Messages

201

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 8 Fast boot time ? Check this out...

« on: September 17, 2011, 05:06 PM »

@shades: good point. But tiling WM have had a resurgence on linux land too. I much prefer it over floating windows.

202

General Software Discussion / Re: A unified solution for note taking and task management

« on: September 15, 2011, 04:29 AM »

I guess what we are discussing here is: is the human race unable to produce a task manager they like?
Facts:

• The todo list app category is bigger than all other categories together, with new entrants daily.
• Mostly everyone I know has huge problems to use a todo list app beyond the first week. They don't stick to it. People find txt files or even paper superior.

Why does the situation sucks so much? Why do I have to spend hours every now and then checking to see if anyone has made a tool for this that is half good?

/rant off

203

General Software Discussion / Re: A unified solution for note taking and task management

« on: September 14, 2011, 05:42 AM »

What I miss on swift todo and many others is a good 'rapid entry' box that I can call with a global shortcut. Only MLO does this, and not particularly well, I must say. But I learned it's crucial to separate collection and classification. Something that doesn't break my workflow is what I need...

204

Living Room / Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works

« on: September 09, 2011, 03:00 AM »

It's a tablet that can actually replace your netbook. I like it better because I would have used an external keyboard anyway, and on this form factor you can use portrait mode, which is better for coding.

It indeed does what a win7 box would do. As a touch OS it kind of sucks. I could not get it to do the automatic flipping when changing orientation. Forget about smooth scroll, pinch zoom, etc. The OS is waiting for the second click, so all the touch operations really suck compared to an ipad. But you can get real work done on this one. And use a real browser. And play HD video. I'd say it's a winner. I got it for free in intel's AppUp event. The meego OS it came with was prealpha. All attendants I know have installed something else.

205

Living Room / Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works

« on: September 08, 2011, 02:24 PM »

I got an exopc. The touch screen is sort of ok. I wonder if it could be used as a remote controller for another pc...

206

General Software Discussion / insightful post on gui design, and why it can be faster than the command line

« on: September 06, 2011, 08:30 AM »

http://blog.garlicsi...guis-kick-clis-asses



Really, this is spot on.
Might be a good read for people here, who have to deal with GUIs and sometimes make their own.

207

General Software Discussion / Re: a light notetaker/word processor that autohides to the side of the screen

« on: August 31, 2011, 08:11 AM »

and it is not Sensible Note Taker
-but it sure is a rtf note-taker ;-)

$10: http://www.dekisoft.com/snt.htm

-Curt (August 30, 2011, 06:07 PM)

nope, it was free and had the tabs at the bottom.
I'm using stickies for this now. Works ok.

208

General Software Discussion / Re: evernote can actually work offline. Time to reconsider it, as it's damn powerful

« on: August 28, 2011, 08:41 PM »

Hmm, interesting. Could you ellaborate on how to use Windows Live Sky Drive with onenote and multiple comps?
I abandoned onenote partly because of the vendor lockin. Your onenote files are incredibly locked down. with EN we are in a similar situation, but it's mostly html, so export is easier.

209

General Software Discussion / evernote can actually work offline. Time to reconsider it, as it's damn powerful

« on: August 28, 2011, 09:30 AM »

Many people here abandoned evernote when it went 'cloud'.
Well, I don't know how long this feature has been there, but evernote can actually work offline.

Just use 'add notebook' (or press insert on the leftmost panel), and check the box that says 'offline'.

You cannot make offline notebooks the default notebook, which is a pity.

And if you need to sync different computers, you can always put the evernote files on dropbox, wuala, etc. This removes part of the need for paying for evernote, although not all. From a review:


"I found that as a paid user the OCR process usually occurred in less than a minute or two. If I instead logged in using a non-Premium account, the OCR usually took no more than five minutes."

"Paying users also gain the ability to enable other people to both see and edit their notes on the web, making Evernote a powerful collaboration tool for groups to work together (that’s another article all by itself)."

For me this beats rightnote in features and convenience. If you add the rich ecosystem around evernote, we have a real winner. For example, this tool lets you use it as a todo/calendar that matches MLO for my usage.

Compared to rightnote:

• tags actually are useful
  
• good search that highlights the matches
  
• keeps indentation
  
• android support for little things
  
• can geo tag notes
  
• encryption
  
• notes can be detached as windows
  
• does ocr (!)
  
• note previews
  
• doodle note type
  

bad

• ads (but can be hidden)
  
• clipping in opera not as good
  
• cannot do the virtual notes (versioning?) by exporting
  
• no headings, no tree, not good for outlining
  

210

General Software Discussion / Re: a light notetaker/word processor that autohides to the side of the screen

« on: August 27, 2011, 12:06 PM »

Actually, no, it's not that good, I get 'subscript out of bounds' . THe quest continues...

211

General Software Discussion / Re: a light notetaker/word processor that autohides to the side of the screen

« on: August 27, 2011, 11:54 AM »

Nope, it was not that one, but it looks good! Thanks!

212

General Software Discussion / Re: a light notetaker/word processor that autohides to the side of the screen

« on: August 27, 2011, 10:52 AM »

It was not notesHolder. This one supported rtf (bold, etc). I think I found it looking for alternatives to Jarte.

213

General Software Discussion / a light notetaker/word processor that autohides to the side of the screen

« on: August 27, 2011, 06:00 AM »

I know this exists. I installed it once, but cannot find it anymore.
Does anyone know of a a light notetaker/word processor that autohides to the side of the screen? It pops up if the mouse reaches the area where it hides.

It's not quicknote. It has rtf support, and it had something like 10 tabs at the bottom for quick notes. Not Jarte, polyedit, etc either.

Thanks

214

General Software Discussion / Re: InfoQube & TreeSheets: Information managers of the future

« on: August 25, 2011, 11:15 AM »

I found a tool that is almost identical to rightnote: mynoteskeeper. Who copies who, is up in the air, but I find this:
"We are a privately owned software provider located in beautiful Shenzhen, Guangdong China" an indicator that bauerapps was first.

There are some minor differences. No xls note type on mynoteskeeper; less configuration options, but also smaller exe size.

215

General Software Discussion / Re: looking for a [i]single[/i] pane file manager

« on: August 24, 2011, 06:04 PM »

Have a look at freecommander XE. it does single pannel better than TC. And many other things too (hard to believe ).

216

General Software Discussion / Re: InfoQube & TreeSheets: Information managers of the future

« on: August 21, 2011, 06:27 PM »

Meanwhile, I've found a notetaker that I really like. Rightnote, I posted about it before long ago. This tool is a labor of love. If you like oneNote, but fear being locked in its proprietary format, rightnote is the best replacement. Portable. Live search is excellent. It can have different note types, spreadsheets and code. The author is very responsive and releases new versions fast. Probably the best notetaker I know. Its treatment of tags is fantastic. And it can link external files and treat them as notes, that is, index them. It's called virtual notes. This is good for collaborating with people who don't use rightnote. Oh, and it clips snippets with their url. It has displaced cintanotes for me.

217

Living Room / Re: HP announces it's discontinuing all WebOS device development

« on: August 19, 2011, 11:16 AM »

Looks like webOS will survive, and will ship on better hardware:
"Currently, the party line internally to the company is 100% licensing to another hardware manufacturer. There are no talks of selling whatsoever. This is something that most of the employees working with webOS would welcome as the current hardware was not showing off webOS well at all. There have been some indications that this is the case, although HP CEO Leo Apotheker is keeping mum on the future of webOS, at least publicly."
http://thenextweb.co...-webos-hardware-here’s-how-it-really-went-down/

218

Living Room / Re: HP announces it's discontinuing all WebOS device development

« on: August 19, 2011, 10:52 AM »

Maybe this is why:
HP Stock Price Falls 23% to 6-Year Low

Or is this a reaction of the market to them killing the one innovative product they had?
I went to a meego event (intel is the only backer, with nokia dumping it). Meego is prealfa, and quite honestly, it sucks. But it'd be great to have a competitor to iOS and android. In the right hands, it could be great. It's a real linux, running on atom. This is sad news, we are heading for a mono/duopoly on this tech... and this is not good for consumers.

219

General Software Discussion / Re: InfoQube & TreeSheets: Information managers of the future

« on: August 18, 2011, 08:34 PM »

Any chance you would take a video of what you did?
I tried to use it, but discarded it quickly... it just didn't resonate.

220

General Software Discussion / Re: InfoQube & TreeSheets: Information managers of the future

« on: August 18, 2011, 03:09 AM »

@40hz You're welcome  

There aren't that many that are in very active development, part of the market has been taken away by online, sync with smart phone type services.

-rgdot (July 15, 2011, 08:41 AM)

I don't know if this is a good thing. Right now we have PC tools that are very poor because most of the effort is on the phone version. The limits of the phone version are extrapolated to the pc. Even worse, they make a web-based version and wrap it for PC use, losing all the advantages of a desktop native app. Phones are awful to write notes, anyway.

221

General Software Discussion / Re: Implement features that are known to be loved in other programs, on your own

« on: August 17, 2011, 04:59 PM »

I totally understand the complexity of some of these features. Some other, like breadcrumbs, are trivial, though.

-urlwolf (August 17, 2011, 02:42 AM)

See?  This is exactly what I'm talking about.  How are you certain this is trivial?  Are you a developer that has written some "breadcrumb code" into your own app?  Most breadcrumb implementations I've seen seem to manipulate a standard ToolbarWindow32 class control.  Manipulating those controls smoothly in real-time can be a right pain in the arse.

-skwire (August 17, 2011, 01:59 PM)

I know nothing about win GUI programming. In fact, I do almost no GUI programing at all I cannot tell if that's hard or not, other than by stretching intuition. In GTK, thunar does it using buttons, a button per folder in the path. It never turns into a textbox when clicked, though. I think nautilus does something similar.

When you see hardware innovation, you can count that there's a patent preventing others from copying it. Only logitech mice have that free spinning wheel, for example. But in the case of GUIs, it must be just a matter of effort to replicate things. I don't think if you make a component that highlights all search occurrences someone will come after you (I might be wrong; I'm using an EU-centric view where software patents are not so pervasive). Independently of how hard it is, I'm still surprised that softwave dev. is not more 'darwinian'. It takes a long time for innovations to reach all competitors. Opera 5 had tabs, at least 2-3 years before any other browser copied it. Was it that difficult to realize this was a good idea? Or was it so hard that they started copying immediately, but took them that long a time?

222

General Software Discussion / Re: Implement features that are known to be loved in other programs, on your own

« on: August 17, 2011, 02:42 AM »

Hmm, so how about packaging that functionality in components that others can use, and sell the component?
Things like .net, seem to have everything under the sun, how come they don't have say smooth scroll text component or highlight all matches? Looks like cocoa does give you those already wrapped up for use...

I totally understand the complexity of some of these features. Some other, like breadcrumbs, are trivial, though.

223

General Software Discussion / Implement features that are known to be loved in other programs, on your own

« on: August 15, 2011, 05:07 PM »

Something that puzzles me is why programmer do not copy each other more often.
Implement features that are known to be loved in other programs, on your own. Why not?
For example:

1- Live search. That is, you get hits as you type, with context. A good example is cintanotes. When I see other programs implementing search as if it was 1990, I cringe. There's no reason inferior search results display is inflicted on us by mostly all other programs.

2- highlight all matches in search. All browsers do this well. Many text editors (!) don't. Not even word did it before word 2010

3- Have redefinable shortcuts. For all your functions. Very few programs do this consistently.

4- breadcrumbs in file managers. Still some don't have it.

5- rapid entry of tasks, by parsing some simple natural language instead of having to go through a long form. Example: google calendar, MLO rapid task entry

6- Smooth scroll. This is a big one. Really. Get out of browserland, and all other tools scroll like they were running in BASIC on a ZX spectrum. Even text editors. We have incredible GPUs, but your text must jump around the screen. Macs are superior here, scroll is smooth by default in all apps in cocoa.

In this day an age, I do not understand why good ideas do not spread faster. It's not that there are copyright issues. In case of breadcrumbs and XYplorer, DonL said he was too proud to copy this feature. While it may sound noble, is this justifiable? ignoring clearly superior design in the name of... what? honor? lazyness? innovation -my sucky feature may be better if I tweak it long enough-?

224

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: 40% off on Notezilla Sticky Notes Program only on 17th August

« on: August 15, 2011, 06:31 AM »

The development is going on. We are planning to launch the new version in 4-6 months. However, we will not be in a position to immediately offer the new version at discounted price on BitsDuJour, definitely.

Thanks , for all your support.

-conceptworld (August 15, 2011, 05:25 AM)

So then buying at BDJ gives us only 4-6 month of usage. Then we need to pay another $20... considering that we don't know what new features will be in v. 8... it feels a bit of a bad deal to buy it now. I'd gladly pay twice in 6 months for a product that is worth it, but given the excellent freeware in this niche, v. 8 better be a major release...

225

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: 40% off on Notezilla Sticky Notes Program only on 17th August

« on: August 15, 2011, 06:23 AM »

I'm liking notezilla. It'd be infinitely better if it adopted the search from cintanotes