Recent Posts

1526

General Software Discussion / Re: Is there any tool to see pdfs full screen in two pages?

« Last post by urlwolf on October 20, 2006, 10:46 AM »

the problem with foxit is that the fonts are not as clear as adobe's (in most papers; in a selected few it's clearer). Readability is what I'm trying to maximize here, so it's a no-go for foxit. I think adobe gives more options: I have selected options> page display > use cooltype and it makes a big difference.

thanks for the suggestion though.

1527

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Write a plugin for windows live writer to handle forum posts

« Last post by urlwolf on October 19, 2006, 07:57 AM »

I really like windows live writer. I know people are writing plugins left and right.

It'd be nifty to write a plugin for windows live writer to handle forum posts.
This would make possible the batch-creation of posts, and to separate forum reading (when online) from forum posting (maybe offline). Of course, having WYSIWYG for the post would be great.

Is this doable/reasonable?

1528

General Software Discussion / Is there any tool to see pdfs full screen in two pages?

« Last post by urlwolf on October 19, 2006, 07:53 AM »

Is there any tool to see pdfs full screen in two pages. Acrobat 7 has full screen mode but it's limited to one page.

Maybe someone should mail to adobe saying that some people use acrobat to read documents off the screen? probably too late if they didn't release it in ther new version 8. Anyone knows if this last version has any improvements in this respect? Also, how about dual monitors?

1529

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-review: Agenda at Once

« Last post by urlwolf on October 19, 2006, 07:50 AM »

Hi Vladimir,

I just came up with a few more AAO feature requests:
(1) Have a 'back' button to take the user to the last task he was in. There should be one for the outliner, another one for the scheduler/calendar, and a checkbox to synch them.

(2) Improve import/export. For example, import from/export to XML. Ideally, one should be able to copy/paste stuff from the outliner into say word and keep the indentation or the structure (e.g., top level is heading1 in word, second level is heading2, comments are body text, etc). This would make it possible to do e.g., mindmaps with the todo lists!. Right now, it is pasted as a table.

(3) Screen real state: save by combining toolbars. e.g., the dark gray toolbar that contains the title of the subwindow (i.e., schedule) should be combined with the toolbar immediately below.

Also, in the case of the scheduler the toolbar is way too thick just because of the 'days'

(4) better report funcionality. E.g., I want to see on a list what things I did the last week or so.

(5) Sometimes AAO doesn't come back from try after I hit the global shortcut (alt + Q in my case). At times, I have to hit it twice. Why is that?

(6) automatic coloring. Set up colors in the scheduler so they can be assigned to any feature of a task. I like to color (by hand) blue the recurring tasks, red the 'have to do' tasks, with a strong deadline (i.e., if I miss the date the opportunity is gone) and white everything else.

If this could be done automatically it'd be great. And of course, tasks you actually did and and crossed out in the outline, should show as grey in the schedule.

Thanks!

1530

Icon Tools / Re: congrats hamradio

« Last post by urlwolf on October 19, 2006, 07:33 AM »

Great job, hamradio!

1531

Living Room / Re: MouserMon - a silly tool that lets you know when the Boss is/not on the forum

« Last post by urlwolf on October 18, 2006, 02:40 PM »

hehe! nice idea!

1532

Living Room / Re: would you run a logger that counts how often you see each word?

« Last post by urlwolf on October 17, 2006, 01:20 PM »

ah! very good point.
It would parse the html of the pages you browse, plus the time spent.

What you type, of course, is not logged.
I don't think your password'd be displayed in an html page at all, it's always the little boxes with asterisks instead of chars that you see (and even so, not even the asterisks or anything inside a textbox would be logged).

So I don't see any way that kind of logger would capture your passwords. The same as google doesn't capture them...

1533

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-review: Agenda at Once

« Last post by urlwolf on October 17, 2006, 01:16 PM »

one more idea.
It'd be great to add to AAO some nice ideas found in this program:
http://www.sciral.com/consistency/

right now, the scheduler and todo list are pretty much independent in terms of completing a task. E.g., I can cross out a task in the todo list, but it still shows in the scheduler (I guess you have plans to fix that).

But making them to be crossed-out in synch is just one possibility.
Recurring tasks offer a new way of tackling this (as an option maybe).

Imagine the follwing escenario.
I have in my todo list "water plants", and it is scheduled weekly in the scheduler. each time I cross it, I don't want to lose the task 'water plants' from the todolist, I want to have some stats that I actually did it, but I want the task to stay there so I water the plants next week! For that, the http://www.sciral.com/consistency/ approach is the best I have seen. Maybe changing colors in the scheduler may support that. In a way, the calendar/scheduler view would work as the matrix in the sciral program.

Does it make sense? Do you think it'd be a sensible feature to have?
It'd be killer I think!

1534

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-review: Agenda at Once

« Last post by urlwolf on October 17, 2006, 11:19 AM »

Thanks for stopping by vradmilovic. I'm glad to hear you are planning a major update .

It is surprising how many good decisions you have made in terms of GUI and usability. The form for a new task is small, concise, and just what is needed. Drag and drop is a good idea. I'm gladly surprised seeing that M$ missed the point with outlook and a small company such as dataland did it right the first time!

1535

General Software Discussion / have you tried mind maps?

« Last post by urlwolf on October 16, 2006, 09:44 AM »

D. Allen was using mind maps (instead of powerpoint), he seems to swear by them. Have you tried them? Any thoughts? I cannot help but be reticent with a highly hyped up thing like this one...

1536

Post New Requests Here / Re: Mouse distance travelled

« Last post by urlwolf on October 16, 2006, 09:17 AM »

try whatpulse.org, it´s exactly what you want.

1537

General Software Discussion / Re: WYSIWYG bb code editor?

« Last post by urlwolf on October 16, 2006, 05:58 AM »

thanks lanux, I saw FASS (never tried)
It looks like it gives you the interface that any website gives you with the advantage of being able to compose offline and preview the post.

But it won't make posting faster (my main goal). I think!

1538

Mini-Reviews by Members / Mini-review: Agenda at Once

« Last post by urlwolf on October 15, 2006, 05:56 AM »

My review is here:
http://www.academicp...com/blog/archives/15

There is a current 30% discount going at DC here:
https://www.donation...index.php?board=85.0

I think this is a fantastic program and very useful for the current GEO experiment running. I think it is particularly relevant to those trying to implement Mark Forster's ideas with a program.

1539

General Software Discussion / Re: WYSIWYG bb code editor?

« Last post by urlwolf on October 15, 2006, 04:34 AM »

In general. I'm thinking something like what live writer does for blog posts.

1540

General Software Discussion / WYSIWYG bb code editor?

« Last post by urlwolf on October 14, 2006, 05:08 AM »

Do you know of any WYSIWYG bb code editor?
There was an ahk one:
http://www.autohotke...b6c3f6e5bf3c8c0d1875

but the download link is broken... also, it was not WYSIWYG after all of I remember well.

1541

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: GETTING ORGANIZED EXPERIMENT - WEEK FOUR+FIVE ASSIGNMENT

« Last post by urlwolf on October 13, 2006, 02:45 PM »

two quick things...
I have added a review of DIT here:
http://www.academicp...oductivity.com/blog/

Also the Forster Interview is finally a fact!
It is pure content, Some really nice chuncks there, for example:
= Why people drop off time management systems
= Why having a day with no long blocks of time available (e.g., if you have to teach a class at 12 and another at 2:00) may actually work in your favour
= Why you should write down any task before doing it
= stuff for programmers estimating a day's work
= Why we should stick to one system (instead of trying many as in the GEO experiment).

I'm really happy with the result. I also want to thank Mark for being so generous with his time. Mukestar will do the sound post-processing, and it should be ready for a podcast soon.

1542

General Software Discussion / Are software reviews important and effective? If not, why not?

« Last post by urlwolf on October 13, 2006, 02:40 PM »

I joined DC because of the software reviews (but mind you, I have found a lot more and I check the site everyday).

I have seen many people swearing by DC's reviews. The software industry certainly has high regards for DC's reviews. I love them, I think they are great fun a good for the ecosystem.

But I found one thing that puzzled me: I don't really use the recommended soft!

Let me explain.
The titanic https://www.donation...oteTakers1/index.php
Notetaking Software Roundup #1
Recommends not one, but three programs… I use a completely different one (oneNote).

The Best Email Client review, recommends the bat, I use Opera.

The Power-user Backup Guide recommends Genie Backup, I hate it with passion and use synchBackSE (although honestly, I'm not very fond of it either).

Ultraedit gets the best text editor award, but I use vim.

You know what I'm getting at?

Are we humans so variable that it doesn't make sense to make software recommendations? If so, what is the alternative? We sure like to read the comparison, but for some reason we end up having our own take on it… and using something else!

Comments? Are you in a similar situation? If so, what are the implications for the reviews?

1543

Living Room / Re: would you run a logger that counts how often you see each word?

« Last post by urlwolf on October 10, 2006, 04:57 PM »

it takes the same effort, so all words.

1544

Living Room / would you run a logger that counts how often you see each word?

« Last post by urlwolf on October 09, 2006, 02:15 PM »

Hi,

I need some feedback from experienced netizens. This is for an idea about and web experiments. I know how scared are people about losing privacy and being observed and such (more so after the AOL database was released).

I think an absolutely killer db to have is how often *each* individual sees different words. I'm planning to run an experiment on what I call "personal history corpus"... I cannot post the details here.

If I created one, would you run a logger that counts how often you see each word? I'd pay you (as it is customary in psych experiments) and probabl ask you to do some experimental task (related to memory). But first I need to have the counts of say your last week online (the more the better).

So would you do it? I cannot recompose what you read (for privacy, your data would be anonymous anyway), but the counts may still give you a certain feeling of what the person reads.

1545

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Utility which highlights filenames of recently created files

« Last post by urlwolf on October 08, 2006, 08:44 AM »

and probably dopus, too?

1546

General Review Discussion / Re: recording phone conversations from a PC (skype, voip). What I have tried

« Last post by urlwolf on October 05, 2006, 05:59 AM »

In their forums: "
I've passed Vemotion on to my professional colleagues.

All of which have asked about Skype.

If it doesn't work then could you please REMOVE any mention of skype from the application.

Specifically the Options dialog where my professional colleagues can set Skype to Enable."

How do I hate testing sub-standard software that wastes my time. And this particular area (voip/skype recording) is full of it...

1547

General Review Discussion / Re: recording phone conversations from a PC (skype, voip). What I have tried

« Last post by urlwolf on October 05, 2006, 05:51 AM »

also, testing skype, I get a popup saying that 'At present, vemotion cannot record skype calls.' Even though the advertise it all over the place...

1548

General Review Discussion / Re: recording phone conversations from a PC (skype, voip). What I have tried

« Last post by urlwolf on October 05, 2006, 05:28 AM »

Thanks Sri

I tried vmotion before, I just didn't remember the results.

It records voip fine.
What I don't like:
(1) It only records the call after it is finished. What if the program crashes? Also, I don't like that you cannot see a file increasing in size to make sure it is recording fine.

It can be solved like this: (from help file)

Save a record before finishing a call

When you are recording a call, select menu command "Recorder | Save Recorded Up to Now" to save the already recorded data into a new record file. This does not mean stopping recording. The call is still being recorded, and another record will be produced when you finish the call or select the menu command "Recorder | Save Recorded Up to Now" again.

But it is still a hack.

(2) bad documentation, lots of things missing.
(3) reaper cannot play the wav files generated (?). The VPs are moving, but no sound is produced. Weird.

Since it's $20 or 3min recording time, I'd have to buy it to actually see how reliable it is.

Is there any reason you recommend this partular one?
Thanks

1549

General Review Discussion / Re: recoding phone conversations from a PC (skype, voip). What I have tried

« Last post by urlwolf on October 05, 2006, 04:00 AM »

Oh, and also, if anyone knows what affects the quality of skype/voip calls to landline phones, please let me know. When I tested everything seemed to work fine, but when I had to 'go live' the quality just wasn't there at all. Minor variations of hardware/phone area/time of the day/phase of the moon seem to affect the quality of the call. I hate this because it is impossible to troubleshoot well (random factors?)

1550

General Review Discussion / recording phone conversations from a PC (skype, voip). What I have tried

« Last post by urlwolf on October 05, 2006, 03:57 AM »

This is the current landscape to Record Skype/voIP Conversations.
They all ask you to pay $20-$30 and most of them didn't even work on my system. Most offer lots of other features that I don’t need, like sharing music, answering machines, or the superpower of making funny noises to your otherwise perfectly normal conversation.

Powergamo http://www.powergramo.com/
   Didn't work at all

HCM express talk 27$ https://www.nch.com....er.exe?software=talk
   The only one that successfully records voip protocol (!)
   Seems to do skype through plugin. Didn't work for me.
   Doesn’t record to wav, but pcm
   Doesn't do two channels
   Can do searches on recorded conversations (using dragon). I haven't tried this
   Waiting music that runs as you boot, and has to be deactivated by hand.
   Documentation sucks, you have to pay extra for support
   It installs 4 programs, plus a plug in needed. Install only if you cannot live without it, as it bugs you so much that you would want to burn your computer. A terrorist attack to your OS.
   It is a mess, it hangs when using the skype plugin
   
HotRecorder http://www.hotrecorder.com/
   Crap interface, buttons don't fit the non-resizable screen. Didn’t test much more

Total recorder http://www.highcriteria.com/
   Msg saying that it is known not to work with voip
   When recording from skype, only one channel is kept ! (e.g., only one person!)
   useless
   
Pamela http://www.pamela-systems.com/products/
   Expensive $24
   Skype only
   Supports skype 2.6
   Hard to unistall (leaves a track of virtual cables)

Prettymay $20 www.prettymay.net/
   Does two channels, skype only
   Saves to wav
   Shares music
   Ok, but when wav is played back in reaper, it is slow motion (!)

SAM $29 http://www.kishkish.com/sam/
   Didn't work at all

So, all in all, I still don't have a good solution to record a phone conversation! And I'm not going to try more software. Apart from the several hours wasted already, I have vowed not to install anything new for a month.

Any ideas? what works for you?
(also see http://www.labnol.bl...e-conversations.html where I got most of the links)