Topics

226

Developer's Corner / Visual Basic: finding out dependent OCX/DLL files

« on: November 24, 2008, 10:08 PM »

this is a topic in view of the ongoing NANY 2009. anyone programming in Visual Basic need to include all DLL/OCX files manualy if they're not using the PDW (package deployment wizard), so i prepared a simple guide to ensure that all the necessary files are distributed together.

Fig. 1


Fig. 2


Fig. 3

227

General Software Discussion / Convert PDF to Word (online)

« on: November 20, 2008, 12:57 AM »

found this site via shellcity.net, works quite well with pdf files containing tables and images.



• http://convertpdftoword.net/Default.aspx

228

General Software Discussion / WSCC - quick access to Nirsoft & SysInternals utilities

« on: November 19, 2008, 08:56 PM »

i did a quick search but couldn't find any entry about this freeware front-end that organizes and displays all utilities from Nirsoft & SysInternals. while you have to download Nirsoft's programs and save them somewhere, SysInternals tools can be accessed from its Live url.

Windows System Control Center is portable and works with relative path (see Fig. 2). plus there is a place-holder to all tools by both of the developers so you can find out what you're missing. of course there's a handy "hide missing items" option to show only EXEs on your hard-drive / usb drive.

you can read more about it from this article in Download Squad.

Fig. 1


Fig. 2


• http://www.kls-soft....om/freeware/wscc.php

229

General Software Discussion / JauntePE - freeware virtualizer

« on: November 12, 2008, 09:30 PM »

JauntePE is quite a popular freeware alternative to make applications portable. it has been mentioned several times before in DC. and today the author Redlar has decided to make the latest release publicly available. its forums has a comprehensive guide on usage so be sure to check it up as well.


• Source: http://www.portablef...52&ts=1226345143

230

General Software Discussion / Open Link Host - Firefox Add-ons

« on: November 11, 2008, 09:01 PM »

sometimes i come across bloggers who deep link to a program's exe or zip files instead of the page. for those type of link, Open Link Host will come in handy as this add-on allows one to open the link's host in either current window/new window/new tab.


• https://addons.mozil...S/firefox/addon/1047


here is an example of what i meant, the link points to the zip file instead of the program's page.

231

General Software Discussion / Process Manager for Windows - use fewer clicks

« on: November 11, 2008, 08:21 PM »

a slightly different and a faster way to change the priority of a process and to end a process.

working with "Process Manager for Windows":
1. Right click in the task bar over any application
2. There are two new options added here "Change Priority" and "Kill", simply click the intended priority or kill the process



• http://processpriori...iki.sourceforge.net/

232

LaunchBar Commander / New arguments other than %file%

« on: November 03, 2008, 03:23 AM »

i noticed that LBC has only %file% variable as its argument. how including support for some others such as %date%, %clipboard%, etc.?

233

Screenshot Captor / Textbox in 'Browse for Folder' dialog

« on: November 02, 2008, 10:07 PM »

just a tiny request, it would be nice if all 'Browse for Folder' dialogs in Screenshot Captor came with a textbox that would allow users to copy/paste and navigate faster.

Sample Screenshot

234

General Software Discussion / Rapid Environment Editor - Freeware Windows environment variables editor

« on: October 18, 2008, 12:39 PM »

just noticed this on shellcity. similar to DC's System Path Commander.

Rapid Environment Editor (RapidEE) is an environment variables editor. It includes easy to use GUI and replaces small and inconvenient Windows edit box. RapidEE supports all Windows versions, including Windows Vista.

-website

• http://www.rapidee.com/en/about

235

DC Gamer Club / Speltorrents.se - for gaming resources

« on: October 15, 2008, 10:25 PM »

this is a good place to look for torrents of gaming demos, patches, trailers etc. the site may be predominantly in Swedish but the torrents are easy to find and the admins maintain that "No copyright protected material is available on this site."


• http://www.speltorrents.se/

236

Found Deals and Discounts / PD Particles on Giveaway of the Day (Sept 28, 2008)

« on: September 28, 2008, 07:31 AM »

i haven't heard of this before but this seems to be a program by the folks behind Project Dogwaffle.


• http://www.giveawayo...ay.com/pd-particles/

237

General Software Discussion / Firefox 3.03 released

« on: September 27, 2008, 04:35 PM »

it seems that release 3.02 had introduced a bug where users were unable to retrieve saved passwords or save new passwords (bug 454708). so upgrade to 3.03 where this issue has been solved.


• http://www.mozilla.c.../3.0.3/releasenotes/

238

Found Deals and Discounts / PPTminimizer 4.0 on Giveaway of the Day (Sept 10, 2008)

« on: September 10, 2008, 06:18 AM »

today's giveaway, PPTminimizer is quite an useful tool for shrinking PowerPoint presentations. Darwin had mentioned about this program on a previous giveaway.

Edit: on a closer look, this giveaway seems to be a time-limited license that will expire at the end of 2008.

*This license is strictly limited to personal use only and it will expire at the end of the year 2008. Companies, organizations, academic and public institutions, etc. are explicitly asked to purchase the program for business use. This free personal edition does not include support or maintenance.

-website

Source: http://www.balesio.c...x.aspx?CID=gotdppt4x



• http://www.giveawayo...com/pptminimizer-40/

239

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Alias: Send Twitter updates from Farr

« on: September 10, 2008, 12:18 AM »

this is an alias to send updates to your Twitter page from Farr. in addition you can also send a 'direct message' and perform a search at Twitter.com which is being touted as a real-time search. This latest update allows users to key-in accented characters without any problems, thanks to mouser & ak_.

usage info
first of all, the latest version of Farr is needed (download from here). once installed, download the twitter alias (click on twitter-farr.zip) and extract the contents into Farr's sub-folder '\AliasGroups\Installed'. If you had installed the previous version at '\AliasGroups\MyCustom', then please delete the alias.

now launch Farr then go to the 'Options' > 'User Variables' (see pic). you will see that there is already an entry for TwitterPlugin. here you can enter your username and password. Click 'Ok' to close then type 'tw' to use the Twitter alias.


this alias can also be updated via DCUpdater. so if you already have DCUpdater, then you can update within the program itself.

btw, this alias uses cURL and the Twitter icon from Fasticon.com and i would like to thank both teams for making this tool and design available.

Edit: updated the download link, thanks to TucknDar.

240

Living Room / 10 Things Your IT Department Won't Tell You

« on: September 08, 2008, 09:48 PM »

TechRepublic's rebuttal on this article published by Wall Street Journal. i thought the article dispensed much basic info, rather innocuous.


• http://blogs.techrep...com.com/hiner/?p=528

241

DC Gamer Club / X-Com: UFO Defense for only $4.49

« on: September 08, 2008, 09:22 PM »

if you're on Steam, you can purchase X-Com: UFO Defense for only $4.49 and the whole set for $13.49. check out this wikipedia article for more info on this seminal game.


• http://storefront.st...AppId=7760&cc=US

242

DC Gamer Club / Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire - Remake

« on: September 03, 2008, 10:15 PM »

younger fans of adventure games genre get to play this classic adventure game with modern graphics. Quest for Glory II was released by Sierra back in 1990 and AGD Interactive has made a faithful recreation of this classic and are releasing it as a freeware. Enjoy!

Also check out this wikipedia article for info on the original version.


• http://www.agdinteractive.com/

243

Found Deals and Discounts / AltDesk 1.8 on Giveawayoftheday (Sept 2, 2008)

« on: September 02, 2008, 02:10 AM »

• http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/

244

Circle Dock / Easy Unicode Paster - Portuguese

« on: September 02, 2008, 12:55 AM »

hey Eric,

your app looks quite promising and i'd like to add some diacritics that i use frequently. i'm attaching the INI file for Portuguese. (note: ü is used in Brazilian Portuguese only).

245

Screenshot Captor / new icon for Screenshot Captor?

« on: September 01, 2008, 04:43 AM »

i think it's high time that Screenshot Captor got a new tray icon that's true colour and all. anyone agreeing with me here?

246

JGPaiva's GridMove and Ahk Tools / a blog post about GridMove

« on: September 01, 2008, 02:14 AM »

just noticed this blog post saying some nice things about GridMove.


• http://pejalai.blogs...r-to-acer-gridvista/

247

Living Room / Has your phone replaced your camera?

« on: August 31, 2008, 03:14 AM »

just curious. with 5MP phone cameras becoming common, has anyone actually ditched their digital camera to use the phone camera exclusively for casual snapshots?

248

Living Room / What's the time? Ask WorldClock

« on: August 28, 2008, 10:31 PM »

i got tired of asking mouser the time before bombarding him with bug reports or feature requests so i googled and came up with this freeware which allows one to view different time-zones.


anyway the purpose is to kind of map out the different time-zones of dc members. this is just a sample i added. (ps. i haven't received any permission for those blanked-out members) do chip in and maybe we will have a collaborative time-zone map soon.



edit: updated with new screenshot.

249

General Software Discussion / dig for Windows - *nix port

« on: August 18, 2008, 09:16 PM »

last week, i was having problems with my ISP's non-working DNS servers and their tech support just ping-ed the name servers and proclaimed all is OK and the problem is with our computers. of course, it's not and our resident server guru Gothi[c] pointed me to this tool called 'dig' which happens to query the DNS and gives out more accurate results. so i downloaded, tested and with Gothi[c]'s help analyzed the output and went to see my ISP's tech support. and it's no wonder that the next day, the name servers were working.

anyway since then, i've learned that Windows comes with a similar tool called NSLOOKUP and there are other GUI-based apps but i'd rather stick with command-line 'dig'.

Dig query output

• http://members.shaw....a/nicholas.fong/dig/

250

General Software Discussion / Do you have a multi-lingual music collection and how do you organise them?

« on: August 18, 2008, 10:18 AM »

i sometimes feel that the current music players are not designed for listeners of multi-lingual audio (music/audio books/news clips). sometimes when i'm listening to music in one language, another will intrude with no warning. i tried separating them by different folders but many players don't understand the folder structure, placing importance on tags instead. but since there is no language tag, it is not of much use.

sometimes it's very troublesome that i resort to modify the genre tag using it as makeshift language tag. so i put my wonderment into words and invite all multi-lingual music lovers to give their input on how they organise their music.

i'm normally listen to music on my PC (WinXP) and my phone (Sony Ericsson) but i'm curious if there are dedicated mp3 players that are able to do a better job.