07.25.2002 GnomeREPORT
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Lockergnomie Mike Riley tells me that Ron is not alone in his frustration. "While things have improved enormously in the past 10 years, the art of providing instructions for users of hardware and software products is still a much-abused field. When I began 'technical' writing over 20 years ago, there were no college programs offering such a thing. Ottawa is supposed to be the 'silicon valley' of the north; if this is any reflection, then California is just as sorry as we are when it comes to spending money to provide good written support. The Documentation is most often seen as a 'necessary evil' and is thus considered 'overhead.' And the plunging stock values and cutbacks and layoffs make it worse. But the truth is I have been fighting with executives for miles and miles and miles to accept that user documentation is an intrinsic part of any product, as important to sales as the development team and the code."
Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? "Companies think they save money by putting out their documents as PDFs. They don't. People don't like to read lengthy concept pieces on their laptops or PCs, no matter how pretty they are. People always have and perhaps always will prefer to grab the book, take it to bed, take it to the back yard, keep it open beside the PC... whatever. You can digest a book, and save your place in it. PDFs are designed to be shared for printing, not for reading online. Help files, on the other hand, are written in easily-absorbed chunks and used as reference while working in your programming. This current fad that commercial software companies are into about making everything an HTML page is nuts; Adobe is the worst. It is becoming almost impossible to search through one of these file sets and come up with highly relevant answers; instead, you get 20 or 30 choices that you have to wade through, making it a total waste of time. Oh, I wish the theory of Indexes and their usage would become part of college entrance exams..."
If this isn't hitting home yet, it will. "It's a miracle when a shareware developer / author also has the smarts to provide a good set of Help files. If I rifle through my downloaded files (which are legion and leviathan), I see that the ones I use most and the ones I have purchased almost always share two things: stability, and a good set of instructions. Often these instructions are in Help files that I can't print, but hey: how many shareware writers can afford the services of a good technical writer ? On the other hand, Ron is right on: a lot of these 'shareware' programs are simply time-limited demos for programs that are designed by businesses with growth expectancies, not by single or small-team developers. As such, I demand that all websites that provide download services re -label these commercial programs as DEMO TO GET YOU INTERESTED IN BUYING OUR STUFF, and not as Shareware at all. Especially the FTP programs, most of which have such obtuse interfaces that even a rocket scientist can't figure them out."
See You in August, Chris Pirillo
GnomeDOWNLOADS
Latest Downloads
Faber Toys 2.4Angry IP Scanner 2.09jv16 PowerToo 1.1.0.140Kana Reminder 1.5.0.54Travelaxe 1.74ArsClip 2.2.5Offline CD Brows 3.1.15Dyro Pop Maker 1.1Crack Killer 1.10Dyro Web Scrollbars 1.0ArtSee 1.2allSnap 1.21Weather Watche 5.0 beta
http://www.mstagger.prv.pl/
{MP3 renamer} Sometimes I'll backup my audio CDs to my PC, and to conserve space, I'll convert the audio tracks to MP3. I use my CD burning software to rip the audio files to MP3 format, and although I can name the MP3 files, I can't edit their ID3 tag. (ID3 tags are what players like Winamp use to help you sort your music in their application.) I could probably use Winamp to edit every tag but that takes time... so instead, I'll load up msTagger! Whether you need to rename your MP3 files or copy data from an ID3v2 tag to an ID3v1 tag, with msTagger you can navigate to your music directory and start editing the files instantly. A word of warning: it does take a little while to learn your way around the software. Once you do, however, it is quite handy and a real time-saver.
PowerOff v3.0.0.11 [264k] W9x/2k/XP FREE
http://users.pandora.be/jbosman/applications.html
{PC on, PC off, Daniel-san} How many times have you spent staying up late at night downloading a big file or doing a long install? You're nodding off the whole time, but being the power conservationist that you are (good for you!), you don't want to leave your computer because you want to shut down your machine when the install/download is done. With PowerOff, you don't have to stay there and wait for your install to finish; just schedule your computer to shut down after the install finishes. Along with the shutdown feature, PowerOff can also reboot, log off, power off, or lock your workstation. You aren't just limited to your OWN machine though, you can perform a "Wake-On-LAN" for any computer on your network (or any of the other aforementioned features), as long as your have rights to that machine. If you're an administrator, you'll also enjoy the fact that you can send a warning to your remote users before shutting them down or rebooting their system. Thank goodness for PowerOff... no more mornings of waking up with a keyboard imprint on my cheek.
Recommend It!
GnomeCLICKS
GnomeSYSTEM
Command Prompt Explorer Bar v1.1 [229k] W9x/2k/XP FREE
http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/CommandBar.asp
{Explorer enhancement} I can't even tell you how many times I have tried to run a DOS batch file or some sort of script (whether VB or Java), only to have a black screen pop up and then suddenly disappear, leaving me with nothing. (Has my computer suddenly been possessed by David Copperfield and his incredible vanishing magic?) Well, that isn't a problem for me since I got the Command Prompt Explorer Bar. With a quick press of CTRL+M, I am left with a command window that is nested inside my current Explorer window. What's even better is that the command prompt is already "navigated" to the window I opened it in. For example: If I hit CTRL+M when my current directory is the Desktop, then the command prompt window opens to C:\Windows\Desktop. Command Prompt Explorer Bar also has a built-in script button, which is nice, but I had a hard time getting it to work on my machine (I suspect a problem with my machine, though, NOT the program). Before you decide to download this application, make sure you have both Windows Installer version 2 and .Net framework installed, both of which you can find on Microsoft's Web site.
GnomeWILDCARD
Check&Get v1.14 [2.1M] W9x US$29Unearthed by Dmitry Skorniakov
http://activeurls.com/
{Web site update checker} I check my favorite Web sites every day (sometimes even twice a day) and it would be nice if there was a way to know if they have been updated since I last visited... why surf when you don't know if anything new is waiting at your destination? Check&Get to the rescue! With Check&Get you can import your favorites from IE, Netscape, or Opera and set the application to check for updates to those Web sites according to a time frame you specify. Or, if you just can't wait, you can also click the "Check URL" button. While checking for updates, Check&Get also detects dead or and duplicate links, and monitors the Web site's availability. A new feature in Check&Get v1.14 allows you to convert your bookmarks into a Web-ready HTML file that allows you to create and publish your own "mini-portal" in seconds. Did I mention that you can turn on the preview pane and view your Web sites directly from the application? It's all right here, folks. Check it out, and Get it!
Submit Your Thoughts |Recommend It!
50 TIPS TO MAKE WINDOWS MORE USEFUL Do you have to deal with Windows on a daily basis? Might as well maximize your time with it. You'll find that some of these tips will apply to other operating systems, too. The world of computing isn't so mysterious once you understand how it works. With this GnomeTome, you'll begin to work faster - and smarter. Download Windows Productivity Tips now!
GnomeFAVORITE
Xanthic Graphics
http://www.xanthic.net/
What can I say... I'm a hopeless graphics man! Some would say I am too easily amused with the sleight of hand that goes into making a beautiful wallpaper, or the wizardry that goes into a dazzling set of icons. Be that as it may, I have fallen in love with Xanthic Eye. With a gallery of wallpapers and icons for both Windows and OS X, who wouldn't be in love with this site? If you still aren't impressed, take a whirl through the "Skins" section and give your Winamp (or Real Jukebox) installation a much-needed facelift. Although it is said that a magician should never reveal his secrets, Xanthic throws this rule to the wind by offering in-depth tutorials for both Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. Maybe now, I can become the mouse-twirling graphics guru that I have always dreamed of being!
GnomeTIP
Several of our friends seem to be suddenly finding themselves in "a family way." I just know that when the day comes (when I become a full-fledged father, that is), it will also be the day that my digital camera becomes permanently grafted to my hand. I'll be taking pictures all the time of my bundle of joy and, of course, I'll be sending them to friends and family all the time. Now I'm going to let you in on a little secret... you can use Moviemaker in Windows XP to share your own pictures. Just open up Moviemaker ,and drop your photos into a new movie. Now all your photos are in one easy-to-play file. On top of that, you can add music or audio commentary. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I think sometimes a small story helps your audience understand what is so great about your photos. So now you have this great slide show that can either be loaded to the Web, on to a CD, or even just e-mailed out (depending on the size) and it literally just takes minutes. Of course you could take it even a step farther and add in clips from your digital video camera and come out with a personal masterpiece, but that is better left for another tip. Also, you may want to note that you may have to play with your pictures a bit to get them to display in a fashion that you'll be proud of because the quality will suffer slightly, but that is a small price to pay for viewing pleasure of your audience.
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