Newsletter for October 31, 2011 - "Frightening Feathers"

[mouser]

Newsletter for October 31, 2011

"Frightening Feathers"

1. Newsletter Editorial

Hello dear readers, welcome to another edition of the DonationCoder newsletter -- filled with tales of terror and suspense.  Or rather, filled with links to some of the more interesting posts on the DC forum in the last month.

I'll keep things short this time, and just remind you that we are approaching the new year, which means our big NANY event.  Otherwise known as "New Apps for the New Year", NANY is where we encourage all coders who visit DonationCoder to release some new piece of freeware and announce it on our site on January 1st.  We encourage coders of all backgrounds and skill levels to participate.  There are no winners or losers, and everyone who participates gets a mug to commemorate the event.  If you're a coder -- just stop by the NANY section of our forum and say you want to participate.  If you know a coder who might be interested, let them know!  If you have an idea for a new small freeware tool, post your idea in the NANY 2012 section.  And no matter who you are, I hope you'll mark your calendars to drop by our site on New Year's Day and join us for a celebration of new software, and help us spread the word.


2. User-to-User: Your Input Requested

We love nothing more than having interesting discussions on our forum -- and we love when new people participate in the discussions.  In each newsletter we try to highlight a few topics that we think might interest casual readers and that are good candidates for making your first post.

• Do You Freelance?
• NAS Recommendations?
• Anyone got an iPad and like it?
• Buying a fast new PC, anyone have a favorite US system builder?

3. DonationCoder Software Updates and Discussions

This month saw a few updates to the larger DC software programs hosted on our site.  I've also included a few notable discussion threads for each of them.

• Clipboard Help+Spell v2.10.01 Released
• Find and Run Robot v2.102.03 Released
• Screenshot Captor v2.102.01 Released
• CHS: New Formatting Dialog
• CHS: Demo Screencast - Using Custom Script/Tool Formatting Presets
• CHS: Share your custom modification scripts here
• SC: Improving Region Select Capture Mode
• FARR: Request - Feature Lockdown for Corporate Use?

4. Skwire Empire Updates

DC member Skwire has been unstoppable on the Coding Snacks area of our forum -- writing new freeware utilities on request, and constantly releasing updates for his existing tools.  Lots of new updates this month:

• CovArt Ops v1.1.3 released
• Frameless v1.0.6 released
• List Numberer v1.1.0 released
• Lucidity v1.0.3 released
• SFV Ninja v1.0.5 released
• Snap DB v1.3.3 released
• sWeather v1.1.0 released
• Trout v1.0.6 build 37 released

6. Mini-Reviews, Coding Snacks, and other DC Member Software Threads

The Coding Snacks section is one of the things that people love the most about DonationCoder -- it's where anyone can post a request for a custom piece of software -- and often find the requests granted over night as one of the coders who inhabit our forum writes it as a free utility (lately DC member Skwire has been running circles around the rest of us, coding requests faster than lighting!)

• Coding Snack Solved: Txt Split & Sort
• Coding Snack Done: Pausable timer
• Coding Snack Idea: XML Stripper
• Coding Snack Idea: Change folder icon colour when folder empty
• Coding Snack Idea: Log off & Standby in 1-Click
• Coding Snack Idea: Dim Everything Else Request
• Mini-review: Sansa Clip Zip
• CyberNet News shout out to skwire

7. Fun, Humor, and Amusements on the Web

You've made it half way through the newsletter, so let's have a break.  Go make yourself an egg cream soda, and check out these fun websites and videos!

• Dungeon Defenders - A Tower Defense CO-OP RPG
• Captain Forever game series deal
• Harvest: Massive Encounter - A unique, moddable, indie Tower Defense game.
• Any Magicka Fans Around?
• The Life-Changing $20 Rightward-Facing Cow
• Humble Indie Bundle Voxatron

8. General Software Discussion

Almost half the posts on the DC forum take the form of general software discussions, questions, recommendations, etc. These posts wind up in the General Software Discussion section and make it one of the most active sections of the DC forum. This is a great resource if you're trying to solve a software or hardware-related problem. We get so much traffic on this board that we split the recent content into two sections in the newsletter - general software and specific software discussions.

• Do you know a Generic GUI tool for Commandline Utils?
• Smart Response Technology and partitioning
• Good quality thesaurus program that integrates with Word 2007?
• Finally made it to Windows 7 -- looking for partitioning reccomendations
• Is this a worthwhile idea for a program?
• The confusion about the term "lifetime license"
• Massive Security Vulnerability In HTC Android phones

9. Specific Software Discussion

This section of the newsletter draws attention to some of the standout discussions about specific programs that have been started since the last newsletter.

• Firefox Extension "Download Statusbar" Now Adware - Maybe Malware
• CFi ShellToys 7.3
• Redo Backup and Recovery
• Firefox 7 is out
• Multiple printer defs under W7. Anyone have the key to this?
• Suggestions for maximum-lockdown XP system

10. Developer's Corner

The title of this section shouldn't scare you off - there is definitely something of interest for everyone here! It's more than just a section for the discussion of software development, it's also where we discuss web design, entrepreneurial ideas, and general productivity issues.  It's great to see that the section has been pretty active recently.

• Herb Sutter's brief look at C++11
• Dart Programming Language
• Cross-platform mobile apps development: MonoTouch/MonoDroid, Marmalade, etc.
• Video Tutorial: Creating Your First C# Application
• Need Partner, Help Me Make PC Gaming Better!
• Deep C Fishing
• Windows 8 from a Developer's Perspective Post-BUILD
• Pricing Software - Some Considerations and Techniques

11. Website Discoveries, Debates, and Discussions

What's new in cyberspace? What exciting new sites have been discovered by forum members?  What's the current hot topic and debate? Read on to find out...

• The Glorious Return of Shell Extension City
• Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal
• Wow: Google insider explains why Big G may lose the Internet wars
• Wikileaks says financial 'blockade' could put it out of business
• Crowdfunding: Some break from always reading about Amazon's E-book Dominance
• Question to Everyone: Setting aside the technical meaning, does Donationware...
• Beyond Gamification. Designing up Maslows Pyramid.
• Logging out of Facebook is not enough
• App vendors discover a new way to abuse Windows
• A rant against the SmartPhone ecosystem.

12. Announce your Projects

We encourage our members to tell us about their new software projects -- both free and commercial.  Here are a few threads we thought you might be interested in checking out.

• RegMerge - Import REG files safely and selectively, or compare their content
• Handling mulitiple tasks on different desktops with nSpaces
• RealWorld Paint 2011.1 finally complete
• Locate32 Live Search - a web GUI for Locate32

13. Computer Luminary Obituaries

First time we've had this section in one of our newsletters...

• Dennis Ritchie, Unix and C Language Creator, has died
• John McCarthy, Father of Lisp and AI, has died
• Steve Jobs, Leader of Apple Inc, has died

[Deozaan]

Nice newsletter. Thanks for the time and effort of putting it together.

[mouser]

For anyone wondering where the cody image is from, see this thread.

[skwire]

Nice work, mouser.  Thanks for the shout outs.

[Ampa]

Yay! One of my posts got featured.

And as ever, some interesting things on DC that I'd over looked.

Thanks.

[mouser]

Yay! One of my posts got featured.

This would be a good time to remind people that if you have a post you would like to be featured in a newsletter, that did not get blogged, just send me an email to suggest it ([email protected]).

[JoTo]

And again i lost half of a day because i neither could resist, nor i can't stop reading this newsletter.

I'm still hoping for an empty or totally uninteresting newsletter in the future so i can satisfy my boss when doing my work instead of reading.

Thank you again for this hours of pure pleasure.

Greetings
JoTo

[kaybay2]

Love it!

Such a wide range of info. With its help maybe I will be able to catch up with technology one day.

Peter

[kyrathaba]

Regarding NANY 2012, here is a report on how things are progressing in this year's event.