Since 2007 we have held an annual event that we call NANY (New Apps for the New Year), where we ask the coders who hang out on DonationCoder to create some new piece of free software and share it with the world.
What follows is a roundup of the entries from this year. Thank you and congratulations to everyone who participated!
Note: The NANY event is not a competition -- anyone can participate and everyone who does gets a coffee mug commemorating the event. Some of these are polished tools with mainstream appeal -- while others are rough around the edges or were written simply as an exercise by the coder. They are mostly tools for Microsoft Windows. All are free.
epCheckDiscuss and download:
here.
Web page:
here.
Jody Holmes (aka Skwire) is one of the most prolific coders to call DonationCoder.com home. Skwire's big entry for the 2014 NANY event is
epCheck, a utility that pulls television series data from
The TVDB database, showing episode summaries, upcoming schedules, etc. Watch the screencast above and you'll see the loving care Skwire gives each application he writes. A great tool for those who like to follow their favorite TV series. To see the scores of utilities that Jody has created over the years (many based on requests at the DonationCoder forum), visit his website
here.
Process PigletDiscuss and download:
here.
Webpage:
here.
Process Piglet is a utility which can be used to monitor the ongoing memory use of programs and alert you when a program starts using increasingly large amounts of memory. The author (Mouser) describes his motivation for coding the tool: "Every so ofter I notice my computer is slowing, getting less responsive, and grinding to a halt and I discover that some application, often the Firefox web browser, is starting to consume (leak) huge amounts of memory. I needed an easy way of getting advance notice when this was happening, and an easy way to restart it when it does." Process Piglet also has a nice concise view of top memory consumers that you can display on command.
Progress Bars of Life v2Discuss and download:
hereWebpage:
here.
Progress Bars of Life allows users to create a set of visual progress bars (shown in a window or docked to the edge of your screen), that track progress towards events or goals. Version 2 introduces many several new features, including an alert system (Zeno Alerts) that can pop up reminders at the recursive halfway point leading up to the event; so an event 60 days away will show a first reminder at 30 days, then another at 15 days, 7 days, etc.
Q-FlashCards for AndroidDiscuss and download:
here
This is an Android platform version of the quite-popular-in-recent-years type of application that helps you learn new material (dates, birthdays, geography facts, etc.). Q-FlashCards does a quite serviceable job of bringing this functionality to the Android platform, and may be of interest to those using an Android phone or tablet.
SpewsDiscuss and download:
hereWeb page:
here.
Spews is designed to automatically switch your wallpapers on a configurable schedule. Simply add your image folders, choose your wallpaper options and click the Enable button at the bottom. You can check/uncheck the images paths as needed; only checked paths will be scanned for images. It's rather resource-usage-light, so its memory footprint won't overburden older systems. There are plenty of wallpaper switchers out there but Spews does have one special feature. You can configure Spews to watch for processes say, running game executables, and it will automatically suspend wallpaper switching if they're found. This can be helpful because certain game's graphics can corrupt is the wallpaper is switched whilst the game is running.
Image Capture & Upload ProgramDiscuss and download:
hereWeb page:
here
ICUP will sit in the system tray. Use the hotkey to take a screen capture, and once the capture is taken, it will upload to the image hosting site
http://imm.io and copy the URL to the clipboard. Double-click on the tray icon to view the history and change the hotkey. This isn't meant to be a full-blown screenshot capture utility. For those whose needs are modest and who value simplicity, this could be the ticket.
BlasteroidsDiscuss and play:
hereWeb page:
here.
Blasteroids is an arcade game similar to Asteroids in which you control a rotating turret in space that is under siege by asteroids. Strategy and coordination will get you to increasingly higher and more difficult levels, and you get extra lives based on increasing score. The author plans to port the game to the Android platform.
Weather Station WarlockDiscuss and download:
here
Weather Station Warlock can retrieve the current weather conditions from approximately 1,800 locations across the United States and US Territories. It works by fetching data from weather stations and can display data from multiple stations at the same time, making it handy for monitoring the weather at many locations simultaneously.
SoloCropDiscuss and download:
here
SoloCrop can be used to quickly manually crop many jpeg images one by one. To use the program you just drag and drop a jpeg image, then click and draw a rectangle. SoloCrop crops when you release the mouse button, saves the newly cropped image with a new name, and then autoloads the next jpeg in the same folder.
ImgFloatDiscuss and download:
hereWeb page:
here.
ImgFloat was designed for use with mouser's
Screenshot Captor program (but can be used with other tools). When a new screenshot is captured, it's sent to ImgFloat, which "floats" the image in a reduced-size, partially transparent window on screen while you continue to work on other things. Gives you the ability to have have on-the-fly reference material posted to the screen so easily, with the ability still to see what's happening on the desktop.
Reference Overlay ToolDiscuss and download:
here.
This utility can take PNG images from a specified directory and overlay them atop any other open windows, at a specified opacity, so that the information contained in the image is available to the viewer while he or she plays a game or works with a highly technical piece of software, etc. A little creative thought will yield other viable uses for this utility.
Wallpaper WelderDiscuss and download:
here.
Web page:
here.
Wallpaper Welder lets you easily create wallpapers for a multi-monitor setup. It lets you assign different images to each monitor and then rescales and combines them to yield a single large image usable by the standard Windows wallpaper control panel applet.
Kyrathaba's SudokuDiscuss and download:
here.
Kyrathaba's Sudoku is an advanced Sudoku generator/solver with multiple Undo/Redo and multiple difficulty levels. Most users will probably make use of it to crack puzzles they haven't been able to solve on their own. However, it can also be used to play entire games of Sudoku, start to finish, that the program auto-generates.
Esc CloseDiscuss and download:
here.
This utility lets you configure a list of program names and class names that it will target when the Escape key is pressed (or double/triple tapped). If one of those applications has focus, "Esc Close" will cause that application to exit when the Escape key is pressed, just like it used to reliably do in earlier versions of Windows. Many people probably don't mind using the mouse, or alternative key combinations, to close their applications, but for those who prefer the Escape key, this program nicely adds that functionality.
RpclipDiscuss and download:
here.
The Rpclip program is a very lightweight clipboard monitor that will capture the text you copied to your clipboard. This is a lightweight portable tool, and no files or registry entries are left behind on your computer if you choose to remove the program.
Text Inspection & Manipulation UtilityDiscuss and download:
here.
This tool lets you perform a wide variety of operations on a text file, including case conversion, encryption, sorting, regular expression search and replace, checksums, etc.
Stoic Joker's Engine Displacement CalculatorDiscuss and download:
here.
This tool will calculate the displacement (size) of an engine using the bore diameter, stroke length and number of cylinders. It will also calculate the compression ratio of the combustion chamber and piston dome/dish measurements. This utility probably won't be of interest to most people, but I can imagine it being quite handy for enthusiasts and mechanics.
File GroupieDiscuss and download:
here.
This program was created in response to a
request in the Coding Snacks section of the forum. It moves (or copies) files from one folder to another in sub-folders allowing you to specify the number of files that will go into each sub-folder. You can sort by size, date, or file name.
Cameo SnackDiscuss and download:
here.
This program was created in response to a
request in the Coding Snacks section of the forum. Cameo Snack sits in the system tray and checks to see if a webcam is attached every 10 seconds. Shows a tooltip balloon with the proper info.
sumatra earmarksDiscuss and download:
here.
Sumatra earmarks lets you visually earmark (bookmark) any pdf page in the pdf reader SumatraPDF. Earmarks are autosaved to a text file, and the pdf files themselves are not modified.
Growl for Windows Forwarder (Plugin): PushoverDiscuss and download:
here.
The open source
Growl service lets you know when things happen. Files finished downloading, friends came online, new email has arrived - Growl can let you know when any event occurs with a subtle notification. This plugin for Growl-for-windows makes it easy to send real-time Growl notifications to your Android and iOS devices.
xbmcsenderDiscuss and download:
herexbmcsender is a small (open source) Python class and commandline utility that allows you to send links from one computer over your lan network (or the internet) to your XBMC computer (
XBMC is an open source cross platform home theater software tool for managing and playing media files). It's useful, for example, if you come across a YouTube or radio link on your desktop PC and want to send it for playback to your XBMC machine. This script will send URLs (audio, video, YouTube, images) to your XBMC HTPC machine for playback, but it can also be used to send local files, which is does by first FTPing the file and then instructing your XBMC to play it from the newly uploaded location. This script itself is cross-platform; it also comes with a Windows-only
Find and Run Robot alias addon.
FTP File UploaderDiscuss and download:
here.
This is a commandline tool that uses
cURL to upload any files whose names it parses from a text file.
WinButtons Webserver PluginDiscuss and download:
here.
Web page:
here.
This is a webserver plugin for the
WinButtons tool, allowing button configurations to be displayed by a web browser on the local network, e.g., from a tablet or mobile phone, using the WiFi network.
Kyrathaba's Text File Duplicate FinderDiscuss and download:
here.
Kyrathaba's Text File Duplicate Finder takes a text file and looks for duplicate lines. The program loads each line from the text file as a new item in a listview. Optionally, the program can save only unique entries (excluding duplicates) to a new text file.
Kyrathaba's Goodreads ManagerDiscuss and download:
here.
Kyrathaba's Goodreads Manager is able to take the JSON data that users of the
Goodreads website can export, and presents that raw data, in addition to computing and displaying some data not shown on the Goodreads website, such as the total number of pages you've read across all the books you've recorded on your Goodreads account. It also allows you to click on an author's name and see all books by that author that you've read.
EarlDiscuss and download:
here.
Web page:
here.
Earl allows you to convert .URL files into standard Window shortcut files (.LNK). This can be helpful if you use an application that doesn't understand .URL files but does understand standard Windows shortcuts. For instance, some icon docks won't handle a .URL file dropped on them, but can work with regular Windows shortcuts. The application creates the new shortcut files in the same directory as the source URL files, or may optionally be configured to work in conjunction with the "Send To" context menu in Windows.
WIS vCalReaderDiscuss and download:
here.
Web page:
here.
For those who don't use Microsoft Outlook, appointments and reminders sent from Outlook users get stored in your inbox as "Unknown.unk" files. WIS vCalReader is a little program that can read and decode these files.
JsRoboKeyDiscuss and download:
here.
Web page:
here.
JsRoboKey is a pre-alpha-stage, not-ready-for-use, open source scripting project, based on javascript and inspired by the
AutoHotkey scripting language.
Minecraft Mod ServerGitBackup Discuss and download:
here.
Web page:
here.
ServerGitBackup is a mod that allows Minecraft server administrators to backup the server to a git repository. It can be configured to do this on an hourly basis, for very active Minecraft servers. Could prove quite useful to Minecraft enthusiasts.
Kyrathaba's Tic-Tac-ToeDiscuss and download:
here.
Kyrathaba's Tic-Tac-Toe is a no-frills tic-tac-toe program for kids that allows two people to play one another from the same keyboard/screen.
gaioNIBBLESDiscuss and download:
here.
gaioNIBBLES is an old retro game that was released for the first time here. It's clone of the classic
Nibbles (Worm) game. Complete with homemade retro music, this runs best on the
DOSBox emulator.
Link LauncherDiscuss and download:
here.
The author wrote this program in response to the discontinuation of iGoogle. It takes an old iGoogle style list of page links and presents it in a compact form where the user can quickly click to visit a given page.
TaoPhoenix's unfinished text file proto-componentsDiscuss and download:
here.
DC Member TaoPhoenix released the C# source code for several unfinished tools. These are mostly unfinished tools -- not meant for end users -- but they do include the source code, so they could be useful starting points for coders who are interested in improving them.
