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5626

General Software Discussion / Re: Download Managers

« Last post by superboyac on June 14, 2007, 11:41 AM »

Here's a good post summarizing a bunch of download managers:
DC download managers

I think most of the good ones will do what you're asking.  I tried a few of them a while ago, the ones I liked were Reget and Internet Download Manager.  But it was overkill for me, I just don't download that much off of the internet.

5627

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by superboyac on June 14, 2007, 10:19 AM »

One question about Endnote users:
Would you use Endnote for keeping track of your pdf's and documents if you weren't using it for research?  Like, if you didn't already have Endnote for school purposes (or some other academic application) you wouldn't go out and buy it for it's ability to annotate your documents, right?

I'm just trying to get a feel who is using Endnote this way.  In my case, I'd probably go with Surfulater or something a little less expensive, especially if I didn't it for a properly formatted bibliography. 

5628

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by superboyac on June 13, 2007, 12:00 PM »

I like locate also.  And for searching inside documents, archivarius.  Combine that with a good web capturing and notetaking tool like Evernote, or surfulater, or something else, and you have a pretty good overall system.

By the way, rumor has it that Zoot has a beta coming out that will be 32-bit.  I don't know about you guys, but I've been eagerly  waiting for Zoot to enter the modern era of notetaking.  Zoot is a very, very nice (I can't emphasize that enough).  Evernote is very similar in structure to Zoot, and probably will always do web capture better that Zoot.  But I can see Zoot becoming my main notetaking program if it ever becomes polished enough.  Anyway, just to keep things updated here...

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General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by superboyac on June 13, 2007, 10:11 AM »

Wow, you guys are hardcore.

5630

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by superboyac on May 23, 2007, 10:37 AM »

Superboyac : would you know about EverNote’s encryption format?

Armando, I don't know anything about the format specifically.  I noticed you asked this already in Evernote's forum, hopefully you get an answer.  Here's something I found on the forums:

A user-entered password is an arbitrary non zero length text message which is used to produce a 128-bit 'digest' or 'fingerprint' using MD5 algorithm. This 'fingerprint' is used as a seed to build 64-bit RC2 effective key by RC2 expansion and effective key bit size adjustment algorithm. After encryption or decryption is finished, keys, 'fingerprints' and passwords are physically erased from memory and there is no way to restore encryption key except providing the correct password again. (Even our own engineering team would not be able to help you recover if you forget your password.)

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General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by superboyac on May 22, 2007, 12:42 PM »

Hmm...that's a good question.  What Surfulater will do better than the other apps you mentioned is sophisticated referencing.  It also has a little better navigation system, kind of combines evernote's and texnotes approach as far as using a timeline, regular tree heirarchy, and toilet-paper scroll.  But I think referencing is Surfulater's strong suit.  If you have a lot of notes and want them linked and referenced together in a somewhat complex and flexible way, maybe Surfulater is what you need.

5632

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by superboyac on May 22, 2007, 11:02 AM »

Thanks cnewtonne, that's really useful information.

5633

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by superboyac on May 20, 2007, 08:23 PM »

Based on all of the above, few of the apps qualified. I have put them to the test for years and none has failed me ...

- MyBase: Almost 4 years of usage with not a SINGLE crash. I have not lost a single word in all my databases. I have collected over 5 GB of data and they are as safe today as they were 4 years ago. The developer truly has spent over 2 years working on the DB engine itself and it paid off. Top of bread.

- UltraRecall: Again, over 2 years of usage and I'm happy with it. Using solid rock DB engine and great deal of DK development, the team has delivered a fine product to the world. The fact that I can dump thousands of articles in one folder and later tag this content is absolutely great. On top of this content, sits almost a hundred view and subviews. The logical linking they provide is unparalleled.

-cnewtonne (May 20, 2007, 08:11 PM)

Great post, cnewtonne.  I have a question for you that would be very useful for me...Can you describe in detail what would make a user choose mybase or ultrarecall?  I would be interested in what applications one is better for than the other.  Thanks.

5634

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Count my jazz albums

« Last post by superboyac on May 17, 2007, 11:51 AM »

This sounds interesting.  I would suggest buying MP3 Collector, and using it's exporting features.    I haven't exported for a while, but last time I remember, it would export all the mp3 files into one big long grid (you can tweak how it appears).  The only problem I had with it is that sometimes, I'd want to just see a list of the albums, and not any of the tracks.  But there was no way (at the time) to export a list of albums without tracks.

5635

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Super Flexible File Synchronizer Mini-Review

« Last post by superboyac on May 16, 2007, 10:11 AM »

OK, nice to know.  Fortunately, even with the discount, SFFS is almost double the price of DirSync so I'm not jumping to get it just yet.  Man, a lot of software I've wanted lately have been way too expensive for me.  It seems like nothing is in the $20 range, even if the program barely does anything.  Calendarscope, TexNotes Pro, SFFS, DOpus upgrade...all in the $50 range.  Oh well, I guess I'll hold off for now.

5636

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Bits du jour/UltraRecall discount approx 60%

« Last post by superboyac on May 16, 2007, 01:25 AM »

cnewtonne, fantastic post.  I will save this for the next notetaking roundup for sure.  Nicely done.

5637

Official Announcements / Re: Power Supply on my PC just exploded: i'll be mostly offline this week crying

« Last post by superboyac on May 15, 2007, 07:12 PM »

Mouser, I just wanted to mention that my psu went out a couple of years ago and a friend of mine told me about a little-known company called PC Power & Cooling that supposedly makes really good power supply units.  I don't know how true that is, but I believed him and I bought one and I've been happy with it.  Like I said, I'm no expert, but it's supposedly one of the best brands.  And they're fairly expensive.

5638

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Super Flexible File Synchronizer Mini-Review

« Last post by superboyac on May 15, 2007, 05:37 PM »

Hey Z, I just bought DirSync a week ago (mainly due to your recommendations).  Is SFFS better than DirSync in your opinion? 

5639

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Bits du jour/UltraRecall discount approx 60%

« Last post by superboyac on May 15, 2007, 11:48 AM »

I don't know.  I have nothing really bad to say about UltraRecall.  It's a fine application.  It does everything.  Let me say this, if you're interested in simple notetaking, like just writing and copying text here and there, it's probably not the application for you.  If you also plan to use it for additional features like an addressbook, todo list, event reminder, project manager, etc. then you may want to consider it.  I guess I always get turned off by UltraRecall not because it's not a good program, but because it does too much.  I already have an addressbook software, a project management software, etc. and they do it better than UltraRecall, so I don't need those functions.  And it's notetaking features aren't that special.

It does have some cool search features.  I will say that.

5640

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Bits du jour/UltraRecall discount approx 60%

« Last post by superboyac on May 15, 2007, 11:35 AM »

Is there anybody who has used both myBase and UltraRecall and can do a quicky cage match before the BdJ runs out? In the mean time, I am going to search through the note taker review and the forum thread.

-tinjaw (May 15, 2007, 10:49 AM)

Well, I did mention in briefly in my notetaking thread:

Another EATKS software.  Actually, I don't think Ultra Recall is as inclusive as other EATKS software, but it's still way too much for a simple notetaker.  Besides, it doesn't offer any unique or special features in the notetaking category.

To me, UltraRecall just didn't seem to offer anything all that interesting.  Sure, it's a decent notetaker, but so are a lot of the other notetakers.  It claims to be fast, but it's not as fast as  mybase.  That doesn't mean it's slow, it's just not as fast as mybase, which is pretty lightweight.

I'm going to install it now and check it out again.  I'll write back later with more fresh details.

5641

General Software Discussion / Re: Alternatives for creating Powerpoint animations?

« Last post by superboyac on May 14, 2007, 03:38 PM »

I guess you are not talking about some little gif-animation, but you know that PP will take various kinds of material (video, flash, pictures, a.m.m.), so maybe others are thinking like me and would be more enclined to answer if they knew a little more on what kind of result you want: What kind of animations?

-Curt (May 14, 2007, 01:03 PM)

Well, it's an engineering diagram.  I need to insert some basic shapes and have them slide around and fade in and out, blink and flicker.  I've gotten like 80% of it in powerpoint so far using it's regular functions.  I was just wondering if there was something a little more powerful out there without having to go full-out Flash.

5642

General Software Discussion / Alternatives for creating Powerpoint animations?

« Last post by superboyac on May 14, 2007, 11:22 AM »

Is there an easy alternative for creating powerpoint animations?  I'm not familiar with flash or another kind of animation package.  Maybe doing it in powerpoint is the best way, but I'm sure you guys know of different ways.  FYI, I need to use the animation for a PP presentation, so don't misunderstand me in thinking I'm trying to use PP just to make an animation.

Thanks.

5643

What's the Best? / Re: What's the best Journal (Diary) software?

« Last post by superboyac on May 14, 2007, 10:29 AM »

Im trialling a thing called Ideamason ( http://www.ideamason.com/ ) which at a quick look has a lot of the features of the Journal, but then i want it specifically for essay writing and research of that type, and much prefer a single organized place for things rather than a separate program for everything, so long as it does it well. (unlike everything else in my life which seems to be totally disorganized lol)

-Grorgy (May 14, 2007, 01:18 AM)

Ideamason is a bit much for just a simple journal.  However, as far as notetaking, it seems very interesting.  I just finished watching the screenshot tour of it and it looks like it's a mature program with many research-oriented options.  I need to look at it a little more for the notetaking thread.

Being the type of person you are, you also probably want something that's "indexable" with a desktop search program (X1, copernic, archivarius...) 

-Armando (May 14, 2007, 03:19 AM)

I don't know, I don't think I need to be able to index it with another program.  After all, it is "private" so I don't want to be as accessible as all my other normal documents.  The search options in the Journal are pretty extensive, so I shouldn't have a hard time finding anything.  If people are going to snoop around in my journal, at least make them work for it!

5644

What's the Best? / What's the best Journal (Diary) software?

« Last post by superboyac on May 14, 2007, 01:04 AM »

I was maybe thinking of keeping a diary, and I looked around for the best software for this.  There are various issues with this...for one thing, a journal might not be too different from a notetaking program, so you can very well use one of those programs for it.  I think as far as a journal goes, Evernote would be the clear choice among the general notetaking software because it organizes things by date by default.  And it's easy to navigate and search.

But being the kind of person that I am, I believe that it's better to find a piece of software specifically designed for the intent of journals.  There's a software called "The Journal" that seems to have a lot of features specifically designed for this kind of thing.  I was wondering if anyone here had experience with journals/diary software.  Please chime in!

5645

Living Room / Re: SuperboyAC's DC blog #3 (My Unique Data Backup Solution)

« Last post by superboyac on May 11, 2007, 12:10 AM »

This is a really important point and it's why i stress so much the need for a versioning update system as i dicussed in my old power-user backup article: https://www.donation...ckUpGuide/index.html

The thing to remember is that if all you are ever doing is making a full backup of your system, and you only keep one copy, then you can become your own worst enemy, because the more frequently you re-backup, the more frequently you are permanently making unrecoverable any older file you accidentally deleted or corrupted without realizing it.

You need to have some backup regime that allows you to say "oops! i just realized i overwrote my novel with a shopping list last week", and then be able to get the week (or month) old copy back.  That's why i favor both a full-image backup procedure, AND an independent backup system which makes versioned preserved backups of my key working documents.

-mouser (May 10, 2007, 08:40 PM)

Whoa!  I didn't realize you had already written an article on backing up.  Very nice!  Actually, now you have me worried because I never thought of doing incremental backups.  I don't think it would be practical for me to do it on the bulk of my files which are audio files, some of them are quite large depending on how I recorded and stored them (uncut tracks, etc.).  Besides, once I save these files, they won't change.

But with my documents and stuff, I can see doing this.  Actually, I think I will because it's important.    Hmm...so many more things to think about.

5646

Living Room / Re: SuperboyAC's DC blog #3 (My Unique Data Backup Solution)

« Last post by superboyac on May 10, 2007, 11:59 AM »

Great post.  I'll comment on the RAID not being a backup.  The main point for most home users is that you can't recover accidently deleted or corrupted files from RAID (luck with undelete/recovery utilities notwithstanding).

For us in-shop, RAID became too problematic as you multiply your failure points.  Typical motherboard on-board RAID controllers might be good for joining a couple of disks and giving some illusions of performance gain, but for actual RAID member recovery they are really weak.  Even high-end commercial RAID enclosures have issues as they get older.  We've had a few that have dropped another member drive while restoring a newly added replacement drive and ended up losing arrays.  Restoration is really taxing on drives.  Now we only use RAID for performance and large data volume.  It's not even a consideration in our backup regime other than the fact that setting it up for parity and hotspares might save us from downtime.

-Liquidmantis (May 10, 2007, 09:25 AM)

Thanks, I think that helps explain it. 

5647

Living Room / Re: SuperboyAC's DC blog #3 (My Unique Data Backup Solution)

« Last post by superboyac on May 10, 2007, 11:58 AM »

how do we order the record!!

-mouser (May 10, 2007, 02:09 AM)

No record yet.  But when we do, it's yours, compliments of the house.  You can download the track off of the site anyway.

SuperboyAC, Can you recommend some CDs of jazz organ trios as well?

-urlwolf (May 10, 2007, 07:24 AM)

There are so many.  Just about anything from Jimmy Smith would be pretty good (assuming you don't get any of his weird stuff).  Our band is named after his album titled "Root Down".

Tony Monaco has excellent albums, two of my favorites being "Fiery Blues" and "East to West".

If you like tenor sax with the the organ trio, check out Hank Crawford and Jimmy McGriff in "Right Turn on Blue".  And of course there's the legendary Houston Person, who I had the great pleasure of becoming friends with recently.  He has a couple of nice organ sessions with a budding, 19-year-old Joey DeFrancesco on "The Party!" and "Why Not".

5648

General Software Discussion / Re: Excel plugin to quickly export selection to text file (csv, tab-delimited, etc.)

« Last post by superboyac on May 10, 2007, 10:20 AM »

superboyac;
I took the liberty to write the author of ASAP, quoting your first post as if it was my problem. Of course that is not the right way to do it, but I did. The answer came today:

Hello Curt,
Thank you for your email.

This is an Excel-specific problem, by default Excel converts all unicode characters to question marks (?) when you save the file in text format.

In Excel however there is also the option to save the file as a tab delimited text file (Save As and then choose Unicode Text). I will incorporate this in the new version of ASAP Utilities. Can you perhaps send me an example file I can test it with? I just ran some tests with russion text and that worked okay.

Kind regards,
Bastien Mensink
www.asap-utilities.com

If you will "answer" this mail by sending an Excel file with lots of Unicode characters to bastien at asap-utilities com, please - or perhaps send it to me, curt at webspeed dk? I have never used Excel myself, it was just part of this Office thing I thought I would need...

Some Unicode characters from my part of the world: æøå ÆØÅ ß

-Curt (May 10, 2007, 08:07 AM)

Thanks for doing that, Curt.  I'll email him directly, that's cool, he sounds like a real responsive guy.  By the way, that symbol, Ø, is the music symbol for a half-diminished chord. 

5649

General Software Discussion / Re: Excel plugin to quickly export selection to text file (csv, tab-delimited, etc.)

« Last post by superboyac on May 09, 2007, 03:42 PM »

OK, I found a workaround for this, if anyone is interested:

In ASAP-utilities, if you go into the export selection dialog, there are several options.  One of them is to export to a tab-delimited file, another is to copy the selection to the clipboard as a tab-delimited.  When I exported to a tab-delimited file, the Unicode characters showed up as "?", which didn't work.  When I copied it to a clipboard and pasted it into a text-editor, the Unicode characters showed up fine.  Weird.  They should fix that...whoever "they" is, I'm assuming Excel.

5650

General Software Discussion / Re: Excel plugin to quickly export selection to text file (csv, tab-delimited, etc.)

« Last post by superboyac on May 09, 2007, 01:10 PM »

OK, here's another problem I just ran into.  I'm using a bunch of Unicode (UTF-8) characters in my excel file.  It looks fine in Excel, but when I export it as a tab-delimited file (using excel's "save as" or ASAP utilities) the text file replaces all of the unicode characters with "?".  Is there a way to have a tab-delimited text file with Unicode symbols in it?  If so, is there a way to convert from excel into a unicode text file?