Recent Posts

37051

Living Room / Re: Avoid bad software versions by reading their forums

« Last post by mouser on May 30, 2005, 08:20 AM »

thebat definitely has a significant number of disgruntled users. i linked to two such sites in the review, which are all the more damning for the fact that they are sites run by people who used to write plugins for thebat(!).

their forum is quite new, that may partially explain the lack of critical posts - rit labs has long run a very busy set of usenet newsgroups that are not, to my knowledge, censored at all.  the newsgroups have been quite helpful to me.  having an open forum is quite important, especially for programs which have support problems.

a good example is agnitum outpost firewall, whose *official* customer service has been horrible; but the forum has become a fantastic resource for users to help each other.  a good forum can go a long way to making up for support problems.

when agnitum pr people asked me how to improve their support problem, i told them to do one thing:  support the forum - give them what they need and hire people to help out their officially.

37052

General Software Discussion / nirsoft freeware

« Last post by mouser on May 30, 2005, 03:32 AM »

shellcity.net has a link to shellex today, a nice freeware tool.
the author of that has a whole bunch of cool freeware: http://www.nirsoft.net/

37053

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: Hotkey controls for screen brightness.

« Last post by mouser on May 30, 2005, 01:58 AM »

geektechnu, have you tried emailing the author -
your feature request sounds very reasonable, an i'm just guessing it's the kind of idea an author would love to hear about and implement.

37054

Living Room / Ideas for thanking donators?

« Last post by mouser on May 29, 2005, 12:39 PM »

anyone have any innovative ideas on ways we could thank and show appreciation to people who donate to the site.  hopefully ways that wouldn't cost money.
i was thinking one thing we could do is make a Thank You page listing people (with pics?) who have donated (optional of course!).

37055

Living Room / Re: Revisiting an idea to encourage donations..

« Last post by mouser on May 29, 2005, 11:20 AM »

i've update the donation page as suggested; let me know what you think.

37056

Living Room / Re: Revisiting an idea to encourage donations..

« Last post by mouser on May 29, 2005, 08:32 AM »

yes, i think you're definitely you're right about this, jpfx.
part of the reason it's so vague is because we (were/are) still honestly trying to figure out what the benefits of donating are.
but i think it's probably time we took your advice and made the benefits more clear and concise.

there are actually 2 pages that explain details of the site, the About page and the Donate page..  anyone have any views about the division of content on these pages, and the focus of each? they sort of touch on same subjects.  maybe we could leave the about page more discursive while making the donate page be short and concise about benefits.

37057

Best ScreenCaster / Re: Next Review Topic - Best Demo Movie apps - 5/30 + 6/6

« Last post by mouser on May 29, 2005, 03:35 AM »

alex sent me a bug report in screenshot captor by making a wink movie demonstrating the problem.
really helped immensely.. i wonder if this might not be the future of bug reports..
let's be sure to talk about this in the review.

37058

General Review Discussion / Re: What categories should we review next?

« Last post by mouser on May 29, 2005, 02:49 AM »

doing font managers is a great idea-
i remember being very frustrated looking for the best font manager.

might be a nice one for a guest review though since i don't think i'm qualified.

37059

Find And Run Robot / Re: Another feature request...

« Last post by mouser on May 29, 2005, 01:44 AM »

i understand 100% the problem you are talking about..
perhaps an update delay (while not messing with search speed) would help.. i'm not sure.

i was trying to think of alternate solutions.. it's tricky..
one interesting idea would be.. what if each entry got added, and in its proper location, but didn't get assigned a number until after some delay (say 3 seconds)... i'm not sure if that would work..

37060

Best Virtual Machine Tool / Re: A Gift from VMWare

« Last post by mouser on May 28, 2005, 07:36 PM »

nice find about the faq and volume - yep that happens to me every time.
hard to say who jumps more when the volume change occurs, me or the cat.
i'll try that fix.

37061

Best Virtual Machine Tool / Re: A Gift from VMWare

« Last post by mouser on May 28, 2005, 03:01 PM »

our review also remarks on the confusing nature of the networking setup in vmware.  one can only assume that it offers some powerful different options that are useful for testing different things or working in different environments, but it is a bit overhelming in terms of trying to figure out what to choose..

i have used bridged networking relaibly since i have a router and it works quite well.  showing icons in tray for connections is not related to vmware but just a generic windows settings regarding showing active connections; i have that turned off.

37062

UrlSnooper / Re: old versions?

« Last post by mouser on May 28, 2005, 06:22 AM »

you can tell url snooper to load a specific url and search it.  Its in File Menu -> "Type a Url..."

you can search for arbitrary words in url snooper still, just type them into the "Also Search For" box, and make sure the protocol filter is set to "Show All"


i could make old versions available if there was a still a need for them.

37063

Best ScreenCaster / Re: Next Review Topic - Best Demo Movie apps - 5/30 + 6/6

« Last post by mouser on May 28, 2005, 03:20 AM »

some more i found:

http://distlib.blogs...macromedia_capt.html
http://distlib.blogs...m/distlib/tutorials/
http://www.edutech.c...x.php?catid=257&
http://www.instant-demo.com/
http://labnol.blogsp...o-help-your-mom.html
http://mfeldstein.co...weblog/comments/185/
http://www.demo-builder.com/index.html
http://www.digitalcu...nvision/Envision.htm

37064

Best ScreenCaster / Re: Next Review Topic - Best Demo Movie apps - 5/30 + 6/6

« Last post by mouser on May 27, 2005, 09:02 PM »

good point markan. a codec or compression format is not very useful if other people can't decode it.

note:
i think video programs like camtasia definitely need to be talked about in the review, but this review will probably focus mainly on programs specifically designed to create high-resolution low-bandwidth screen demo movies, in a format like flash, as opposed to full-video solutions (which are either high-bandwidth or lo-res).

these two approaches are very different.  it will be useful to talk about both, but my intention is to focus on the former, which is more suitable for demoing software (imho).

37065

Living Room / Re: Avoid bad software versions by reading their forums

« Last post by mouser on May 27, 2005, 08:59 PM »

another thing i always look for, to get an early indication of quality of company is: a version history list.

a nice detailed, dated version history list is always a very good sign.

37066

General Software Discussion / Re: Which app stays open on your desktop all day?

« Last post by mouser on May 27, 2005, 08:33 PM »

love the avatar:)

i'm a roboform fan too.. we're going to have to do a review on such tools soon.

37067

Living Room / Re: New Columns Page

« Last post by mouser on May 27, 2005, 08:01 AM »

ps.
show some love for our bloggers/columnists - they're doing a terrific job!

37068

Living Room / New Columns Page

« Last post by mouser on May 27, 2005, 07:23 AM »

check out the new blog columns start page (click Columns item in navigation bar at top of page).
i think this is a real improvement over the old system, and will make it easier to keep up with the blogs.

37069

Screenshot Captor / v1.01.08 - png with comments

« Last post by mouser on May 27, 2005, 03:51 AM »

png file saving is now on par with other formats in saving embedded comments in the file.
complete version history can be found in on line help.

ps.
thanks to HiComponents ImageEn library for adding png text support (http://www.hicomponents.com/) that made this possible.

37070

Living Room / Re: An Idea: Feature One Site from Links page each week

« Last post by mouser on May 27, 2005, 03:12 AM »

ok, i've made a first attempt at it.

youll see on front page a link which will be updated each week saying "Site of the Week:"

that takes user to links page which now has at top one featured site from the list below, with a longer description of the site.

37071

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: Save and Exit

« Last post by mouser on May 27, 2005, 02:12 AM »

this seems like it might be a good job for AutoIt.. where's Keene Coder to visit this thread?

37072

Unfinished Requests / Re: MUST-HAVE: Music/File Search...

« Last post by mouser on May 27, 2005, 02:11 AM »

this sounds like an ideal task for these new desktop search engines, like X1, msn desktop search, google desktop search, yahoo.. i agree i dont like slowing system down with constant monitoring, but some of these let you tell it exactly when to update its database..

37073

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: Plugin for Winamp or Windows Media Player

« Last post by mouser on May 27, 2005, 02:09 AM »

im not sure how you would do this..
i have multiple monitors.. i guess one thing that might be possible is a system tray icon that toggles the windows display settings from "mirror" mode to multimon mode..   but im not sure how easy it would be to save and restore the multimon configuration settings, or the side effects from going in and out of mirror mode.. probably would be more trouble than its worth, im guessing..

37074

Living Room / An Idea: Feature One Site from Links page each week

« Last post by mouser on May 26, 2005, 02:17 PM »

we've got some really nice sites on our links page now, but i'm guessing many people don't bother to check them out.
so i thought wouldn't it be nice if we helped bring attention to some of these cool sites.

so i thought, what if on the front page of the site (maybe in side bar or in main text of home page), we featured a different site each week.  doesn't really matter how we pick them, though the less well-known sites would probably appreciate it more.

and we would just have a blurb about the site and encourage people to check it out.  just a way of helping some good sites get recognized..  what do you think?

would be nice if as members we agreed to visit and take a look at the site too.

it almost sounds like we should be doing a best-of-sites review every once and a while..

37075

Best ScreenCaster / Next Review Topic - Best Demo Movie apps - 5/30 + 6/6

« Last post by mouser on May 26, 2005, 02:10 PM »

i'm really liking the idea of this new 2 week review process.
especially since ive been busy coding like mad the last 3 weeks  (though it seems no one has any use for my latest )

anyway i would like to do the next review on Demo Movie Making programs.
(ie robodemo, macromedia captivate, turbodemo, bb flashback, qarbon viewletbuilder, wink, etc.

so, according to the plan we discussed, this monday i will post a skeleton review, and try to list all of the apps i can find that are up for contention for the award.  please start posting now on this thread your thoughts and any other apps you think should be considered.

and especially post features that you think are important.

then we will have a week to debate which is best and talk about important features, etc.
i'm really looking forward to having that week to discuss the various merits of the different apps.

i'll start out with a feature not found in all programs that i like:
ability to record audio.

and a feature that is important to me that many programs do not handle all that well, proper screen capture synchronized to mouse: often i find that for example if you click a menu and then select an item on it, when you watch the movie the menu doesnt appear until you make the second click, which can be quite confusing.

another feature of important: size of result.