Messages

6126

General Software Discussion / Re: Mp3 catalog/database programs

« on: March 07, 2006, 02:07 AM »

I downloaded musikcube recently and played with it, and I actually did like it.  But I'm so hooked to the increasingly sluggish winamp and my skins and plugins, that I can't even attempt a transition yet.  And I never use a player's own cataloguing system.  I just feel like that playing and cataloguing are two distinct functions that should be done independantly.  If no one's noticed yet, I'm very, very hesitant to use any all-in-one devices.

Same goes for mediamonkey, although I haven't really tried it.

When I found out about collectorz a few years ago, I was pretty active on their forum and they were really responsive and helpful to new features and suggestions.  I'm barely ever there anymore, but I assume they are still good about all that.  Although I've noticed the new versions come out much less frequently now, I think that is more attributed to the fact that the program has matured well.

The other program I was talking about was this one:
MP3 Archive Manager
http://www.audioinfosystems.com/

He also does a movie collection program and the bitrate labeling program I mentioned in my first post.  Although I haven't used his cataloguing programs, I have a really good gut feeling about this guy's programs.  He seems to have a good philosophy and intelligent approach to his software.

The only reason why i don't even attempt to try his stuff out is because I have absolutely no complaints with collectorz.com yet.  This might very well be the case where there are more than one really excellent solutions to the same problem.  I have a feeling that audioinfosystems may be a bit more minimalistic than collectorz, but also, I feel like his program may be able to handle extremely large collections more efficiently than collectorz.

This is probably the most you'll ever see me write about a software I have never even downloaded!  For some reason, I'm fascinated by his programs.  I swear, it's all speculation, I really have no reason for any of this other than a gut feeling!  weird...

6127

General Software Discussion / Re: Corporation grade email/scheduling solution (like Outlook or Groupwise)?

« on: March 07, 2006, 01:51 AM »

Yeah, you know, I don't know anything about how Groupwise is actually administered.  We are using version 6.5 I think, and an even older version of the server (although I'm not positive).  It's just such a plain and unimpressive program.  I'm sure there's a lot of things set up under the hood that makes it somewhat attractive to the IT (as I found out when I almost ranted against it to one of the IT guys), but the end user stuff is just so dull and limited.  I mean, you can't do anything with the emails, just read and write back pretty much.  It doesn't even allow you to use the ">" symbol for replies.  I can count the tweaking options for the entire end user interface on one hand.  In my opinion, it's just crappy.

Like I said, I'm no fan of Outlook, but this makes Outlook seem like a filet mignon.  I really really hope the director makes a big push for Outlook, and hopefully the IT department will just have to suck it up and deal with it.  There's no reason to give the users the crappiest interface possible just because it's easy on the IT department.  I'm sure there are ways to make Outlook/Exchange just as secure as Groupwise.

6128

Best E-mail Client / Re: What's with all the blank lines in emails recieved from Outlook users?

« on: March 06, 2006, 07:27 PM »

Yes, I'm pretty sure that's it.  But why does it do that?  It's one of the most annoying things about using email.  I'm a plain text guy when it comes to email, I don't have a lot of patience for all the formatting and stuff, I mean, all we're doing is talking to each other, it's not a freakin presentation.  But to each his own...still, that Outlook spacing is ridiculous, especially when you hit reply and you get that > symbol on a ton of blank lines.  Sometimes I find myself manually going through and deleting the blank lines in my reply, then I ask myself "why am I even bothering to do this", then I get mad at myself for being so anal, then I get mad at Outlook for making me like this, then I get just cranky at software in general.

Take a chill pill...yes, I know.

6129

General Software Discussion / Mp3 catalog/database programs

« on: March 06, 2006, 07:07 PM »

I know we had previous discussions about the best mp3 tag/renamer previously, so here is a complementary topic:  good mp3 catalog programs.  I don't have time to do a full-blown review right now, but my vote goes to MP3 Collector from:
http://www.collectorz.com

It's great, I've used it for years.  It's highly customizable, etc.  All the things a poweruser could want.  I'd also be interested in others' opinions.  Other programs I've run across are:

Mp3rat
http://www.kaylon.com/mp3rat/
It's by the maker of Powermarks, the best web bookmarking program ever.  Honestly, I've never tried the program, but if it's by the same author, I assume it's a good program with some interesting features, possibly.

There's another program that I've never tried, and the name escapes me right now, but it's by the same guy who wrote a program to automatically scan directories and attach the bitrate to the folder name.  I'll post the actual name and link when I get home.  Anyway, he mentions that his program is extremely efficient and can scan thousands of mp3's in very little time.  Anyway, just based on the author's reputation, I'm assuming it's a good program also.

6130

General Software Discussion / Re: Corporation grade email/scheduling solution (like Outlook or Groupwise)?

« on: March 06, 2006, 06:43 PM »

Here's a better question...what's better for a corporate collaboration system:  Novell Groupwise, MS Exchange/Outlook, or Lotus Notes?

6131

Living Room / Re: firefox made 72 million dollars from click ads last year

« on: March 06, 2006, 06:41 PM »

Wow, if those 120 employees get a cut of that $72M, then they made some good bank.

6132

Developer's Corner / Re: Tour of Programming Languages

« on: March 06, 2006, 01:40 PM »

Oh man, I love the attitude this guy has in his essay, it's great.  Check this line out:

On the other hand, in addition to being a language, a virtual machine, a huge set of class libraries, a security model, and a portable bytecode format, Java is a religion. So you can't trust anyone who loves it too much. It's a tricky business to hire good Java programmers.

  I don't know, that made me laugh out loud.

Oh my gosh, I'm dying here!!:

There are "better" languages than Perl - hell, there are lots of them, if you define "better" as "not being insane". Lisp, Smalltalk, Python, gosh, I could probably name 20 or 30 languages that are "better" than Perl, inasmuch as they don't look like that Sperm Whale that exploded in the streets of Taiwan over the summer. Whale guts everywhere, covering cars, motorcycles, pedestrians. That's Perl. It's charming, really.

6133

Developer's Corner / Re: Tour of Programming Languages

« on: March 06, 2006, 01:35 PM »

That's very interesting...I've always said I'm not a programmer by any means, however, when I was doing my undergraduate work at Berkeley, I had to take a class for programming, and the program we used was lisp with emacs.  It was a great fun class for me, since all my other classes were pretty dull with engineering and sciences.  But it THAT is real programming, then I have to say that I wasn't so bad at it!  I did really well in the class, and I was very enthusiastic about it (plus I met the girl I had a crush on in there, so I was able to help her!)  I would have taken more classes in programming, but I had no desire to unnecessarily prolong graduation.  Anyway, it's good to know that I was learning an authentic language and that I potentially had the mind for it.  I always thought lisp was just a kiddie's programming language, with all the parantheses and commands, as if I were programming my TI calculater (which I was really good at actually).  I remember my calculus teacher in high school would call me at home for two reasons--either to tell my parents I was talking too much in class or to ask me to write a program for the calculater to transfer to the other students.

So that's the extent of my programming history: Ti Calculaters, and Lisp.  Now I'm going to pretend like I know everything about programming!

6134

Best E-mail Client / What's with all the blank lines in emails recieved from Outlook users?

« on: March 06, 2006, 11:46 AM »

How come whenever I recieve email from people who use Outlook, there are so many blank lines?  It's pretty annoying.  It's not even just double-spaced, sometimes there are 3 or 4 lines between actual lines of text like this:

----------
Hi,


When are we going to




the movie tomorrow?



Thanks,


Jim
----------


What the heck is wrong with that program?

6135

General Software Discussion / Corporation grade email/scheduling solution (like Outlook or Groupwise)?

« on: March 06, 2006, 11:43 AM »

Hi everyone, I work for the city of Los Angeles, and in our department we use Novell Groupwise as our email client as well as scheduling/addressbook/overall network administration solution.  Now, I don't know or understand some of the "under the hood" workings that make up the network administration aspect of it, but I know that as a email system (including the addressbook and calendar), it really sucks big time.  I mean it's horrible.  You have barely any options for anything, and using the program makes you feel about as much in control as a yahoo email account.

Interestingly enough, the mayor appointed a new director of our department, and I was just reading her little introduction biography, and in it she said her pet peeve is the Groupwise email and how she's going to try to make a push for Outlook (I cheered out loud!).  Now, I'm no fan of Outlook/Exchange, but I'm pretty sure it's magnitudes better than Groupwise as far as from a user standpoint.  (I've hear Groupwise is good for security and stuff, but I'm stricly talking about functinality).

So, my question to you all is this...can anyone tell me if Outlook would really be better than Groupwise, at least for the email/calendar aspect?  Also, even though I doubt they will consider anything besides Outlook or Groupwise, can anyone recommend other solutions that might fit a large, integrated corporation?  I doubt the Bat! will be a good solution for something like this.

And we use IMAP email, I'm pretty sure.  It has unbelievably bad filtering options, horrible signature options, horrible reply-to settings, and to top it off, the administration has a 45-day limit on email messages, after which they are purged from the system.  If you want to keep mail, you have to go through this archiving process which is a pain in the butt, and even when they're archived, you can't export it in a format that will be usuable in any other email client.  Otherwise I would always archive everything and send it to my Bat! folder so I can store them inside a good program in case I need to use it later.

6136

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MyLife Organized (Time Management To-Do list maker)

« on: March 05, 2006, 04:12 AM »

superboyac, maybe you could ask the author if they are willing to give a nice discount for dc members - sounds like something the people here would like.

-mouser (March 04, 2006, 04:47 AM)

Sure thing, I'll give it a shot.  I'll do it tomorrow night.

6137

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: March 05, 2006, 04:09 AM »

Well, I hope we can get this thread back on topic...which is brainstorming for this complicated notetaking genre of software.  I'm sure mouser and other software developers have other threads in the living room section for discussing the issues of shareware/freeware/donationware (which, incidentally, is an extremely interesting topic).

Anyway, since these discussions have proved to be somewhat productive lately (at least to me), I thought that sometime in the future, I'd put together a short summary of some bulletpoints of what most of us are looking for in notetaking software.  I'm sure that will be of some help to both the users and developers.

6138

Living Room / Re: Why flickr is cool - yawning cats made my cat a star

« on: March 04, 2006, 01:51 AM »

That's awesome!  Cats have amazing yawns, and they're hilarious to look at.  A lot of people hate cats, but they're kind of cool pets.  My parents have a cat, I like messing with it.

6139

Best Website Change Monitoring Tool / Re: Website Change Monitoring Review/Award - WebsiteWatcher

« on: March 02, 2006, 05:18 PM »

I got my head around DOpus after a while.. but a bunch of things annoyed me about it, so after a while I ditched it in favor of xplorer2, which I'm very happy with. I just wish I could find a way to use it as the default explorer method, but then that maybe isn't the smartest thing either . It's good the way it is, I suppose.

-moerl (March 02, 2006, 05:05 PM)

Wow, moerl, you went to xplorer2 from Dopus?  Xplorer2 is pretty nice, but it doesn't hold a candle to Dopus.  I'm going to try to convert you back! Seriously though, if you do want to go back to DOpus, I'll be more than happy to help.  I might even be able to send you a setup file that you can import and automatically have everything set the way you like.  If you ever were a fan of Total Commander, I even have a layout for DOpus that imitates the TC look and functionality.

6140

Mini-Reviews by Members / MyLife Organized (Time Management To-Do list maker)

« on: March 02, 2006, 04:58 PM »

I just found out that the author published my review on his website.  I guess I'm official now!  Here it is in case anyone was interested:

http://www.mylifeorg...-Aram-Chavdarian.htm

It's a pretty cool program, although to be honest, I haven't tried to many other similar programs besides the simplistic Outlook and such.  It works for me.

6141

Best Website Change Monitoring Tool / Re: Website Change Monitoring Review/Award - WebsiteWatcher

« on: March 02, 2006, 04:54 PM »

They are up there on my list of programs with incomprehensible preference dialogs. Directory Opus still takes the cake in the department,

Really?!  I don't think DOpus is that difficult to understand, but it is A LOT of preferences.  Maybe that's what makes it so confusing, just the sheer number of things to tweak.  But that's also what makes it so customizable and powerful.  I haven't used Website Watcher that much, but I do remember it's preferences kind of overwhelming me.

6142

Living Room / Re: Chocolate Milk: The New Sports Drink?

« on: March 02, 2006, 11:39 AM »

Cool!  I still love milk!

On a similar note, my friend is a professor and excercise & physiology phD and he just did a preliminary study that essentially says that men who are slightly overweight actually live longer than the skinny guys.  When I say slightly overweight, I don't mean obese, just the typical belly and a little extra weight  that men gain as they age.  The point was that it was a misconception that those 50-60 year olds with the six packs and the gym rats weren't necessarily healthier than a normal guy who eats normal and just simply takes care of himself.

6143

Living Room / Re: What's up with all the scams on ebay?

« on: March 02, 2006, 11:25 AM »

ah!  OK, I'll remember that.  So, is it always obvious if they're a company?  I think it's pretty easy to tell, right?

Also, while I'm ranting, what's with the people who put really fuzzy or bad pictures of their item on ebay?  Why can't they just put a good, clear picture?  sheesh.

6144

Living Room / Re: What's up with all the scams on ebay?

« on: March 02, 2006, 11:00 AM »

No kidding.  You have to be really careful buying anything on ebay now.  There are so many little tricks now, even if they aren't scams.  For example, the way people abuse the shipping and handling fees on it, what are they thinking?  Like if you buy a cd and they charge $4-5 for shipping, which is ridiculous.  I emailed one person who had a cd price STARTING at $8 with a $5 shipping charge.  I'm like, why would I buy this from you when I can go right down to the store and get it for the same price or maybe a dollar more?

Or recently (even though it was a good deal) I bought a cable that normally sells for $50 for $15 from ebay, but the auction price was $1 and shipping was $14 for tiny little cable.  What are they trying to pull off here?  Just be honest, say the cable costs $13 and charge a couple of bucks for shipping.  My goodness.

6145

Living Room / What's up with all the scams on ebay?

« on: March 02, 2006, 10:35 AM »

There are so many freakin scams on ebay!  Go look for laptops and you'll find a ton of sellers with what looks like bargain prices...and then you see their feedback is very good also.  But click on some of the feedback auctions to see what they've sold in the past.  They're all stupid little things like socks, dolls, baby clothes, all for less than $10.  What a scam!  So these people are going from selling hand me down clothes to top of the line laptops?!

6146

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: March 02, 2006, 10:00 AM »

a related issue: http://www.opml.org/spec2
opml is an xml markup standard for exchanging "outliner" (hierarchical notes) data.

-mouser (March 02, 2006, 01:34 AM)

That looks interesting.  I don't understand much (too technical for me) but it sounds good.

6147

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: March 01, 2006, 01:46 PM »

I didn't realize Surfulater was C++.  I know nothing about programming, I'm just talking out of my arse there...

But when I said it felt faster, I don't mean by actual time.  If you measured it, I'm sure everything is just as fast as can be.  I think your explanation is more accurate...I meant the editing experience is faster on other programs than on Surfulater.

Here's my suggestion:  for captured material like html pages, it's good to have an editing mode and a viewing mode like there is now.  However, for just plain notes, I'd prefer the editor to just always be in editing mode.  As in, you don't have to click in and out whether it's the pencil or double-click or single-click or whatever.  For just plain notes, you want to be able to go in and start typing, I don't think you want the user to feel any interruption.  Just like this forum's quick reply box--I know if I click inside it, I can just start typing away.  That's what I'm talking about.

I can definitely see how Surfulater will have an easier and more successful time with true notetaking in the future.  I think these issues are present currently only because notetaking is a more recent feature of the program, which was initially intended for capturing information.

If you really think my suggestions are useful, I'll keep them coming, especially if you think they apply to the general userbase also, and not just myself.

On a completely different note, am I not capturing from the web correctly?  I'm using Firefox, and when I highlight text and capture in Surfulater, it's fine.  But when I capture pictures, there are a lot of those broken links (with the red "x").  What are the limits to capturing accurately from the source in the program?  (I'd post a screenshot, but I've been having a hard time attaching files lately here).  And the final question I wanted to ask is how to make everything in the right content pane smaller?  I like things much smaller, compact, minimal than most, and everything in Surfulater on that right side is just too big for me.

6148

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: March 01, 2006, 11:47 AM »

A quick comment:  you and I are on similar pages superboyac.  I agree with your primary needs and also your admitting that there are other needs out there.  Have you looked at NeoMem (http://www.neomem.org)?  I dont use it because it is deficient in some areas but it is an interesting example of an information manager.  Like you said before (I think it was you), we want our cake and eat it too.  This genre could be so powerful... it's just so hard to fit everything in!

Kevin

-kfitting (March 01, 2006, 05:57 AM)

Yeah, I tried Neomem.  It's deficient in a lot of areas that I am personally used to.  To be honest, I haven't spent too much time with it.  But it does seem to have a lot of interesting features under the hood, and eventually, I will explore some of these a little more.

But, if a guy like jbiebeler saw Neomem, he would say, "What's the big deal".  And he has a point, because it doesn't offer a different approach for organizing notes. At it's base, it is still just a traditional tree-heirarchy text editor, like Keynote and Mybase.

I do like the simple interface, it's efficient and fast, which is my main stumbling point with Surfulater.  I kind of wish that we could combine the organization engine of Surfulater, with the interface of Neomem/Keynote/Mybase, and that would be heavenly to me right now.

6149

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: March 01, 2006, 11:31 AM »

nevf, I tried the patch, and it works!  Yes, that is what I was talking about as far as a simple note article.

I think I understand the flexibility and power that the html offers in this program, but I still don't really like the way it "feels".  It's such a subjective and stubborn issue with me, I'm embarrassed to even mention it.  It's like my reason for not liking the way a Mac feels compared to Windows--it's nothing really functional or practical.

For one thing, I'm not a big fan of clicking the pencil to edit the note, or the fact that if I highlight the text in the note and overshoot the mouse pointer past the border of the note, then I'm out of the "editing" mode of the note, and I have to click the pencil to get back in.  It's little things like this that always make it difficult for me to embrace programs using the html/xml/java language instead of C++, or whatever the other language is (I'm not a programmer, so I don't know the details).  I know that programs written in C++ "feel" faster to me than programs written in html or java, if that makes any sense whatsoever.  I have the same issue with A-book, which uses html templates (similar to Surfulater I believe) to display it's information.  In fact, the whole "look" of the program is similar.  But , like Surfulater, it does it's job better than the other programs available.

So here's where I stand on the issue.  It seems like Surfulater is headed in the right direction as far as becoming a good information collection and notetaking solution.  I'd have to decide if I was able to deal with the small, personal annoyances I have with the interface and "feel" of the program, or should I just go with another program that feels better to me, but will probably not offer the progressive features that Surfulater has.

Like I said before, I'm getting tired of the Mybase/Keynote/typical tree heirarchy, but those programs feel very "fast" to me when I use it and combined with a couple of other minor features, I would lean towards using it instead of Surfulater.  But I also know it the back of my mind that the future of these programs won't be as dynamic and interesting as Surfulater.  But, right now, using Surfulater feels a bit sluggish to me and I can't commit totally to it yet.

What do you think, nevf?  Do my statements make sense to you, or do I just sound hard-headed?

6150

Official Announcements / Re: FEBRUARY SOFTWARE DRAWING RESULTS - POSTED!

« on: March 01, 2006, 12:24 AM »

Suh-weet!!  This is probably the biggest thing I've ever won in my life.  The next closest would be the mag-lite I got at a company picnic 3 years ago.

I'd like to thank my parents, without them, none of this would be possible.  And my computer, who has stood behind 100%.  And to all the terrible software out there which have turned me into a cynical, pessimistic, cranky, and anal poweruser.

Thanks mouser and DC!