Recent Posts

22651

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request - right click on results Command prompt here option

« Last post by mouser on July 10, 2008, 06:22 AM »

There have been a number of similar but different requests..
I think perhaps the best solution might be to allow users (and plugins) to customize the right-click actions for results.

22652

Living Room / Re: Gizmo's Tech Support Alert Newsletter Merges with Windows Secrets

« Last post by mouser on July 09, 2008, 11:31 PM »

From Gizmo announcement:

On July 24, the Support Alert Newsletter will merge with the Windows Secrets Newsletter to bring you a better publication on software and technology.

 The amazing growth of the Support Alert Newsletter has made it too much work for me to handle by myself. The administrative requirements of 150,000 subscribers meant I was spending too much time sorting out subscription problems and not enough time finding you the best free products.

By merging the two e-mail newsletters into one, I'm getting production and administrative help from Windows Secrets, which will free up my time to write more stuff for you. That means more great freeware finds and more useful and practical PC tips.
 
  I'm becoming the senior editor of the combined newsletter, which will be called Windows Secrets & Support Alert, as shown in the image at left. (After a transitional period, we'll shorten the name.) After the merger, the combined newsletter will reach more than 400,000 tech users.

 The combined newsletter will come out weekly rather than monthly, and my  freeware reviews will be in every second issue. That means you will be hearing from me twice as often as before. However, each newsletter you receive will be shorter (but more timely) than the old, monthly Support Alert.

While Windows Secrets & Support Alert are merging our newsletters, we are not merging our websites. My website techsupportalert.com will continue on as before. Indeed, in its new  freeware wiki format, I will be giving it my full personal support to make it the best freeware resource on the web.

I'll be working on the combined newsletter with editorial director Brian Livingston, who is the co-author of 11 books in the "Windows Secrets" series. Some other writers I'll be joining with are Woody Leonhard, the co-author of several "For Dummies" books, and Scott Dunn, who's been a contributor to PC World magazine for 15 years.

 I do hope you'll support my new writing project. I'm sending you this special announcement today because there are are just a few small steps you need to take.

22653

Living Room / Re: An interesting comparison of internet shopping websites

« Last post by mouser on July 09, 2008, 07:38 PM »

short but sweet -- definitely a useful list for people who don't know about these sites.

22654

Living Room / Re: Gizmo's Tech Support Alert Newsletter Merges with Windows Secrets

« Last post by mouser on July 09, 2008, 07:28 PM »

Only time will tell, but let's give them a chance..
My impression from reading the announcement was that Gizmo's content would become the main content, while at the same time freeing him from having to worry about the technical details of sending out the newsletter and managing subscriptions.  if you combine that with the new pay-what-you-want model for subscribers, it could be a win-win for everyone.  But only time will tell.  I hope that readers will post follow-ups here to let us know how they like the new version.

22655

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by mouser on July 09, 2008, 07:00 PM »

I have 2 nvidia graphics cards, each with 2 DVI connectors.  I think its one GT8600 and one GT8800, all four running at 1600x1200 (no SLI or other special connection).  The monitors are all Samsung 204b 21" monitors (two of them are experiencing noticeable problems with areas of dead/miscolored pixels but otherwise i'm quite happy with).

As for game playing, the last game i played for more than an hour was GTAIII and the next one i play will be GTAIV.  It's hard for me to play a game for more than a few minutes without me wanting to go make my own game (which i don't have time for), so i stop and get back to coding, which is more satisfying.

22656

Living Room / Gizmo's Tech Support Alert Newsletter Merges with Windows Secrets

« Last post by mouser on July 09, 2008, 06:23 PM »

This is pretty big news in the computer newsletter world.

Ian "Gizmo" Richards' newsletter "Tech Support Alert" has been a favorite newsletter among those who love to keep up to date with windows software news, and Gizmo's Tech Support Alert website and list of top freeware is a huge favorite of many people (a lot of people found out about DonationCoder.com from gizmo's site).  Ian is a great guy with an eye towards the little guy and that makes him a hero in my eyes.

The Windows Secrets newsletter gets slightly more mixed reviews from DC readers i think but it's still been a reliably good resource, and they also did something we love, which is they made the paid subscription version cost completely up to the reader.  So subscribers can now decide exactly how much they want to pay for it.  Love this idea.

Today the Windows Secrets website announced that Windows Secrets is going to merge with and fold in Gizmo's Tech Support alert newsletter (and retain its Windows Secrets name after some temporary period), with Ian as the new Senior Editor.  Seems to me this could be good news for everyone and could make Windows Secrets one of those must reads.

My only comment is to the Windows Secrets editors to redouble their efforts to purse the highest ethical standards regarding recommending software; Windows Secrets makes money from software advertising in their newsletter in addition to the paid subscriptions, and it's very important that such things are made very clear to readers and that the editorial content not be biased by the paid advertisers.

A bigger, better newsletter with Support Alert
By Brian Livingston

I'm extremely proud to say that Windows Secrets is joining together with the Support Alert Newsletter, a major tech publication.

When our two newsletters merge on July 24, we'll reach over 400,000 subscribers in total and add new content from one of the world's best sources of Windows software reviews.

Meet our senior editor, Ian 'Gizmo' Richards

Ian Richards The Support Alert Newsletter has been edited since 2002 by Ian Richards (left), known to everyone as "Gizmo." Prior to that, the newsletter was run by tech writer Robert Schifreen. At its inception in 1998, the publication was entitled PC Alert, but was renamed Support Alert in 2000.

Gizmo's made quite a name for himself on the Web by writing today's best danged reviews of downloadable software, especially free software. He built up Support Alert to the point that it had about 150,000 e-mail subscribers.

By merging his newsletter with Windows Secrets, Gizmo liberates himself from the production drudgery of e-mail publishing (that's my job). Now, as our senior editor, his time will be free to concentrate on rating free software for our more than 400,000 combined subscribers. Watch out, Microsoft — there's no stopping him now.

http://windowssecrets.com/comp/080709

22657

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by mouser on July 09, 2008, 12:49 PM »

he's eating all the donation credits!!

22658

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by mouser on July 09, 2008, 12:48 PM »

Actually anyone figured out why Cody can't fly?

well here's a picture of him in flight:
https://www.donation...com/About/index.html

but as to why he might find it hard to get off the ground sometimes..:

22659

Living Room / Re: Flash Game of the Week: Totem Destroyer

« Last post by mouser on July 09, 2008, 12:44 PM »

thanks p3lb0x.

22660

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by mouser on July 09, 2008, 11:32 AM »

I now have Quad Monitor Cody Wallpaper (thanks Nick!):

22661

Find And Run Robot / Re: stalls during 'search history'

« Last post by mouser on July 09, 2008, 11:18 AM »

it may be that a network path has gotten into your launch history and is slowing down farr while it tries to resolve it.
go to options and launch history tab and delete links on network/removable drives.

22662

Living Room / Flash Game of the Week: Totem Destroyer

« Last post by mouser on July 09, 2008, 12:45 AM »

Some people love physics-based games.. They don't do anything special for me, but here's a really nice simple one that's quite enjoyable:

http://armorgames.co...1871/totem-destroyer

from http://www.neatorama.com/

22663

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by mouser on July 08, 2008, 11:59 PM »

ok i admit it, dust is invisible to me.. i live in a world which is covered with a thin layer of dust.  when i say clean i mean clean of all unwanted particles large than a grain of sand.

22664

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by mouser on July 08, 2008, 11:16 PM »

my personal experiences tell me:
the difference between 1 monitor and 2 is huge in terms of how efficiently you can work; adding more than 2 monitors is a nice little luxury but isn't that big a deal.
size of desk isn't so important -- have a clean and neat work area is.

22665

General Software Discussion / Re: windows volume control setting

« Last post by mouser on July 08, 2008, 08:29 PM »

nice.

22666

Living Room / Re: Spore Creature Creator Released - Make Cody Creature Contest!

« Last post by mouser on July 08, 2008, 04:06 PM »

hahahahaha who knew he was such a dancer! 

22667

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by mouser on July 08, 2008, 03:37 PM »

Nice work spotting the cat

22668

Unicode Image Maker / Re: what is a rvf file?

« Last post by mouser on July 08, 2008, 03:34 PM »

Hi Matthias,

I apologize for not replying sooner.  I think you may be the first person to actually want to use this commandline feature in the years since Unicode Image Maker was first released.  Not exactly my most popular program.

Anyway the RVF file is an internal file format used by the richtext component i use, and so is not very useful for you.

If you give me a day or two i will upload a new version which will let you load RTF files instead.

-mouser

22669

Living Room / Re: Show us your (physical) desktop

« Last post by mouser on July 08, 2008, 09:20 AM »

I think a really cool wallpaper would be a nice scene with cody on a road.
cody would start out at the very far left side of the road with sun rising in the morning and would gradually make his way to the right hand side of the screen at the end of the day as the sun goes down. 

22670

General Software Discussion / Re: An Analysis of CamSpace as a Webcam Mouse and Gaming Controller

« Last post by mouser on July 08, 2008, 09:18 AM »

Thank you very much for posting your impressions of CamSpace -- really very interesting reading. 

22671

General Software Discussion / Re: windows volume control setting

« Last post by mouser on July 08, 2008, 08:19 AM »

actually this is a fantastic idea for a coding snack, a tool that runs on windows startup and forces the volume and wav volume settings to a specific value.

22672

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: GTDTiddlyWikiPlus for FARR (alias pack)

« Last post by mouser on July 08, 2008, 06:24 AM »

Just installed... *very* cool.

22673

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Problem with Internatinal codepage

« Last post by mouser on July 08, 2008, 04:43 AM »

There is no way around it in the current version, however i am starting to update all of my programs and i will try to add rtf clipboard text format to the next version which would be able to handle this.

22674

Living Room / Re: Would anyone want a free DonationCoder.com bumper sticker?

« Last post by mouser on July 08, 2008, 03:52 AM »

They are quite small (3inches by 10inches) and although they seem very high quality, aren't very sticky.

22675

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: GTDTiddlyWikiPlus for FARR (alias pack)

« Last post by mouser on July 08, 2008, 03:17 AM »

we can also provide web space at USERNAME.dcmembers.com if you want web/ftp space.