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37776

Living Room / Re: An idea for "Columnist Corner" - read in please

« Last post by mouser on March 22, 2005, 07:00 AM »

well it's really taking shape..
i think this is gonna be a really nice addition to the site.

37777

Living Room / Re: An idea for "Columnist Corner" - read in please

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2005, 01:21 PM »

nudone, email me with a desired password for blogging (don't use a password that you use for any other purpose), and also if you would like a donationcoder.com email address i will set that up for you.  it can either forward mail to another account, or you are welcome to use it as a real mailbox with pop3 and smtp support for use with any mail client.  just send me user name you want for it ([email protected]) if different from nudone, and either another email address you would like mail forwarded to or else ill use the password you send me for the blog for the email mailbox.

37778

Living Room / Re: An idea for "Columnist Corner" - read in please

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2005, 12:48 PM »

sounds great.

eventually what we'd like to do, if we have more people contributing actual content to the site in a real way (like columnists), is figure out a way for donaters to be able to indicate that some of their donation should go to a certain aspect of the site.  so that maybe a donater would say, 50% of my $10 donation should go to the columnists.  Then 5 columninsts would split $5 and get $1 each from that donation.  its going to take some time to get that set up since paypal is of no use and we will have to write some scripts and figure out how to deal with it all.  when you add the fact that the money coming in so far is probably just enough to cover web hosting fees and not much more, you're not missing out on anything.   but that's the basic idea of what we'd like to set up eventually.  for now though columnists will be paid in love + appreciation + a soapbox
plus maybe a tshirt that says "I'm a columnist for DonationCoder.com and all i get is this lousy tshirt" 

i'm actually really excited about this columnist idea - it will really be nice to have some new content each day that people can look forward to.  like i said before it doesnt have to be anything that takes much time from you, just post some thoughts once a week on something related in some way to software.. might be nice though if each columnist sort of specialized for the most part on some different issue/area, just to make it easier for readers to identify who talks about what, but thats just an idea.

i'm working now to set up some blog systems and get them integrated properly into the site; after that they will be all yours and you'll have complete control over the posting, editing, etc. from your web browser.  I'm happy to provide some additional web space as well for columnists who want to host some additional personal pages etc.

37779

UrlSnooper / Re: Updated version of URL Fetcher / Real7ime after ver 1.1

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2005, 12:37 PM »

i remember that Real7ime tool, it was strange one but quite interesting and impressive.
have you posted this question on the streaming media recording forum (see link other post).
there have been other discussions about changed dll files names in the past and it might be possible to get it to work by changing some driver names, OR else making a local copy of the Real drivers in a separate directory for Real7ime to use (i think that might be your best bet), much in the way that the Real Alternative thing does (google will find you a link for that).

Let us know if you figure out a solution.

37780

Living Room / Re: An idea for "Columnist Corner" - read in please

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2005, 08:31 AM »

def. not tomorrow.
i still have to set up some nice blogging software and get everything integrated properly into the site.
probably next tuesday if you're up for it.

it doesn't have to be tuesday either - you can pick which day of the week you'd prefer (mon thru fri).

37781

Best File/Folder Compare Tool / Re: What did you think of the review?

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2005, 08:25 AM »

yes you can export for flash modification, and you may be able to individually export and import mp3 files for individual slides;
the strange thing is that captivate gives you two choices for compression quality of the audio, i just want it to give me a few more.

part of the problem may lie with the flash format itself. when i made my 2xl simulator (hehe even got in a plug for another of the things available at this site), i discovered that some lowfi mp3 audio formats do not play correctly in flash.

37782

Living Room / Re: An idea for "Columnist Corner" - read in please

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2005, 08:22 AM »

check the new member group description under your name, and the sample columnist page 

37783

Living Room / 50% DISCOUNT CODE FOR OUTPOST FIREWALL NOW POSTED IN MEMBERS ONLY SECTION

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2005, 06:40 AM »

As topic says, we have the the discount code information for agnitum outpost firewall pro posted in the Members Only section of this forum!!

Remember it's only good untill April 4th.  Thanks to everyone for being so patient.

If you don't see the Members Only section (it should be the last forum section in the list), then it means that you are not recognized as a Donating Member of the site; if this is in error and you have donated, simply email me ([email protected]) and let me know your nick here and the email you donated with (or your real name), and i will update your profile manually.

37784

Living Room / Re: An idea for "Columnist Corner" - read in please

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2005, 06:36 AM »

nudone i've only "known" you for a couple of days so far but i have the impression that you would be perfect for this.

opinions are good.
focusing on freeware is good.

my idea for the "columns" is that they would just be some thoughts on some aspect of software - you could choose whatever topics you wanted.  we wouldn't have any desire to judge or censor or in any way effect what the columnists/bloggers write.  It would just be a little corner of our website where you could write about some aspect related in some way to software, once per week.

the main thing would be that you be able to commit to posting once per week. every week, on a given day, as i am thinking that that would be the theme of the columnist corner, that each column comes out on a specific day of the week, just to make it kind of like "appointment browsing", so people know that each day they will have a new blog entry to read, and so that fans of a particular columnist can know that every monday will be nudone's new column, and every tuesday will be jibz' new column, etc.

37785

Living Room / 50% DISCOUNT CODE FOR BEYOND COMPARE NOW POSTED IN MEMBERS ONLY SECTION

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2005, 05:54 AM »

 As topic says, we have the the discount code information for beyond compare posted in the Members Only section of this forum!!

Remember it's only good untill the end of march.

If you don't see the Members Only section (it should be the last forum section in the list), then it means that you are not recognized as a Donating Member of the site; if this is in error and you have donated, simply email me ([email protected]) and let me know your nick here and the email you donated with (or your real name), and i will update your profile manually.

37786

Living Room / What screensize do you have? Should we reduce size of left sidebar

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2005, 04:46 AM »

I'm worried that the left side bar might be taking up too much room..
i browse with 1600x1200 full screen so it's fine for me, but
for people who work with lower resolutions maybe the left sidebar occupies too much space.

please post your thoughts.

 

37787

Best File/Folder Compare Tool / Re: What did you think of the review?

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2005, 04:40 AM »

Yes, i think we will endevour to have at least one movie for each new review.

37788

Best File/Folder Compare Tool / Re: What did you think of the review?

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2005, 04:22 AM »

there are 2 audio options when publishing, high qual and low qual.  it uses mp3.
the review demos i posted are low qual; i would have much preferred an option to let me make it lower quality,
as i think their review of low is still better than it needs be and i would have preferred the space savings.

37789

Living Room / Re: An idea for "Columnist Corner" - read in please

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2005, 04:18 AM »

sample front page for what i was thinking:
https://www.donation...m/Columns/index.html

37790

ProcessTamer / Re: ideas for process tamer

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2005, 12:01 AM »

i thought win2k had the balloons also.  either it isnt, or can be disabled, or its just a winxp thing.
i will def try to do the icon change thing this week, and maybe show a summary of "tamed apps" as you say, in the about box.

37791

Living Room / Re: I was thinking of making a hardware section, opinions?

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2005, 10:06 PM »

yes, it probably is outside the scope of this site/forum, so probably having it's own section is too much - i think having too many sections is bad for a forum, it spreads everything out too much and makes it less fun.  so maybe hardware posts can fit in somewhere else - maybe its nice just having one "living room" in the main section of the forum for discussing such things.

37792

Living Room / "Columnist Corner" - read in please

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2005, 10:03 PM »

We were thinking about the possibility of setting up a section where we might have a couple blogs related to software.  the idea would be to have like some virtual "columnists", just a few, who might make an occasional blog-like post relating to some new program they found and liked, or maybe just some general comments on some software issue.

we like the idea of having things that are like weekly events so that people can depend on them and come to read them regularly, so it would be like, you'd know that every sunday you could come check out person X's column to see what they wrote about, it might be their thoughts on a specific program or on some issue in general, like an opinion column.  these would be really short posts, just like blog entries.  we would even use blog software in order to make updaing it easily for the "columnists".

thoughts on this? Maybe one or two people on this forum feels like having a column would be something they would be good at?  you wouldnt be doing long comprehensive reviews, just short little entertaining posts on something that interested you in the software world.  could be fun  or could end up being a burden to have to write a column entry each week 

probably i'm getting carried away but i was just thinking it might be fun to have like 7 columnists/bloggers, one for each day of the week, so that every day there would be one (and only one) new post to read.  We could call the section like "Columnist Corner" or "Opinion Central", with a nice hub page showing a lbutton ink for each day of the week/columnist.  heh the more i write about it the more i like it, but that's what usually happens to me at night and then i wake up and wonder wtf i was thinking.

thoughts?

ps. am i the only one who thinks that the Message Icon list needs to have more icons? i'll look into it.  maybe add some more smilies to the [more] list as well.

37793

Best File/Folder Compare Tool / Re: What did you think of the review?

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2005, 09:48 PM »

Yep, i used macromedia captivate.
i'm kind of a fan of the demo-creating softwares.  maybe a review is in the works.
i wouldn't say that captivate is flawless, it had an issue with clipping audio a bit at the ends, but it was a very easy program to use and made it quite simple to make those movies. i would have liked to be able to reduce the quality of the audio too, the audio is the main factor for the size (2mb with audio, 200k without) - i almost didn't post them because of their size..

a nice free flash demo maker (don't think it supports audio):
http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

37794

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

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2005, 09:42 PM »

well i should say that, despite the issues, nod32 is on my system right now 

some issues:

it freaks out with some files - there are a few files that seem to really cause it to scan very slowly.. some dll's that have copy protection and some small .html files.  and combined with a flaw in it's ability to cache crc values for files, the weel-renowned speed of nod32 can literally slow down to molasses at certain times.

it took me many days of frustration to figure out that this was the reason that my right click in explorer was taking 10 times longer to pop up than normal, and why my dictionary program suddenly went from opening instantly to taking 20 seconds to open.  truly bizarre behavior, and the only solution is to manually exclude these files/folders from scanning.  a bug in the exclude dialog makes this even more annoying.

nod32 also has a heuristic engine on by default which can false alarm on some files, and when it alerts on them it doesnt tell the user "hey i'm just guessing about this", which has resulted in some confusion wrt some very harmless programs being accused of having viruses.

with all that said you might think i don't like nod32, but in fact it's really mostly a very nice antivirus with a very efficient feel to it in most respects.  i used antivir for a long time and i sometimes go back and forth between antivir and nod32.  i just couldn't get used to the interface of avg and some other antiviruses i've tried.  i also liked f-prot.  mcafee seemed quite nice to me too but i had the feeling it might be using a lot of system resources..

37795

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

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2005, 12:03 PM »

nod32 is a very good av, but its not perfect;
it has some problems with certain files - but i hear they are planning a major engine overhaul in hear future that may fix some of these things.

a really nice free one that i like is
Antivir Personal
http://www.free-av.de/

37796

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

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2005, 12:01 PM »

there absolutely is an av review planned.
and we will for sure award best free and best commercial.

nod32 is def. in contention for best.

37797

ProcessTamer / Re: ideas for process tamer

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2005, 10:45 AM »

this is #1 on my list to add this week, to have an option for turning off the balloon.

i will also add the ability to customize the thresholds which trigger the raising or lowering of process priorities.

one thing i could think about adding is changing the icon slightly when process tamer has at least one process reduced in priority.. just to make it possible to tell at a glance if has kicked in or not..  that would be an option also.

37798

Find And Run Robot / Re: Thanks, with questions...

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2005, 10:42 AM »

someone had this exact problem with launching shortcuts - must be a bug in the program.
kinda embaressing since launching shortcuts is the main purpose of this program!

i just wonder why its working fine on some machines, and other seem to have it not work at all when launching shortcuts..

well i will try to solve this bug this week.

maybe if one or two of you who are suffering fromt his problem can check this section occasionally this week you can help me beta test it?

we'll get it solved this week for sure - any problem like this which is consistently occuring is easy to fix.

transparency.. hadnt thought of it but its not hard to add.
would you want it to always run at a given level of transparency, or change levels at certain times?

i'll try to add an option for it this week, for adjustable transparency.

37799

Best Firewall / Re: Discount available for DonationCoder.com member

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2005, 04:39 AM »

sorry for any confusion - i've gotten a few emails from people who are wondering the same thing.
you've got it right -
the discount is already agreed to and settled, we are just waiting on a discount code and form to give to our members.

agnitum outpost works by activating the trial download, so i suggest, as i did in the review, that you download the trial and install it, and use it for a few days while we are waiting for the official discount gateway, so that you know it's right for you before you spend any money on it.  At $20 it's a pretty great deal but still no point being imprudent, might as well use the trial for a couple days and make sure it's something you want before you lay out the money.  the trial is fully functional just has a 30 day limit.

when i get the codes i will send out an email and we will probably put the links and codes in the Members Only section of this forum, since that is already set up to be for member's only.

37800

Living Room / Re: Long post about the new 50% Discounts (!)

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2005, 03:56 AM »

thanks nudone, i appreciate that - i wanted to do something to show you guys how much we appreciate you helping us kick start this project off on the right foot.

I'm going to have those discount codes/forms up any day now - we just have to sort out the best logistics for it.  ScooterSoftware is a small enough company that you could probably email them right now to have them apply the discount with your purchase, but it's probably best if everyone could wait until we get a the official codes set up.