It's about time..


Gadgetopia says: "This is every bit as awesome as it sounds.  The finished book looks fantastic as a PDF."

http://en.wikipedia.org/w...Book&bookcmd=book_creator

DC member chris hanscom updates us on his OpenMenu project:

The official Open Menu Wordpress plugin has been released.  This plugin allows you to easily integrate an Open Menu Format menu into your Wordpress site.  This was my first venture into plugin development for Wordpress.  Lots of work was spent on best-practice integration.

Features:

• Open Menu Post Types
• Widgets for specials, restaurant location and a cuisine tag cloud
• Powerful [openmenu] shortcode lets you insert a menu in any page or post
• Options to control how the menu renders
• Site-wide settings to ensure your menu fits into any theme

Link: http://openmenu.com/wordpress-plugin.php

Linuxaria serves up 27 good reasons to love Linux on hubpages.com. Among them are:
- Ease of use (yes, believe it!)
- Free software and games
- No more piracy, registration, validation, verification, or cost
- One-click upgrades and updates
- Great music players
- Stability, viruses aren't a concern, no more defrag, no more reboots
- Choose your desktop (want it to look and work like Win7 or OSX? no problem)
- Use workspaces, not 11 different windows open at one time
- Support is universal

In the last couple of years I've become increasingly interested in board games, and exploring what makes different games fun.  I thought that I might start posting some thoughts as I try out different games -- to help others who have similar tastes find games they might enjoy.


My first micro-review and recommendation is for: Pandemic.

I've been trying to keep a journal for a while.  Actually longer than I've been trying to keep a blog, though I've been as successful with one as the other.  That is... not.  I saw a tweet from Jesse Meecham about OhLife, and checked it out.  It seems like a good idea- something in my face might help.  Basically, you sign up, and it sends you an e-mail reminder every day at 8PM to write about how your day was.  You reply, and it appears in your area on the site.  A pretty simple idea... I'm hoping it will work.

http://www.ohlife.com

I just discovered Readability, a bookmarklet that makes it easier to read content that is normally surrounded in clutter.

I'll be honest: I haven't used it yet and I don't have time to look into it and make a decent write up about it, but I thought the good folks here would find it interesting.

Here's a video for a quick introduction: http://vimeo.com/3445774

It has been mentioned here on DC before: Lower The Lights? Easier To Read Websites?

Thanks to Ashraf at dottech: http://dottech.org/freeware-reviews/17960 "NirLauncher: Portable application launcher for 100+ portable NirSoft (and SysInternals) programs"

http://launcher.nirsoft.net/utilities_list.html

The latest version of Find and Run Robot has a big speed improvement in waking up from minimized/sleep state.

Download latest version from Official Web Page: HERE.

Version 2.90.01 - Aug 18, 2010

• [MajorFeature] Faster wakeup display from minimized state (see also the StayInMemoryLonger option on General Options tab)
• [Feature] Alias matches now show instantly even when keypress delay option is enabled.
• [BugFix] When you do not have "stop on exact alias match" checked and an alias was matched, it could show large numbers of results.
• [Feature] New install of farr now adds the search directory %PROGRAMFILES64% which will search in the win64 specific program files directory (not just the Program Files (x86) directory); older users should add this directory manually.
• [BugFix] When launch results had an argument that ended in \ it could mess up launching of them
• [BugFix] When the option to show FARR in taskbar when active was set, there was an additional delay before FARR could start accepting characters after unminimizing.
• [MinorFeature] Added text in options tabs reminding people to right-click to add/edit/delete items.
• [MinorFeature] Added version of appcapappendmemo that doesn't scroll to bottom of memo.

As some of you know I've caught the board game bug.  More than playing them I enjoy reading about them and thinking about the different mechanics and game design ideas.

I'd like to start a thread collecting various sites and blogs that review board games.  Here's a few to start us of -- fellow board game fans please add more.  I'll link directly to the sites or to DC threads about them:

• BoardGameGeek.com - All things boardgame site with tons of user reviews
• The Dice Tower (Tom Vassel Video Reviews) - One of the best known video review sites
• TheGameCrafter - Cool new site to help you make and sell indie board/card games, with reviews of indie games
• The Great Game Gate - Lots of game descriptions though not very opinionated
• Obessed Board Gamers - Nice long reviews with detailed rule discussion
• Board Games with Scott - Recently switched to a more academic format focusing on comparison of games with certain mechanics to great effect
• Drake's Flames - Good opinionated reviews
• Cracked LCD - good reviews
• BoardToDeath - The funniest review intros

1. Newsletter Editorial

It's 96 degrees out here and time again for another DC newsletter.  The heat seems to be getting to everyone because we've had a couple of arguments flair up on the forum lately, but things seem to be calming down now that the weekend is here.

If you have any interest in scanning software, the one thing you don't want to miss in this newsletter is the link to the giant review of VueScan written by a DC member last week, with some serious scanning tips.  We're also giving away a few copies of VueScan this month to celebrate the review.

DC member skwire has also been up to his usual tricks and has released a bunch of new free utilities based on user requests that you can download.  See the Coding Snacks section below for the new ones, including a cool context menu extension that lets you right-click on an image file and show it's geo-tagged location in your web browser.  This edition of the newsletter also has a big section devoted to announcements from DC members about software projects and blogs that they are working on -- we love to highlight member projects so don't be shy about posting on the forum if you are working on something interesting.

I was also thinking we might take this newsletter as an opportunity to encourage people to check out some of the posts on the forum that have not yet had any replies, and see if any are worth commenting on.  Check the link below for a list of all threads which have not yet had a reply posted.

And lastly, let me remind all coders and friends of coders, that we are approaching the final months of the year when our NANY (New Apps for the New Year) event is going to start kicking into high gear.  Join us by pledging to create and release a new application on January 1st of the new year, and become one of the proud custom mug carrying few who have participated. We need more participants -- so spread the word to your coder friends, and and if you are a coder looking for a kick in the pants to get you to finally finish that project that's been sitting half completed on your hard drive, or to finally implement that idea you've been daydreaming about for years, now is the time!

Martin over at ghacks has written several write-ups of programs that let you customize the context menu in windows explorer / file managers.
Today he writes about and older program called "Fast Explorer 2008", but he has written a whole series of other short articles on similar programs, all worth checking out.  

• ghacks on Fast Explorer 2008 - http://www.ghacks.net/201...ws-explorer-context-menu/
• ghacks on Context Menu Enhancer - http://www.ghacks.net/201...ws-explorer-context-menu/
• ghacks on XP Context Tools - http://www.ghacks.net/200...context-tools-to-windows/
• ghacks on File Menu Tools - http://www.ghacks.net/200...orer-context-menu-editor/
• ghacks on Your Menu - http://www.ghacks.net/201...to-windows-7-contex-menu/

I've posted links to blog essays by Jonah Lehrer before, and i maintain he is possibly the best popular science of psychology writer around today on the web.

He moved from his own blog to Wired recently, and the move doesn't seem to have slowed him down at all.  Today's essay on "The Psychology of Power" is worth reading.

Nothing revolutionary in the article, but it's worth reading.

Basically it argues that some of us have got it backwards with regards to how we get bad leaders. Jonah suggests that organizations tend to promote kind and conscientious people, and weed out the really selfish ones (contrary to the thinking of many of us that only the cut-throat Machiavellis make their way to the top).  But that it's the very act of having power and responsibility that tends to lead good people to going astray.  I guess that's the age old "power corrupts" thing.  Worth reading, especially if you are one of those good people who may find themselves in a position of some authority and think "i could never act that way."


http://www.wired.com/wire.../the-psychology-of-power/

PayPal is going to introduce a new, low-cost, micropayment service. This would allow making small payments to DonationCoder instead of using DonationCredits as it does now.

Yahoo news article: PayPal introduces micropayment service

Honestly, I don't mind using DonationCredits. I usually buy some (say $25 worth) when I want to donate for a new software program I'm using. I give $20 for the program, and I keep the other $5 for future individual donations.

I wonder if the PayPal micropayment service would be more popular than the DonationCredits that DonationCoder uses now? Not everyone uses PayPal, although many people do.