File this under 'they deserve it'

The People Vs. Web Host Plus, Inc..

My last webhosting company was swallowed up and destroyed by Web Host Plus.

Scary Mind Horror Forum

I had some time so I through together a quick horror forum called Scary Mind . I figured what the hell. I like horror movies and been playing around the new forum software from Simple Machines so why not.

The colors need some work (I'm colorblind) and the forums will be tweaked over time but I hope this grows into something.

Anyway, if you like horror then stop by and create an account and start chatting. I hope to get some great conversations going as I am a big fan of horror.

Did you know of Windows Vista Mail?

Windows Vista Mail will replaced Outlook Express as the free email client in Windows Vista. If you have never heard of it then check out this Screenshot Tour.

Looks good if you ask me. I think they should have created an XP version to replace Outlook Express for once and for all.

Link:
http://www.lifehacker.com/photogallery/windowsvistamail/

Linux in under 50MB

Damn Small Linux is a distro created to be, well, small.

Some of what it can do:

• Boot from a business card CD as a live linux distribution (LiveCD)
• Boot from a USB pen drive
• Boot from within a host operating system (that's right, it can run *inside* Windows)
• Run very nicely from an IDE Compact Flash drive via a method we call "frugal install"
• Transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install
• Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram
• Run fully in RAM with as little as 128MB (you will be amazed at how fast your computer can be!)
• Modularly grow -- DSL is highly extendable without the need to customize

Link:
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Microsoft Office Accounting Express (Free)

Microsoft Office Accounting Express: "Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 is everything you need to make your small business idea flourish. Whatever your idea, take it further with these great features: Create quotes and invoices; track expenses and employee time, Manage payroll and taxes with ADP’s integrated payroll service, Store and organize all your customer, vendor, employee, and financial information in one place, List items on eBay, track sales activity, and download and process orders, Email invoices and get paid faster with PayPal, and Monitor your customers’ business credit in real-time through Equifax."

Yeah, but can they make it permanent?

Campaign for Real Beauty

-more-

Extreme Photo Retouching

Crazy Egg – visualize your visitors

Crazy Egg is one of the most ingenious ways I have seen to track what and how your users interact with your website. What makes them so different, and so freakin cool, is the heatmap.

Check it out. Impressed? I was.

Link:
https://www.crazyegg.com/

Website Optimizer

Website Optimizer - Adwords - Google: "Website Optimizer is a free and self-service tool. Without extensive experience or resources, you can run multivariate experiments on landing page content, including headlines, promotional copy, and images. Complete the steps below and sign-up to participate in our beta test. We can only invite a small number of advertisers at this time, but hope to open the tool to all Advertisers over the coming months."

Pixeur gets a long awaited, much needed feature

Pixeur is the ultimate in a Color Picker / Color Selector application. I finally had a little time so I added a feature that many users have been asking for, a zoom window. Pixeur now has a zoom window to make selecting a color even easier.


Check it out and please let me know what you think...

Link:
http://www.veign.com/download_app.asp?app=107

Microsoft Firefox 2007 Professional

Microsoft(R) Firefox: "The new award-winning browser from Microsoft is now faster, securer and quicker anything else on the market. Why use anything else?"

My first submission on Planet Source Code

I finally submitted some code on Planet Source Code. The code called Create Password Class is a PHP class that makes generating random passwords a trivial matter. If you download it and like then please vote for me.

Thanx for looking.

Create Password Class:
http://,,,/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=2146&lngWId=8

Microsoft Windows 1.0 the sales pitch

Microsoft Windows 1.0 - Google Video

A script center from Microsoft

Script Center Technology Areas is a fairly large scripting library from Microsoft. I found this a couple days ago. Amazing what you can find if you poke around the Microsoft website.

Link:
http://.../hubs/default.mspx

Firefox 2 is live!

Mozilla Firefox 2 Release Notes

Little known use for Windows Defender

Most users will download, install and run Windows Defender and let it do what it does - protect your system from malware. But there is a little know, but very useful tool, that comes with Windows Defender called Software Explorer.

Software Explorer is a pretty powerful tool that lets you monitor

• whats running on your system
• networked connected software
• winsock connected software
• what will be running at startup

I know that a lot of applications do this but this one

• groups software by developer
• offers more information
• tells whether it was shipped with the operating system
• and how (on startup applications) it was started

This is worth checking out.

Windows Defender out of beta

Windows Defender home: "Windows Defender is a free program that helps protect your computer against pop-ups, slow performance, and security threats caused by spyware and other unwanted software. It features Real-Time Protection, a monitoring system that recommends actions against spyware when it's detected and minimizes interruptions and helps you stay productive. Now with 2 free support incidents for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003."

The what and why of my software

Just in case you stop by this blog but never checked out my main website and saw some of my software I figured I would post the titles here. Also, I have switched all applications to basically freeware. I say basically because they are listed as donationware but come with no limitations, nag screens, or malware.

Note-It:
A simple, yet powerful, sticky note application. I often use the notes as a temporary storage, to count words and characters in text, and a place to jot down notes to 'think aloud'.

Seeker:
A search and replace application. I use this application a lot to make mass changes to website I design. Open Seeker, plug in a search phrase, give it a replace phrase, and press replace. Simple, fast, and comes with a powerful reporting feature.

Cfont Pro:
Font manager, font previewer, and so much more. This is my flag ship application. The one I started with and boy has it come a long way. So many features, so many uses, just give it a try.

Link200:
Clean your favorites and bookmarks. This application came to be as a test to process HTTP calls natively through standard Window API methods. It scans your system and then scans Firefox, IE, Netscape, or a text file of bookmarks / favorites and reports on whether they are still valid.

Usage Monitor:
Monitor how system resources an application in using. This is a great tool to 'watch' an application and be notified when the limits you set have been reached.

Pixeur:
Color picker with some additional features. This is another application I find myself using so much. I seem to always be curious about a color I see and Pixeur gives me all the color information I want from simply selecting it.

Xsite:
Load and parse a website. Makes it very easy to download all images or files from a single webpage. Load the URL into Xsite and let it handle all the work for you.

Outlook Attachment Enabler:
Manage what Outlook determines to be unsafe attachments. This application lets you turn on and off attachments that Outlook has determined to be unsafe.

What are you waiting for, start downloading now and send me an email on what you think.

WTF?. I loved this game

E.T. The Extraterrestrial is listed as the worst game ever.

Try it out for yourself

Icon Editor Shootout Review

While most image editors could be used to create small icons, an icon tool is a utility which is (almost) exclusively devoted to designing icons, and has special features and tools designed to make quick work of small icon design.

A very comprehensive review of icon editors. Another software review from DonationCoder that, even if you don't need, its well worth bookmarking.

Link:
http://www.donationcoder.com/Reviews/Archive/IconTools/index.php

Get a web dev environment setup quickly on Windows

Phpdev So phpdev is a pre configured suite of all the bits and pieces you need to get Apache/PHP/MySQL/other running on your machine. It is not invasive and does not alter any windows settings or touch the registry etc. In its current incarnation PHP runs as an apache module.

Link:
http://www.firepages.com.au/

BootVis.exe Tool

Bootvis.exe is a performance tracing and visualization tool that Microsoft designed to help PC system designers and software developers identify performance issues for boot/resume timing while developing new PC products or supporting software.

Basically BootVis will show you your systems boot process so you can identify the bottlenecks.

Download Bootvis

Scrybe

Scrybe is a groundbreaking online organizer that caters to today´s lifestyle in a cohesive and intuitive way.

Simple solutions for some age old problems.

• Seamless offline access - without any installations
• Rich and fast like a desktop
• Intuitive zoomable calendar views
• Organize your thoughts with bookmarks, web snippets, images and files
• To-do lists integrated with your calendar
• Share and collaborate with friends and co-workers
• Elegant, compact and handy print formats
• Easily work across multiple timezones
• Import and export from other apps easily. Your data is yours!

This could be amazing if the final product is anything like the video.

Link:
http://www.iscrybe.com/

Most annoying Javascript trick

Paste the following Javascript into the address bar. Works best while looking at a page with lots of images.

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.getElementsByTagName("img"); DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=(Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5)+"px"; DIS.top=(Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5)+"px"}R++}setInterval('A()',5); void(0);

George had a brother?

Watching Seinfeld a couple of nights ago I caught George mentioning his brother. I thought I would do a bit of research and see if I could find any additional information on this. What I found was two episodes where George mentions a brother (see below). No mention of the name though.

The suicide:
http://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheSuicide.html

The parking space:
http://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheParkingSpace.html

IE7 Quick Reference Guide

IE7 Quick Reference Guide provides a list of keyboard shortcuts and common tasks. I think this is a great idea for MS to release.

Will Windows XP SP3 ever see the light of day?

Windows XP SP3 Pushed to 2008: "Microsoft has further delayed the release of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, moving expected availability from the second half of 2007 to the first half of 2008. The change came silently in an update to the company's service pack roadmap"

WinZip 11.0 Beta

WinZip® 11.0 Beta:
http://www.winzip.com/betawz.cgi

Whats will be new:

Allow WinZip to Select "Best Compression" Automatically
Make the most of the improved compression methods by letting WinZip decide for you which method to use.

Zip .wav Music Files
A special algorithm will compress .wav files smaller than ever.

.BZ2 and .RAR File Support (Extract Only)
Open .BZ2 and .RAR files.

Configure the Job Wizard to Email Reports and Zip Files Automatically (Pro only)
Now the Job Wizard can send you an email to confirm whether a scheduled job completed successfully or alert you of problems. You can also configure the Job Wizard to email the resulting Zip file and/or the Job's log file.

View Thumbnails within WinZip
If you have any images in a Zip file you can now browse through them viewing the thumbnails without first extracting the images from the Zip file. This makes it a lot easier and quicker to work with images in Zip files.

View Full-size Images with WinZip's New Image Viewer (Pro Only)
If you need a closer look, sometimes a thumbnail just won't do. Now you can view images without manually extracting the image from the Zip file.

10.855 seconds

The Worlds Most Addicting Game

Revised: New high score for me 20.99

Blocking Delivery of Internet Explorer 7

See Options for Blocking Automatic Delivery:
http://.../windowsupdate/ie7announcement.mspx

VHD Specs

Download details: VHD Specs: "This paper describes the different virtual hard disk formats supported by Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server and provides information about how to store the data.This paper focuses on how to store the data in files on the host file system."

Youth marketing

American Student List maintains one huge database of school kids. Not sure why I'm posting this. Check it out and you can get your name removed, so they say.

Google's webmaster tools gets even better

With more features this tool from Google is a must for anyone running a website or performing SEO.

New features added to Google's Webmaster tools:

• Googlebot activity reports
• Crawl rate control
• Enhanced image search
• Number of URLs submitted

Blog post about the new tools:
http://...learn-more-about-googlebots-crawl-of.html

Webmaster Tools:
http://www.google.com/webmasters

Generic names for soft drinks

Generic names for soft drinks map gives what people call soft drinks in the different parts of the country.

Link:
http://www.popvssoda.com/countystats/total-county.html

Found on DonationCoder.com

DeskTask

Carthago Software: "DeskTask connects to Microsoft Outlook and displays your calendar and task items on the desktop."

Link:
http://www.carthagosoft.net/desktask.htm

Windows Desktop Search: Internet Explorer History Add-in

Windows Desktop Search: Internet Explorer History Add-in: "This Add-in indexes the history of the web pages you have browsed using Internet Explorer.

By downloading this Add-in, your Internet Explorer History will be indexed by Windows Desktop Search when your PC is idle or when you select ‘Index Now’. Once the index is updated you can immediately search your Internet Explorer History."

Paint.NET v3.0 Alpha 1

Paint.NET is a photo and image editing tool designed for computers running Microsoft Windows XP or Windows 2000. It serves the digital imaging community as a free alternative to the standard paint application included with Windows. It brings powerful features to the desktop, a myriad of special effects, plug-in extensibility, and layer manipulation. It enhances the image editing experience for tablet owners with Windows XP Tablet Ink support. Digital photographers and artists can enhance their images with features and effects such as levels adjustment, cross-layer cloning, anti-aliased tools, motion blur, and red eye removal.

Whats New:

• Brand new Multiple Document Interface (MDI) with tabs that show thumbnails for all the opened images
• Colors window now supports a color palette, along with the ability to manage multiple named custom palettes
• Colors window now uses value sliders that more clearly show how the color is being manipulated
• Floating windows now better support docking and snapping, and remember their positions across sessions
• Brand new icon and logo, including full 256x256 icon so that it looks great on Vista
• Toolbar is context dependent: only the toolbar items relevant to the current tool are shown
• Tolerance control moved to the toolbar
• Ability to choose default values for toolbar items, as well as the tool that is selected at startup
• Ability to draw with "smooth" or "sharp" text. Smooth text is good most of the time, and sharp text is good for when 'smooth' doesn't look good (sometimes for small text), or for doing GUI mockups
• UI for update checking, downloading, and installing is better
• "Edit -> Paste in to New Image" replaces "File->Acquire from Clipboard", and is accessible with Ctrl + Alt + V
• Updates and Language commands moved to Help menu
• History window now uses much less memory and significantly fewer User/GDI handles
• Session temporary data is now compressed if the file system is NTFS. This results in less disk I/O and thus higher performance
• Font list dropdown loads much quicker

Link:
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/PaintNET/1096481993/3

Virtual Apple 2

Virtual Apple 2e is pretty freakin cool. Why? Because the Apple IIc was the my first real computer that got me hooked. Yeah, I had a Commodore Vic 20 but I seemed to only type in games from the back of magazines and play those. But with the Apple IIc I started programming in basic, using a word processor for the first time, copy games and bypass copy protection, use a 1440 modem to connect to bulletin boards, and spend countless hours with my brother playing the Bards Tale series and Might and Magic.

This currently only works in IE.

10 Windows Explorer alternatives compared and reviewed

10 Windows Explorer alternatives compared and reviewed: "Windows Explorer, the default file manager for Microsoft Windows, hasn’t really changed all that much over the years. Below you’ll find reviews, screenshots and links to download 10 different alternatives."

I just can't get away from Windows Explorer.

All the PIMs you could want

FreePIMs is the most comprehensive list of Personal Information Managers (PIMs) I have ever come across. Hell, I never even knew so many existed.

I linked to the first page in the list. Just use the drop down to navigate to the other pages.

Link:
http://www.freepims.com/id17.html

Accurate Monitor for Search Engines from Cleverstat

From the developer:

Monitor the position of your website by different keywords and phrases on all popular search engines, not just Google. See both free and paid placement results, not just URLs, but site titles and descriptions (snippets). Keep the statistics in order to be able to track your progress. The program works through the Google API and the Yahoo API and supports Unicode, so you can check the results in 30+ different languages.

I have searched high and low for an application like this. There are many out there but known even come close to how good this application is. The interface is clean and logical and the functionality is all there.

They have a free version that does a good job and is really just a teaser to get you to purchase this application but for some start-up SEO companies or people just looking to find out where they rank in the major search engines it will work well enough.

Check this one out!

Link:
http://www.cleverstat.com/search-engines.htm

Virtual PC 2007 Beta Available

Virtual PC 2007 Beta Available: "The latest Microsoft hardware virtualization software is now available for download from Microsoft Connect. New features in Virtual PC 2007 include support for hardware-assisted virtualization technology and support for Windows Vista as a host or guest operating system or both."

Xdrive: Free Secure Online Storage

Xdrive provides a free 5GB online storage account. With this account you can store photos, files, videos, and whatever else large files you want online. This is actually a great way to share files with friends since emailing large files (greater than a few Meg) is kinda of rude.

Link:
http://www.xdrive.com/

Google Office

Google Office combines Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

Windows XP SP1 Support Ends Today

Windows XP SP1 Support Ends Today: "Microsoft is officially ending support for Windows XP Service Pack 1 and SP1a Tuesday, with users being recommended to install SP2 as soon as possible. The move means that no more security updates will be released for the now-obsolete version of Windows."

Time to install SP2

Yahoo Time Capsule

Yahoo Time Capsule is one of the first internet time capsules, or so Yahoo! says. In 29 days the digital mosaic will be projected onto an ancient pyramid and then beamed into space. Act now and maybe you can get something included.

Link:
http://timecapsule.yahoo.com/capsule.php

WikiMatrix

I posted about a Forum Matrix site that provides a very easy to understand comparison of the major forums available. Well, here is the same thing only for Wiki's instead.

WikiMatrix:
http://www.wikimatrix.org/

Free Monitor for Google

Free Monitor for Google: "Free Monitor for Google is free web promotion software designed for search engine specialists and webmasters. With it, you can find position of your web site in Google Top for popular keywords and get more traffic from Google. Google Monitor will query Google and show you the position of your site by your target keywords and also how well your competitors are doing. It keeps statistics for several URLs and several lists of keywords. You can add notes."

The application does 'phone home' but the developer says it for checking for updates. Just a heads up and I wouldn't let this stop you from using the software. I have been searching for a tool like this for a long time and have found none better.

Snitz forum out, SMF forums in

After much hesitation over taking the time to convert a couple forums that I manage over to a new forum I finally bit the bullet. I just had to get away from Snitz forum and to a more professional (and PHP) solution - in walks SMF into my life. So far, life is good and so is SMF. Its an open source, actively developed, PHP / MySQL forum that, at first glance and use, seems pretty powerful.

Good job SMF and looking forward to the future of SMF and thanx to DonationCoder for the slight push in what appears to be the right direction.

Check out this forum matrix and compare for yourself.

SMF:
http://simplemachines.org/

Firefox 2 Release Candidate 2 is now available for download

Firefox 2 Release Candidate 2 is now available for download:

Highlights of whats new from the dev site:

• A new theme that updates Firefox’s familiar interface
• Built in Phishing Protection
• Enhanced search engine management and search suggestions for Google, Yahoo! and Answers.com
• Improvements to tabbed browsing, including the ability to re-open recently closed tabs
• Firefox will resume from where you left off after a system crash or browser restart
• Better support for previewing and subscribing to Web feeds
• Inline spell checking in Web forms
• The ability to create bookmarks with “Live Titles” for Web sites that offer microsummaries
• New Add-ons manager that simplifies management of extensions and themes.
• Support for JavaScript 1.7
• Extended search plugin format
• Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
• Support for client-side session and persistent storage
• Support for SVG text using svg:textPath
• New Windows installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System

Link:
http://...firefox-2-release-candidate-2-is-now-available-for-download/

Add Mapping and Location to Outlook

Add Mapping and Location to Outlook:

• Send your Microsoft Outlook meeting requests with maps you can see in road, aerial, or bird’s eye view.
• Use real-time traffic updates to help avoid accident or rush hour delays and find the best routes.
• Print precise driving directions "to go", then save the details to view when you are offline.
• If you have installed Microsoft MapPoint® 2006, access your map in MapPoint when offline.

Link:
http://www.microsoft.com/mappoint/outlook/download.mspx

Media Convert - Convert and split sound, ringtones, images, docs

Media Convert - free and on line - convert and split sound, ringtones, images, docs. This converter is different than others as its 100% online. Your files are uploaded to the server, converted, and then downloaded.

Keep in mind: Since the files are uploaded to the server they can keep a copy - not saying they will but they can.

Supported Formats:
MP3 WMV 3GP AMR FLV SWF AMV MOV WMA AVI MPG MP4 DivX MPEG4 iPOD OGG WMA AAC MP4 MPC MMF QCP KAR MIDI REALAUDIO FLAC JPG PSD DOC PDF RTF TXT ODG ODP ODS ODT SXW WK1 MDB XLS VOB

Link:
http://media-convert.com/convert/index.php

Yahoo! Top 100 Weird Sites

Yahoo! Top 100 Weird Sites has some, should I say, interesting websites. Check out the first one in the list - Strange Dolls.

Link:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/hot/100-weird/1.html

Google Blog Search adds pinging support

Google Blog Search recently added pinging support. What is it and how does it work? Read all about it on the Google Help site.

Link:
http://www.google.com/help/blogsearch/about_pinging.html

Google Code Search

Google Code Search is a new service from Google that lets you search for code. This could be a great assest for software devs.

This is very cool and could turn into something great.

Link:
http://www.google.com/codesearch

Be sure and check out the Big Google List to see what else they have to offer.

Dell coupon codes

Got these in the mail and don't need them so first come first serve

20% off Dell On Call:
3?JH3HJ7XL?RBP

10% Off Electronics and Accessories:
HQD$9RL73$5$VQ

valid 9/20/2006 - 11/06/2006

AllofMP3 still operational

Not if US officials had their way: AllofMP3 Must Shut Down

Shocked this site has lasted this long...

Windows XP Replacements For Vista Applications

Windows XP Replacements For Vista Applications!: "some of the applications that you can use in XP that will give you the same functionality as the ones offered in Vista. "

Google Gadgets For Your Webpage

Google Gadgets For Your Webpage lets you add various Google widgets to your website. Mapping and Pacman, what more could you need.

Link:
http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open

How's your web hosting company

Mine is GoDaddy - Thumbs Up.

Yours? Just post the name and either Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down.

(no anonymous comments please as these will be deleted from this post)

How to create 100 passwords quickly

I had the need to create 100+ passwords as a starting point for an online CMS system for a client. Of course I wanted control over the passwords to make sure they were strong and fit the parameters of a password that I have set. Passwordinator made this amazingly easy.

Can it be better? Of course, everything can be. How? Add the ability to add a salt value and provide a hashed version (SHA1 / MD5 to start) of the password too. Something like;
password 1, hashed version
password 2, hashed version
password 3, hashed version
...and so on

Since they are providing the ability to create many passwords, most people who use this would probably be setting up some type of secure system and adding a salt value and storing the hashed value is the right way to do things.

Thank You Passwordinator!

Link:
http://devhed.com/password-creator/index.jsp

Financially viable way to start a business

The blog post called 5 Things You Shouldn’t Spend Money On When Starting a Business is spot on when starting a new business and giving yourself a financial chance. I actually adhered to these five thoughts with Veign.

Link:
http://...spend-money-on-when-starting-a-business

The most expensive things on eBay

See the most expensive things being sold on eBay. I just can;t see buying something for 10.5 million through eBay - just doesn't seem right.

How to copy those copy protected games

Link provided for informational purposes only.

"GameCopyWorld only supplies Information and Tools necessary to make a PERSONAL BACKUP of legally owned Game CD/DVD's."

Link:
http://www.gamecopyworld.com/

Did you even know this existed?

Add-Ons for Microsoft Internet Explorer v7.0

Ajaxload creates animated gif loaders

Ajaxload lets you create various Gif loader images, with some control over look, with ease. This has got to be the easiest and best way to get these little images that you see all over the place.

Link:
http://www.ajaxload.info/