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Recent Posts

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2151
Living Room / Re: JOTT - a new cell phone service
« Last post by J-Mac on June 07, 2008, 03:37 AM »
By the way, beyond just sending voice reminders to yourself - which is pretty valuable itself - you can "Jott" events to your Google Calendar, or Jott tasks to your "Remember the Milk" or Toodledo To Do lists, among others, or 30 Calendars, Backpack, etc., etc.  You can also send SMS messages with Jott.  The recipient(s) can either read the test recognition or listen to a .wav file of your voice message itself.

A lot of really cool uses!

Jim

EDIT:  Almost forgot -- you can also send a Jott voice message to Amazon.com naming a product - any product they might sell - and Amazon will then send you search results with descriptions and prices to your cell phone.  It includes links so if you see a result you want you can click it and purchase it right then, as long as you have an account at Amazon!
2152
Living Room / Re: JOTT - a new cell phone service
« Last post by J-Mac on June 07, 2008, 03:33 AM »
New?  Wow!  I just checked and I initially signed up for Jott in February 2007!  IIRC, it was an early beta at that time.  Still though, it has been pretty mainstream for at least 8 or 9 months.

Truly one of the best web applications I use.

Jim
2153
I just sent my nomination.  Sure do hope you make it mouser!

Jim
2154
Logitech MX Revolution Mouse.  Great!  I now have three!  Way too many buttons and TWO scroll wheels!  (Second scroll whell IS pretty worthless.)

Only problem is that to do much with this mouse you must install Logitech's Setpoint software - with which they actually LIMIT some of the mouse's best capabilities.  Idiots!

However there is a guy who has created a wonderful add-on called "UberOptions" that installs over Setpoint and let's you customize this mouse - along with most other Logitech items that use Setpoint - to the point of pure joy.

Jim
2155
OK...  Whatever DID happen to Copernic??

I was using it when V.2 was released, but after having it installed for awhile it would stop working and I never could figure out why.  By "stop working" I mean that it would still index regularly and built up an immense index file, but at some point it would stop finding most files.  After it not finding a few things it should have I would enter some really easy searches and it failed every time.  Copernic doesn't really support the free version very enthusiastically, and would eventually say, "Try re-indexing", or "Try reinstalling".  Re-indexing never fixed anything. Reinstalling would get it working again but after a time (several  weeks or a couple of months - can't remember now exactly) it would get the same symptoms.

Is it possible that it has a maximum size and stops working if your index exceeds it?  (Google Desktop Search does exactly that.  Has a maximum size and when you hit it starts acting up terribly).

Thanks!

Jim
2156
General Software Discussion / Re: Thorough harddisk checking.
« Last post by J-Mac on June 04, 2008, 11:57 PM »
I never tried Spinrite.  Is there a story to go along with that, f0dder?

Jim
2157
Found Deals and Discounts / Re: RecentX at Bits du Jor, 4-Jun-2008
« Last post by J-Mac on June 04, 2008, 11:55 PM »
I don't know, Tuck - haven't tried that.  But if I find out, I'll let you know.

Jim
2158
Living Room / Re: Why I could never buy a Dell or HP computer (rant)
« Last post by J-Mac on June 04, 2008, 02:03 AM »
I have to stand by dell. For the past two systems, I have purchased from them, learning my lesson about building a system on my own when it is not really my passion. Yes, I can build a system given the time, but time has become a valuable commodity to me with the military and my family. Dell's warranty services are the best, turn around time just shy of two days for a received new part on failure. Their system configurations on their website make it very easy for me to customize their systems to my exact needs.

Also, when it comes to "crapware", my last system had about 4-5 apps I had to uninstall. Given how often I reformat, about once every year or so, this is a very very negligible annoyance and one I will gladly put up with to obtain a system that I know will work, continue to work, and if it breaks I can have it fixed without any out of pocket expense. Bravo to you Dell

I'll agree to a point - warranty services are much better for the business site than for home users.  Last time I purchased a Dell (prior to this last notebook), all Home service had been outsourced to India.  now I don't usually have any problem with that.  When I was still able to work I spent time at my company's Mumbai office and had (still have, actually) a lot of respect for the engineers and designers there.  As talented as any I have known.  But Dell had apparently gone the "cheap" route. Their Indian techs were extremely poor from an English language standpoint, and they only read from scripts - the same as you could read on the Dell support site or in the user manual.  No higher tier there, and they would not transfer you to the US offices.

And though their crapware levels are way down presently, they used to put a ton of it on their Home systems five years ago and prior. You couldn't even pay them to leave it off!

Jim
2159
Found Deals and Discounts / Re: RecentX at Bits du Jor, 4-Jun-2008
« Last post by J-Mac on June 04, 2008, 01:55 AM »
I had been using FARR for nothing but application launching.  Then after seeing RecentX and giving that a lot of thought I decided to see just how much more FARR could do.

Wow!  Finds folders and files as quickly as anything I've tried.  As long as I am still exploring all that FARR can do I won't use RecentX.  No sense having another app that I would only use for the same things I can do just fine with FARR.

Jim
2160
Found Deals and Discounts / RecentX at Bits du Jor, 4-Jun-2008
« Last post by J-Mac on June 04, 2008, 12:36 AM »
Just saw that RecentX, so recently available at Give Away of the Day, is available today at Bits du Jor for $9.95, a 51% discount from the retail price of $19.95.

Of course if you can't get it there today, the DonationCoder discount of 33% is still valid also.

Me?  I can perform a lot of the same tasks with Mouser's Find And Run Robot (FARR) here at DC!!   :)

Jim
2161
Living Room / Re: Why I could never buy a Dell or HP computer (rant)
« Last post by J-Mac on June 03, 2008, 01:37 AM »
After refusing to purchase from Dell for almost five years, I recently broke down and purchased a notebook from them - an XPS M-1330.  Though it does have a fair amount of issues, due mostly to manufacturers releasing rotten drivers for their "Vista-compatible" hardware, there was almost no crapware on it at all.  A few Dell-specific things - one of which I found to be extremely annoying - but other than a few of those, nothing.

I was pleasantly surprised.

BTW, the annoying thing I mentioned above was a Dell-branded Google search page.  Anytime you go to Google's home page you instead get redirected by a BHO to a Dell/Google page that has 75% sponsored ads and 25% real search results.  I found the problem - it's actually a program listed only under "C:\Common Files", but II could not install it from the Control Panel.  When I tried it said that it required me to install a disk first. But none of the Dell-supplied disks worked to uninstall it.

I finally just found the DLL and renamed it, then found and deleted the registry key for it.  B@stards!!

Jim
2162
No Chris....

That's MY machine!

Jim
2163
General Software Discussion / Re: WebSite Watcher Question
« Last post by J-Mac on May 29, 2008, 05:04 PM »
By the way, Website Watcher is an excellent program; very comprehensive.  However it does have a bit of a learning curve, at least for non-coding types like me.

I liked the idea of a program that could keep an eye on web pages and notify me when they change. Of course it isn't quite that simple! Most pages, for example, have a Date element that changes daily, and there are usually a number of other elements that change more often than you realize at first blush.  When you get notified of ALL changes it is sort of like the boy who cried wolf -- you stop paying much attention to that page and then invariably miss a big change that you were hoping to catch.

In those cases - which is most pages - you can create filters to only be notified of changes that are important to you. Some filters are pretty basic and don't take a lot of learning. Others require that the filter be composed - like writing scripts for some applications. That's where Website Watcher can be more difficult, IMO.  There is not much information at all as to how to compose filter scripts.  I have tried some that get real complex very quickly, and more often than not I end up getting changed pages where there's a warning saying that my filter is no good.  Occasionally I get it worked out, and a lot of times I just give up!

The program could really use better documentation regarding filters IMO.  Although at the forum many users seem to have less problems with filters, so it may just be that you need to have a better background in coding.  At least that's how it appears to me.

Jim
2164
General Software Discussion / Re: WebSite Watcher Question
« Last post by J-Mac on May 29, 2008, 04:52 PM »
No problem.  You wouldn't know otherwise - I have been at his forum a number of times so I would know.

And if you're reading fast at work you probably don't look at signatures or might even have them turned off.

It does seem that he keeps an eye out here for questions and tries to post answers when he can.  Pretty admirable.

Jim
2165
General Software Discussion / Re: WebSite Watcher Question
« Last post by J-Mac on May 29, 2008, 01:51 AM »
Thanks: I thought it had to be like that, but just wanted to check users.

Have you tested that functionality?
-Perry Mowbray (May 28, 2008, 10:38 PM)

Perry - that was Martin Aignesberger, the developer...  I think he has most likely tested it!!  ;D

Jim
2166
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: ZohoDB - Online Free Relational Database
« Last post by J-Mac on May 25, 2008, 10:13 PM »
Thank you for the excellent review.

I have been searching for a relatively easy to use database application for a very specific need I have. (A search of the forums here will show my pleas for assistance in this).

I did try Zoho Creator when it was initially introduced and I personally had a lot of difficulty in creating anything I could use. I wasn't sure at the time whether it was due to my own lack of database skills or if it was truly that problemsome. I subsequently found many discussions where others wrote of similar difficulties and decided that both reasons were likely valid: my meager database skills and the program's own shortcomings were problems.

I did end up solving my problems with a different application. But at some point I will go back and give this one another look.

Thanks!

Jim
2167
Living Room / Re: Wireless Internet signal allergy
« Last post by J-Mac on May 25, 2008, 09:25 PM »
I agree that without any such diagnosis formally existing there can be no accommodation required by an employer or government agency.

However I'm not quite laughing it off either! After all the relatively large number of people worldwide who believe that the waves carrying mobile phone signals can cause brain cancer have caused myriads of scientific studies looking for a correlation. (Not that I worry much about it here as I type this reply on my Blackberry!!). Try to imagine the horrors of such an allergy if it WERE true! There would be virtually no escape from such an allergy in this day and age. Eeewww!

I don't entirely dismiss such claims anymore - as I did for most of my life - mainly because static electricity has become a very large annoyance in recent years. I have personally destroyed a Motorola 6412 Cable Box/DVR, two DVD Players (a Panasonic & a Sanyo, and a Panasonic Home Theater receiver. What always used to be a tiny blue spark and a little snapping sound has become a miniature blue lightning bolt of a half inch to an inch with a much louder crack. We moved from a very cold climate to Florida and lived there for 8 years - hot, humid, and NO static electricity. But ever since we moved back up north I have been frying electronic devices ever since!

None of that really means much of anything. But before that I would have routinely dismissed any such claims about static electricity as laughable.  Go figure...

Jim
2168
Thanks for providing the link to the free upgrade post, Jim. I wasn't sure if I should post it or not, but was too shattered to go looking for it and actually make the decision (passed out after making the post for a blissful 9 hour sleep  :-[)!

Well, Tobias was pretty open about it at the time.  I can't see why it would be upsetting -- it's not like I am posting it outside of DC or anything.  Heck, it might even get him some sales to new users!

Jim
2169
TJ and anyone else here at DC:

Here's the link with Tobias's promise of V 4 upgrades.   :)

Jim
2170
Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Convertibles on sale from Cornucopia3D
« Last post by J-Mac on May 20, 2008, 11:54 PM »
Still not certain just what you do with it, but your links sure do have some great sci-fi/fantasy artwork!

Jim
2171
PhraseExpress doesn't do that now, though. Just tried ;)

Nice to know, but a little late...   :)

Jim
2172
mediaguycook,

gorwin stated it perfectly.  The engineering companies I have worked with are exactly the same way.  Everyone would like to install their favorite applications, but IT has no way of knowing which will have possible conflicts with company-approved software - that which is needed to perform their job duties - and if they were to install something for an employee and it caused, say, a network problem for 20,00 users or so, they most likely would no longer work there!

Pretty standard business practice.  And a sound one at that.

Jim
2173
I had similar issues with PhraseExpress last year. They use a lot of hotkeys for extending text, but override existing ones on your computer.

E.g., on my computer OneNote 2007 uses the Win+S shortcut for screen clipping.  Whenever PhraseExpress was open it changed that hotkey to "Sleep".  That got more than a little frustrating!  I inquired about allowing users to disable that and the developer told me to close all other programs with hotkeys when I run PhraseExpress.

Not a very good fix IMO.  I use Direct Access now.

Jim
2174
Living Room / Re: Streaming audio across a network to multiple PCs?
« Last post by J-Mac on May 19, 2008, 02:37 PM »
And you all are still talking music, correct?

I've been investigating squeezebox-type technology that will allow streaming of DVD video on a home network.  There are a few solutions out there, but I have seen mostly mixed results.  Some claim it is definitely doable, while others claim they cannot get it to work at all.

Anyone here at DC streaming ripped DVD's over a network?  (I have seen a few posts alluding to this here.)

Thanks!

Jim
2175
KenR,

I was wondering if you could help me with a few Linkman issues that have been giving me some difficulty.  I have written two email messages to Outertech Support but have not received any replies at all from them, which is more than a little disappointing.  The first was submitted on May 11 and the second on May 13.  Not even an autoresponder confirmation.  I hope that is not normal for Outertech.  Anyway, here are my questions:

  • I am having more difficulty with Linkman's UI than any other I have used.  I have read everything I can find in the Help file and in the PDF manual but still find getting what I want to see on the screen is not very easy.  Most of the time I end up closing Linkman altogether and then reopening it later, hoping that it will return to the original view that I started with.  (Ken, this is partly resolved once I discovered that the last drop-down in the right-hand pane determines what you see in that pane, though there are still some anomalies that I have not figured out yet).  There are times when I cannot figure out what is showing in the right pane, and why.  At times the right pane seems to be showing the contents of the highlighted folder on the left.  Other times, however, it is showing something completely unrelated.  I sometimes hate to do anything that might lose that view because it is so difficult to get it back.  Any particular tips you may have found since you have been playing with this application a bit longer than I have?

  • Searching for a link, or running a query actually, is very different from what I have seen in other applications.  No actual search dialog shows up, or at least anything that looks like a search dialog.  The UI doesn't really change at all when I click on the Search button.  Is there any way that I can open a search dialog?  Or even make one of the panes look like a search dialog?  The present search capability, while it may be powerful, as claimed, is kind of difficult to look at, at least for me.  It's different than most other programs' search functions.  The deskbar's "query" function, while being very fast, has been pretty limited so far IMO.  If there are more than one links with the keyword I'm searching for, only one shows up.  I then have to open the full UI to perform the search over again.  (The word or words used in the deskbar search do not carry over into the full UI).

  • Also I have had a few instances where the Linkman query simply will not find certain words.  Actually, it DOES find the word in one or two links, but is missing a few where it also appears in the title.  Have you noticed this?  E.g., I have two different links for Citizen Bank.  Running a query on "citizen" finds two other links that also have that word in them, but does not return either of the Bank-related links.

  • Ever since installing Linkman Version 7.3.0.1 the window view has been a little tough to get right.  Whenever I click on the deskbar link to show and hide Linkman it opens in a "Normal" window, even though I have always viewed it maximized in the previous version.  As a matter of fact, Linkman always opened fully maximized in the previous version.  Not any more, though.  Now, after it opens in the smaller Normal window, I click on the Maximize button and the window is maximized, but the contents of the window stay the same as they were in the Normal window.  IOW, the window maximizes but the contents of the window do not!  If I then restore it to a Normal window and immediately maximize it again the contents then become maximized.   Sometimes I have to do this a few times before the contents become maximized.  Is this a known issue with Version 7.3.0.1?

That's about it in a nutshell.  A few other little annoyances, but the above are the ones that are really giving me some problems.  Navigation can be a little wonky, but hopefully I will get used to that.

Most distressing, though, is not getting any response to my support requests.  Outertech seemed to be extremely accommodating here in the forum when your review was first posted.

Thanks Ken!

Jim
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