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25101
The Getting Organized Experiment of 2007 / Re: For those with a System that Works -- Post it!
« Last post by mouser on November 04, 2007, 04:26 PM »
Nudone may be forgetting that he is referring to a patented strategy, Structured Procrastination:
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=3850.0
25102
General Software Discussion / Re: Google OS already here, with hardware?! Well, sort of.
« Last post by mouser on November 04, 2007, 03:12 PM »
I think they would make a really nice OS..

And then would come the dawn of built-in-desktop advertising.

Free programs for your pc, but your desktop background wallpaper, screensavers, and toolbars, would all be full of ads.

No thank you.
25103
Older Newsletters / Re: Newsletter for November 2nd, 2007 - Codename "Challenge Yourself"
« Last post by mouser on November 04, 2007, 02:28 PM »
I urge everyone who reads this newsletter to take the theme to heart.

Make November a month to challenge yourself to learn something new, or accomplish something you've been putting off.  Make a plan to create something this month.  Then let us know how it goes.
25104
Developer's Corner / Consumating’s Ill-Fated Point System: Nice Blog Essay
« Last post by mouser on November 04, 2007, 01:24 PM »
This is an essay relevant to DC and other similar internet communities.  It speaks to the danger of setting up a points-based reward and punishment system, in terms of using such a thing to improve community content.

One of the things that I tell people who want to build an audience for their website is that they have to figure out a way to continually reward the people they recruit. The short story is, it is not very important what your reward is - it could be points, stickers or a nice warm feeling in your belly - as long as it feels rewarding to the members to do something that you want them to do.

I will below provide the story of Consumating’s ill-fated point system as a sort of counter-example to how you should design your own. We built a point system into Consumating because we thought giving direct feedback to people about their conduct on the site would encourage them to be nice to one another - you get a thumbs up when you are nice (treat!), and a thumbs down when you are a douche (electric shock!). It worked dramatically well in that aspect, and gave our members everything they needed to police themselves, punish trolls, and create a vibrant and unique culture. In virtually all other aspects, however, it caused serious problems.
..
The primary problem with Consumating points was that they did not actually give incentive to the members to do anything valuable.
..


from http://waxy.org
25105
Living Room / Re: Pet Peeve: I will never buy a rechargeable mouse again for as long as i live
« Last post by mouser on November 04, 2007, 08:14 AM »
am i the only one who thinks we need to chip in and get nudone a hi-res artist mouse?
25106
Living Room / Re: Pet Peeve: I will never buy a rechargeable mouse again for as long as i live
« Last post by mouser on November 04, 2007, 07:34 AM »
i am very easily frustrated -- getting rid of the wires and eliminating the periodic fight with the cable pulling back on me was a big win.  no more wired mice for me.
25107
Living Room / Re: Pet Peeve: I will never buy a rechargeable mouse again for as long as i live
« Last post by mouser on November 04, 2007, 07:20 AM »
Thanks for reminding me of a point i wanted to make!:

If you want to use rechargeable power in a mouse -- by a battery powered mouse and use rechargeable batteries just like Darwin says!!!   Then there is no waiting time while the batteries charge since you can do that offline, and you can always use regular batteries in an emergency, and you can always buy new rechargeable batteries when they stop holding a charge.
25108
The Getting Organized Experiment of 2007 / My System - Index Card Centric
« Last post by mouser on November 04, 2007, 07:16 AM »
The major insight for me in developing a system for improving my productivity was inspired by David Allen's Getting Things Done, which we talked about in GOE 2006.

The insight was simply that trying to keep things in my head was wasting a huge amount of my mental energies.  Of course this is something I already knew but i didn't realize how much of a benefit it would be to have a strict system of offloading all ideas and tasks to paper immediately.

I think this approach may be especially useful for people who feel like they are constantly getting ideas for new projects, and need to find a way to satisfy these urges while not getting distracted.

So my system is very simple:
  • Every time I have an idea for a new project or a feature to implement, I write it down on a 3x5 index card and file it in one of several card boxes i have on my desk.  The cards are within arms reach at all times so I'm constantly reaching over and jotting down an idea.
  • Once an idea is written down, I can "let go of it" from my mind -- this is absolutely key -- it means i don't waste time and brain cycles trying to remember all the ideas i had, etc.
  • All todo tasks are also written one on each card and filed away into the card box in sections designated for each ongoing process.  Having previously used todo lists written on 8.5x11" notebook paper i can say that moving to a system of writing each item on a card is *vastly* superior.  It's much easier to lay out tasks and look at them, much cleaner to maintain, just a win-win on all levels.
  • Periodically i go through all the cards and throw out the ones i don't care about, and remind myself of outstanding issues.

myfiles.jpg

Links to where i bought my material in case you are in the USA and want to try it:

25109
Living Room / Pet Peeve: I will never buy a rechargeable mouse again for as long as i live
« Last post by mouser on November 04, 2007, 06:44 AM »
You'd think I would have learned my lesson the first time, but somehow I wasn't careful enough in reading descriptions and bought another rechargeable mouse.

Big mistake.

I never remember to put it in its charging base until it runs out of power, requiring me to go connect another corded mouse while it charges.  Plus when i put it in its recharging cradle most of the time now it doesn't quite get the connection it needs so i have to sit there fiddling with it for 10 seconds trying to shift it around until it makes good contact.  what a pain.

Seriously, never again.  Battery powered mouse is 100x better and doesn't eat so much power as to make buying batteries a concern to me.

Consider this a warning to all those of you who haven't yet experienced a rechargeable mouse and might buy one by mistake -- read the descriptions carefully before ordering.

ps. ok you messed up criminally insane rechargeable-loving freaks can post your replies now telling me how wrong i am.  :-\
25110
Developer's Corner / Technical Debt - Nice Programming Metaphor and Long Blog Essay
« Last post by mouser on November 04, 2007, 06:32 AM »
A nice way to look at the cost of cutting corners and making strategic decisions about putting things off..

The term "technical debt" was coined by Ward Cunningham to describe the obligation that a software organization incurs when it chooses a design or construction approach that's expedient in the short term but that increases complexity and is more costly in the long term.
..
What is Technical Debt? Two Basic Kinds
The first kind of technical debt is the kind that is incurred unintentionally. For example, a design approach just turns out to be error-prone or a junior programmer just writes bad code. This technical debt is the non-strategic result of doing a poor job. In some cases, this kind of debt can be incurred unknowingly, for example, your company might acquire a company that has accumulated significant technical debt that you don't identify until after the acquisition. Sometimes, ironically, this debt can be created when a team stumbles in its efforts to rewrite a debt-laden platform and inadvertently creates more debt. We'll call this general category of debt Type I.

The second kind of technical debt is the kind that is incurred intentionally. This commonly occurs when an organization makes a conscious decision to optimize for the present rather than for the future. "If we don't get this release done on time, there won't be a next release" is a common refrain—and often a compelling one. This leads to decisions like, "We don't have time to reconcile these two databases, so we'll write some glue code that keeps them synchronized for now and reconcile them after we ship." Or "We have some code written by a contractor that doesn't follow our coding standards; we'll clean that up later." Or "We didn't have time to write all the unit tests for the code we wrote the last 2 months of the project. We'll right those tests after the release." (We'll call this Type II.)

25111
PopUp Wisdom / Re: minor window layout issue
« Last post by mouser on November 04, 2007, 06:26 AM »
I promise i will release an update of this soon and make sure these win vista issues are addressed.
25112
Find And Run Robot / Re: show which program has been launched most often
« Last post by mouser on November 03, 2007, 06:46 PM »
no but this would be a perfect idea for a fun plugin someone could write -- which could keep track of statistics of launched programs and show a little summary.
25113
Older Newsletters / Newsletter for November 2nd, 2007 - Codename "Challenge Yourself"
« Last post by mouser on November 03, 2007, 05:59 PM »
Newsletter for November 2nd, 2007
Codename "Challenge Yourself"


"If you read nothing else on our site, read our BLOG"




1. Newsletter Editorial

Hi everyone, it's mouser here taking over the reins of the newsletter this month.  I'm not sure why, but October 2007 saw the largest number of new signups at our forum in the history of the site (over 7000)!  A giant DC welcome to all our new members -- please make yourself at home and stop by our forum to say hello.  We even have a special thread where people can post a little bit about themselves, and I invite you to do so, whether you've been a member for one day or since day one.

For the next few months I'm going to be working on a more traditional paying project for a change, so I'm not going to have as much time to work on DC coding as usual.  So I'm putting out a call for all you programmers, novice and expert alike, to participate on DC and code something fun for the DC community.  We've set up a couple of programming "contests" that will be running in the next three months to keep things interesting.  And if you have an idea for something new, post it!  It's all in your hands now, and if you've been waiting for something to goose you into becoming active on the site, now's when we need you.

We'd much rather have your time than your money -- but if you don't have the time to help us improve the site, we would deeply appreciate your financial contributions.  Are you ready to become a supporting member of our site and help fund our effort to create the best software site on the internet?  It's safe and it's easy, and in addition to the benefits of a lifetime license for our current and future software, you'll feel good all month!


Remember that when you donate to our site, *you* retain complete control of how your donation is allocated.  Your donation is returned to you in the form of donation credits -- when you see someone on our site who is writing a program you like, or who posts a useful review on our forum, etc., just send them a few of your donation credits to say thank you and encourage them to keep up the good work.


2. Site Announcements - Challenge Yourself!

You don't have to be a programmer to participate at DonationCoder.com -- in fact most of the people on the site are just lovers of fine software and aren't interested in coding.  But there are plenty of programmers who hang out at DC and we love to encourage them to create new programs and share them on the site.  The coolest thing by far is reading the interactions between programmers and users and they discuss ideas and feature requests.

To help celebrate the coder spirit, we are going to be having some programming-related contests (well we like to call them challenges since we like to reward everyone who participates not just pick one winner).  If you have any programming experience -- don't be shy! Check out the firefox extension programming challenge, and the Getting Organized Programming Challenge.

If you're not a programmer, but want to learn -- stop by our newly revamped self-teaching Programming School section.  There's no better time than the present.

And lastly.. For everyone who could stand to improve their efficiency and the way they spent their time -- please stop by the Getting Organized Experiment 2007 (GOE) section of the forum, and exchange ideas about productivity tips and systems.



3. DC Software Updates

After nearly a year in development, I've finally released a public beta of my Find and Run Robot v2 program.  I think it still needs some tweaking, and until I create a set of video screencasts showing the advanced features, it's going to be hard for people to use the full feature set, but I'm still happy to have it out there in the public.  There are also a ton of plugins released for it already, with more to come in the near future.  Another one of my programs, Clipboard Help and Spell, also got some attention from PC World recently, and I just released an update of that with a cool new feature for pasting time and date stamps in a wide variety of formats.



4. Your Input is Requested

Looking for a good place to make your first post on the forum?



5. Living Room

Some interesting discussions and finds have been posted over the past couple of weeks. Seedling's post pointing to a page of Windows performance tips in one spot sparked lively discussions, as did a great list of freeware tools and a thread on the coming computer sex revolution.  Read on for more of what DC'ers were discussing in the latter half of October!



6. General Software Discussion

Here's a list of some of the top general software discussions and tips on our forum in the last 2 weeks.  Sometimes the best discussions start with someone posting a request for a tool to solve a specific problem, so if you have some task that you wish there was a program to help with, don't be shy about posting it.



7. Specific Application Discussion

There are some great finds in this issue's software discussion section - it's been a busy period.  The hardest part about preparing the newsletter is deciding which items to leave out.



8. Fun and Games

The pursuit of happiness... Well, these links may not bring you happiness but you'll have a good time regardless!  If you're a long time reader of our forum you know we like "Tower Defense" games, which are very easy to play and offer a nice casual gaming experience without requiring too much effort and learning -- so make sure you don't miss the roundup of Tower Defense games posted this week.



9. Mini-Reviews by Members

Tomos weighs in with a look at Qimage, a batch printing and processing software. Donationcoder reviews and mini-reviews are well respected and get a lot of attention from within and without the DC community. There are easy to follow and use templates to help you along, so if you'd like to review an application or a category of applications, don't be shy!  The only requirement we have is that you not be affiliated in any way with the product/company you are reviewing.



10. Developer's Corner

Software developers fuel our software addictions, so it's only fitting that Donationcoder has a board devoted to software development. You may not think of yourself as a programmer and yet you might just benefit from a visit to the Development boards. Here you might be able to contribute end-user experiences that will assist coders in tweaking their offerings, you might learn about features and functionality in apps that you were unaware of, and you might just get bitten by the development bug!

And it's not just about programming -- it's also where we discuss running your own business and website, and talk about general entrepreneurial issues.



11. Coding Snacks

One of the most popular features of the community are the coding snacks. These are bespoke solutions to software wants and needs posted in the Post New Requests Here section. Read below for some recently completed coding snacks followed by some recent requests. If you are having trouble finding a software solution, perhaps drop by the Requests board and post your requirements.



12. Member spotlight

DC member Sridhar (Sri on the forum) is a WordPress fiend, and blogs about software and technology on his website.  His site is updated daily with small summaries and lots of useful links.  Are you a member of DC with a site you think deserves wider attention, let us know.



13. Site of the Month

Our site of the month for November is one of my daily reads: MakeUseOf.com.  Though perhaps relying a little much on the "top 10 tools" genre, MakeUseOf does a great job of summarizing the top tools or tips in an area, while adding enough of a personal informed recommendation to make their frequent blogs very enjoyable and educational reads.  Combined with an occasional longer instructional post, MakeUseOf is a terrific addition to the software blogging field, and well worth your attention.  ps. They accept donations as well.

25114
Official Announcements / Re: Official Bug Tracking and Feature Request Threads launched
« Last post by mouser on November 03, 2007, 05:13 PM »
Gri,
 I think Josh meant for author's who have software here officially on the DC forums.
25115
The Getting Organized Experiment of 2007 / For those with a System that Works -- Post it!
« Last post by mouser on November 03, 2007, 04:45 PM »
Those of you who participated in GOE 2006 or who have adopted an organizational system of some kind from some other place, please post a description of it, and where it works for you, and where it breaks down and could use some improvement.

In the GOE 2006 Experiment we focused on reviewing existing published strategies by people like David Allen (GTD) and Mark Forster (Do It Tomorrow).

I think for this year we should concentrate on our own ideas and what works for each of us personally.  Let's share our experiences and struggles and try to each perfect our own system.

I'm convinced that having some set of policies and guidelines -- a "routine" of sorts, is important for most of us to stay on track.  So this year let's try to each of us focus on refining the techniques that work for us individually.

I have held onto a few things from last years GOE which have helped me immensely, and i would never go back from what i do now to using a ToDo list.  I'll post my "system" in a few days.. Meanwhile I'd like to hear what you guys do!
25116
General Review Discussion / Re: Best Archive Manager Review: Suggestions
« Last post by mouser on November 03, 2007, 12:28 AM »
Welcome to the site giorgio! Glad to have you stop by  :up:
25117
GOE 2007 Challenge Downloads / Re: GOE 2007 Programming Contest for November 2007
« Last post by mouser on November 02, 2007, 10:51 PM »
Note:

A productivity-related plugin for a free/donationware program would also qualify for this challenge.
A plugin for Find+Run Robot 2 would super qualify :)
25118
The Getting Organized Experiment of 2007 / Re: NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month 2007
« Last post by mouser on November 01, 2007, 08:49 PM »
We should start a thread on novel-writing-helper-software.  I know there is some.
And maybe someone on the site could consider writing a little program to help in some way as part of this challenge we are doing in november.
25119
The Getting Organized Experiment of 2007 / Re: NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month 2007
« Last post by mouser on November 01, 2007, 08:34 PM »
Good for you vaidab! Let us know how if you can keep it up!
25120
General Software Discussion / Re: online tutorials - screencasts rule over static pages?
« Last post by mouser on November 01, 2007, 04:44 PM »
I would also highly recommend a series of short screencasts (part1, part2, part3, part4) rather than one big one.
Segments of 2-3 minutes are probably optimal in terms of viewability.
25121
General Software Discussion / Re: online tutorials - screencasts rule over static pages?
« Last post by mouser on November 01, 2007, 04:43 PM »
I think you've made the case convincingly that you should go with screencasts. And the two version idea sounds good to me.

The only thing i would suggest is make a very brief but nice looking static web page (or blog entry) to go with each screencast, which has a screenshot or two from it and some text explaining what it is a screencast of, and maybe some bullet points.  Enough to let people know whether it's something they may want to watch before they click play.

I would forget about charging -- it won't work.  Better to just get an audience at this point.
25122
Activation/License/Language Help / Re: About signing up to download freeware license keys - READ IN PLEASE
« Last post by mouser on November 01, 2007, 03:33 PM »
Hi somaly, welcome to the site.
You can get your license key from this page:
https://www.donation...r.com/Keys/index.php
25123
Living Room / Re: Bloons Tower Defense - Very Well Done
« Last post by mouser on November 01, 2007, 12:00 PM »
hehehehehehehehehe
25124
Screenshot Captor / Re: Title bar at Startup
« Last post by mouser on November 01, 2007, 02:27 AM »
i will try to fix this bug in the next update.. the only thing i really need is to find someone who this happens to regularly and who is willing to test fix attempts, as i can't get this to happen on my pc.
25125
Screenshot Captor / Re: Slow capturing using mouse
« Last post by mouser on November 01, 2007, 02:26 AM »
great bug reports, all seem like they should be fixed and won't be too hard to do.
they will be added to bug report list and expect them to be taken care of in next update.
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