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14201

General Software Discussion / Re: Is DonationCoder too exposed of a brand?

« Last post by mouser on February 25, 2011, 09:25 AM »

This is one of these occasional threads that i find so hard to comment on, not because there isn't some interesting thing being talked about but because the original post has little or nothing to do with what we're talking about -- and in this case it's worse since the original post is so confusing.. it just feels like making the situation worse to try to have a substantial discussion on a thread that at least looks like its about something else.

I guess this is my plea -- let's try to start new threads with clear purpose and focus when we have something that we want to have a useful discussion about.  It makes it more easy to locate and focus these discussions.

Otherwise the nonsequiturs in a thread like this are mind-killers.

14202

Living Room / Re: Show us your desktop

« Last post by mouser on February 25, 2011, 09:15 AM »

dj,  we try to avoid linking to external images -- can you attach your images to your posts instead of linking to offsite images?

14203

Official Announcements / Re: March 2011 DonationCoder.com Fundraiser Celebration -- Pledges?

« Last post by mouser on February 25, 2011, 02:00 AM »

One last thought -- I think it might be productive to have a thread on things we are doing poorly here on DC -- and ways we could improve.  There is always room for that.

But if you think about it -- what are we asking people to do during the fundraiser?  Donate whatever amount they want -- commensurate with the benefits they get from the site.  It seems kind of hard to argue that we haven't done enough to warrant asking people to donate what they feel the site is worth to them..

ANYWAY,

let's get back to keeping this thread positive and on topic -- and i'll invite loutus to start a new thread for discussing constructive (hopefully!) criticism.

14204

Official Announcements / Re: March 2011 DonationCoder.com Fundraiser Celebration -- Pledges?

« Last post by mouser on February 25, 2011, 01:46 AM »

Just a quick note: The day we moved from a VPS to a dedicated server was one of the best days in the life of this site.

On a VPS you are sharing a server with other sites and have no control over what they are doing -- leading to huge swings in responsiveness of the server and contentions for resources, and no way to figure out why things are going wrong when they do and the site grinds to a halt.

Trying to host a site like DC on a VPS would be (and was) an exercise in frustration for everyone.   Gothic, who does all the server administration for DC and has been a life saver could tell you more about the nightmares of trying to run a big site on a VPS.

14205

Official Announcements / Re: March 2011 DonationCoder.com Fundraiser Celebration -- Pledges?

« Last post by mouser on February 25, 2011, 01:36 AM »

EDIT: Move reply to this thread.

14206

Official Announcements / Re: March 2011 DonationCoder.com Fundraiser Celebration -- Pledges?

« Last post by mouser on February 25, 2011, 01:18 AM »

EDIT: I've moved my original reply to lotus to this thread.

14207

Site/Forum Features / Re: My google page rank dropped to 0, anyone have any ideas why?

« Last post by mouser on February 25, 2011, 12:56 AM »

After a few miscellaneous changes, it looks like dc is starting to have some of the sitemap urls picked up, thats a good sign.

And it looks like google is *finally* starting to listen to our sitemap at least a little:


ps. i posted this in wrong thread, im moving it now.

14208

General Software Discussion / Re: Is DonationCoder too exposed of a brand?

« Last post by mouser on February 24, 2011, 09:57 PM »

I find it really hard to compose replies to these posts that pack in 10 different conflicting barely-related ideas..

Paul please take this as constructive criticism -- you find some great stuff and have some cool ideas but it can be so hard to digest this stuff and respond intelligently when it feels like i'm reading a murder mystery with these posts sometimes.. with 10 different ideas, a mystery title, and 5 different links.  And it makes it that much more likely that any discussion to follow is going to go off in 10 directions at once (or else just cause people to give up trying to form a coherent response).  I'd give anything to have you refine these posts a bit and just really try to make one point at clearly as possible in each topic..

I say this to you as someone who suffers myself from sometimes feeling a need to write EVERYTHING i think about a topic all at once, whether it's in an email or whatever -- and I can tell you it is RARELY a good idea -- you just overwhelm and saturate everyone's ability to absorb what you are trying to say and it gets lost.


So I'll try just try to productively respond to one aspect of your post that resonated a bit with me, since i find myself increasingly thinking about ways in which DC can be confusing for people not familiar with the site.  One of the things it seemed like you were suggesting is that perhaps we should be more in the vangard about actually advocating for the concept of donationware and championing that cause more clearly in everything we do.

14209

Site/Forum Features / Re: My google page rank dropped to 0, anyone have any ideas why?

« Last post by mouser on February 24, 2011, 07:29 PM »

A week or two after i submitted a request to google to "re-index the site" here is the response i just got.

You have to love the deliberate obfuscation, deniability, and general deliberate doubletalk fog of the reply:

We received a request from a site owner to reconsider how we index the following site: https://www.donationcoder.com/.
We've now reviewed your site. When we review a site, we check to see if it's in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. If we don't find any problems, we'll reconsider our indexing of your site. If your site still doesn't appear in our search results, check our Help Center for steps you can take.

So..

In other words they've reviewed the site and checked to see if its in violation or if there are any problems.  But they don't feel like telling us if they found any problems.  And therefore they might or might not eventually reconsider re-indexing the site at some point in the future.  And if they do or don't decide to do this, that's their little secret -- and we should go search the web one day if we eventually come to the conclusion that enough time has passed that something should have changed.

Google -- proof that when you get big enough, you just don't have to give a f*ck about people.

14210

Screenshot Captor / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - ScreenshotCaptor - 2.91.01 - Feb 24, 2011

« Last post by mouser on February 24, 2011, 06:18 PM »

do you ever use the splice blur mode?
if i gave you a keyboard shortcut would that be almost satisfactory?

14211

Screenshot Captor / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - ScreenshotCaptor - 2.91.01 - Feb 24, 2011

« Last post by mouser on February 24, 2011, 05:57 PM »

Couple of minor updates, and one serious one for people who use a lot of objects -- a fix that makes editing lots of objects on screenshots much faster:

v2.91.01 - Feb 24th, 2011

• [MajorFeature] New options (interface and objects tabs) that let disable anti-aliasing and smoothing when editing objects, which can dramatically speed up the speed at which multiple objects can be manipulated.
• [BugFix] SC was overly conservative about allowed filename characters.
• [Changes] Changed some shortcuts to be more standardized (Ctrl+P for print, Ctrl+D for deselect)
• [BugFix/Change] Ctrl+C and Edit->Copy was no longer copying individual selected objects in object mode.

14212

Site/Forum Features / Re: Request for help: graphic designer/writer to make an old-timey 2-page wackyness

« Last post by mouser on February 24, 2011, 02:10 PM »

We need to draft nudone onto this job. Sounds like 'pledge' material to me... if he has the time...

you know he doesnt.. and since no one else can draw cody we need to not disturb the master until new cody images are needed   

14213

Site/Forum Features / Re: Request for help: graphic designer/writer to make an old-timey 2-page wackyness

« Last post by mouser on February 24, 2011, 12:12 PM »

Yep, that's just the kind of look i was thinking of.

14214

Screenshot Captor / Re: BUG - Copy Object

« Last post by mouser on February 24, 2011, 11:55 AM »

Olli you are right, i experienced that yesterday myself.  I must have made a change recently that made Ctrl+C always copy full screenshot.
I will try to release a new version in next couple of days.

14215

Official Announcements / Re: March 2011 DonationCoder.com Fundraiser Celebration -- Pledges?

« Last post by mouser on February 23, 2011, 08:11 PM »

stephen try to make your signature bigger, i can still see some text on the page.

14216

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY MUGs

« Last post by mouser on February 23, 2011, 06:29 PM »

more photos please!

14217

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / MOVED: The Lost Thing (Video)

« Last post by mouser on February 23, 2011, 05:28 PM »

This topic has been moved to Living Room.

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=25823.0

14218

Developer's Corner / Re: To persist with Windows 2000 support?

« Last post by mouser on February 23, 2011, 03:32 PM »

it's increasingly hard to justify support for win2000.. if it's too much trouble i wouldn't stress over dropping support for it for most programs.

14219

Find And Run Robot / Re: How can I set 'start in' parameter for any program in Farr?

« Last post by mouser on February 23, 2011, 03:02 PM »

that is an interesting question..
currently there is no way to do this short of what you describe -- making standard windows shortcut files and having farr trigger the shortcuts.

if this was something people needed i could add an alias launching flag that allowed it to be specified.. but frankly i think you are the first to request it.

14220

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Clipboard Help+Spell - Top Priority Requests for 2011

« Last post by mouser on February 23, 2011, 11:38 AM »

* Quickly access the source web page of internet clips.

i really like this idea and i can implement it.

14221

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Clipboard Help+Spell - Top Priority Requests for 2011

« Last post by mouser on February 23, 2011, 11:38 AM »

The feature to automatically filter a clip depending on the contents (e.g., the text strings) into a Virtual Folder in CHS, using the appropriate SQL, is either not enabled in CHS at present, or is too obscure for me to understand

See this thread and the sample URL virtual folder in CHS: https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=4135.0

14222

Official Announcements / Re: March 2011 DonationCoder.com Fundraiser Celebration -- Pledges?

« Last post by mouser on February 23, 2011, 11:19 AM »

How come people aren't more excited about my new card game? 

14223

Site/Forum Features / Re: Revisiting the idea of simplifying the DC big app license key stuff

« Last post by mouser on February 23, 2011, 10:37 AM »

what we have now is more annoying since if the user does not insert the key, he gets a nag until he does, right?

Yes. What we have now essentially REQUIRES people to go get a (free) license key or they will be nagged to do so.  At that point they can download a 60 day license key from the site without signing up, or a 6 month license key (that turns permanent after 1 more visit) which turns off all "nags."

The new idea has a couple of key changes:

• First, no "free" license keys -- they won't be needed any more.  No programs would nag you to donate or visit our site to get a free license key.  All programs would work fully and never stop, and not nag on startup, etc.
• BUT, every 30 days, non-donors will see a COMBINATION "please consider donating" and "update check" dialog, which will guide them through performing an update check/download and at the same time ask them to consider donating (or let them click to cancel the update check).
• My thinking is that combining the reminder to consider donating with the update check could be a win-win, in that it's providing a function to the user and reminding them to consider donating at the time when it's least annoying and most likely to be something they are open to.  But i could be wrong.
• If they *manually* check for updates (or just install updates) more frequently than every 30 days, we could either skip the reminder message entirely, OR show it at those times, not sure which

14224

Site/Forum Features / Re: Revisiting the idea of simplifying the DC big app license key stuff

« Last post by mouser on February 23, 2011, 10:01 AM »

Yeah i was suggesting that donors with a license key can choose exactly when to check for updates, automatically and/or manually.

And that non-donors would no longer need a license key, but would be REMINDED every so often (every 30 days) to "click here" to run an update check, with a "Please consider donating" message shown at that time.  Or reminded to consider donating if they manually invoke the update check.

At least that's one idea.

14225

Site/Forum Features / Re: Revisiting the idea of simplifying the DC big app license key stuff

« Last post by mouser on February 23, 2011, 08:28 AM »

I don't think this is a good idea, especially for people who have lots of DC apps and are already a donor.

Quick clarification -- I meant to say that such messages would not be shown to donors who have put in a license key.