BREAKING NEWS JAN 6, 2018 - Results of our Annual NANY (New Apps for the New Year) 2019 event are now posted: see here.
Super-sized Newsletter for December 3rd, 2018
"Codename: Wedding Feathers"
1. Newsletter EditorialHello and welcome to another edition of the DonationCoder newsletter! I'd like to briefly mention a few things before we get to the normal round-up of interesting posts on the forum.
First things first, I want to thank everyone for making our 2018 fundraiser, held in April and celebrating 13 years online, such a big success. It's been a few years since we had a fundraiser, and I wasn't sure how it would go. In the end, we received over $13k in small donations from everyday users. It was gratifying and humbling to see our hard work in building the new website honored with such generosity. It made all the work feel worthwhile. Thank you all, for not just your financial donations, but more importantly for your enthusiastic encouragement for the site and our non-traditional approach to things. (If you missed the fundraiser, we would still appreciate your support -- just click the Donate button at the top of our web pages).
Second, I want to call your attention to the 11th annual NANY event on the site, and let you know about its upcoming deadline of January 1st to participate. NANY stands for New Apps for the New Year, and it's where we invite coders who hang out on the site to release a new freeware application by the first day of the new year. So if you are a coder, even just a beginner, you might consider taking the opportunity to participate. There's nothing to win or lose, you just get a nice free mug for participating. Even if you're not a coder, stop by the NANY 2019 section and try out some of the early releases and suggest ideas for last minute entries, and cheer on the coders who are participating.
Third, on a personal note, I got married since the last newsletter! Thank you all for your good wishes and thoughts. I am by nature a very private person, but I wanted to share the experience with my extended family here, and I'm glad I did. I even posted a couple of photos (see below).
Last, I wanted to give a special shout-out to a coder nicknamed "KodeZwerg" who has been programming up a storm on the Coding Snacks section of the forum lately. His enthusiasm is contagious, and he's even been hanging out in the DonationCoder IRC chat room and making the place a bit more lively this holiday season. So if you have an idea for a small program you'd like to see created, now might be a good time to visit the Coding Snacks section of the forum and make a request. And if you find yourself bored at 2am just choose the Chat option from the Help menu on the website and join the late night crew for some meandering chit chat.
Signing off from Champaign, Illinois, USA,
-Jesse (mouser)
2. NANY 2019 - New Apps for the New Year - LESS THAN A MONTH LEFT TO PARTICIPATEFor the last 11 years on the DonationCoder.com site we run a friendly event called "NANY" (New Apps for the New Year), where we invite forum visitors to help us celebrate the new year by releasing a new freeware program on the first day of the new year. We typically get a variety of entries -- some are genuinely useful tools designed to be shared widely, and some are programming exercises for new users. All participants receive a free deluxe DonationCoder NANY Mug, and we may have some additional prizes donated by members.
If you are a coder you now have less than a month until the January 1, 2019 deadline to enter!
3. Mouser's Software Updates and DiscussionsI've uploaded some updates to many of my large applications since the last newsletter. As always, you can find the list of what's new both in the online help pages (linked from each program homepage) or in the forum thread about the application (also linked from each program homepage). I've also released some new android apps and a bunch of miscellaneous updates.
4. Member ProjectsWe love to keep up with projects that our members are working on, and hearing what our forum members think of software they use. If you're working on something interesting -- let us know! And don't forget to check out the NANY section above, it's got tons of new software releases by members.
5. User-to-User: Your Input RequestedWe 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.
6. Coding SnacksThe Coding Snacks Section is where people can request small utilities be coded while they wait.
7. Website Discoveries, Debates, Essays, Discussions, and HumorWhat'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.
8. Fun, Humor, and EntertainmentSome entertaining diversions.
9. Software DiscussionsSome noteworthy software discussions on the forum since the last newsletter.
10. Developer's CornerThis section highlights some discussions that might be relevant for not just coders and developers, but also people interested in entrepreneurial issues.
