News and Reviews > Official Announcements
Official Fundraiser Blog Day by Day
mouser:
Greetings and salutations! My name is Jesse Reichler and I've been helping to run the DonationCoder.com website since its opening 6 years ago in 2005. I'm writing today to ask you to reach into your pockets and make a financial contribution to the site.
Now don't get all grumpy and close this page just yet.. This fundraiser is a cause for celebration.
Why should you make a donation now? DonationCoder is a small site. For 6 years it has thrived, supported exclusively by small direct contributions made by normal users just like you. Unlike most of the internet, we have resisted trying to fund the site using advertisements. We enjoy the idea that all of our funding comes directly from our users.
But it hasn't been easy. We've recently upgraded to a bigger server to support the demands of our software downloads and discussion community, and to allow us to provide webspace for member projects.
We have worked hard over the years to earn your support. Much of what we do revolves around creating free software to share, and with our server costs at nearly $500 a month, we need your help now to raise funds for the upcoming year.
Will you please consider making a donation today to the site? You'll be joining over 8,000 other people who have donated to the site since our opening in 2005, and you'll be a part of something fun and different. You choose the amount -- no amount is too small or too large.
And while it's easiest to donate using a credit card, through paypal, amazon.com, or one of several shareware payment services -- we will accept donations of any form: cash, cookies, rare gems, precious metals, oil paintings, knitted cat socks, etc. Even just a postcard from across the globe saying good job.
We just ask that you do something, anything, to let us know that you want to see the site keep going.
And to try to sweeten the pot a little this year, we will be running a special giveaway at the end of the month for everyone who has donated, and we'll be giving away some things that we've never tried before -- including custom coding time on a project of your own invention, and some very sweet computer hardware. Stay tuned to the website for more details in the days that follow!
Ready to make that leap of faith and send us a few bucks? Just click the Donate button at the top of the page and you'll be done and feeling good in no time!
-jesse
mouser:
Ok it's Day 2 of the Fundraiser and we are doing well! Over $2,000 donated by 105 people(!) However we need to remember that this initial pace will not survive much longer -- these represent the "true believers" in DC -- people who have supported the site in the past and are responding to the initial email call for donations.
I'm going to break up today's fundraiser update into a couple of posts because I have a few things to update and talk about today.
And first up I want to talk a little bit about the giveaway we are going to do at the end of this month, open to everyone who has donated to the site. We do giveaways pretty frequently on the site for supporting members, but it's usually in the form of giving away 5-10 copies of a commercial software program. This year we are going to try to spice things up a little.
We will start with a big collection of commercial software to give away of course -- some site favorites and some new stuff. But we will also be giving away some unique gifts that are being donated by other forum members, including:
One ridiculously cool Optimus Maximus keyboard (too expensive for any human to buy):
Custom Coding Time on a project of your choosing/design:
* I will be personally donating 10-25 hours of my time to code anything (legal) that you want.
* We'll probably have a couple more coders and website designers do the same.
* You design it, we'll create it -- and you can do with it what you want (give it away, sell it, whatever).
* Or maybe you want us to spend the hours improving an existing program of ours adding custom features of your choice. It's up to you!
And a lot more -- I'll be updating this page with more items in the giveaway as the month goes on. We should have a few more surprises up our sleeve before it's all said and done, and we'll try to have some strange and unusual things for those of you who are strange and unusual.
The entry form will be put up near the end of the month, when you will be able to enter and rank what you would like to win most. The giveaway will be open to all donators, new and old -- and in keeping with the spirit of the site we will pick winners randomly without regard to how much they have donated.
mouser:
As part of the fundraiser celebration, every day this month (March 2011) we're going to post or release something brand new. A new software application, a review, a screencast video, etc.
Today DC member timns, author of the wonderful Head in the Clouds web comic, posts his mini-review of Centerbase CRM and explains why he thinks its a good Customer Relationship Management program.
It's a good example of what our mini-reviews are all about (you can find more mini-reviews here).
mouser:
It's day 3 of the fundraiser, and we're doing well: Almost $4,500 raised from about 200 donors so far!
I thought today I'd make a post to introduce the site to those of you who may not be so familiar with it.
Many people arrive on our site for one of our larger free software applications, like Screenshot Captor, Process Tamer, URL Snooper, or Find and Run Robot. You'll find these and many more on our main Software page (you can also watch some recent videos of these).
Recently one of the busiest areas of the site has been our special "Coding Snacks" section, where anyone can post a request for a small custom utility that they would like to have created. Coders on the site regularly read the requests and code the programs which are released as freeware. You can visit the Coding Snacks forum section to post a new request, or view a list of finished requests to download.
And speaking of our forum, you'll find that there are always some interesting discussions going on there, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We pride ourselves on quickly responding to requests for help. We have some serious software addicts on our site and if you're wondering what's the best tool for a job, you're likely to find someone on our forum with a strong opinion. Most of the software discussions are Microsoft Windows related, but we also have quite a few Linux users and a handful of Apple users.
Don't be shy about registering at our forum and making your first post -- whether it's a question about a particular software program, a feature request for one of our tools, or just to post a photo of your dog or cat. We are a friendly and diverse bunch from all walks of life. You can also sign up at the forum to receive our monthly newsletter where we recap the month's most interesting forum discussions and new web/software discoveries. We even have an online (text) chat channel where people come to unwind any hour of the night. There's an About page if you want to learn more about the history of the site.
In the past we really focused on writing big long comprehensive software comparison reviews.. But most of those reviews are a bit long in the tooth now, and we have shifted focus in the last couple of years more and more to what we call member "Mini-Reviews", where forum regulars write and share their (usually) brief reviews of software packages, both commercial and free (and sometimes other things like Board Games or gadgets).
Look a bit deeper on the forum and you might stumble onto our "Self-Teaching Programming School" section -- a progression of increasingly difficult assignments in dozens of different programming languages for people who are learning to program. It's our fun way to encourage and motivate new students to join the exciting world of programming.
Let's see, what else? You may have heard of us through our yearly NANY (New Apps for the New Year) event, where we encourage coders who hang out on our site to release a new free application at the start of the new year. There were over 30 entries in the event this past January. Some are just small toys, but some are seriously cool and useful. They are all free. We also provide hosting space for those members on our site who need a place to host their software and website.
So that's a quick tour of the site. I'm sure I left out a few things but hopefully it's enough to help you decide if the site is something that appeals to you.
mouser:
To celebrate the fundraiser, DC member skwire has released a new application: sWeather.
But before I describe sWeather, I need to say a little bit more about Skwire. Over the last year he has released an absolutely astounding number of brand new freeware programs over the last year - almost all in response to requests from everyday people who have stopped by and posted on the DonationCoder.com Coding Snacks Request board. He's almost threatening to break the record for releases by DC member Skrommel. It's great fun to watch Skwire create new tools based on user requests.
Ok back to the new app, sWeather. It's a tray-based weather tool. There are a few of these kinds of tools around, some good, some bad. sWeather is nice because it looks great while being pretty minimalist, and does all of the important things well. There are tray icons for weather condition and temperature, and it's easy to switch quickly between locations and perform update checks. Overall a very sweet tool.
* Program Web Page: http://skwire.dcmembers.com/wb/pages/software/sweather.php
* Direct Download Link: http://skwire.dcmembers.com/apps/sweather/sWeather.zip
* Forum Discussion Thread: https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=25940.0
Official Fundraiser Blog Day by Day
Official Fundraiser Blog Day by Day
Important Note: During the fundraiser we ask people to make new donations into the site. And these donations help cover site hosting costs and other expenses. But we also have a system we created (called DonationCredits) in order to let people direct their donations to specific members on the site who they would like to show support to. The best thing you could do with your donation is actually to send your donation credits out to specific people on the site like Skwire, whose work you want to support - as a way of letting them know that their work is appreciated. So don't just donate, spread the love a little by sending your donation out to people on the site like skwire. Actually skwire has his own direct paypal donation button on his website, and that would also be a great way to let him know he is appreciated.
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