Recent Posts

876

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

« Last post by iphigenie on September 18, 2007, 10:50 AM »

I think one message that I get loud and clear from these past few pages on this thread is that there are several "understandings" of note taking

Some of the key ones

1. Personal information organiser
Keep and organise little snippets of information from addresses to quotes to todos - (usually small bits of information which change a few times maximum)

2. Reference organiser
Store webpages, quotations etc.
(usually medium to large bits of information which don't change much)

3. Idea organiser
Tools that help write something by organising, fleshing out, reorganising etc.
(large bits of information which change every minute)

It follows from this that someone with one of the styles in mind will clearly object to the choices and criteria used by someone who has a different one in mind, but the fact that they have a different target in mind might not be immediately obvious since a lot of the features and vocabulary will overlap...

PS: I'm looking for a good #3 style one at the moment, as I find writing documents from scratch in a text editor or, worse, word just doesnt work for me.

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Living Room / Re: Need a small, closed (!) forum

« Last post by iphigenie on September 17, 2007, 01:40 AM »

yes, yahoo groups makes it pretty easy to set up a closed discussion board

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Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Acronis True Image 9 - $8 (plus shipping)

« Last post by iphigenie on September 13, 2007, 09:35 AM »

there were a lot of improvements from 6 to 7 to 8 if i recall

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Living Room / Re: Forum Signature Spam: Let's discuss how to handle..

« Last post by iphigenie on September 13, 2007, 04:39 AM »

I don't even bother *setting* a signature on a forum until I have posted there about 20 times so I know people.

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Living Room / Re: Firm sues over comments

« Last post by iphigenie on September 13, 2007, 04:30 AM »

That is why so many sites have a disclaimer somewhere that puts it in writing "Discussion contents reflect the views of individual participants only. X and its owner organizations bear no responsibility for accuracy of participant comments and will bear no legal liability for discussion results."

Of course if you are a large organisation you need a more detailed one. Here's one I bookmarked a while back as an example of a good one - very thorough yet understandable in plain english http://www.nhri.net/default.asp?PID=112

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General Software Discussion / Re: ReNamer: The best freeware file renamer? (yes says cybernetnews.com)

« Last post by iphigenie on September 13, 2007, 04:09 AM »

Wow, fame at last!

Hmm, it never occured to me that sequential operations were not supported - you have to go to the advanced mode, you cannot queue 2 simple presets. That's a very good point, and I guess it shows the author is so familiar with the advanced mode options he couldnt imagine some people would not be comfortable to have to switch to that mode to do simple things like -001. (I have fallen in traps like that when writing web applications - expecting people to use the advanced search etc.)

Curt: the advantage of the live preview is that you can figure it out and get it wrong 12 times in 20 seconds and still not have lost too much time.

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Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Acronis True Image 9 - $8 (plus shipping)

« Last post by iphigenie on September 13, 2007, 03:59 AM »

Yes, I am still on 9 - they lost me when they tried to screw me at that upgrade.

How to lose a dedicated customer - someone who has had the software for years, upgraded 4 or 5 times, has 2 licenses and has recommended your software on their own website a few times...

1. Change your licensing model to break it in 3 levels.
2. Put said existing customer at the lower license, thus *removing* features from the product they currently have.
3. Tell said customer that they have to upgrade to the newest version and the next license up to get their CURRENT LEVEL of features back. At a price with which said customer could buy 2 competitive products and still have some cash left.
4. Wonder why the money is not pouring it 

This even made me start to look at their competitors again!

Just to compare, Bitdefender have recently changed their "package levels"  - and the one I was on no longer exists. What did they do? Upgrade everyone to the HIGHER package level. Automatically. And for the rest of their license. And I paid BD a lot less than I had Acronis in the last 3 years.

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What's the Best? / Re: Anti-Virus Package

« Last post by iphigenie on September 12, 2007, 10:09 AM »

wow, nicely done! I was wondering how a minireview of a virusscanner would work, since we're not really equipped to test the virus side of things. This is a very nice explanation of the software and how you use it and all 

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Living Room / Re: Forum Signature Spam: Let's discuss how to handle..

« Last post by iphigenie on September 12, 2007, 10:07 AM »

Actually i think there's a setting somewhere in SMF to only show a person's sig once per thread - that might be a good start to lighten things up

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What's the Best? / Re: Anti-Virus Package

« Last post by iphigenie on September 12, 2007, 09:09 AM »

I bought kaspersky a few years back and it polluted my NTFS drives forever. I know this was a temporary thing which is nowadays optional, but it kind of annoyed me! Especially as at no point did it ask whether i wanted to use this feature or what the consequences would be on utilities like defrag / disk checking tools...

I wanted to try it last winter when i was trying other tools but I noticed the price and decided, not to bother. I wouldn't pay that much for a tool like this since there are very good ones which cost a lot less.

There is a list of top performers from a detection perspective, and it almost always includes kaspersky, eset NOD and bitdefender. Then there are another ten or so tools which are all pretty good but not quite as systematically tops,  have better/worse years etc.

They all are in slightly different places on the combination of price / speed / helpful interface / detection rates (that usually depends on type too, virus / spyware / trojan malware / browser protection etc.)

You can't go wrong, but the best thing is to buy one where you feel you understand the configuration options and messages.

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General Software Discussion / Re: ReNamer: The best freeware file renamer? (yes says cybernetnews.com)

« Last post by iphigenie on September 12, 2007, 08:48 AM »

It's very similar in flexrename 

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Living Room / Re: Forum Signature Spam: Let's discuss how to handle..

« Last post by iphigenie on September 12, 2007, 04:31 AM »

I'll unashamedly say I was hoping trying to get rid of some books with my signature, but it didnt work  

I don't mind signatures as long as they dont contain tons of images that are kind of distracted - it would be nice to have an option "dont show images in signatures" as I like the software hints or quotes etc. that people do put in their sig

888

Living Room / Re: Étonné - logic, math, crypto and programming problems

« Last post by iphigenie on September 12, 2007, 04:23 AM »

you probably have to think closer to home

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What's the Best? / Re: Anti-Virus Package

« Last post by iphigenie on September 12, 2007, 03:54 AM »

I have dual core machines with bitdefender and never had any problems on these.

I had some annoyances on my ATI-graphic'ed machine with bitdefender, and i tried a few other programs, but ended up back on bd after seeing it was always doing very well in security tests and I would have either to pay 3 to 4 times as much or settle with a program with a much lower track record in malware detection.

Havent had a problem since I went back to BD - so either the new ATI drivers or some changes in BD have fixed the issues I experienced.

890

General Software Discussion / Re: ReNamer: The best freeware file renamer? (yes says cybernetnews.com)

« Last post by iphigenie on September 11, 2007, 10:26 AM »

My favorite is flexRenamer - that is real live preview!!!

I think the site is in japanese and I can't find it this minute, but the program is very nice

* simple precanned actions
* can do files or folders, recursive as well
* advanced options supporting supports regular expressions, translation mapping, and normal windows style wildcard
* can use attributes as part of the rename
* can use tmetainformation for certain types of files (music tags, exif and iptc for images, html meta tags and office meta tags)
* instant preview of the effect

The last one took the cookie for me - it is instant (although tag rename can take 3-4 seconds) even on very large trees (10'000 images, say) and means you can figure out your regexp and refine etc.  In one of my previous jobs this program meant that our designers were able to rename/renumber large number of images coming from clients in minutes, without having to involve the techies

Should do a mini review to show all the options

EDIT: found the link in the "about flexible renamer" http://hp.vector.co....s/VA014830/FlexRena/

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What's the Best? / Re: Anti-Virus Package

« Last post by iphigenie on September 11, 2007, 10:10 AM »

I'm still using bitdefender - some of the problems I had have disappeared with the launch of the new version, and the track record in tests is pretty good - all the better ones cost a lot more for very similar results on average. That is based on other people's tests, though.

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: Getting Organized in 2007

« Last post by iphigenie on September 07, 2007, 03:30 AM »

My experience is that no one method alone can work long term. It can help, but eventually some parts of the method that don't suit us will start causing problems. Pick bits from methods that help you overcome your own weaknesses... my method is a patchwork!

Most systems are flawed - hey all assume that cataloging a huge list of tasks and prioritising them then some method for going through them is all we need to become effective productive and shiny people... when it can simply make us better at being busy. Of course this is because as a system they focus on tools to manage things and don't tackle the issues behind it - the planning and decision making that should make us only take on what can reasonably done...

These system might have worked well for people who are in a hierarchical system with clear lines, where the source of "todos" are few and clearly defined (our boss, ourself, our clients) and therefore you can assume that these sources can be aware of what else you have to do, and possibly self limiting (your boss will know she gave you a deadline and not throw something else in the mix without thinking).

But for anyone who is self employed, or an executive, or in the flatter companies we seem to operate in lately (where people report to a dozen different people for a dozen different side projects etc.), or for projects where we have to self motivate... for any of us then just cataloguing the todos and putting a system is not enough. You just end up spreading time thinner and thinner between a lot of different and all urgent things.

I like Mark Forster's pragmatic - decide what you do and don't do, focus on a few things at a time - approach. And even in business it can work, because thinking "do we really need to do this now, whats the cost if we do, what's the cost if we don't" is a very useful exercise that can save a lot of money.

Anyway, I have a few personal projects that need completing and this experiment might just provide the "name and shame" pressure for them

893

General Software Discussion / Re: Stay Away From Microsoft VISTA

« Last post by iphigenie on September 06, 2007, 04:36 AM »

You don't have to keep up with the pace of change even if you program professionally. It's easy to catch up since you can pretty much ignore what happened in between now and the last time you used technology X.

Most of the change recently is all about one framework or pattern replacing the previous framework or pattern as the new "thing"... APIs come and go, new languages appear, old ones reappear, versions change, methodologies get a fad moment, IDEs and platform evolve - but when it comes to good (or bad) habits, fundamental architecture, and  the craftsmanship of software there hasn't been much of a change for quite a while.

894

General Software Discussion / Re: Data recovery software suggestions?

« Last post by iphigenie on August 31, 2007, 08:10 AM »

Spinrite is not all FUD to me. Spinrite managed to recover a huge amount of data of a drive which was dying on me and was erratic, and could not be read from any other way. It also once recovered a lot of files for me on a drive where the whole partitioning had gone wrong. Both were a long time ago, but still. I also used to to recover files of a drive in a laptop which had been badly damaged and couldnt run long enough in windows to run any of those easier tools.

Spinrite doesnt make sense when your drive is fine and windows still runs and these other tools can actually run. And when the reason you have lost your files is either deleting them or something overwriting them, all of it within the normal working of your OS. Spinrite is aimed at a different situation.

Not had to use it much since as I have better backup policies in place, but will continue buying new versions until I can no longer remember why I am so grateful to it.

895

General Software Discussion / Re: Check&Get support blows chunks

« Last post by iphigenie on August 30, 2007, 10:44 AM »

By the way, Martin (aignes) has added a "portable" option to both WSW and LWA 

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General Software Discussion / Re: Check&Get support blows chunks

« Last post by iphigenie on August 30, 2007, 10:34 AM »

If the developer is no longer providing support he should say so. If the software is dead and no further developing is going to take place, that should be made clear - though I know few authors do this. Why? Because people wouldn't buy their software if they knew it was dead.

-KenR (August 30, 2007, 10:22 AM)

That is certainly a totally fair point.

I might buy software that is no longer being worked on if it does everything I need -I don't believe that a software needs a new version every 6 months- but I would hesitate to buy if there was no support at all anymore if I encounter any bugs.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Check&Get support blows chunks

« Last post by iphigenie on August 30, 2007, 10:29 AM »

I totally understand where you are coming from, and that you didnt really mean it as an attack on the software or developer, just a profound disappointment (the anger was more due to having spent so much time crafting the email etc. for nothing). I just thought it a good idea to make a point that we are blessed with so much good service in this community we start taking it for granted and feeling cheated when we don't get it... and to a certain extent we should be, but we must also remember that a lot of those people are one man bands with a second job... or a small group doing their best but who now and then will have a few off weeks or months.

I wasnt trying to start a debate at all - now let me tell my ebay-support-are-ignoramuses story...  

PS: I didn't manage to make either Check-n-Get or website watcher work for me - neither saved me that much time, as the time saved checking sites  was kind of eaten by the micro management applications seem to require... It could be that this is more satisfying than browsing for many people, or that it gets better after a month or two, but it didnt work that way for me.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Context Menu Editor?

« Last post by iphigenie on August 30, 2007, 07:34 AM »

I use stardock's RightClick http://www.stardock....products/rightclick/ which works mostly for desktop content menu, and wirekeys http://www.wiredplan...n/wirekeys/about.php which can also kick in when there is text selected or over/in any application's menu.

Both are good but tend to overlap a bit and sometimes you dont get what you expect. or it could be me not spending the time to fine tune it.

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Living Room / Re: How do you organise your 'My Documents' folder

« Last post by iphigenie on August 30, 2007, 07:31 AM »

I had a tree structure like this but you end up spending more times shuffling files than working - and a lot of things could fit in more than one category so in the end you are never sure where to look for things.

So I went to a much flatter set up and better search.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Check&Get support blows chunks

« Last post by iphigenie on August 30, 2007, 07:27 AM »

I agree partly with what you're saying, but I think you should make a distinction between people who offer their software for no charge (voluntarily), and those who charge for it (commercial).

-justice (August 30, 2007, 05:04 AM)

If I buy a £200 accounting package, how much support do I get? If I am super lucky, 90 days for free. It is worse for other full commercial ware. Some have non free support, pay-per-call lines, or 30 days etc. For our virus scanners we pay yearly, more and more...

I totally understand sharing the frustration of having a good piece of software with so much potential and not getting through to someone who could at least listen and respond (mostly because in this forum we often have the chance to see developers respond within hours with a fix, new feature etc. and we kind of get used to this luxury). I share that frustration.

But even if the software is paid for, I object to seeing us call a piece of software "shitware", even as a joke, because we didnt get an answer after 3 weeks... it feels unfair.