NANY 2016 Roundup
For the last 10 years on the DonationCoder.com site we run a friendly event called "NANY" (New Apps for the New Year), where invite forum visitors to release a new free program on the first of the new year, to celebrate the new year.
We typically get a variety of entries -- some are genuinely useful tools designed to be shared widely, and some are programming exercises for new users.
This year was a fairly low-key affair and we didn't promote the event outside of the forum -- but we still got some fun entries. Here's a roundup of the submissions:
These are in no particular order, but I'll start with the three utilities I released:
Automatic ScreenshotterNANY post:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=42090.0Official web page and download:
https://www.donation...enshotter/index.htmlScreenshots:
What it does:Automatic Screenshotter runs in the background grabbing screenshots of desktop or active window at predefined intervals, and keeping the last N copies, with some hopefully smart options to avoid duplicates, add exceptions, etc. The intention is to be a fairly lightweight primitive "backup" tool, like an airplane black box, so that in a case of last resort (app or system crash) you can go back and see what was on your screen at a certain time in the past.
Key features:- It's made to run in the background, taking screenshots of either the currently active foreground window, or the entire desktop.
- You can configure how often the screenshots are taken, and how they are named. The naming can include putting them into subdirectories and can be based on the data,time, and application name.
- It will automatically prune older screenshots based on limits you set regarding screenshot age, # screenshots to keep, and total file space you want to use.
- It will also try to be smart about avoiding saving multiple screenshots when the window (desktop) contents don't actually change, with some configurable tolerances, to minimize disk space used.
- It can also be told about certain applications to never capture, or alternatively a small list of applications that it should only ever capture.
- It can be configured to ignore capture when your pc has been idle for a certain amount of time, or when screensaver is running, or when full-screen games are running.
- You can also manually trigger a capture with a hotkey.
- You can also toggle capturing on-and-off easily from system tray menu.
- Screenshots are saved as standard png files.
Mousers Media BrowserNANY post:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=42114.0Official web page and download:
https://www.donation...iaBrowser/index.htmlScreenshots:
What it does:Mouser's Media Browser is a small utility for browsing directories containing images.
Key features:- Lots of viewing modes to find the one that works best for you.
- Option to show recursive contents of folder tree (with search filtering and sorting)
- There are excellent powerful free image viewers/browsers (irfanview, xnview, etc.), and it would be foolish to try to compete with these. My aim here is to make a more streamlined, focus helper utility.
- It was designed to be bundled with other programs to provide a nice way to browse image directories.
Lucid Dream InducerNANY post:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=42140.0Official web page and download:
https://www.donation...amInducer/index.htmlScreenshots:
What it does:Lucid Dream Inducer is at core a simple little utility to play a customizeable chime and voice file in the middle of the night to try to nudge you into Lucid Dreaming. The basic idea is that you would enable it when you head to sleep, and some hours later it will play some chimes to semi-wake you and then a voice recording to remind you to try to be aware that you are dreaming. There are options to let you easily choose which chimes and voice messages to (randomly) play at what volume. I include a few but really you should make your own. You can choose how long after you head to sleep the first episode should occur, and then the number and delay between subsequent episodes.
Key features:- Nice checklist of chimes and messages you want the program to randomly choose from.
- Easy to add your own message and chime files.
- Configure random element to the timing of messages to avoid complete predictability; configure primary and secondary schedules.
- Customize volumes of chimes and messages.
- Log helps you identify which sounds worked for you after the fact.
Text Overlay ToolNANY post:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=41759.0Official web page and download:
http://bit.ly/TextOverlayToolScreenshots:
What it does:This app creates a transparent window that stays on screen on top of other windows and displays the contents of any text file. If it detects markdown, it will display it formatted in markdown.
SysTrayIconsManageNANY post:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=42136.0Official web page and download: see post above
What it does:This app sits in the System Tray, and tries to detect newly installed applications that put an icon in the system tray. When detected, it sets that to always show, stores the application name in a list, and waits for the next application to be added. It was written to solve an extremely annoying and confusing behavior in recent versions of MS windows, where application system tray icons are hidden by default, and must be manually enabled, which can easily lead to applications running in the background without being noticed by the user. It is a complicated process to circumvent, and this program attempts to do just that.
sTrayNANY post:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=42128.0Official web page and download:
http://skwire.dcmemb...s.com/fp/?page=strayWhat it does:Tiny, tray-based utility that gives you the option to shutdown, restart, switch user, log off, lock, sleep, or hibernate your computer. I use Microsoft's Remote Desktop (RDP) a lot for the various computers and VMs that I deal with. RDP works great but has one drawback and that is, for whatever reason Microsoft has, the normal shutdown and reboot commands are missing from the Start Menu when you're working on a computer remotely. Yes, you can use the shutdown command via the commandline or you can click the taskbar and press Alt-F4, etc, but not everybody is comfortable using the commandline or remembers that hotkey. Hence, this simple utility.
Screenshots:
QuickJump 2016NANY post:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=42086.0Official web page and download:
http://vdsfreak.com/.../135641989110/qj2016What it does:QuickJump 2016 is a FREE, fast, and easy file/program launcher. It can be used 2 ways, put QuickJump2016.exe in any folder and run it. It will list all files and folders in a menu so you can just click and it will open/run. Or you can put QuickJump2016.exe in a folder and create shortcuts to it passing a path to files or shortcuts. It will list all of the files in that path. See QJ Readme.txt for more info.
Screenshots:
Move Aside PleaseNANY post:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=42131.0Official web page and download:
https://sites.google...ite/moveasideplease/What it does:Many times we need to keep a small window of a program always on top of the desktop screen. This program may show network connection, mail status, auto updating messages etc. Now when we are working on some full screen program like editor, browser etc., this small window block the view of the part of the editor or browser. Instead of closing or removing the small window, this tool moves it aside from view when you hover the mouse cursor on it. This way you can easily view the blocked part of the editor or browser.
Screenshots:
txtprocNANY post:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=42088.0Official web page and download:
https://github.com/phitsc/txtprocWhat it does:txtproc is a text processing tool, similar to my
TIMU. It currently comes without a GUI though, i.e. it is just a command line tool at the moment. It is a completely new implementation. Compared to TIMU, its most interesting features are:
- It works on Linux as well as Windows (and probably OS X as well)
- It can be used in a pipeline to do multiple text manipulations in a row
- It has a better understanding of text. It knows words and sentences. E.g. "hello,world" are two words in txtproc, but only one in TIMU.
- It has most of TIMU's text processing functions, some new one's which TIMU doesn't have, and even one or two which were requested for TIMU but I never added.
Minecraft PlacesNANY post:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=42132.0Official web page and download: see link above
What it does:Store the coordinates of places you visit in Minecraft in a searchable database to find your way back to your base, a dungeon, a stronghold, and/or other places of your interest.
Features:- Portable enabled.
- Keep notes about each place.
- You may also edit/copy a place and change what is needed.
- You may also delete places you no longer need.
- Search the places. (Hint: Right click search bar for search type.)
Screenshots:
wjamoe's 2016 FARR alias collectionNANY post:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=42116.0What it does:I asked wjamoe to collect his recent aliases for Find and Run Robot and collect them as a kind of meta-NANY submission.
IconusNANY post:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=42079.0Official web page and download:
http://www.sspxusa.org/goodies/#iconusWhat it does:Iconus is a simple icon viewer.
Features:- Designed to be Quick and Easy
- View icons at 16x16 or 32x32
- Easily and quickly switch between libraries
- Common Libs menu: Keep a library of often used icon libraries
- History List: Keep history of viewed libraries
- Open the library in your favourite icon library editor
- Open icon libraries in Iconus via commandline, drag-n-drop, file-browse
- Get detailed information on each icon in the library
- Easily extract any icon in the library
- Easily fetch the icon's ID
Screenshots:
win resize keysNANY post:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=42018.0Official web page and download: see post above
What it does:Lets you resize you window for multiple side by side monitors using only keyboard short cuts.
Screenshots:
PINCode GrapherNANY post:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=41999.0Official web page and download: see post above
What it does:Helps you remember your PIN with the help of a chart.
Screenshots:
Quick Bible Command Line UtilityNANY post:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=42101.0Official web page and download: see post above
What it does:Let's you search for bible verses. Works on windows/linux/mac but requires PHP with the pdo_sqlite extension installed.
Screenshots:
Skully the Training VirusNANY post:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=42138.0Official web page and download: see post above
What it does:This is completely benign "Training Virus" that was written to be used during a "Human Firewall" Security Training program. Its primary purpose is to scare the shit out on the user - after they have engaged in some foolish behavior - and then it displays a series of text segments that give a rough outline of what they just did wrong. It will not cause any actual harm to the pc.
Screenshots:
YouTube Downloader ShellNANY post:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=42124.0Official web page and download:
http://limelect.com/...be_downloader_shell/What it does:This is a gui wrapper around the well known "
youtube-dl" tool (a command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and a few more sites).
Screenshots:
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