Messages

37476

Mouser's Zone / launcher tool

« on: April 21, 2005, 03:22 PM »

one of the tools i've been wanting to write for a while is a launch bar.

ie like quicklaunch bar, or True Launch Bar, or Advanced Launcher.

i'm not much on fancy mac osx dock bar looking things, so it would be kinda plain looking..

anyone here use a launch bar and find themselves wishing it had some features it doesnt?

37477

General Software Discussion / anyone using a nice weather tray tool?

« on: April 21, 2005, 03:17 PM »

ive been using weatherpulse, pretty remarkable and free.
i also have weather watcher installed, also free.

37478

Best FTP Server / Re: ASRT: What should we do for 4/23?

« on: April 21, 2005, 01:25 PM »

filezilla server and gltpfd are open source and would be worth a mention.

37479

Official DonationCoder.com Reviews / Re: Corrupt Hardware+Software Reviews , Payola etc.

« on: April 21, 2005, 08:38 AM »

agreed...
when did greed become a virtue?

37480

Official DonationCoder.com Reviews / Corrupt Hardware+Software Reviews , Payola etc.

« on: April 20, 2005, 09:35 PM »

"Details of a payola scheme by NBC tech analyst Cory Greenberg surfaced Wednesday, in which he was receiving upwards of $15,000 a piece from technology companies to positively promote their products on NBC's Today Show. The news underscores an emerging trend of questionable review practices, both online and off. "

http://www.betanews....ch_Payola/1114026025

37481

General Software Discussion / my favorite free (open source even) virtual desktop tool

« on: April 20, 2005, 01:35 PM »

http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/

it just got a new website on sourceforge.
been using this program for years, works great.

ps i use the "Low Profile" icon set, and i configure hotkeys as alt+1 through alt+9 for selecting between 9 desktops.

37482

Living Room / Re: I thank all those who have donated

« on: April 20, 2005, 05:59 AM »

wanted to point out something else.
we have also used the donations by people to this site, to make donations to other people whose free software we use here, so we are spreading the wealth.

we have made donations to smf forum software, inno setup, swfdraw, winpcap network engine, phpdig search tool, and others.

your donations have also funded the purchase of a movabletype license which runs the blog columns.

i think that a bulk of the donations is now going to get spent on an upgrade to a new hosting provider which should give us some space and bandwidth to grow on, since we are just about hitting the ceiling on this host.  on the plus side, i think the new host should provide us with some spare disk space and bandwidth, so if anyone has any suggestions for ways we could put these to good use, please let us know.  we could provide web space to freeware authors who don't have a good web provider, or similar..

37483

Backup Guide / Re: Hello from Genie-soft (and info about discount)

« on: April 20, 2005, 05:06 AM »

for an example of the job-centric approach that i think is more useful for a backup program (as opposed to the approach i complained about in genie), see handy backup: http://www.handybackup.com/

another minor request for genie:
the checkbox in a job labeled "shortcut for this on desktop", i think might be better handled by the approach that retrospect takes, which is basically to have a BUTTON or menu item called "create a shortcut for this backup job"; then you could make it when you wanted and where you wanted.

37484

Living Room / Re: Screen Recorder used by DCC?

« on: April 20, 2005, 04:54 AM »

there is also Wink, which is FREE:
http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

(don't think it does sound though).

37485

Living Room / Re: I was thinking of making a hardware section, opinions?

« on: April 20, 2005, 04:46 AM »

yep, i think having a focus is good, and i think the best thing for us is to add some links to good hardware sites on our links page, and keep our forums here focused on software.

of course if people want to make recommendations about some particular hardware thats great, but we won't make a special section of the forum for hardware, since i think on further consideration it would just spread us too thin; better to have fewer sections and more common talk.

37486

Living Room / Re: Long post about the new 50% Discounts (!)

« on: April 20, 2005, 04:42 AM »

sounds great.

and like i've started saying, the discount codes are meant to encourage people to join, so they shouldn't be posted on public forums,
BUT like everything at donationcoder.com, we aren't trying to be jerks about such things - if you have a couple friends or family or etc who wants the discount code, it's cool to share it with them.  the idea of requiring membership is like everything else here, its really mean to encourage people to join.

 so if you tell someone about why you like donationcoder.com, and suggest they consider joining, then that's good enough for me and you're free to give them the discount code without requiring them to donate to get it.

37487

Living Room / Re: Screen Recorder used by DCC?

« on: April 20, 2005, 04:39 AM »

i used macromedia captivate.
i've tried a lot of them but must admit havent formed a definitive opinion about which is best.

captivate seems to handle audio very well.  it does occassionally hickup when capturing video.

i'd like to do an award for best flash screen capture tool / demo maker - its a great kind of program and identifying the best one would be nice.. there are a lot of them now.  i'm going to check out the bb and see how it compares.

37488

Backup Guide / Info about Handy Backup added to backup guide

« on: April 20, 2005, 04:37 AM »

the backup guide has been updated with a discussion of Handy Backup: http://www.handyback...p.com/pro/index.html


Handy Backup Pro shares almost all of the functionality of Genie Backup Pro, and looks to be an excellent backup program. It is priced at $57 (as of 4/20/05), and a trial version is available for download. Handy approaches some things differently than Genie which may be more appealing depending on your requirements. Backup sets can be created in zip-file compatible format, which can be extremely useful. It is capable of exluding folders based on pattern match, which is something we lamented the absence of in Genie. It also has a job-centric user interface, which we also think is better than the wizard approach taken by Genie. Handy also has a very nice log panel which shows operations as they are performed, which is very nice.

However, the main reason we cannot recommend Handy at this time is the operation of its incremental/versioned backup mode. This is the feature we think is most important and we were not able to convince it to stop backing up all files each time, as opposed to just changed files. Handy also has no support for browsing and restoring files from older snapshots (though because the files are in zip format you can go investigate the files yourself). If these issues were fixed, Handy could easily take over the #1 slot in our document backup award category. And the value of backing up files in zip format may in fact be more important to you than built-in support for viewing/extracting/searching older snapshots. Just make sure you try out the incremental mode and that it works for you.

37489

BrowserTraySwitch / Re: Minor Bugs: Netscape 4.7 not recognized / double icon clicks

« on: April 20, 2005, 03:02 AM »

i tried netscape 4.7 and had no problem (but that was on winxp)
it may be that the short filename issues in win95 mean you have to try using the shortfile version of the full path to netscape, if that makes sense.

37490

BrowserTraySwitch / Re: Minor Bugs: Netscape 4.7 not recognized / double icon clicks

« on: April 19, 2005, 09:37 AM »

btw if users of this program have more suggestions for features to add, read my other posts about some ideas i had and feel free to suggest more features.

37491

BrowserTraySwitch / Re: Minor Bugs: Netscape 4.7 not recognized / double icon clicks

« on: April 19, 2005, 09:36 AM »

hi atom,

thank you for the report.

i've not noticed any issue with 2 right clicks on try tray icon being necesary; if you can figure out anything about this, if it dissapears or reappears, let me know; if anyone else notices this let me know.

i am going to look for netscape 4.7 to see if i can figure out why it might not find it.  see if you can look at the ini file and see if maybe it has to do with spaces in the file name; you can use double quotes to try to handle this "".

37492

BrowserTraySwitch / BrowserTraySwitch tweaks+observations

« on: April 19, 2005, 09:00 AM »

i've noticed some interesting things when testing on dif plaforms and with various dif file extensions.. different browsers use some different strange tricks for different files.

two things: don't be surprised if after you set a browser to be default, the browser itself still reports that its not the default browser, even when it behaves as if it is.  you can try letting it set itsefl to default once, but if it always pops this up when you change browsers back and forth, then just disable the "check if default" for the browser, since its never going to be satisfied; browsertrayswitch doesnt try to change every possible registry setting that a browser might look for in order to satisfy itself.

ive noticed on a new virtual machine that mozilla was complaining about double clicking on .url files, untill i let it make itself the default browser once; after that i could use browsertrayswitch to switch between browsers and double click .urls without issue.

so when in doubt, let each browser make itself the default once - this may let them set up the uniquely wierd settings they want.  BrowserTraySwitch should thereafter be able to switch between them without issue.

37493

General Software Discussion / Re: Agile Project Management Software (free)

« on: April 19, 2005, 05:10 AM »

screenshots look beautiful.

37494

Living Room / Re: First Impressions of DonationCoder.com, and yours?

« on: April 19, 2005, 12:33 AM »

thank you very much zaine for the kind words - makes me happy
i hope we can live up to your expectations.  and anyone who hasn't already been to zaine's software site and blog page, you're missing out!

37495

Mouser's Zone / Re: Any new ideas for small utilities?

« on: April 18, 2005, 08:21 PM »

awww.. don't go

37496

Living Room / Re: Links page - suggestions wanted

« on: April 18, 2005, 06:35 PM »

i've seen your site before and loved it!
it's a really great site and donationcoder.com is trying to do something similar in our reviews/awards as you have been doing for a long time.

anyone who hasn't seen the site go check it out and read the good information at the bottom of the main page.  i agree 100%.

great to have you here

going to add your page to the links page now, don't know how i overlooked it before.. i wonder if we need a new section for great sites like yours to put them in their own category?


ps.
hehe - i remember how i found your site, someone made a post scomewhere about the screenshots in your "image viewer page"

37497

Best FTP Server / Re: ASRT: What should we do for 4/23?

« on: April 18, 2005, 12:09 PM »

ideally it would be great if we could have guest reviewers quite often.
my strategy has been only to review categories that i feel very strongly about and feel i know a fair amount about.
so the ideal situation would be to have a reviewer each week who really knows the area well and feels passionately about it.
so i'm all for guest reviewers.

the only thing i have to make sure about is that the reviews maintain a standard of quality + depth, and at last some continuity in terms of approach to reviewing and evaluating software.

of course i'm not insisting that guest reviewers have the same approach as me - but i don't want guest reviews to seem out of place with the rest of the reviews.  if anyone hasn't read it yet, here is the little thing i wrote up about what i look for in user interfaces: https://www.donation...iews/uithoughts.html .  this is from the awards overview page https://www.donation...ws/Awards/index.html .

the other thing for a reviewer to remember is that the approach on this site has been to make a real recommendation for which program we think is best, considering all things including price.  it's fine to have some ties if programs are really close, but it's important to realize that the purpose is to make a real recommendation so confused users can get some advice on what to buy/use without losing their mind.

i have also been lax in identifying open source alternatives; wherever possible it would be nice to mention the best open source / free ware alternatives (and award them the special open source award if appropriate).

37498

Best FTP Server / Re: ASRT: What should we do for 4/23?

« on: April 18, 2005, 12:00 PM »

some other popular ftp servers:
raidenftpd, http://www.raidenftpd.com/en/ (the interface for this was far to klunky for me last time i tried it)
blackmoon ftp server, http://www.blackmoonftpserver.com/ (this is the one i've used the most and i like it a lot)
glftpd, http://www.glftpd.com/ (open source server for *nix which i hear good things about)
cute's secure ftp server, http://www.cuteftp.com/gsftps/ (looks nice)

37499

Living Room / Re: Should I increase avatar size? Poll.

« on: April 18, 2005, 11:53 AM »

thats not a bad idea at all, and it would be easy to do.
i'm going to try that and also look at some alternate button sets on the simplemachines site and see what's best/
need to do some other things first though.. so much to do so little time.

37500

Best FTP Server / Re: ASRT: What should we do for 4/23?

« on: April 18, 2005, 11:51 AM »

tenseiken if you're up for it this week, i'm game.

be prepared for it taking longer to write than you think.  it takes me most of a day to write my reviews and at the end i'm f*cking exhausted..

Of course i will gladly help, in proofing and formatting, etc, and i can send you a blank html "template" that you can use.  when you decide on what program you are convinced is best (or if there is a tie that's ok too), you can let me know and i'll contact the authors/companies about offering a discount, or you can do that as well if you like and i'll just forward you the basic emails i send out describing the process.

[ i think i've got it down quite well now - i used to do a pretty hard sell about why offering a big discount to our members is such a good think; now that we've done it often enough, i think they realize its a good deal for them. and i've decided that we will reserve the "Specials/Spotlight" page only for programs that have won our awards and offer a 50% discount, so this is a real incentive for the company to offer a 50% discount.  this seems to work quite well for everyone ].

i would like to be consulted with your thoughts as you look at the different servers so i can try them out also and give you my opinion.  i have used an ftp server occassionally but not too much, so i will definitely defer to you, but i would like to make sure we are on the same page in terms of some things, like the importance of things beyond just feature set, like ease of use, security, reliability, and  clean interface.  And my one real feature that i would insist on is support for ssl, but i think they all support that now..

if you're up for it, let's go for it, i think it would be a nice subject for review.