Recent Posts

14251

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

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 07:46 PM »

So, do you consider that most of the money donated to the site that's 'in circulation' between members is, in reality, already donated to the site?

Let me put that another way, if everyone holding Donation Credits allocated those to the site during the drive would that be nothing more than an empty gesture? Last time around, in order to move the thermometer we had to put in 'new' money.

what we say on the donationcredits page is that if your donationcredits go unused for over a year, they revert to a site donation.  i think if anyone objected to that there would be no reason not to give them back -- the point is simply that many people donate to the site and never explicitly give their donationcredits away and we do consider these to default to site fund donations.

but more to your second question -- the fundraiser thermometer in the page only counted new donations into the site, and did not distinguish between donations that went into the site fund and those that went to a specific member on the site.  you can see that is different in spirit to the idea of counting only donations into the site fund, and doing so regardless of whether its a new donation or transfer of donationcredits.

from my standpoint i guess i prefer the fundraiser thermometer to show new money coming into the site regardless of who it goes to.  that's not to say that people sending money to the site fund isn't important, it's just to say that i would rather see new money from new members come in -- i think that's more healthy -- and i would like to see the hardcore long time involved members donate directly to members of the site that they know are producing good stuff (people writing coding snacks and mini reviews, and nany participants, etc.)

does that make sense?

14252

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

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 06:57 PM »

I don't have numbers, but i stand by what i said in this article which is basically that DC is like a "ping pong" economy, where donations between users ping pong around until they reach someone who tends to substantially contribute to the site, at which point they are cashed out.  So basically only a handful of people really get enough donationcredits that they bother to cash them out.  The rest just pass them along.

14253

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

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 06:29 PM »

This may be asking for trouble, but I thought it might be time to start a new thread to talk about the license key stuff on DC and whether there are things that can be done better.

To revisit the current situation:

• Some of the software on DC is just normal freeware, no limits, no nags, etc.
• Some of the other software on DC (mostly my big apps) will start to nag you on run to put in a license key.  You can get a license key in a number of ways:  You can get a 30day license key immediately from site with no signup.  You can signup on forum for a 6month license key which you can return visit for another one at any time and after a year you get permanent one, or you can donate any amount to get a permanent license key.  The motivation behind this is 1) to get people to give some thought to donating, and 2) not make it so much easier and so much less work, and thus so much more appealing to not donate.

The benefits of this approach seem to be a substantial number of increased donations from people who can afford to donate and would rather donate then have to sign up or go through the "hassle" of coming back in 6 months for a new license key, etc.  The increase in donations when we made this change were significant but I don't have any real hard numbers to go by.  Encourages more people to sign up on the forum and thereafter participate in our discussions.

The problems with this approach are: Increased complexity in explaining the way our site works, which turns off people and confuses them into just leaving; confusion on other websites about the nature of our software (is it really free? etc.).


Possible changes:

• Do away with license key system entirely, go back to just asking for pure voluntary donations; this should lead to happier users but could reduce donation substantially. As tempting as this is we have to remember that without *some* kind of incentive to donate, people as a rule aren't willing to go through the hassle.
• Simplify license key system: Allow anyone to get a N-month license key immediately on site without signing up.  Donations required for permanent license key; do away with need to sign up and 6month renewal turning into permanent license key; This would be simpler to explain and use, and doing away with signup encouragement for non-donors would be welcome by many.
• Remove the need for license key but allow donors to download newer versions of programs; Idea here would be that donors would get the latest versions of the programs ahead of non-donors; the versions available to non-donors would always be N months behind latest release; This has an advantage of being simple to explain and offering a real benefit to donors, while still offering fully free versions to everyone and no need for free users to deal with license keys; Another advantage is the incentive is on us to keep improving our software.
• Have a page where anyone can download a full license key, and must simply state that they have considered and will consider in the future, the idea of donating to the site, but not require anything; at least this would let us have an opportunity to ask them to consider donating.
• Leave everything the way it is.
• Other ideas?

Thoughts?

14254

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

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 06:15 PM »

The 50/50 thing continues to confuse the hell out of me -- and i can see it has resonated with some of you -- can someone else take a shot at explaining the significance of it to me.

I'm all for encouraging people to donate to each other on the site -- as far as i'm concerned donating directly to someone on the site who makes the site a better place is at least as good if not better than making a donation to the site fund.

The part that confuses me is that every single donation to DC goes into your account in terms of donationcredits that you can split between the site account and other people on the site.  Every donation can be split 50/50 or 75/25 or 25/75 or 100/0 or 0/100.  And that's confusing enough.. I just don't understand the appeal of forcing a certain split on people and the added complexity of that.

14255

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

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 05:43 PM »

Or perhaps we could do something even simpler and ask people to donate AND tell us what direction they want to site to go in -- tell us about changes they'd like to see on the site.

The idea being that we would be reaching out to these first time donors and letting them know that we are committed to listening to their opinions about how the site can be more useful to them going forward.

14256

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

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 05:39 PM »

I have kind of resisted the idea of having a giveaway drawing for donors -- I always fear it may attract people for the wrong reasons.

But what if we say that everyone who donates (either a new donation or sending existing donationcredits to site account) can enter into a drawing to have an idea turned into an application?  We could maybe do a multi-round thing where at the end of the month we select a couple of ideas from the donors, and then let all donors vote on which appliction(s) actually get created?

So we would encourage people to make their first donation in order to have a say in the creation of a new application.

We could combine this with a larger giveaway of things of course.

14257

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

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 05:29 PM »

Perhaps we could do something where we let everyone know that if we get a certain number of donations (not amount but number) then we will do something special?

Or else have something special that everyone who donates during the fundraiser gets that other people will not..

14258

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

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 05:01 PM »

My favorite idea so far about the fundraiser was to focus on the idea of trying to get all of the people who have signed up for the newsletter and registered on the site to finally make their first donation.. If we could only think of something that would motivate these people, who probably aren't frequent visitors, to make their first donation..

14259

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

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 04:59 PM »

I think it's a very nice idea to have people be able to contribute directly to those people who helped the site during the fundraiser.

What if at the end of the fundraiser we had a page up with all the people who participated by pledging and creating something during the fundraiser, and people could then allocate their donationcredits (from when they donated) to them as well as to the site fund.

14260

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

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 04:46 PM »

these have to be serious non-trivial things that we can feature on the home page that will honestly interest people.

14261

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

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 04:38 PM »

Regarding pledges for software, coding snacks, and minireviews, what if we get enough pledges to have 1 new thing every day during march.

So rather than 1 new coding snack AND 1 new minireview per day, what about just 1 new (CodingSnack/Software release, or minireview, or essay) per day throughout march?  That seems a little easier to pull off.

14262

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

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 04:37 PM »

Yes, special fundraiser newsletter will go out right before the start of March, and special thermometer fundraiser banner will go up too.

14263

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

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 04:35 PM »

I think part of the confusion about the fundraiser "events" this year has been that some of the really fun ideas are ideas that are only going to appeal to the real hardcore members who are already involved in the site and are familiar with everyone, etc.  I tend to think of the fundraiser as the one time of the year where we can kind of take the long time members for granted in a way.. they already know about the site and know enough to make a decision about whether they want to continue to donate to support the site (i sure hope they will).

It's reaching new potential members, participants and supports that is so important during the fundraiser (im my opinion).  If that's true we need to be sensitive to their concerns and interests, and understand that they will be mostly new to the idea of DC and how it works, and the more complexity they have to overcome to participate in the fundraiser the worse it is.

That's why the approach that seems best to me is simply to show the useful things we do and ask people to support us so we can keep doing them.

14264

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

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 04:27 PM »

I suppose we are viewing this from two very different perspectives.

This idea of getting people to promise to donate some money if someone achieves their pledge might make sense in terms of getting people who already know and daily visit the site to participate.. but i tend to think of those people as already being friendly to the concept of supporting DC with donations, and not needing much of an incentive.

To my mind, the more important thing during the fundraiser is to try to reach out to those people who either have never visited the site, or else have visited once or twice to download some program, but have never donated and haven't given it a real thought.

So from my perspective, the most important thing we can do for the fundraiser, other than appealing to long time members to donate again, is to reach these other people by showing them that we create useful content that they benefit from, and by having other people spread the word about the useful content we create.

That's why my focus has been to be able to have some events during march that will get people's attention and show them the kinds of things we do that they might like to support.  Hence the idea of having a new coding snack or mini review released every day during march.

What I'd really like to be able to do is spread the word to other website that sometimes write about DC and say: "please tell your readers to drop by and pay us a visit throughout march as we will have new things every day that you may be interested in" and "consider making a donation if you like what we do".

The fundraiser is an opportunity for us to show why we are useful and why people should support the site.

14265

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

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 04:01 PM »

People pledging to create content means a lot -- it means people will visit the site more during march then normal when they hear about the plans for march -- and this will lead to more donations.

So pledging to create content helps a huge amount.

It's nothing so complicated as people promissing to donate $x if a specific pledge is accomplished.

It's more like: Let's do what we always do but even more so this month, to show people how useful and interesting the site is.  And in doing so we will get more donations from people who want to support the site.

14266

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

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 03:24 PM »

pledging is important so we know what we can announce is happening? or maybe im misusing the term pledge?

14267

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

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 03:19 PM »

i didnt think we were going to sponsor pledges, just get enough lined up so we can announce all the stuff we are doing for march and try to encourage people to donate to the site while they come for the pledges.

14268

General Software Discussion / Re: Google set to steal Opera's thunder yet again, decides to eliminate url bar

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 11:22 AM »

Seems like a horrible idea to me -- just like this move to get rid of menu bars, etc. all seem like bad ideas to me.  Just give me a standard user interface and stop all this obsession with hiding everything.

14269

Screenshot Captor / Re: How to capture window client area

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 10:46 AM »

can you guys give an example perhaps? of a program window you want to capture client area of, and what SC can grab and what you want it to grab?

14270

Screenshot Captor / Re: How to capture window client area

« Last post by mouser on February 21, 2011, 09:26 AM »

As Lanux says, RedBox mode for object capture should be the solution.

14271

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: StartSSL.com Certificate Provider: Mini-Review

« Last post by mouser on February 20, 2011, 07:24 PM »

UPDATE:

After talking with Eddy and trying again today, the problem appears fixed!
I don't know enough about ssl certificates to know why it wasn't working a week or two ago but is working now, but all appears well currently. 

14272

UrlSnooper / Re: foreigners -> Privacy to privacy

« Last post by mouser on February 20, 2011, 11:33 AM »

Thanks for that info skyrl! i will update the normal release.

For those that don't understand:

The way the UrlSnooper does automatic network adapter detection is that it opens an online website while it is sniffing pages, and if it finds some text it expects on a page, it knows it can sniff from that adapter.  By default UrlSnooper opens the google privacy page and looks for the string "Privacy"; skyrl is saying that for different countries this string is translated, so use one that is in a url and won't get translated.

14273

Living Room / Strange subtleties of the Placebo Effect

« Last post by mouser on February 20, 2011, 09:51 AM »

Most people are familiar with the idea of the "Placebo Effect", where a pill with no medical benefits can make people feel better.

But many people are unaware of the deep and fascinating study that has gone into this effect, and the fascinating and subtle discoveries made about how things like shape, color, context, delivery device, etc. effect how well it works.

Here's a great video taking you on a tour of some of the strangeness of it all.

http://www.wired.com...-really-really-fast/

14274

General Software Discussion / Re: Freeware Telephone Support Number

« Last post by mouser on February 19, 2011, 06:59 PM »

putting it on a help line is a recipe for anger imho.
most of us might find it funny, but those who need help won't.

14275

Living Room / Black ops: how HBGary wrote backdoors for the government

« Last post by mouser on February 19, 2011, 05:10 PM »

Fascinating article on the recent unmasking and collapse of the security firm HBGary..

On November 16, 2009, Greg Hoglund, a cofounder of computer security firm HBGary, sent an e-mail to two colleagues. The message came with an attachment, a Microsoft Word file called AL_QAEDA.doc, which had been further compressed and password protected for safety. Its contents were dangerous.

http://arstechnica.c...-the-government.ars/

from http://yro.slashdot....ke-Online-Identities