Recent Posts

301

Developer's Corner / The Best Introductory Language

« Last post by KenR on April 13, 2007, 12:20 PM »

Now I'll just bet the best way to start programming is NOT to jump into C/C++, which was what I did.

...This paper examines several approaches to which programming language is the best, and afterwards gives several useful relations for which languages should come first. Finally it gives a final verdict, defends it and then gives some other good food for thought...

http://www.shlomifis...troductory-language/

from http://www.osnews.com/index.php

302

General Software Discussion / Five Website Annotation Programs

« Last post by KenR on April 13, 2007, 12:11 PM »

Here is a review of five tools for adding annotations to web pages.

• Diigo (A must have for researchers) is a research tool that lets you share bookmarks and annotations on web pages using a browser plugin or bookmarklet. Notes are anchored to highlighted text and bookmarks...
• Fleck (Bare bones) is the most basic of the annotation services, letting you simply post public or private text notes on a page. Notes can be posted by using a browser plugin or by ajax when Fleck feeds web pages...
• ShiftSpace (Have your way with any webpage) is an opensource browser plugin (FF only) being developed by NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program and is pretty close to internet graffiti. The plugin allows their users...
• Stickis (Subscribe to only the annotations you want) is a web page annotation service that lets you subscribe to content “channels” from your friends and the community via a browser plugin. We previously covered...
• Trailfire (Create and share tours of the web) is an IE and Firefox plugin that lets you post notes (called marks) right on top of a webpage and string them together with hyperlinks (making “trails”). The plugin consists of a note...

http://www.techcrunc...-to-mark-up-the-web/

303

Living Room / InteracTrivia - A Multiplayer Online Trivia Game

« Last post by KenR on April 13, 2007, 11:57 AM »

Here's a game to stimulate your thinking (well ok, just your recall of long-term memory) in addition to your motor skills, though you do have to register to play.

InteracTrivia is a multiplayer, interactive, online trivia game  allowing users to go head-to-head against other players around the world in a battle of knowledge - all happening in real time. Players compete against one another in four exciting rounds of fun trivia scoring points by answering questions quickly - and correctly - to fight your way to the top of the leaderboard.
Just like your television, InteracTrivia offers a variety of different game channels for your trivia enjoyment. Channels devoted to specific categories of knowledge, themes or user levels allow you to pick the game that is right for you...

http://www.interactr...via.com/Default.aspx

from http://sitereview.org/software/

304

Living Room / Free Download A Day

« Last post by KenR on April 13, 2007, 11:48 AM »

Each day, they select a freeware program and give a description of it. I have already downloaded today's program and can't wait to check it out.

Love free stuff? So do we! At FreeDownloadADay.com, we bring you one great program every day — 100% free, no strings attached. We carefully select each free downloadable application, making sure it meets our high standards for usefulness, powerful features, ease of use, and time-tested system stability. At FreeDownloadADay.com, you'll find software for Internet viewing and communication, home and office productivity, business and financial tools, system utilities, fun and games, graphic design, entertainment and more. Here you'll never find buggy, ad-laden junk or spyware — just great software. (We cover Windows, MacOS, and Linux.) And if you don't want what we have today, come back tomorrow! ...

http://www.freedownloadaday.com/

305

Living Room / How to make a multi-monitor compatible wallpaper

« Last post by KenR on April 13, 2007, 10:47 AM »

Here's a rare post from one of my favorite magazine's website that provides a nice wallpaper-making tutorial for multimonitor users.

I run a delightful tri-monitor display at work, and over the years, I've always been pissed that wallpaper just doesn't display right with multiple monitors. Not only can you not display separate backgrounds on different displays, but if your displays are different resolution, one of them is going to look either stretched and fugly, or cropped and weird. So, last week I set out to figure out an easy way to make multimon-friendly wallpaper.

http://www.maximumpc...compatible_wallpaper

from www.lifehacker.com

306

General Software Discussion / Directory Opus 9

« Last post by KenR on April 11, 2007, 05:57 PM »

Here is some exciting news for DOpus fans, version 9 will be released on April 27th. Upgrade information is listed below and here is a preview of the new version.

GPSoftware is proud to announce the imminent release of a major upgrade to its flagship product, Directory Opus. This week, Version 9 passed through the company's rigorous Beta testing program thanks to the help of a dedicated team of Beta testers and is currently is undergoing final testing and certification.
This new version cements Directory Opus' place as the leading File Manager and Explorer Replacement for Windows. Directory Opus 9 raises the bar even higher for Windows File Managers providing full support for Windows Vista and a host of enhancements and new functionality.
    * Directory Opus 9 will be available for purchase and upgrade on April 27.
    * All registered users will be notified when the product is available for official upgrade. (DO check that your email address you have registered with us is up-to-date. Otherwise you may miss the important notice of your upgrade rights. You may check your registered details from the Licence Manager on the Support page.
    * There will be no increase in price for the new product. Pricing will remain the same at AUS$85.00 for a single Licence. (Around US$60-65 - unless the US dollar drops even further through the floor as it has been doing recently!)
    * All users who purchased after December 1, 2006 will automatically receive a free upgrade.
    * The upgrade pricing for all other users of Opus 8 will be AUS$50.00 for a single Licence with a sliding scale for extra licences.
    * A discounted upgrade will also be available for registered users of Opus 6. Pricing to be announced.
    * Version 9 has a new Licence which allows a registered user to also install the program on one personal laptop.
    * You will be able to run Opus from an external USB flash drive with the new licensing scheme. A USB export Licence will be required for each USB flash drive a cost of AUS$10.00 per Licence per device. These will be able for purchase at the time of order of the new version for new and existing users as required.

http://www.gpsoft.com.au/index2.html

307

General Software Discussion / SelfImage: The open-source hard disk imaging utility

« Last post by KenR on April 11, 2007, 04:39 PM »

Here is a nice, freeware program for creating backups of your operating system and software. If you don't already have a backup program of this type, you would be doing yourself an enormous favor by downloading and trying this program. To give you some perspective, it would take someone between 80-100 hours for me to rebuild my system from scratch. With my backup program though (analogous to this freeware program), I can restore it from my 8GB image in about 30 minutes.

SelfImage is the little hard drive utility with big aspirations.
SelfImage is capable of making an image file of a hard disk or hard disk partition, and can restore an image back to any drive or partition that doesn't have open files.  Useful for making backups.  Unlike dd for Windows (or cygwin), SelfImage is capable of creating an image of a partition that is currently in use.
Additionally, when run on Windows 2000 or XP, SelfImage can create images of partitions that Windows doesn't even recognize or have mounted on a drive letter.  Perfect for the dual-boot system, you can create an image backup of a Linux partition directly from Windows.
Features include:
    * Create 1:1 image files of any mounted (or unmounted on Windows 2000/XP) hard disk partition
    * Can create an image of an entire hard disk, including the master boot record, partition table, and all partitions (Windows 2000/XP)...

http://selfimage.excelcia.org/

from http://shellcity.net/

308

General Software Discussion / ImageTasks.com - Free image, batch-processing software

« Last post by KenR on April 11, 2007, 04:27 PM »

Here is a nice looking freeware program that allows you to automate some image processing tasks. Will also generate albums of these images.

ImageTasks is a powerful tool for editing, adjusting, converting images. It also includes Batch Edit for processing large sets of images, HTML Album for generating albums ready to be published on the web and Desktop Extensions for customizing look and feel of your desktop.
Image Adjusting features include hue, saturation, brightness, contrast, color balance settings, resize, cut, rotate, flip and watermark tools and 12 graphic filters (blur, sharpen, place in frame e t.s.). Batch Edit makes it easy to apply all this settings and filters to a large sets of images.
ImageTasks supports 15+ graphics formats and can save your images as JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PNG and BMP. Also provides a full-featured HTML Album generation tool and templates.

http://www.imagetasks.com/about.html

from http://www.all4you.dk/FreewareWorld

309

Developer's Corner / Working for the Man: Essay on Lessons for Young Software Developers

« Last post by KenR on April 11, 2007, 04:11 PM »

...
After I'd finished checking for obvious facial wrinkles in the bathroom I decided to go on a quest to find other engineers in the building who were at least as old as I was, and felt much better when I found some. But it set me thinking about what kind of advice I would give if I could meet myself at his age, in order to guide the young Allison into a promising engineering career. So in the best spirit of "The Screwtape Letters", here is some of what I've learned so far about making yourself a career in writing software.
...
If it's not what you love, don't do it
I've worked with many programmers during my career. Without a doubt, the only ones who are any good at it are those who see writing code as art, a creative process.
...

http://tuxdeluxe.org/node/122

from www.slashdot.org

310

Living Room / Medieval Tech Support

« Last post by KenR on April 11, 2007, 03:56 PM »

This is for all the people out there who have ever helped someone "resolve a technical problem". I hope you appreciate it as much as I did. KR

Help Desk and Tech Support in the old days. Introduction to the new system:"The Book"
(from a Norwegian TV show).

http://www.flixxy.co...val-tech-support.htm

311

Living Room / JellyJumper: Flash Game of the Day

« Last post by KenR on April 11, 2007, 03:44 PM »

Here's another fun game to spend some time on. There is little learning curve and you learn how to maneuver JJ quickly.

http://www.jellyjump...m/game/en/undefined/

from www.digg.com

312

Living Room / Is Amazon's Mechanical Turk a Failure?

« Last post by KenR on April 10, 2007, 10:37 AM »

This post draws attention to the ambiguous scoring and large amount of work for a small payoff, among other things.

Amazon's Mechanical Turk is a machine that harnesses the work of hidden humans. It's a service that attempts to match people to small, bite-size units of work that are unsuitable for machines.
As of this writing, there are 128 Human Intelligence Tasks available via the Mechanical Turk task page. The reward for these tasks ranges from $1.00 to $0.10, skewing heavily toward the bottom of that range. Almost 100 of the 128 tasks are $0.10 each. Here's a quick sampling of the available tasks:
    * Transcribe a 9 minute, 2 second podcast ($2.31 w/bonus)
    * Write a review of a blog ($1.00)
    * Make ten 2-3 sentence posts in a fansite forum ($0.50)
    * Write a 2-3 paragraph blog entry ($0.50)
    * Provide 3-D and 4-D ultrasound pictures of your baby ($0.40)
    * Send unsolicited junk faxes from California companies ($0.25)
    * Say 6 phrases in Turkish ($0.10)
    * Write a short plot description of the movie "Black Snake Moan" ($0.10)...

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/

313

Living Room / Microsoft is Dead

« Last post by KenR on April 10, 2007, 10:24 AM »

While I can't be certain, I fear this will cause universal mourning. Better start distributing the SSRIs.

A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to a young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I said that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft. That was why they'd positioned themselves as a "media company" instead of a technology company. Then I looked at his face and realized he didn't understand...

http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html

314

Living Room / Universcale: Graphic representation of very large sizes and numbers

« Last post by KenR on April 10, 2007, 10:04 AM »

Here is a very nice graphical representation of sizes and numbers that are difficult to conceptualize readily, if at all.

We are able to view all entities, from the microworld to the universe, from a single perspective. By setting them up against a scale, we are able to compare and understand things which cannot be physically compared.
Today, using the electron microscope and astronomical telescope, we can see the objects which we have not been aware of its existence before. Are you able to fathom, or even roughly grasp, these sizes?
See our Universcale and experience the sizes of various objects.

http://www.nikon.co....verscale/index_f.htm

from http://crave.cnet.com/

315

Living Room / BegForPost: Humorous site about advertising

« Last post by KenR on April 10, 2007, 09:55 AM »

To go out to dinner or a show with someone, I used to use BegForDate variation of this principle.

...ADVERTISERS
BegForPost is an automated system that takes the burden out of having to directly contact bloggers to have your product, service, or company promoted.
BLOGGERS
Find interesting topics and companies without having to sift through thousands of emails from Web 2.0 founders begging to have their lame-site plugged.
PUBLISHERS
Sorry, you're the "middle-man" and you have been eliminated. We have no API and prefer to work with bloggers directly....

http://www.begforpost.com/

from http://baron.vc/

316

Living Room / Boomshine: Flash Game of the Day

« Last post by KenR on April 10, 2007, 09:40 AM »

Wow. Go to this website. You can either play the game or just listen to the music!!!

Boomshine is an addictive Flash casual game. Click the screen to start a chain reaction and try to explode as many dots as needed to pass a level. The game contains 12 levels ranging from the easy to the hard (only 3.97% of games pass level 12). Over 3 million games have been played by over 100,000 different players.

http://www.k2xl.com/games/boomshine/

from http://www.goodexperience.com

317

Mouser's Zone / Re: Multi-browser Bookmark Synchronization Tool and Other Multi-Browser Ideas?

« Last post by KenR on April 08, 2007, 05:27 AM »

FYI, mag.nolia does pretty much like del.icio.us but it also copies a local version of each page you bookmark so if it dissapears, you can still see it in there.

Is there any software here that can synch with mag.nolia / del.icio.us?

-urlwolf (April 08, 2007, 04:57 AM)

Thanks urlwolf. I appreciate the information. Also, I am sorry, but I don't know the answer to your question.

Ken

318

Mouser's Zone / Re: Multi-browser Bookmark Synchronization Tool and Other Multi-Browser Ideas?

« Last post by KenR on April 08, 2007, 03:00 AM »

I understand your cautionary tale.
But then again, Link Commander is not necessarily like Powermarks...

-patteo (April 08, 2007, 02:51 AM)

My warning ONLY applied to Link Commander.

319

General Software Discussion / Re: Link Commander: Good program, Bad support

« Last post by KenR on April 08, 2007, 02:21 AM »

Yesterday, my readiness to be rid of the annoying startup nag screen exceeded my willingness to wait for them any longer. So after waiting a week for them to respond, I ended up just buying the software, making the time and effort I put into the URL submission a complete waste of time.

Ken

-KenR (April 08, 2007, 01:52 AM)

Maybe this is their strategy 

-TucknDar (April 08, 2007, 02:07 AM)

You might be right TucknDar. Either way, I want people to know what they do.

Ken

320

Mouser's Zone / Re: Multi-browser Bookmark Synchronization Tool and Other Multi-Browser Ideas?

« Last post by KenR on April 08, 2007, 02:18 AM »

On the other hand, see my cautionary note about Link Commander here.

321

General Software Discussion / Link Commander: Good program, Bad support

« Last post by KenR on April 08, 2007, 01:52 AM »

I have posted previously that I thought Link Commander was a good program. After working with it for a while I thought it would be helpful for me and went to the Resort Labs site to purchase it. While there, I noticed they were offering free registration for Link Commander if you sent them a URL collection. I did some work on a group of URLs so the links would meet Resort Lab's criteria, sent them off, and waited eagerly for their response. That was last Sunday morning. After hearing nothing by Monday night, I sent them an email asking when I might expect a response to my submission.

At the writing of this post, I have received nothing from them: no license, no response to my URL submission, and no response to my request for for information. Yesterday, my readiness to be rid of the annoying startup nag screen exceeded my willingness to wait for them any longer. So after waiting a week for them to respond, I ended up just buying the software, making the time and effort I put into the URL submission a complete waste of time.

In my experience, nearly all support technicians respond within a day, while Resort Labs still hasn't after a week - and may never. That makes me concerned about what will happen when something goes wrong with the program that I can't resolve on my own. So, buy from it at your own risk and GOOD LUCK to you if you decide to take a chance with them too.

Ken

322

General Software Discussion / Re: J. River Media Center: Awesome for music, great for video, and good for pics

« Last post by KenR on April 05, 2007, 10:28 PM »

... they delete people's posts in their forum, and even mock some requests. It is a very closed environment, and the Jriver people (the founder particularly) treats other people disrespectfully...

-urlwolf (April 02, 2007, 05:57 PM)

Urlwolf, WOW, I didn't know that. I do recall seeing some "strange" things, but didn't pay any attention to them. I made a post to the forum not too long ago, and some of the responses I got (I don't know who made them) were bizarre and irrelevant. I really don't use the forums though and find this information pretty shocking and disgusting.

I looked at Media Monkey and considered it, but ultimately stayed with MC because of its features. I would love to find something that was as good or better with a lifetime license. While I thought Media Monkey was a very nice program, it didn't seem to have all the features that MC did.

So, thanks for ruining MC for me
Ken

323

General Software Discussion / Re: SmartFTP Users: Adware As Of v.2.5.1004.7

« Last post by KenR on April 05, 2007, 08:44 PM »

Great!!! Thanks very much for letting me know Nighted!

Ken

324

General Software Discussion / Re: SmartFTP Users: Adware As Of v.2.5.1004.7

« Last post by KenR on April 04, 2007, 06:46 PM »

Ok, SmartFTP is now out of Beta. What is the verdict on this topic? Does it contain spyware or not?

Ken

325

Living Room / Help Vampires: A spotter's guide

« Last post by KenR on April 02, 2007, 02:15 PM »

An interesting and humorous article about the "draining effect" of people who always need help.

...Help Vampires are found in every public online community, from those nearest to our hearts to those furthest from our principles.
Instead of consuming of ill-gotten hemoglobin, these vampires suck the very life and energy out of people. By nature they feed on generous individuals who tend towards helping others, and leave their victims exhausted, bitter and dispirited...

http://www.slash7.com/pages/vampires