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Wednesday July 23, 2008

DonationCoder/Veign Programming Contest Results Posted

A month and a half ago we announced a programming contest here at DC, to give away an amazing programming prize generously donated by long time DC forum member Chris Hanscom.

Three people chose to enter the contest, with entries that could not have been more different.



Complete DC newcomer Eric Wong blew everyone away with not one but two unusual entries that were extremely impressive from a technical/programming standpoint.  His first program, Webcam Signature, uses a computer webcam to identify and track a colored object and let users create signatures from it.  It's described by eric (VideoInPicture) on this thread, and has it's own full and beautiful website along with a video demo: here.


Eric's second submission, coded in only a couple of weeks, is called Circle Dock, and is a wonderfully cool implementation of a circular floating toolbar/dock/start menu.  Eric describes it in this thread and has another great website for it complete with a demo movie: here.




Long time active DC participant Eóin entered a very polished professional program for managing sets of windows system services.  His program is called ServiceProfiles, and is described on this post has a website: here.  It's a program we expect many power users would find immediately useful and valuable:




Sometimes poster and long time DonationCoder chatroom participant hollowlife1987 submitted Btts, a complete standalone torrent tracker, complete with it's own web server (made in C# with asp.net).  It's a pretty impressive accomplishment and a very cool demonstration of what can be done combining asp with C# in a standalone tool.
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We AGONIZED over who to give the prize to.  All of them really deserved it for different reasons.

It's a strange prize to give out because it's such a varied set of tools that very few people on planet earth would have real use for more than one or two of the components in it.  We decided to ask the participants to tell us honestly how they would use the prize if they won it.. We do this quite a bit at DonationCoder because we try very hard to be fair and put things into the hands of those who will benefit from them.

This was actually the primary way we decided who to give the prize to -- not by deciding which program or programmer we liked best, but by deciding at this stage who we thought could most use it.

In the end we decided that there will be no single "Winner" but that:
  • We will give the MSDN giveaway prize to Eóin.
  • And we will create additional prizes for the other 2 entrants; both Eric and Hollow will get $250 in cash to spend as they wish (hopefully on programming related stuff!), and we'll endeavor to find some other gifts for them as well.
  • And all entrants will get a custom mug commemorating the contest (hey this is the best prize of all) and free web hosting for life.



So congratulations to the 3 winners, tied for first place: Eric Wong (VideoInPicture), Eóin O'Callaghan, and Hollowlife1987.

You should all be proud, and on behalf of DonationCoder and Veign, thank you for making this forum and site a more enjoyable and educational place to hang out.

I hope you will all keep us updated on your programs and future work.  Eric in particular we cannot wait to see what software you develop next(!)

posted by mouser donate to mouser - Today at 01:42:00 PM
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DeVeDe - Convert files for DVD playing

DeVeDe is a(nother) video converter, but with the sole purpose of producing DVD's viewable on a TV using a standalone DVD player

Features (from the site)


I'll start by saying that I have (until recently) had no interest in or requirement for anything like this, hence my knowledge of all things relating to video editing, conversion, production, etc is practically nil, and as such, I have absolutely no qualifications for writing this review...

Recently though my inlaws purchased a shiny new HDD camcorder...

how is that relevant?  well, for a start they are techonogically challenged.  They really shouldn't have any tech whatsoever, period.  They didn't seek any advice regarding their purchase, just what the salesmen told them on the day (I think you can see where I'm going with this....)

...

DeVeDe on the other hand was something of a revelation.  Not only was it dead simple to use, but I understood what it was doing, and I got good results (choose the output format (DVD, VCD, SVCD, CVD or DivX), add my files, answer the prompts, and I'm done!!)

The interfaces are logical, clean, and simple, with all the common functions ready to hand, and the lesser only a click away.   

    Click here to continue reading the full minireview now..

posted by Target donate to Target - Today at 01:26:00 AM
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Tuesday July 22, 2008

Dictators in free and open source software?

I know this is controversial, but i tend to agree with the general premise that it's helpful to have one person (or two), who is for all intents and purposes in charge of making final decisions and riding herd over a project.

This short essay talks about why:

Quote
Some people seem to challenge the idea that most (if not all) free software projects need a benevolent dictator—that is, somebody who has the last say on every decision. They are quick to point out Linus Torvalds’ past “mistakes” (see the brackets): using BitKeeper to manage the kernel, not allowing “pluggable” schedulers in Linux, etc. As a software developer, I feel that a dictator is absolutely necessary in every free software project. Here is why.

http://www.freesoftwarema..._and_open_source_software

ps. While i agree with most of the points I don't don't agree it has to be one person for life -- i see no reason not to rotate people in charge. And i think when a project has only a few core developers, a normal informal equal-responsibility situation is fine.  I think this need to have one designated person in charge really becomes useful mostly when the group starts getting bigger.  My experience is that some things will just never get done unless you have a designated person to crack the whip and make sure everything that needs to get done does in fact get done.

posted by mouser donate to mouser - July 22, 2008, 02:54:00 PM
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Wordle: Create Beautiful Word Clouds

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Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

This is a Java applet, so you will need Java installed and enabled in your browser, to be able to use this.

http://wordle.net

Beautiful stuff.

posted by app103 donate to app103 - July 22, 2008, 04:16:00 AM
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Linux needs more haters

We all love to hate Windows (or a version of it), but where's the Linux hate? Say no more, the Linux Hater's Blog has you covered, where 'Linux users' are labeled 'lusers' for short. Even ZDNet's Jeremy Allison adds his take on what's good to hate about Linux:

_______________________________

Reading the LinuxHaters blog is a wonderful way to waste an afternoon. The premise behind it is that Linux is so awful that the blogger must rant about a particular problem they have had with the operating system, and describe it in great detail at least once per day. Every reply is labeled a “flame”, and the people responding don’t seem to know (or maybe they just don’t care) that the whole blog itself is a way to goad fanatical Linux supporters into attacking the author. Usually they complain that the author just “doesn’t get it” as to why Linux really does work well in this particular case. I must confess I enjoy reading the replies sometimes more than the blog posts themselves....

LinuxHater really doesn’t hate Linux, despite the name. No one takes that much time to point out flaws in a product that they completely loathe and despise. The complaints are really cries of frustration with a system that just doesn’t quite do what is desired (albeit well disguised). A friend pointed out to me that the best way to parse LinuxHaters blog is to treat it as a series of bug reports. A perl script could probably parse out the useful information from them and log them as technical bug reports to the projects LinuxHater is writing about. Deep down, I believe LinuxHater really loves Linux, and wants it to succeed.


posted by zridling donate to zridling - July 22, 2008, 03:53:00 AM
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Monday July 21, 2008

Article: take a peek into MS Windows development

Here's an interesting article, written in 2006 by a guy who activelly worked in windows Vista.
It's interesting to see the whole process involved in making such a giant product, and how things sometimes don't come out the way they were expected.

http://moishelettvin.blog...ws-shutdown-crapfest.html

To be honest, I actually like the feature mentioned in the article (it's Vista's shutdown button), except for the fact that it comes predifined to "sleep", which makes no sense. After changing it to "shutdown", I think it's a giant step better than XP's dialog.

posted by jgpaiva donate to jgpaiva - July 21, 2008, 08:28:00 AM
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Racer Review: Fun 3D racing

Game NameRacer
Game URLhttp://www.racer.nl/
PriceFree, open source (I *think*) closed source

Racer is a single and multiplayer off/online racing game with massive modding capabilities. Currently in beta stage, it has been in development for what appears to be several years (it is a one-man w/ volunteers setup). Allows the player(s) to race, drive or do anything else behind the wheel of a car on almost limitless downloadable tracks and in almost limitless downloadable cars.

    Click here to continue reading the full minireview now..

posted by wreckedcarzz donate to wreckedcarzz - July 21, 2008, 02:49:00 AM
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Sunday July 20, 2008

ycombinator list of ideas they'd like to fund

http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html

Quote
When we read Y Combinator applications there are always ideas we're hoping to see. In the past we've never said publicly what they are. If we say we're looking for x, we'll get applications proposing x, certainly. But then it actually becomes harder to judge them: is this group proposing x because they were already thinking about it, or because they know that's what we want to hear?

We don't like to sit on these ideas, though, because we really want people to work on them. So we're trying something new: we're going to list some of the ideas we've been waiting to see, but only describe them in general terms. It may be that recipes for ideas are the most useful form anyway, because imaginative people will take them in directions we didn't anticipate.

posted by urlwolf donate to urlwolf - July 20, 2008, 04:23:00 PM
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Saturday July 19, 2008

The Long Tail and its Doubters

The Long Tail is a provactive book (based on an article by a Wired magazine editor), that talks about the new abilities for sellers to focus on (and make profit on) the items farther away from majority appeal.

See:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html
http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1401302378

From a review of the book:
Quote
The long tail is the colloquial name for a long-known feature of statistical distributions that is also known as "heavy tails", "power-law tails" or "Pareto tails". In these distributions a high-frequency or high-amplitude population is followed by a low-frequency or low-amplitude population which gradually "tails off". In many cases the infrequent or low-amplitude events--the long tail--can cumulatively outnumber or outweigh the initial portion of the graph, such that in aggregate they comprise the majority. In this book the author explains how due to changing technology it is now not only feasible but desirable in business to cater to the "long tail" of this curve.

The author explains how in traditional retail, you have the 80/20 rule, with 20 percent of the products accounting for 80 percent of the revenue. Online, instead, he sees the "98 percent rule." Where 98 percent of all the possible choices get chosen by someone, and where the 90 percent that is only available online accounts for half the revenue and two-thirds of the profits. He also explains how filters and recommender systems that help people find what they are really looking for are crucial ingredients. Thus, in a nutshell, Anderson's theory is that mass culture is fading, and being replaced by a series of niches. Thus the subtitle of his book, "Why The Future of Business Is Selling Less of More."


Make sure to check out the new essay by Kevin Kelly on the problem with the Long Tail from a content *creator's* standpoint: http://www.kk.org/thetech...08/07/wagging_the_lon.php

    Continue reading the rest of the entry and discuss..

posted by mouser donate to mouser - July 19, 2008, 12:26:00 PM
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Advice: Never use your ISP provided email address

My internet service provider just got bought out by another company and decided they would discontinue the old email addresses.  So now i have to go around to every site i've ever signed up at and change my email address.

So some advice:

  • Never actually use your ISP provided email address when you sign up at places, and never give it out to friends and family.
  • Set up another email account like gmail or one through your own domain name+hosting, and use that.
  • It's fine to just forward email sent to your other account to your isp account, and then do everything from there, but the key is not to ever become dependent on an email address that is tied to your isp, since it's not reliable as a permanent address.

posted by mouser donate to mouser - July 19, 2008, 12:23:00 PM
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redmine: website tool for collaborative project todolist/wiki, bugtracking, etc

mouser and I have been using redmine lately for various projects, and I must say it really helps productivity.
I find this kind of the ultimate `getting-things-done` tool, even if you don't need a bugtracker for what you're doing per se. It's a bit hard to explain everything so I'll just break down the features below:

    Click here to continue reading the full minireview now..

posted by Gothi[c] donate to Gothi[c] - July 19, 2008, 06:28:00 AM
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Mini Book Review of "The Best of 2600: A Hacker Oddyssey" (now shipping)

I just got my copy of "The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey" and thought I would post a little about it.

For those of you not familiar with the magazine "2600", it's a small magazine about hacking phones and computers, that was stared in the mid-80s as a few printed sheets stapled together and mailed out by a couple of college students. It's always been a kind of loosely put together collection of musings and pictures of odd phones, and the occasional cool hack.  It's always had a very distinctively underground feel, bordering on illegal, and has developed a kind of cult following.  I've always been a fan of the magazine though i don't understand most of it and only read it occasionally.

With the release of this new big anthology, the best writing of 2600 is about to become a lot more well known.

The book is edited and contains chapter introductions (sometimes substantial) by Emmanual Goldstein, one of the original founders of 2600 and still the driving force behind the magazine.

I expected the book to have the eccentric/indie feel of the magazine and be similar in organization to anthologies like "The Best of Creative Computing" -- that is, filled with pictures and organized into randomly themed areas.

Instead, the book is organized chronologically, and separated into 3 main sections for the decades of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, and subchapters in each section.

It's a big hardcover book, 871 pages.  And there are no pictures or photos(!).  This is actually a little strange given how many photos and illustrations are in the magazine normally.. I wonder in fact if this wasn't a decision made out of legal concerns.. No explanation is given.

The lack of images and the minimal discussion about the history of the magazine is going to be a little disappointing to anyone who gets the book hoping for a visceral immediate feeling of nostalgia the way one gets from reading the Creative Computing anthologies for example, nothing looks or feels like the original magazine, and the articles are all professionally laid out and typeset uniformly.

It's a great collection of essays that reflect the hacker mindset and the amateur hobbyist perspective on hacking -- a collection that anyone interesting in the history of hacking would be thrilled to own.

If you're expecting to get a collection of the best hacker writing in the last 3 decades, suitable for a general audience, you're likely to be dissapointed.  2600 was always hackers writing for other hackers, and these are not professional writers.  And if you're expecting a visual walk down memory lane through the history of 2600 you'll also be disappointed.

But if you are looking for a collection of the best essays from three decades of the magazine and the hacker community, providing a representative and thorough look at the emerging issues in hacking over time, you've got yourself a new bible.  It's a fascinating book and a great way to jump into the raw source literature if you like that kind of thing and are curious about the hacking community.  And if you're a fan of the magazine it's impossible not to be a fan of this book.

posted by mouser donate to mouser - July 19, 2008, 12:03:00 AM
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Wednesday July 16, 2008

Turning a pc on and off remotely?

I've been talking about Wake over network recently and have successfully managed to make my computer wake from sleep (but not off) via a PHP script on my webpage.

Is there a way of making the computer go to sleep via a webpage? I'm mostly thinking of using Orb via my mobile phone so won't have access to a remote desktop connection, but I could put IIS onto the computer (Vista Enterprise SP1) if IIS could shut down the computer.

Or is there just a program that could do it (that could also be placed on a phone or loaded from a webpage).

Thank you experts!

    Read what forum members suggest..

posted by mediaguycouk donate to mediaguycouk - July 16, 2008, 08:37:00 PM
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