Recent Posts

31151

Official Announcements / Re: The DC Website is free from google ads - CodyQuotes are here!!

« Last post by mouser on June 17, 2006, 10:36 PM »

maybe later we can add it little trivia things, and other words of wisdom from Cody.

31152

Official Announcements / The DC Website is free from google ads - CodyQuotes are here!!

« Last post by mouser on June 17, 2006, 10:34 PM »

(I'm leaving in the context-sensitive google ads on the top of the forum for now only because they can be amusing and/or relevant to topics (for now), but other than that..)

Big announcement: the website pages have been scrubbed of google ads!

now we have something very new.. CodyQuotes!

Here's a screenshot:



The idea is to show a random little excerpt (teaser) from some of the fun (and some negative!) testimonials/quotes sent in by people.  When you click on it you can read the whole thing and other quotes - and on that page we make a pitch to donate.

The idea of replacing the ads with these are that:

• we have more control and don't feel like suckers begging for advertising dollar pennies
• we might even do better financially if this encourages more donations
• they are just more fun and less obnoxious.
• it will encourage more people to send in comments

Note: currently while testing, many pages show 2 blocks of these, one at top and one at bottom left.  I think we will make it alternate between these and not show both at same time.


Well, what do you think?
(if you are a member you might have ads turned off so you might never see them anyway).

31153

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Keepass Password Safe mini-review

« Last post by mouser on June 17, 2006, 09:57 PM »

fantastic mini review!
program looks beautiful too.

31154

Official Announcements / AutoHotkey Fund Goal Reached and Donation Made on Behalf of all DC Members

« Last post by mouser on June 17, 2006, 05:35 PM »

AutoHotkey Fund Goal Reached and Donation Made on Behalf of all DC Members

We successfully reached our goal of $100 donated by dc members (1000 credits) and it has been donated to autohotkey on behalf of all DC members.

(an additional $50 was also donated to autoit as per our earlier discussions).


THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO PARTICIPATED!   

31155

Screenshot Captor / Re: Can SC capture entire contents of Add/Remove Programs list?

« Last post by mouser on June 17, 2006, 12:37 PM »

looks like i'm going to have to change the default scrolling method, there are a lot of windows not responding to scroll commands.. i have an idea i'm going to try, to try to autotmatically switch between scrolling capture methods.  i'll try to post a new version this week.

31156

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: ooops... a bug!!

« Last post by mouser on June 17, 2006, 11:20 AM »

I don't know if the author of Clipboard help+spell read this board

  every 10 minutes he does ( it's me )

does it happen right when the program starts?
there is a known bug that seems to happen that is related to remembering the docking arrangement of the windows.

try exiting program and going into Clipboard Help+Spell directory
and deleting the files:

Last.preset.dock
Last.preset.grid
Last.preset

then restarting.

see if that helps.

if that fails you could try deleting:
ClipboardHelpAndSpell.ini
from the Clipboard Help+Spell directory.

let me know if this solves it.

i'm planning on releasing an update for clipboard help+spell this week and hopefully i will be able to fix this permanently as well as improve some other features.


ps.
the background image of your sceen looks nice - how about posting the whole thing for us to see.

31157

Living Room / Re: New Smiley Requests

« Last post by mouser on June 17, 2006, 10:14 AM »

im happy to add any that people find.

the giant smiley page also definitely needs some cleaning.

31158

Living Room / Re: All your base are belong to us

« Last post by mouser on June 17, 2006, 09:12 AM »

what about dancing hamster? wasn't thatone of the first pages that started that trend?

31159

Site/Forum Features / Re: Site Policy on Possible Conflicts of Interest

« Last post by mouser on June 17, 2006, 09:11 AM »

starting tomorrow dc will move to massive amounts of pop-unders and floating musical video popups.

actually - i think we are on the verge of removing ads from all pages.. stay tuned for the fun idea.

31160

Site/Forum Features / Site Policy on Possible Conflicts of Interest

« Last post by mouser on June 17, 2006, 07:14 AM »

I thought it would be nice to reiterate every once in a while the policies on this site regarding conflicts of interest and full disclosure, and make clear also what it expected of members posting on this forum.  Most of you know all this already, but I think it's important to be up front about it.

DonationCoder.com takes no payments in terms of money, services, or products, from companies in return for "promoting" any software.

We frequently ask for discounts and donated copies of software to give away publicly; we do not give anything in return for such discounts or donated copies, except to let people know about these discounts and donations.  We make no commissions or get any kickbacks for sales.

After a review is written we often ask the companies of winning programs if they will donate copies and offer a discount; whether a company wants to give a discount and donate copies has no effect on their outcome in the review.

On a rare occasion a company will donate to us a license explicitly for the site's own use.  We sometimes except these donations if its a program we really like, and we couldn't afford to buy it otherwise.

We currently host Google Ads on our web pages (donating members can disable these).  We have no control over which ads get displayed.  Do not consider an advertisement on this site to be an endorsement of that product.

In the future we may try to find an advertising system that we have more control over, or we may do away with advertising completely.

We welcome people to post on our forum about their own software, or software from companies they are affiliated with, but we expect full disclosure.  If you are making a post about how great some program is, it's very important for you to state if you have any financial arrangement with the company in question.

Anything i left out?

31161

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR GUI Behavior

« Last post by mouser on June 17, 2006, 03:41 AM »

thanks and welcome to the site siouxdax!

farr certainly should be remembering it's position! if it is shrinking or drifting, that's a bug and i will try to fix it.

(unless it is "drifting" in order to remain onscreen when too many results need to be displayed).

one thing you might try if you are having it near bottom of screen is to select the option saying the editbox should be on bottom:

31162

Living Room / Re: Digg, the wisdom of crowds, the hive mind, netscape, and competitors

« Last post by mouser on June 17, 2006, 03:33 AM »

fantastic points as usual oshyan.

and the point about slashdot is excellent, because i have found it much much worse in all respects than digg (except maybe for skill level of commenters).

i do think that, in theory, the idea of having some people with a technical background in the area and good background domain knowledge acting as a kind of filter would be useful to add to the mix of a social news site like digg.com.

those people could add some context to links, or say: no this link that you are all highlighting is really an insignificant thing - but if you're interested in this then maybe this other one is worth highlighting.  or: everyone is linking to this site, but if we list that site then surely we should list these others: x,y,z.

in other words, i'm suggesting leveraging the wisdom of the crowd, but adding a layer on top of that, or a filter, which calls on people with some domain knowledge and expertise to act as a balancing force to eliminate some of the faddish effects, provide additional relevant info, and prevent abuse.

side note:
there have been some (credible?) accusations that digg.com really has a kind of unspoken system where certain people (friends of the site) can artificially squash or promote stories.  and one could view the idea of certain people having more points to vote with as being a step in the direction i am talking about, so guess the value of this idea is very much dependent on having reasonable people as your expert filters..

31163

Living Room / Re: Digg, the wisdom of crowds, the hive mind, netscape, and competitors

« Last post by mouser on June 16, 2006, 09:00 PM »

It's amazing what "normally rational" people will do when they're in a crowd.

this is a really good point - don't know why i haven't thought to cite these facts when arguing against "wisdom of crowds" concepts.

31164

Living Room / superticker's stumbledupon sites, and recent review of social bookmarker sites

« Last post by mouser on June 16, 2006, 08:20 PM »

while reading another post i clicked on superticker's website (the blue globe under poster's name), and discivered a nice webpage of sites he's "stumbledupon"
(http://superticker2.stumbleupon.com/)

this recent one looks like a nice find, a review of several social bookmarking sites:
http://www.h3rald.co...bookmarking-services

31165

Living Room / Re: Is firewire better than USB?

« Last post by mouser on June 16, 2006, 08:15 PM »

great to read superticker's description of firewire and usb - love these kinds of posts 

31166

Living Room / Re: Digg, the wisdom of crowds, the hive mind, netscape, and competitors

« Last post by mouser on June 16, 2006, 06:48 PM »

i hope other people will chime in with their views, because we are going to be adding a kind of system like this to dc soon..

31167

Living Room / Digg, the wisdom of crowds, the hive mind, netscape, and competitors

« Last post by mouser on June 16, 2006, 06:47 PM »

there's been a lot of talk recently about the new sites that are planning on challenging the popularity of digg.com.

for example see:
http://www.readwrite.../digg_ceo_jay_ad.php

Digg CEO Jay Adelson took time out of his busy schedule to email me some thoughts about Netscape's new digg-inspired community news site. Jay's thoughts below, but first some context. I've written two posts about the new Netscape site. In the Read/WriteWeb post I had two main points:

1) I think introducing paid editors into a community site may end up being as problematic as the 'hive mind' that it aims to prevent - because it introduces potential bias and favoritism.

2) The prominence of internal links and editors influencing discussions with "commentaries", IMO deflects attention away from the actual articles - which leads me to think Netscape wants to keep people onsite, in order to expose them to more advertising (which there is a lot of on the new Netscape site). This of course is an old-style portal strategy.

I followed that up with a ZDNet post which suggested that the paid editors now hold the balance of power - and how appropriate is that for a community site? I also pointed out that because Netscape has released a working version of non-tech categories before Digg, that this could spell trouble for Digg as it attempts to expand beyond tech.

Personally -
This probably won't win me too many fans here, but i generally consider myself an anti-hive mind type.

I should start of saying that I find digg.com to consistently have great links.  and i think the ideas about "the wisdom of crowds" are *generally* insightfull. letting lots of people indicate whats interesting or good can usually lead to great results.

however i am genuinely disturbed by the fadish nature, the susceptibility to gaming the system, the influence of organized groups biasing results, and the general randomness that results.

these problems aren't unique to community run sites - they are prevelant in most media - where silly items can get huge amounts of attention if they happen to get some momentum on a slow news day, while genuinely important issues can be completely ignored because it somehow doesn't excite the masses.

SO,
i find myself much more in favor of finding a way to combine the community approach of these sites with some sort of higher level "editors" or filters, humans with background knowledge and some ability to objectively make a decision about the relative newsworthiness of subjects.

just my 2 cents.

31168

Living Room / Watch out for this fake paypal phising scam

« Last post by mouser on June 16, 2006, 06:09 PM »

Watch out for this fake paypal phising scam:

http://news.netcraft..._identity_theft.html

When the victim visits the page, they are presented with a message that has been 'injected' onto the genuine PayPal site that says, "Your account is currently disabled because we think it has been accessed by a third party. You will now be redirected to Resolution Center." After a short pause, the victim is then redirected to an external server, which presents a fake PayPal Member log-In page. At this crucial point, the victim may be off guard, as the paypal.com domain name and SSL certificate he saw previously are likely to make him realise he has visited the genuine PayPal web site – and why would he expect PayPal to redirect him to a fraudulent web site?

bottom line is same as always:
if you get an email or webpage that says anything about your account being disabled for some reason, or requiring you to visit some special resolution center.

IGNORE IT.

this is good advice for any financial service.  If you want to find what is up, go log in their normal site.  only then should you trust any messages.

31169

Find And Run Robot / Re: WIN + Space as hotkey

« Last post by mouser on June 16, 2006, 05:25 PM »

winkey is not recognized yet, but it's on the todo list.

31170

Screenshot Captor / Re: Post your Programs where Scrolling Window Capture Fails

« Last post by mouser on June 16, 2006, 11:05 AM »

let me try a ms office document and see what i see.

yep - ms office apps are not capturing scrolled - let me see what i can do about it this weekend.

31171

Living Room / Re: Animator vs Animation - one of the best flash animations i've seen in years.

« Last post by mouser on June 16, 2006, 08:18 AM »

the xiaoxiao movies are groundbreaking.

31172

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Software protection against cracks and piracy

« Last post by mouser on June 16, 2006, 08:06 AM »

any interest in offering donationcoder.com members a discount on execryptor?

31173

Podcast Radio Show / Re: Planning for the Third DonationCoder Audio Podcast Radio Show, July 2, 2006

« Last post by mouser on June 16, 2006, 08:02 AM »

sure, you can mention a few.  different accent sounds funny.

ps.
it's official - we will now be giving out one cody mug for each podcast, to recognize best submission.

31174

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by mouser on June 16, 2006, 07:58 AM »

that weather one is great

31175

Living Room / Re: What's your significant other's favorite key on the keyboard?

« Last post by mouser on June 16, 2006, 07:11 AM »

 

tilde:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde