Recent Posts

6051

General Software Discussion / Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software

« Last post by Darwin on March 05, 2007, 09:58 AM »

Hmph! I just RMA'd my copy of PaperPort Professional 11 after having it loaded for three weeks. Two categories of issue for me: 1. BUGGY and SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW! 2. My suspicions were confirmed - I can't see the point. Don't misunderstand, there are some fantastic features - the cleanup tools for scans are BRILLIANT, but not worth the price for me. I can achieve everything with DOpus and do it a lot quicker. Note, too, that indexing using OCR is ridiculously slow.

I also have reservations about Scansoft/Nuance's technical support policy - one free call/e-mail and $9.95 per incident after that, regardless of whether it is a problem with their product or not. Note that even if they can't fix your problem,  you're still on the hook for $9.95. Paying to report bugs is not something I am prepared to do...

OK Rant over.

6052

General Software Discussion / Re: roboform2go or sticky password?

« Last post by Darwin on March 04, 2007, 03:47 PM »

I love Roboform but note that giveawayoftheday is featuring a similar app on today. Have neither heard of it nor tried it though! Also, the makers of Clipmate recently purchased darn! passwords, which is supposed to be very good as well (can't tell if it will run off a thumbdrive or not). Can't go wrong with Roboform, in my books...

6053

General Software Discussion / Re: nostalgia hour: old software you loved

« Last post by Darwin on March 04, 2007, 08:47 AM »

I completely forgot about Norton Utiliites. I used them on a 286 machine running only Dos on a 40MB harddrive (that harddrive was such a huge leap from having to load all my software up on floppies) in about 1990. Used that setup for three or four years. I can't remember what version of DOS (4 or 5) and I can't remember the version of Norton Utilities. Just remember that I loved it and really missed it when I accidentally wiped my the program disks.

6054

General Software Discussion / Re: nostalgia hour: old software you loved

« Last post by Darwin on March 03, 2007, 08:14 AM »

I had Windows 3.11 for Workgroups tweaked using the following (still miss that setup, though it's probably like missing high school - if I went back I'd probably hate it!):

FMStepUp
FMToolbar
ToggleMouse
PLUG-IN for Windows
Instant File Access

The only two that still run udner Win2k/XP are FMStepUp/FMTToolbar and ToggleMouse (development only stopped a year or two ago and the one-time payment that I made for a license was good right up to the end), though I no longer use either. I never made the move to Win95 because I had 3.11 setup so nicely. The little notebook saw me through a Master's degree in England, an idle nine month stretch back home in Canada (95/96 - did all my web surfing and e-mailing with it) and only gave up the ghost in South Korea in 1998 when the basement flat I lived in got flooded in the August rains and the powerconverter was immersed. I could have had it repaired (and really wish that I had) for about $45, but I gave it to a school teacher to use in class - complete with five years of work and e-mail still on the harddrive! I'd never do that now and can't think why I did it then.

Oldest software that I use now...Windows XP Pro

PS Forgot about an app that used to give me long file name support. It *might* have been built into Plug-in or FMStepUp. No longer remember but it was indispensible. Just went digging and it was actually Instant File Access... Either PlugIn or FMStepUp was reengineered for Win95 (and 98?) but by the time I got to Win98 it had disappeared. I do rembember running a demo of it on a work machine that had Win95 on it...

6055

Official Announcements / Re: Mar. 2007 Giveaway/Discounts: Website Watcher,Local Website Archive,AM-Notebook

« Last post by Darwin on March 02, 2007, 06:04 PM »

Can't speak to WSW, but I use a similar product, Check&Get 3 and setting it up was effortless - you set it to import your bookmarks/favourites and (if you want to streamline things) then select which it will watch and which it won't and you're done. I set it up to watch all of my Maxthon groups rather than importing my favourites. Looking at WSW, I suspect it is much the same. There really isn't much of a learning curve and I urge you to give either a try!

6056

General Software Discussion / Re: : Does this site mean anything to us…I don’t know u tell me??

« Last post by Darwin on February 28, 2007, 08:07 AM »

Keep it as an example to others... This is not the first time this has happened (anyone remember PolZegerully?)

6057

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

« Last post by Darwin on February 27, 2007, 04:39 PM »

Yeah, I'd second that one... I am putting PaperPort Pro through it's paces and wish to H-E-double hockey sticks that it would do this. Who knows, maybe it does. I'm still digging through the tutorials.

6058

General Software Discussion / Re: Needed: Send Shortcut to (select folder here)

« Last post by Darwin on February 26, 2007, 08:51 PM »

In DOpus, if you have two pane view enabled and have your target in one pane and your source (file or folder) in the other, right clicking on the source object and selecting "create shortcut":

[attachthumb=#1][/attachthumb]

places a shortcut in the target location:

[attachthumb=#2][/attachthumb]

I don't know if this works in other two pane file managers or not, though I suspect that it does...

6059

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

« Last post by Darwin on February 23, 2007, 04:29 PM »

I must say that my appreciation for the beta of Evernote 2 just took a huge leap forward. I hadn't bothered tagging any of my notes as my habit had been to simply use Evernote's search feature to find what I want and (as noted above, somewhere...) use NetSnippets to organize my notes into folders Well! I got around to playing with Evernote and found that I have 200+ notes. I set up a number of tags and was able to get everything tagged using drag and drop in less than an hour. I love it! Now I just select the tags I want highlighted and if that doesn't reveal what I'm after I use the search feature. Brilliant. I honestly had not appreciated before doing this (yesterday) the big fuss about tagging. I'm very interested in finding good apps for tagging my other files, particularly mp3s (and other format music files) and digital photographs.

6060

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?

« Last post by Darwin on February 23, 2007, 01:31 PM »

I haven't installed the demo for Portfolio and don't think I'll bother. I can't see myself buying a license even if I love it, so am not too motivated. I have a full version of Corel's Snapfire Plus (came as a freebie with PSP XI, which I won in an online contest) that I have yet to install. From the reviews that I read at the time that I won it, it appears not to be in the same league as ACDSEE, Picasa and the organizer that is built into Photoshop Elements (5?). I'll install it and see what I can report.

6061

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?

« Last post by Darwin on February 23, 2007, 11:51 AM »

I noticed nobody mentioned Extensis Portfolio. It's not all that cheap, but it has *all* the features you want.

This is an understatement...! A cursory look at the website for their base product is admittedly compelling - the features and the GUI impress - but the price caused me to choke on my Cheerios. $199! They describe this price as "surprisingly affordable". To whom? Bill Gates? Certainly not this humble consumer... I'll dig around though. Maybe they have an academic license?

6062

General Software Discussion / Re: SuperboyAC's DC blog #2 (Live Search feature in software)

« Last post by Darwin on February 22, 2007, 04:12 PM »

Darwin, thanks for the DOpus screenshot.

No problem, Superboyac! Thanks for a great little overview of live search (and again for pointing out the live filter in Dopus).

6063

Older Newsletters / Re: Newsletter for February 7th, 2007 - Codename "Helping Hands"

« Last post by Darwin on February 22, 2007, 01:33 PM »

My vote for freeware author is Jim Wilsher .The others mentioned here are highly deserving in praise as well - and let's not forget mouser and the rest of the donatinocoders in this group too! Despite this:

So who wants to nominate some freeware authors (not on DC!) who we should email a thank you to as our Cody Club task this week?

Jim is the developer of Bulk Rename Utility and is very approachable and helpful. BRU is also the best renamer that I know of, so check it and him out!

6064

Living Room / Re: How do you spend your time on the computer?

« Last post by Darwin on February 22, 2007, 01:25 PM »

Computer use for me is an avoidance strategy - I'm avoiding using my computer to do what I am supposed to be doing with my computer... Chiefly working on my PhD dissertation. I spend the majority of my time in front of my computer, pursuing this avoidance strategy. I've been spectacularly successful at this and see no end in sight.

Here's what I do:

- surf the net
- read online newspapers
- obsessively peruse the donationcoder forum (no lie)
- prepare powerpoint presentations for my university lectures
- research software/download software
- order books (related to the PhD that I'm NOT doing, er, AM doing - if I say this loud enough, maybe it will come true)
- send and read e-mail
- organize and occasiaionally occasionally edit digital photographs
- play around (without any skill, sadly) with various vector and raster graphics programs
- banking/paying bills
- download, catalogue and promptly forget about thousands of pdf's related to my PhD topic (note that rarely do I actually READ these files)
- occasionally watch movies (dvd's)

6065

Official Announcements / Re: wtfcody.com - Cody now has a home not just an address.

« Last post by Darwin on February 21, 2007, 10:30 PM »

Oh, er... fabulous work nudone!

6066

Official Announcements / Re: wtfcody.com - Cody now has a home not just an address.

« Last post by Darwin on February 21, 2007, 10:27 PM »

Of course, reading the faq is usually a much better way to get to the bottom of things... 

6067

Official Announcements / Re: wtfcody.com - Cody now has a home not just an address.

« Last post by Darwin on February 21, 2007, 10:20 PM »

All right, I'll be the one to ask: WTF does wtf mean in the web address   

6068

Living Room / Re: The Machine Is US

« Last post by Darwin on February 21, 2007, 11:58 AM »

tinjaw, the Marshall McLuhan connection may be a stretch... But I immediately thought of his famous remark that "the medium is the message". f0dder, I can only say that the WOW factor for me came in because I teach intro cultural anthropology at a college and was blown away by what I perceived to be a highly effective way of contextualizing the information for students. Brilliant.

6069

General Review Discussion / Re: Free PDF tools review?

« Last post by Darwin on February 21, 2007, 11:46 AM »

I'm using Nuance (Scansoft) PDF Converter Professional 4 and it works really well. I noticed a big improvement in performance, reliability and the "play nice" factor with other software when I moved from v.3 to 4. Anyway, definitely worth a look (IMHO)...

PS They've fixed the activation problems that plagued version 3 (any time you had to repair the installation it needed to be reactivated a major PIA and scary, too, because you only had - I believe - 9 activations). Note though, that there is no free support (bad - though they have a fairly comprehensive FAQ, and decent documentation. It may be better than decent but I've only superficially scanned it...). Finally, there is no trial BUT they have either a 30 or a 90 day no questions asked return policy, which I used when I purchased another of their products without any trouble (it was OmniPage Pro 15 - I wound up purchasing it afterall... long story. Love it).

6070

Living Room / Re: The Machine Is US

« Last post by Darwin on February 21, 2007, 01:35 AM »

I've watched it several more times and am still blown away. Marshall McLuhan would have loved this!

6071

Living Room / Re: The Machine Is US

« Last post by Darwin on February 20, 2007, 02:16 PM »

WOW! Thanks Edvard, what a fantastic find.

6072

General Software Discussion / Re: SuperboyAC's DC blog #2 (Live Search feature in software)

« Last post by Darwin on February 17, 2007, 09:18 AM »

PS urlwolf - to see the filters next to location in Dopus, alt-click on a toolbar (or just right click and select customize). In the dialog that appears, select the Commands tab, then view. Now drag "file filter field" out of the dialog and drop it next to the location bar. Voilà!

6073

General Software Discussion / Re: SuperboyAC's DC blog #2 (Live Search feature in software)

« Last post by Darwin on February 17, 2007, 09:09 AM »

Like nudeone, I didn't know that Dopus 8.x had such a feature and have now implemented it. I can't believe I didn't know about it - I've been on Dopus since 6.1, for at least five years. Live and learn. Thanks Superboyac!

6074

Official Announcements / Re: FEBRUARY 2007 SOFTWARE DRAWING RESULTS POSTED

« Last post by Darwin on February 15, 2007, 11:52 AM »

Woo hoo! Thanks mouser, Gautam, and conceptworld!

6075

General Software Discussion / Re: Brillant Text Editor (search functions)

« Last post by Darwin on February 14, 2007, 09:33 PM »

Bruce - I couldn't agree with you more about the need for ease of use. I hope mouser is right and that there is text editor that will do what you seek available already. I look forward to hearing more about it when you find it (I took a kick at googling for it this morning and didn't turn up very much).