Recent Posts

37051

Living Room / Memorial Day in US - a moment of thought for the foot soldiers in harms way

« Last post by mouser on May 30, 2005, 11:06 AM »

it's memorial day in the united states today (http://en.wikipedia....rg/wiki/Memorial_Day)

this is not a political board an i do not want us to get into political arguments here; plenty of good sites for that.

regardless of politics, i hope we can all lend a moment of thought to the foot soldiers from all countries who may now as we speak be in a far off land, scared and in danger, doing only what they think is right.

37052

Living Room / First 2-part review has started

« Last post by mouser on May 30, 2005, 10:53 AM »

As we discussed in the ASRT member section, DonationCoder.com will now be doing two-part, two-week reviews.

I'm really excited about this idea, as it will give us a week where members can try various programs and offer their opinions, with the review being updated throughout the week, building up to a final summary and awarding of best-in-class to one particular program.

I hope you will help by evaluating the programs and offering your views on their strengths and weeknesses.  You should post comments in the forum assoicated with the review (link from the review page), and we can have a rolling debate about the merits of different programs.  This will be a big help to the person doing the review, and I think it will lead to an improved quality of the reviews.  Are we the only site doing reviews in this way?  Let's make it a success!

The first part of the review of ScreenCasting tools is now up (follow link in upper right of forum or on main page).



Note that we are going to try making part 1 of the review available to members only.  The final part 2 of the review, which is the full review, will be available to the public next week.

As always, if you are not a member and cannot/will not donate for whatever reason, just email me and let me know the situation and i will mark you as a member.  Our intention is not to punish people for not donating, but rather to create an incentive for those who can afford to and just need some encouragement.

It should automatically detect that you are a member based on your forum cookie.  Let me know if you have any troubles. 

For those curious, here is the page that non-members will see for part 1 of reviews; comments/criticism are welcome:
https://www.donation...NonMemberReview.html

37053

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

« Last post by mouser on May 30, 2005, 10:27 AM »

contacting an author/company before you buy the program is something i would highly recommend, if only to ask a simple question, etc.  or if you are a student, ask if a discount would be possible.

you can get a good first impression about the company/author based on if/when they reply and in what manner.

37054

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.

37055

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/

37056

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.

37057

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!).

37058

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.

37059

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.

37060

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.

37061

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.

37062

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..

37063

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.

37064

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.

37065

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.

37066

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

37067

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).

37068

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.

37069

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.

37070

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!

37071

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.

37072

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.

37073

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.

37074

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?

37075

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..