FINAL: The Official WriteUp for the NANY 2012 Event!

[kyrathaba]

The NANY 2012 Event at DonationCoder.com

Welcome to the final official write-up for the DonationCoder.com NANY 2012 event!

NANY stands for "New Apps for the New Year". It's an annual event here on DonationCoder.com where we challenge coders of all experience levels to release a brand new freeware / donationware application to celebrate the coming of the new year.  It represents the playful and generous spirit of the DonationCoder.com site and the people who visit it.

Some of the releases are full featured polished, professional-level applications, while some are just experiments by new programmers.

Click here to discuss the NANY 2012 event and learn more, or watch videos of the entries below.  Click the program name to visit the forum thread for that application to discuss and download it.


As always, if you like what you see, consider making a donation to the site, and then sending your donation to some of the authors of the programs below.

Start with these entries
There are some real showstoppers here -- some very polished cute little programs and some unique power tools.

Ethervane Echo

Written by DonationCoder member tranglos, Ethervane Echo is a lightweight clipboard extender designed to speed up typing repetitive text. For writers, translators and coders. Fast and lightweight, with instant search. I have to say, the amount of time and effort that tranglos put into this program really shows. The help file is extensive and documents the program extremely well.

Qatapult

Written by DonationCoder member ecaradec, Qatapult is a keyboard launcher reminiscent of the QuickSilver program on Macs that has this super nice feature that allows to run commands on objects with completion on object and command and possibly extra arguments. It also has a very slick and customizable design UI. Ecaradec has adapted ideas from QuickSilver and made them available for Windows as Qatapult.

MPQ Screensaver Builder

Multi Photo Quotes Builder, by DonationCoder member mouser, let's users package screensavers for their friends and family that contain images and quotes of their own creation.  Based on mouser's Multi Photo Quotes screen saver engine, it offers a high degree of customization on the installed machine, and has unique abilities to tile images on multiple monitors and support random text quotes integrated with the images.

Web Link Captor

Mouser's Web Link Captor is a program that takes a list of plaintext items, and builds an output document containing a list of url-linked results based on web searches for the items. It's a way to quickly build a clickable list of items from just their names, suitable for posting on your blog or a forum, etc. This program took some time, folks. You'd normally expect to pay for software that is this useful and polished. Being able to obtain software like this for free is one of the great things that DonationCoder offers the virtual community.

(You can also watch a longer tutorial here).



Image Grid

This tool, by DonationCoder member vlastimil, allows you to take several smaller pictures and create one big image with all the smaller pictures arranged in a rows and columns. This tool will prove useful to create custom wallpapers from photographs, create previews of multiple images for sites like deviant art or for designers' client, create pictures for a printing service that only supports pictures of certain size and the client needs lots of smaller pictures.

Recursiview

Written by DonationCoder member skwire, Recursiview is a simple image viewer that will allow view a flat list of all images in a folder and subfolders.Keyboard-driven operation; Unicode-path compatible; Configurable thumbnail size.

MPH (Media Player Hotkeys)

Written by DonationCoder member skwire, MPH (Media Player Hotkeys) is a hotkey application designed to allow you to control various audio, video and media players from one set of global hotkeys..

PDFInfoGUI

Written by DonationCoder member skwire, PDFInfoGUI is a Graphical user interface front-end for pdfinfo.exe from the Xpdf package at FooLabs..  It can show a table of pdf information for a large collection of pdf files, and export to csv.

GotSpace?

GotSpace?, by DC member Stoic Joker, is a small simple portable utility that will list the available drives and the space available on them. It's actually a clone of another program SJ had been using for years which had never been updated and lacked some of the features that SJ has added to Got Space?

Portable Extension Warlock

Using this tool by DonationCoder member hamradio, you can build a launch file to launch files of certain types in certain applications skipping the system file associations.  You should be able to use this as well on portable devices as long as the computer you intend to use it on has .NET 4.0. by using the DropZone that is included.

Uncle Cody's Dice Game

DonationCoder members Mouser and Krishean collaborated on this game, which is a simple Solitaire dice game based on Martian Dice by Tasty Minstrel Games.  Fun!

PinPics

Written by DonationCoder member NinJA999, PinPics maps out geotagged photos from a folder.  It's a great way to see where you've been and to bring back old memories.  Try it with the pictures on your smartphone!

Stick A Note

Stick A Note, by DonationCoder member anandcoral, is an application to create focus-less notes that can be associated with application windows.  The note moves with the associated window, and in saved in text format. The note auto-hides in the associated program window is hidden or inactive, and a hotkey can be used to show/hide the note.

Tell When Done

Tell When Done, by DonationCoder member anandcoral, watches a program window, which is doing some process, and tells when it has done it's processing. Effectively freeing the user to do another job in another window, without worrying about it.

Paste Like Text

Written by DonationCoder member anandcoral, Paste Like Text gives option to paste the text from clipboard, in different format, like Proper case, valid file name, hex color value, remove blanks etc. Also option for mimic typing, auto pasteboard and view the color, if possible.

Kyrathasoft Christian Prayer Minder

DC member kyrathaba has this to say about Christian Prayer Minder : This program will likely appeal to a narrower audience. As you might infer from the name of the program, the program provides informative texts on prayer-related topics, plus enables easily save/retrieve/edit/search prayer files. Searching prayer files is based on tags and/or author, or the user can search within the actual words of the prayer itself for a word or phrase. In its future incarnations, the program will have the ability to use user-configurable prompts to remind the user to pray at certain times, and/or about certain topics. Designed for use by people of faith, CPM is a tool that will continue to grow more refined and useful with each new version that becomes available. And if you love beautiful religious artwork, be sure to check out the program, which currently features a score of very attractive images, many of them created by John R. Bell.

Fentwiss

Fentwiss is a java-based keyboard-centric calculator and converter written by DonationCoder member timns. The program features simple and natural syntax for fast calculation and conversion, and tries to present the results in a human-friendly way (mixed units, fractions).

After you've checked out the above entries you might want to check out these
Some of these may appeal to a narrower audience, or be a little rough around the edges.

Desktop URL Embed

Desktop URL Embed was written by DonationCoder member wraith808. Active desktop was supposed to be a big feature on Windows, but it has faded into the annals of history.  Or has it?  It's still there, just not as prevalent.  So when wraith808 wanted to embed a webcam view in his Evil Genius desktop setup, he decided to learn about Windows Gadgets.  This program allows the user to embed a URL into their desktop, and set a refresh if desired and the size of the gadget.

Kyrathasoft Source Code Line Counter

Are you a software developer? Do you ever find yourself estimating a project's size ("Oh, what you're wanting will probably amount to about 5,000 lines of code...") in terms of lines of source code? Kyrathasoft Source Code Line Counter, by DonationCoder member kyrathaba, makes counting lines of source code easy and fast -- within a single project, or across multiple projects. It has the option to discount blank lines and/or comments, and to count/discount IDE-created code. This donationware program supports the following programming languages' source-files: Visual Basic, C, C#, Delphi/Pascal, Bash, Java, AHK, and AutoIt.

Kyrathasoft Found Money

Found Money when DonationCoder member kyrathaba responded to a coding-snack request made by DonationCoder member caddo. The program allows you to keep track of money that you find -- under your car seat, in the washing machine, etc. Features record creation, saving, editing of saved records, and even searching against criteria ("show me any records in which the number of pennies is less than six", or "show me any records in which the number of one-dollar bills is exactly equal to three"). Use it for its original intended purpose, or as a digital piggy bank.

Kyrathasoft Hangman Game

This program was kyrathaba's first submission for NANY 2012, although he later added three more programs. This is a Hangman variant that presents well over nine-hundred hangman puzzles to be solved. As you continue to solve puzzles, the amount of time you have in which to solve each puzzles decreases -- to a point. You can opt to register a username on the online database in order to compete against others who are also using the program, seeing who can get the highest score. In the contest I ran, $30.00 of DonationCredits were distributed to monthly high-scorers. I very much enjoyed everyone's participation, and assistance in improving the game!

Visual Perimeter

Visual Perimeter, by DonationCoder member hegearon, is a very simple-to-use, barebones application whose inner width/height can be set via a "Control Panel" that drops down from the top of the mostly transparent form. Use this program to visualize a perimeter that is so many pixels in width, by so many pixels in height. A nice first effort, by new DC member hegearon!

Treat Yourself Nicely

Treat Yourself Nicely, by DonationCoder member Stephen66515, is designed to be used in conjunction with a healthy diet.

Using this software will give your computer control over when you are able to have a snack! Simply enter your name, and timer options in the settings menu and your good to go!

NoteMe

Using NoteMe, written by DonationCoder member justice, you can quickly send mail to yourself. NoteMe makes it possible to blog using WordPress or Posterous, to send stuff to evernote or pinboard, or label these messages (use NoteMe as a work log). Anything that can accept email can be used with NoteMe. Choose an email address from the dropdown combobox, enter a brief message, click Send. Voila! You've sent a note via email.  This program can also be invoked by a script or batch file.  

Chess PGN Processor

Commissioned by DonationCoder member TaoPhoenix, is a free program for filtering and compressing the data in PGN chess game files.

GoogolBar

GoogolBar, by DonationCoder member app103, is a replacement for the Google Toolbar for Windows. It does not contain anything questionable, unethical, shady, sneaky, privacy invading, etc. Nice, clean, and simple. It is a deskbar that integrates with your taskbar to provide convenient searching of various Google services (20 in total) right from the desktop in your default browser. It will work with all major browsers and most obscure ones, too. It will work with both horizontal and vertical taskbars. It will not store a search history, not phone home, not report statistics, no automatic installation of updates without the user's knowledge or consent, no tracking of personally identifiable surfing activities, no tracking of "anonymous" statistics, no changes to your default search engine, no changes to your default "new tab" page, no changes to any web page you view, no collection and storage of personally identifiable information, no loading of dynamic content from the web, no advertising, no 3rd party bundled software, no BS. NOTE: It currently works with WinXP 32-bit ONLY, but soon a version is coming that will be Vista/Win7-compatible.

And for those that really care about privacy, there is an option to search using Scroogle.

Nea

Nea, by DonationCoder member ewemoa, starts and stops certain AHK_L scripts -- though the current intent is for FARR-focused scripts.  Over the years a variety of FARR-related AHK scripts and snippets have been posted to the DC forums and this app might make it convenient to manage a collection of these.

PerceptualDiff

PerceptualDiff is authored by DonationCoder member JoTo. The program is used to batch compare two branches of image files in a human visible (perceptual - not binary) way. It permits the user to Move and Rename files depending on match results. It is a GUI front-end to the Perceptual Diff utility authored by Hector Yee, and has been offered back to the SourceForge project.

Flipside

Flipside, created by DonationCoder member Deozaan, has a very simple premise. You have a single board, where you play on both sides of it simultaneously. Basically, one side tries to kill the other side. Take turns moving units and attacking each other. But wait, you say, if they are on two different sides of a plane, how do they fight each other? You notice that each side have two different looking units in the corners. They are special units. They cannot be killed, but they also cannot attack either. If they are targeted and hit, they will be pushed back a square in the opposite direction of the attack. But if they aren't combat units, what do they do? They can flip specific squares from one side to the other. The unit with a + on his helmet flips all the squares in the same row and column (orthogonally), while the unit with an X on his helmet flips all the tiles going out diagonally from his position. The special units do not change sides at all, ever, but any other unit on a flipped square is moved to the other side regardless of which side he started on, unless of course one of the special units is occupying a tile that a regular unit would flip to.

Reverse Dictionary (for Android devices)

Reverse Dictionary (for Android devices), created by DonationCoder member lotusrootstarch, is a powerful word finder that lets you describe an idea/concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept.  Also functions as a thesaurus.  For android devices.  Ad supported.





Big Bang Theory Sound Quotes (for Android devices)

Reverse Dictionary (for Android devices), created by DonationCoder member lotusrootstarch, presents you with the ultimate collection of sound quotes from The Big Bang Theory. For android devices.  Ad supported.





Printer PaperSource Explorer

Written by DonationCoder member Ath, Printer PaperSource Explorer displays information about your printers Paper Trays (the source of the paper). Ever needed to setup Tray numbers in an application for a complicated, multi-tray, office printer? Then here's the way to find out the correct tray/bin numbers.

APK loader

APK Loader, by DonationCoder member limelect, is used to load APK files to an AVD simulator. The program makes use of Eclipse and an Android simulator.

Habanero Simple Software Licensing - Early Beta Release

Habanero Simple Software Licensing, by DonationCoder member josant, is an early beta release of a new software licensing solution for developers that will be released eventually as commercial software.

[mouser]

A huge huge thank you to DC member Kyrathaba for shepherding through this year's NANY.  It's a huge undertaking (just ask DC member Perry Mowbray whose skills at it may never be repeated but who after 2 years of it had to go on a 2 month long walk in the wilderness just to recover).


Congratulations to everyone (including myself!) who participated by releasing a new application.

Now let's all chip and and make a donation or two to some of the authors of these programs (if you aren't familiar with how to do so, you just make a donation to the site, and then you're donation will be credited to your forum account -- after which you can send parts of your donation to specific members).

See a list of all NANY 2012 coders (with a quick link to donate to the them at the bottom of the page) here.

[kyrathaba]

I'd like to sincerely thank mouser for the opportunity to work on this year's NANY. It was a very enjoyable experience! Also, tremendous thanks to all those who took the time, and went through the birthing pains of bringing a new software creation into the world

[rgdot]

Thanks kyrathaba, mouser and all participants. DC is really something (in a very good way)

[josant]

The whole NANY idea is great and participating has been a very positive experience. I will definitely try to participate again next year - but start work a little earlier!

Big thanks to the organizers and great work everyone who participated.

[kyrathaba]

Josant, thanks for your great software contribution! I watched the screencast and it definitely looks like something I might use for my own .NET apps. 

Hope to see you enter the contest again this next time (I'm hoping to convince mouser to start the NANY 2013 thread maybe in July again).

[JavaJones]

Congrats everyone and thank you for sharing your coding talent and time with us!

- Oshyan

[tomos]

Great work all round, thanks and congrats!

[JoTo]

Thanks to Kyrabatha for his great work. And mouser too, of course. Also thanks going to the Screencast makers and all the visitors that are reading, using and enjoying our NANY apps. Last but not least a big hooray to all the co-programdevelopers that made the NANY 2012 a success again.

Now let's looking forward to NANY 2013!

Greetings
JoTo

PS:
And the most important question is: WHERE IS MY MUG, and what picture would be on it?
<eagerly waiting> Hehehehehe!

[anandcoral]

Thank you Kyrabatha, mouser for taking up so much trouble and giving we developer a platform to showcase our works. I will remain grateful to DC forever.   

Also thanks to all participant and users, without whom NANY would not be NANY 

Regards,

Anand

[TaoPhoenix]

Nice writeup of my humble little offering!

Modesty leads me to ask if it is too much trouble or gives the wrong impression to say "commissioned by" because I don't want to take false credit from the talented crew here! I also want to know overall if that is like drawing outside the lines of DC - I believe in the open software movement, so it's fairly likely I'd donate other commissioned programs in the future.

[Deozaan]

Congratulations to all who succeeded and a big thanks to mouser, Kyrathaba and all else involved behind the scenes to make NANY 2012 such a success!

Also a big thanks to the anonymous donor(s) who paid for the reward mugs.

[kyrathaba]

Modesty leads me to ask if it is too much trouble or gives the wrong impression to say "commissioned by"

@TaoPhoenix: Done!

@Deozaan: much thanks, buddy. It's been great fun for me!

[tranglos]

This is so awesome! Thank you Kyrathaba and Mouser for amazing work! And thank you to all who did the screencasts, they look really impressive arranged in such a victorious procession

[mouser]

We tried to do a bad enough job with the screencasts that we would encourage authors to do their own next time 

[TaoPhoenix]

Modesty leads me to ask if it is too much trouble or gives the wrong impression to say "commissioned by"

@TaoPhoenix: Done!

-kyrathaba (January 06, 2012, 06:37 AM)

Thank you! Now I can sleep this weekend!

Really though, I think it's an important "3rd angle". In fact it ties into that "I'm done with free" discussion - don't just code an app and blindly throw it into the wind - get a PowerUser Sponsor to commission it! Think about it - my app probably has a net-wide userbase of a hundred, tops. Business potential of Zero. But not only am I a Humanities type and not a coder, I'd hate the idea of burning 3 weeks making that "just to get back to what I was supposed to be doing"! Also, that's too big of an App for a Snack - that's at least a Coding Pizza!

(Plus I wanna know what other Retro Enthusiast likes the RetroComputing inspired interface!)

[CWuestefeld]

Good work to all. Not only is this a long list, but the collective effort grows increasingly professional every year, so once again, this year's collection is a high-water mark.

[kyrathaba]

We tried to do a bad enough job with the screencasts that we would encourage authors to do their own next time

Well, mouser tried to do a bad-enough job ... for me, it came naturally   

[NinJA999]

Great job!  I'm impressed with the number and quality of the submissions, and with the dedication of mouser and kyrathaba to making screencasts for them all.  Super!

In the PinPics video: I like the part about me being the "owner and sole author" of Shaken Software, Inc.  That's right, at least, for now

It's too bad you didn't have any geotagged photos to play around with.  Perhaps I should upload a few of mine to serve as examples (the ones in the demo screenshot are simple pictures I took around here in Boston with my phone)...

[kyrathaba]

the dedication of mouser and kyrathaba to making screencasts for them all.

I'd like to acknowledge and thank Skwire for doing his own screencasts for his three entries. That helped us considerably. Was there another developer who produced her/her own casts?

[anandcoral]

I am planning to walk on skwire's footmarks , for next year.

I will search for some small, better portable, app which makes flv, avi, wmv or mk4 etc. and also uploads to youtube (will be bonus). No audio required, as I do not have any audio system. But will put text message at each step.

Wink or something, is one such I checked few years back, any other suggestion ?

Regards,

Anand

[Ath]

I should properly thank mouser for the nice screencast he did of Printer PaperSource Explorer. I'm currently not able to create one myself, but I'll get a microphone somewhere , and do (at least) next year's NANY myself .

Should probably be promoted for next year's NANY edition: Optionally create a short screencast of your entry. (Or deliver a script/playbook for making a useful one?)

[grandpastan]

Terrific job everyone. Thanks

[Tinman57]

  Well since everyone has been appropriately thanked, I'd like to take this time to thank myself for reading this...   

[davidqxo]

I'm overwhelmed at the amazing demonstration of creativity and productivity. Kudos to all the contributors. You're an inspiration.