Idea Thread for NANY 2016

[mouser]

If anyone has any ideas to suggest for NANY 2016, or collaborations they want to work on, etc. -- feel free to use this thread (or start a new one starting with NANY2016 idea).
Remember that NANY ideas should typically be small in scope -- not year long projects.

[mouser]

One of the truly TERRIBLE ideas in recent versions of windows is that icons in the system tray are BY DEFAULT set to hide unless they produce a message.
This can frequently (for me at least) lead to me having programs running in the background that I didn't realize were still running.
The option to hide icons is great.  The default behavior is not.

It might be nice to have a program that changed the system setting to always show icons for newly discovered apps.  That is, the utility would run in the background, and the first time it encounters a new exe running, it would check registry for an entry saying to hide the icon, and change that to say to show the icon.  If the user goes so system tray options and chooses to hide it in the future, there will be no effect, as this app is only modifying the setting the first time an app is seen.

[IainB]

IDEA: OCR - create a common OCR module or plugin for CHS (ClipboardHelp&Spell) and SC (ScreenshotCaptor)
...possibly using the OCR code provided by Microsoft for $free ...

Some related DonationCoderForum posts:

• Feature request: automatic OCR of captured images. | DCF (2014-11-24)
• Feature Request: Search text notes in screenshots ... | DCF (2013-03-14)
• IDEA: OCR & paste | DCF (2008-09-18)
• Re: Microsoft OneNote - Office Lens for iPhone and Android phones | DCF (2015-09-24)

Some related web references:

• Quick Tip: How to Search for Text Inside an Image } EverNote.com
• About Optical Character Recognition in Google Drive | Google (answers)
• Windows 8.1 now searches text within photos thanks to... | TheVerge.com
• Extract text from pictures and file printouts by using OCR in... | Office.com
• Free Online OCR - Convert JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, PDF  |  NewOCR.com
• "Hosted Microsoft OCR library": Free OCR API web service | Autonomous Technology (a9t9)
• FREE OCR software: a survey of desktop and online tools... | FreewareGenius.com

Open the floodgates! 

[ewemoa]

Some folks have been noticing that over the years, various apps appear to "phone home" from time to time.

For example, Firefox seems to contact a variety of locations -- they do provide some info about this and often how to disable:

  http://kb.mozillazine.org/Connections_established_on_startup_-_Firefox
  https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-connections
  https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/755147
  https://superuser.com/questions/832608/what-is-being-send-to-received-from-safebrowsing-google-com-when-i-open-firefo
  https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1076594

but there does not appear to be a single preference one can select to disable all such behavior (or alternatively, turn stuff off temporarily and restore later).  Also it turns out in some cases it's a plug-in (e.g. IIUC, NoScript may talk to secure.informaction.com -- please point out if this is incorrect).

I also noticed that at some point one of the tracking related settings had gotten enabled here   In general, I'm not too happy about settings changing behind my back...

So this leads to an idea...

A policy-checking / reporting plug-in or app -- perhaps at first for FF, but may be also for other apps.  A rough idea of it is to be able to specify a policy (e.g. no non-user initiated connections) and then get a report on whether it's followed and perhaps to warn when the policy appears to be violated.  Being able to load / save various policies might be nice too.

I realize that doing this in detail is likely to be a fair bit of work -- was just thinking something simple might be possible to gain a fair bit of benefit.  Perhaps something that just checks a certain set of settings -- not actually try to monitor app behavior.

May be such a thing exists already, but if not...

[ewemoa]

Just tried out qemu-launcher:

  https://screenshots.debian.net/screenshots/q/qemu-launcher/14020_large.png

Part of what it does is provide a GUI for creating / editing sets of information for launching the qemu emulator.

Was thinking that a general GUI tool to do this sort of thing for any command line program (i.e. rather than specifically just for one program) could be handy.

Perhaps one could provide (for each supported command line program) a template describing options, corresponding GUI layout, and how what's specified gets translated into command line parameters.  A motivated user might provide / share their own templates.

IIUC, some of this is done by Drag and Drop Robot -- the creating / editing sets of information part at least.


Insert usual comment about if suitable thing doesn't exist already

[BGM]

And.....  there is always Fungus!
http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=39418.0

I am still waiting for someone to do this!

Mr. Unlimited Bacon made an Android app out of, but never completed it; it works, but you can tell it isn't finished.
https://github.com/unlimitedbacon/kfungus

[tomos]

mouser! are you looking for an idea?

Convert PopUp Quotes to a personalised reminder and/or motivational and/or goals software. Could even be used for random ToDo's that dont need to be done urgently. Or simply a way of running ideas by every now and again so that they can rattle around in the background -- that's the main idea: that one sees a suggestion or idea on occasion, unexpectedly, to help keep it in mind. But instead of coming (directly) from others, the are from out input, from our experience.
Or it could be simply something like 'helpful tips for me'.

I know this can all be done, but it need ease-of-use for non-motivated people like me
Seriously though, imo it does need ease of use before it could be presented as software for these purposes.

Doesn't need much work I dont think:

• ability to easily add text/quote (e.g. via popup or the tray icon - would possibly have to be limited to one editable file)

• ability to delete (quoted) text (ideally via button on the popup)

• ability to edit text (ideally via button on the popup) -- PopUp Quotes just showed "Remove a Restriction" (no kidding: that's what I love about this app)

[dr_andus]

May be such a thing exists already, but if not...

Doesn't WinPrivacy Plus do some of that?

[dr_andus]

It might be nice to have a program that changed the system setting to always show icons for newly discovered apps.

Yup, I would use that! +1 

[ewemoa]

May be such a thing exists already, but if not...

Doesn't WinPrivacy Plus do some of that?

Don't know

[dr_andus]

May be such a thing exists already, but if not...

Doesn't WinPrivacy Plus do some of that?

Don't know

Well, it does something along those lines, I'm just not sure if it does it at the granularity you were suggesting.

P.S. I think there is a free version of that as well, if you want to check it out.

[ewemoa]

I appreciate the suggestion, but lately I'm wary of apps for this sort of thing without source.  Still, it's nice to see some development along these lines!

[dr_andus]

I appreciate the suggestion, but lately I'm wary of apps for this sort of thing without source.  Still, it's nice to see some development along these lines!

Sorry, what do you mean "without source"? It's from the makers of WinPatrol, discussed before on this forum (which is how I found out about them, incidentally).

[ewemoa]

Sorry for the vagueness, what I meant was "without source code".

[n8wachT]

Convert PopUp Quotes to a personalised reminder and/or motivational and/or goals software. Could even be used for random ToDo's that dont need to be done urgently. Or simply a way of running ideas by every now and again so that they can rattle around in the background..

I am really diggin this idea

[dr_andus]

This might be a bit late for NANY 2016 (?) but wasn't sure where to request it.

Idea: a simple calendar app for Windows that implements the Don't Break the Chain productivity approach as follows:

• - use standard self-updating calendar in the style of Classic Calendar, showing monthly view (though ability to switch to annual view would be also nice).
• - ability to add an unlimited number of rows for tasks/projects to be ticked in the column represented by each day. This would be the competitive advantage of this software over what's on the market, as normally these types of calendars only allow for one task/project to be followed across time, when one might need several (e.g. one for work, one for exercise, one for meditation etc. etc.)
• - allow to add a big X or tick sign (with customisable colour) for each day to be ticked off, for each task/project separately.
• - ability to add a few words (or at least abbreviations) to describe the nature of the task that was accomplished that day. This could be overlayed by the X or tick sign, but still visible.
• - option to launch at system start-up or waking up
• - option to launch automatically at a predetermined time every day (or a number of times a day)
• - option to launch in fullscreen mode.

Thanks for considering.

P.S. examples of existing implementations:

• Don't Break The Chain! - online, with Google Chrome app

• Don’t Break the Chain - Jerry Seinfeld's Method for Creative Success - just a PDF file
• Chains.cc - Don't Break The Chain App - with iOS and Chrome Web Store apps

[dr_andus]

Never mind re above... I've decided to create a dedicated Google Calendar for recording my Don't Break the Chain activities. While it's a bit more manual (will have to create a new entry each day for a given type of activity), the benefit is that it's mobile and cross-platform.