okay, I know there is a program called NoiseNak (
http://www.nakware.com/noisenak ) that does this but I have found it to be a little to bloated for my taste and I was looking for something a little "lighter" (less memory, less cpu usage, simpler feature set)
Here is the basic idea:
-the computer is in the den/study/wherever
-you forget to shut it off or turn down the volume
-you climb into bed on a cold night and are about to fall asleep
-all of a sudden your computer is beeping and making sounds (new email alarms, winamp, media player, web pages etc)
-now you have to wake up and get disturbed (or your kids, wife, etc)
And here is the Solution (if someone can code it!):
-program loads at startup, sits in system tray
-program is small (low memory/cpu) and unobtrusive
-after XX minutes of inactivity (XX should be configurable by user) the master mixer volume is muted
-when user returns and moves the mouse/keybd, sound will return to its
previous state (notice I said previous state and not necessarily un-muted-- for example if the speaker
was already muted BEFORE the user went idle, then it should remain muted even after they return)
-the mixer state will be preserved between reboots -- by this I mean that if the computer reboots for some reason in the middle of the night, the user will not be disturbed by loud beeps and noises, so if speaker was muted, then it will still be muted even after next startup. Example of this is sometimes Defrag program needs to reboot computer to do its work, and this may happen at 5am on Saturday morning etc, this way user does not have to be disturbed...
-
the tray icon will have several functions also: 1)
double-left click -- toggle program enable/disable (meaning if you disable it, then automatic muting will no longer happen)
( if program is disabled, tray icon should indicate this by dimming or changing color, etc)
2) right click will present a simple menu, like this:
Configure
About
Exit
3) "Configure" box should have the following settings:
auto-mute speaker after __XX__ minutes of inactivity
only un-mute after mouse moves __NN__ pixels (useful for preventing accidental unmuting by cat bumping the mouse when crawling on desk!
)
[ ] (checkbox) do not mute speaker if any of the following programs are running:
wmplayer.exe
vlc.exe
mplayerc.exe
winamp.exe
itunes.exe
...etc.... (user can type their own .exe processes in a box?)
That's about it............. I actually hired someone to write a program like this for me a few years ago but I lost the program and the source code
and I was not able to contact the developer........ I have really missed this program ever since!!
what do you think?
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this would be great. I used to have a utility like this on my old MAC using OS 9 but have not found anything comparable on the PC .. most "timesheet" type programs are Waaaaay too bloated or expensive.
