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15576

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / NANY 2011 Poll To Help Decide Mouser's App

« Last post by mouser on September 13, 2010, 10:57 PM »

I've already committed to finishing up a large web application for NANY 2011, but I've also committed to writing a new large desktop application.

But i'm having a hard time deciding what desktop application to write.  So i'm asking for some feedback about which program you'd most like to see.

I've listed 4 ideas that are currently on my mind, but i'm leaving the details vague.

• Exercise/Workout Builder - This is an idea to let people build custom workouts from modules that others build
• Webcam Recording/Diary Utility - I have written a fairly extensive image and video browsing/recording tool for another project and was trying to think of a way to reuse some of the code and create something new; in some sense the easiest since i have much of the code, but it's the one idea that also needs to figure out what exactly novel it would do.
• Touchscreen Pictureframe App - The idea for this is a program you would run on a touchscreen monitor mounted on the wall in a picture frame; it would let you configure screensavers, visual demo effects, special web pages, etc.; and easily cycle through them, kind of like an iphone style user interface that let you navigate between modules.
• Card/Board Game Protoyping Tools - I've already written several scripts for board game designers to help prototype games; this idea is to take this to the next level.

So does anything on this list grab your attention?  Use the poll above to vote, and thanks for your input!

15577

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: xkcdDownloader

« Last post by mouser on September 13, 2010, 06:02 PM »

Cool!
Maybe someone wants to make a MultiPhotoQuotes screensaver image pack for it?

15578

Site/Forum Features / Re: Idea: DC Cody Tshirts customized for an interest area

« Last post by mouser on September 13, 2010, 04:18 PM »

keep it up and you'll lose your cody badge!

15579

Find And Run Robot / Re: Farr + GooglePlus Configuraton always pops up

« Last post by mouser on September 13, 2010, 03:00 PM »

And it's my fix - I forgot all about that!

 

been there, done that.

15580

Find And Run Robot / Re: Farr + GooglePlus Configuraton always pops up

« Last post by mouser on September 13, 2010, 02:38 PM »

good to see you exploring all the things FARR has to offer James  
GooglePlus is one of the best.

The problem you are citing is a known recent bug; hopefully we will have a proper new version of it soon that fixes the problem you are experiencing; until then there is a fix here:
https://www.donation....msg216449#msg216449

15581

N.A.N.Y. 2011 / NANY 2011 Release: UserQuotes.com Web Service

« Last post by mouser on September 13, 2010, 01:29 PM »

NANY 2011 Entry Information

Website Service	UserQuotes.com
Short Description	Collaborative management of quotes/reviews about your products
Official Discussion Section	https://www.donation...ndex.php?board=301.0
Authors	mouser and JavaJones

Description
The idea of the website is to let one or more people in a group manage a collection of quotes from users, links to online reviews, email testimonials, and feedback comments.

Many websites keep a collection of links to reviews, awards, email comments, etc. that praise their products.  Typically this list is created by hand and placed in a box on a website somewhere, with a heading something like "What people say about us"  or "Awards we have won."

But there are problems with maintaining such a list by hand and UserQuotes.com was designed to solve these problems.

Features

• Allows collective management of quotes/reviews/awards, so a *team* of people can add and manage items together.
• Allows anonymous users to submit feedback form or add new items, but these items are not made public until the team appoves them; gives you control over what items are shown.
• Site automatically fetches screenshot grabs of web pages (with reviews, etc.) and makes a thumbnail image of the web page (or directly of an award graphic).
• In addition to reduced size thumbnails, the site will also grab a FULL image of the entire webpage and a text version of the webpage.  If the review page *ever* goes offline, users can still read the cached original.
• Tags let you organize sets of quotes into logical groups and present them to users.  So a team can manager a collection of quotes about multiple projects, and you can choose different subsets of these to show on different pages.
• You can embed random quote boxes in different styles and themes on your own site's pages.  Or just send people to the UserQuotes.com page to browse.

Screenshots


Known Issues

UserQuotes.com is currently in a *VERY* ROUGH BETA state.  Don't expect to be able to use this for your real projects yet.  Most features work well, but some final finishing touches are really in rough shape which will make it hard to actually deploy for real yet.  But we are working on it, so stay tuned.

15582

Site/Forum Features / Re: Idea: DC Cody Tshirts customized for an interest area

« Last post by mouser on September 13, 2010, 12:31 PM »

and why is the bowl sitting on top of a magnifying glass?
and same image on front and back?

15583

Site/Forum Features / Re: Idea: DC Cody Tshirts customized for an interest area

« Last post by mouser on September 13, 2010, 12:30 PM »

hmm.. i can't help but think we can do better..
something a bit more mysterious and samurai-spirit inspiring might be nice.

something that stirs bystanders to envy, fear, apprehension, and awe.

15584

Site/Forum Features / Re: Idea: DC Cody Tshirts customized for an interest area

« Last post by mouser on September 13, 2010, 10:43 AM »

i just thought everyone had lost interest in the t-shirt(s).

hell no!!!

i just expected the Coding Snack gods like skwire and skrommel to speak up and say what they wanted the final design to look like.

no one ever loses interest in Cody!

15585

DcUpdater / Re: DCUpdater redundancy

« Last post by mouser on September 13, 2010, 12:37 AM »

thanks for finding the bug.. new official version will be posted soon.

15586

DcUpdater / Re: DCUpdater redundancy

« Last post by mouser on September 12, 2010, 09:48 PM »

ok i think i see the problem.

deo, can you try replacing your existing dcuppdater.exe with this beta:
https://www.donation.../beta/DcUppdater.zip

and see if that fixes it.

15587

Living Room / Re: I haven't abandon you all!

« Last post by mouser on September 12, 2010, 09:27 PM »

welcome back Kamel! 

15588

DcUpdater / Re: DCUpdater redundancy

« Last post by mouser on September 12, 2010, 09:09 PM »

how on earth is this happening  '
i swear sometimes i think you guys that find these bugs have magical powers.  i would have laid money that this was not possible in the latest version.

can you show me your "Extra Update Files and Exclusions" tab in the options?

and to confirm, you are getting these duplicates right after you launch the updater manually right?

15589

DcUpdater / Re: DCUpdater redundancy

« Last post by mouser on September 12, 2010, 09:05 PM »

and now the file question, if you do Help -> About from DcUpdater, what version does it report?

15590

Living Room / Re: Tipping - Why does this appear to be a "requirement"?

« Last post by mouser on September 12, 2010, 06:31 PM »

Wraith -- if your point is that in professions where people depend on tips, simply eliminating tipping without adjusting their pay would be unfair -- i totally agree and that should be obvious to everyone.  People who work in jobs where there are tips (such as restaurant waiters, etc.), receive much less in pay because employers assume that a portion of their pay will be from tips.

But it seems to me that the debate has to be whether it would be better to simply raise the wages of such people and do away with tips -- and that is what i would argue for.

I think a case against such a change could be made based on the idea that you want to reward people who do an especially good job more than those who do a bad job, and that tipping can help achieve that.  But my experience is that this does not work.  It fails because i don't think there is much evidence that good performers make more from tips than bad performers.  There are interesting studies of what affects tip size, but i don't think performance factors very high.  Better to use standard approach to evaluating  performance as is done on all other normal jobs.

And the downsides to using tips to offset lower wages seem very substantial, including unpredictable wages, biases against certain kids of people, tax evasion, social expectations of tipping amounts, etc.

The question is -- wouldn't we be better off just paying people higher proper wages and doing away with tipping?  On the average everyone would come out the same, and there would be less gaming of the system, and less frustration on everyone's part.

15591

Living Room / Re: My portable HTPC project

« Last post by mouser on September 12, 2010, 05:49 PM »

wouldn't the simple answer be to get a laptop with a large hard drive and hdmi out?

15592

DcUpdater / Re: DCUpdater redundancy

« Last post by mouser on September 12, 2010, 05:44 PM »

ok this is important for me to solve this (since i thought i already did!)
can you show me pictures of the bottom panel when you click on the 2 duplicate entries for an item? (ie show me the bottom panel when you click on the first two entries in your list) -- i'm trying to see where it shows the update file located.

15593

Living Room / Re: Tipping - Why does this appear to be a "requirement"?

« Last post by mouser on September 12, 2010, 04:46 PM »

Tipping is definitely out of control, and exerts a distortion on every industry that it touches, not to mention the ramifications for tax avoidance, etc. I think we'd all be much better off if we got rid of the entire practice of tipping.

Regardless of whether you are happy with the business of tipping -- i think you did the right thing and others should follow in your footsteps -- if treated rudely, do not just sit their and take it, demand a refund, and go up the chain of command until you get satisfaction or at least cause them to think twice before they treat someone else that way.

15594

Find And Run Robot / Re: Very slow program execution

« Last post by mouser on September 12, 2010, 03:57 PM »

I only wonder what functionality I will lose?

try launching a .doc or other microsoft office document.. the purpose of the helper utility is to avoid a delay in farr that can occur when launching such files.  something strange must be happening in your case when the helper utility is trying to launch a file, but im not sure what.

15595

Find And Run Robot / Re: Very slow program execution

« Last post by mouser on September 12, 2010, 03:47 PM »

quickdoclauncher is exceedingly simple tool.. that makes me think its some antivirus tool that is freaking out.

however.. try this: go to the General options tab, and uncheck "Use document launch helper utility" and see if that helps; you might also try changing the other options inside "Options for Launching Programs and Documents":

15596

Site/Forum Features / Re: Idea: DC Cody Tshirts customized for an interest area

« Last post by mouser on September 12, 2010, 03:43 PM »

i thought i was still waiting for a final design?

15597

Find And Run Robot / Re: Very slow program execution

« Last post by mouser on September 12, 2010, 03:23 PM »

if you have a memory resident antivirus program, maybe you could disable it and see if it effects launching speed?

one other thing that might be worth trying is an older version of farr:
https://www.donation...obotSetup_081810.exe

just to make sure the problem was introduced with the latest version.

15598

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR 2.90.02 not useable

« Last post by mouser on September 12, 2010, 02:20 PM »

very strange..
let's talk over email if you don't mind, so i can see if i can figure out some more clues.

the fact that it's slow to respond to tray click suggests to me that it's engaged in some process going on in the background that it shouldn't be -- that is, it's stuck in some background scanning loop in addition to the main searching.

15599

Living Room / Re: How to send fax through high-speed internet connection?

« Last post by mouser on September 12, 2010, 12:20 PM »

lifehacker thread on internet fax services:
http://lifehacker.co...ve-best-fax-services

15600

Find And Run Robot / Re: FSubScript plugins acting strange

« Last post by mouser on September 12, 2010, 12:16 PM »

could you see if you can figure out if it is indeed another plugin interfering?
it could also be some problem involving the embedded web browser in farr.