com/

http://www.neowin.ne....php?act=submit_news

http://www.dailytech.com/submitnews.aspx

http://www.osnews.com/submit.php

http://reddit.com/submit

http://www.theregist.../odds/about/contact/

Thanks

143

General Software Discussion / Winamp plugins and additional useful stuff

« on: April 13, 2006, 09:32 AM »

Since we discussed Winamp plugins in various threads I think I should start a topic that focusses on this.

I'm using these plugins for Winamp 5.x:

Toaster, a great track change notifier plugin - I don't like to have Winamp waste desktop space, it's minimized to the tray almost all the time: http://www.winamp.co...etails.php?id=138586

DFX - a great quality sound enhancement (DSP) plugin (not just an equalizer!): http://fileforum.bet.../detail/1030468205/1

PaceMaker - a nice tempo/pitch DSP plugin that allows me to listen to recorded radio shows at 177% of the original speed: http://www.winamp.co...689&show=reviews

Winamp Advanced Controls: https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=2295.0

Mute Hotkey - assign one "global hotkey" to mute/unmute: http://www.nunzioweb.com/daz/

MuchFX - originally I wanted something to switch between the two DSP plugins mentioned above, but this plugin even allows me to run them both at the same time! Just one not-so-cool side-effect: PaceMaker's keyboard shortcuts are disabled when using MuchFX - some info: https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=3078.0

And of course I *have to* mention Skrommel's IdleMute - it's not a plugin, but a real help if you are (for example) using your PC to play music late in the evenings: https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=1580.0 / https://www.donation...m/Software/Skrommel/

144

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: TrayDefaultBrowser - just double-click to switch to another one

« on: April 12, 2006, 09:00 AM »

Hi,

I'd like to be able to use a tiny program where I could *once* set the path to the browsers I'd like to use and then just double-click its tray icon to change the default browser.

It could just display a tray message to show which browser had been selected or (would be extra cool, but more work) could display a new icon according on the browser that's being used.

So something like mouser's BrowserTraySwitch (which isn't working on my system), just with a little bit different approach.

145

Mini-Reviews by Members / MLB/Mouseless Browsing FF extension - MUST-HAVE for every keyboard user!

« on: April 12, 2006, 06:06 AM »

I recently read about MLB/Mouseless Browsing on https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=2842.0

MLB (http://www.rudolf-no...ouselessBrowsing.htm) is a Firefox extension, I chose to install version 0.4.1 Beta.

Basic Principle

Mouseless browsing bases on appending small boxes with unique ids for all links, form elements and frames to the page. You can trigger an action (e.g. following the link) by simply entering the id and depending on the configuration confirming it by pressing Enter.

As DC user vamp07 said in the other thread, I quickly noticed it makes sense to change the delay from 500 to 750 ms and to set the Numpad0 key to toggle visibility of the IDs.

A picture says more than 1000 words, so have a look:

On that screenshot I marked three places, which have so-called IDs:
A = 176 (quote)
B = 180 (shoutcast.com, external link)
C = 188 (reply)

All I now have to do is to quote Carol is to hit Ctrl and type 176, if I would type 180 the new page would open in another tab (depends on how you set up Firefox) and if I would type 188 while holding Ctrl down I'd just reply, without quoting.

This is an extremely helpful extension! Being a true keyboard user I was always annoyed when having to grab the mouse.


These settings are working fine for me (I didn't change the "Styles" tab values):

Google Mail users might want to pay special attention to the setting I highlighted in the last screenshot. By default MLB uses the "/" key of the Numpad here - which allows you to easily jump to Google Mail's search field!

146

Living Room / Micropayments Drive Asian Games

« on: April 09, 2006, 11:08 AM »

Another example of how micropayments could change things:

By now it's expected that major American multiplayer games like World of Warcraft will charge customers a monthly subscription fee. But the news out of Asia's booming gaming market suggests a different approach may be more lucrative: Throw open the gates to your online world, while tempting users with small purchases that help them look good while they're visiting.

While I'm not a gamer, I like the idea!

http://www.wired.com....html?tw=rss.culture

147

Living Room / Giant devil rabbit terrorises village

« on: April 07, 2006, 05:20 AM »

http://www.theregist.../04/07/devil_rabbit/

[...]fear provoked by the attentions of a monstrous, allotment-menacing devil rabbit.

That's according to the Times, which reports that the "Beast of Felton" - a deer-sized, black and brown creature with "diabolically shaped ears" - has already decimated "a market stall's worth of Japanese onions, parsnips and spring carrots".

The first sighting of the Mephistophelean herbivore came back in February. Allotment holder Jeff Smith, 63, recounted: "This is no ordinary rabbit. We are dealing with a monster. It's absolutely massive.
[...]

Too bad there are no pics (yet)

148

Living Room / Firm pitches $2,800 64GB USB Flash disk

« on: April 07, 2006, 05:13 AM »

http://www.reghardwa...cey_64gb_flash_disk/



Yes, that's 64 GIBABYTE! Nice!

149

Post New Requests Here / DONE: DimSaver, a better PowerDimmer screensaver alternative

« on: April 06, 2006, 05:11 AM »

Hi,

in https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=1998.0 LuckMan212 told us about PowerDimmer (http://www.whitsoftdev.com/powerdimmer/). While it is working pretty good, it has several flaws:

• it doesn't always react on key presses
• it disables itself even when no key is pressed, for example when another app brings up a new window or popup.
  

Also, it would be especially cool for such a screensaver to allow different dimming settings for day and night - dimming to the same level makes it now hard to recognize the dimmed screen content at day when it's perfectly set for night use.

So, is anyone here up for the task?

150

Mini-Reviews by Members / calcr - perform calculations online *including* virtual tape!

« on: April 05, 2006, 06:29 AM »

http://calcr.com/

Web site calcr offers users a very simple but useful online calculator.

As you perform your calculations, calcr dynamically creates a tape that tracks each calculation. Calcr can handle parenthetical expressions like (3+2)*5 and can also support several functions (e.g., abs, sin, cos, tan, asin, acos, etc.). In all, calcr is a quick, easy, and elegant online calculator.

Found on http://www.lifehacke...ith-calcr-164360.php

I like it - now I just have to remember another URL