Que es?
The Weblog of Brett Singer. Bringing the world what it needs most - a blog.
Note: Sorry about all of the 'hot deals' entries (someone referred to this blog as
CorporateShill.com).
The deals and things are being fed into Multineedia.com. We will
soon move the deals category over to Multineedia so you don't have to read it, and we apologize for any inconvenience.
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Great free software:
Mon, 31 Jul 2006
Aptana is a new integrated development environment for building interactive web pages.
Via Wired.
Mon, 24 Jul 2006Tasks Jr. is a nicely designed free set of php scripts (does that make it software?). There are non-free versions as well that do more, but so far the free version seems pretty useful.
Tue, 21 Mar 2006I tried to install some old (circa 1999) children's software today and couldn't. The first problem was that my anti-virus program choked at a file called DSSAGENT.EXE. Just for yucks I disabled the a/v scanner, and tried again. No go, same file, although it just didn't want to install. According to this, it's spyware, and really stupid spyware.
I was first alerted to this suspicious-looking program by Mike of Voice Of The Public, which details the DSSAGENT app and several others on its Spyware page. DSSAGENT is a tool that lets software developers push a new splash screen into a program at any time, e.g. for bug reports and product updates--but I think it's probably more centered around advertising :( This program has been seen most often bundled with children's software titles from Mattel Interactive/Broderbund. I have also had a report of the module being installed by AOL 6.0 and hammering the DNS server with "MILLIONS" of requests for www.brodcast.net.
"The idea behind Brodcast was that the splash screen didn't have to be static and stay the same for the life of the program. It could be changed when there was some information that the company wanted to pass along to its customers. The availability of new versions or related products or services could be made known on the splash screen."
So it's mostly on children's software and it doesn't do much of anything of any use whatsoever. Nice.
Mon, 20 Mar 2006I just installed (and then removed) the trial of the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Professional. It takes up over 2.5 GIGS of space. That is INSANE.
I'm not a programmer, but how can it be necessary to create a program like this? Are there actually that many more features or is it just lazy coding?
Mon, 06 Mar 2006
AJAX File Uploader
A cool looking tool. From here.
SpamAssassin tagged a LogFile email from my server as spam because the contents included a URL from the SURBL blocklist:
Que Es Un Podcast?
I know I must be the lamest person alive to ask this, but what exactly is a "podcast". I assume it has something to do with an iPod?
You know what? It's not the stupidest question in the world. It may be a stupid ANSWER, since in truth, the 'pod' part is not remotely necessary.
It works OKAY. It's not perfect, but it does allow you to selectively block most ads. It seems to crash The Yankees web site because there is SO much media embedded in there. Certain pages on MySpace would probably make my computer explode. For what it's worth, here's a a direct link to the extension (xpi file), and here's the page that you can find it on.
Fri, 15 Jul 2005These look like useful Perl scripts. I know this is not exactly a news flash to anyone, but I love the fact that people write simple software and give it away for free, often with instructions so that non-programmers such as myself can install them without too much trouble. Well, sometimes there is trouble, but it's not their fault. Its great that people write complex programs too (OpenOffice, etc.) but I use the little web-based ones all the time. So thank you!
Tue, 05 Jul 2005 Fri, 27 May 2005
Brander's XSPF plugin for Winamp
Brander released a new version of his XSPF plugin for Winamp and it works for me. For reasons that I don't understand (if anyone wants to enlighten me, go for it) it renders/fetches/plays (fetches is probably the most accurate description) playlists from Webjay faster (more XSPFilly, as in spiffily? Okay, okay) than Real or Windows Media Player, or Winamp playing .pls files. I haven't timed this, but it's clearly smoother. This could be on the Webjay side or on the client side, or both.
Here's an interesting thought to promote XSPF usage: show that it renders (is that the correct term? Lucas, help!) faster than the other playlist formats.
The plan, such as it is, is to use XSPF on my Webjay Stereo, since it seems to be more reliable for Webjay playlists than SMIL or PLS. ASX actually works fairly well, but the idea of running Windows Media Player unattended (which is what I would do with a stereo, as would most people I imagine) is not a pleasant thought. Imagine: Bill Gates shows up at my door asking to borrow my 'Feelin' Irie' CD. But Bill, how did you know I had that CD? Why, Windows Media Player told me!
Giki is a fork of Wiki!, which is the easiest Wiki ever. This new version looks like a genuine improvement. Danke, Gregor.
Mon, 16 May 2005The latest version of Yahoo Messenger broke my install of Gaim, although installing the new version fixed it. Gotta love open-source (well, if you're a user and not a publicly traded company). YME requires you to install Yahoo Messenger. I'm thinking that companies feel IM is the gateway to VOIP or similar activities, since MS Messenger installed itself (unasked) during my last Windows update. Messenger is tied to YME in a way that I find irritating. It should be illegal for companies to bundle software like that. Isn't that what we all complain spyware co's do? What makes Yahoo different? Because they are Yahoo?
Fri, 22 Apr 2005
AudioToMidi
Software to convert a wav flie to a midi file. You need to click the WAV button at the top and it won't sound like it's working, but it is. Then save the midi file and you've got it. Found here.
Bhajis Loops
Bhajis Loops is music creation software for Palm OS devices. There seem to be people making music with this tool, curious to hear what it sounds like.
New MP3 Player (for Palm OS) Finds Album Art
From MyTreo.net, news of Busker, which can search for album art wirelessly, or just use the album art in a folder. iTunes apparently has a feature like this, where a link to the image file is stored in the ID3 tags. Not sure if that's exactly right. More info is here, including info on how to use Busker to listen to podcasts - which I suppose is nice, although it annoys me that the term is really catching on.
If you can find a 5 1/4" floppy drive, this looks like it would let you read your disks in Linux. I want one for old Brother word processor disks. Can't find one. Been looking for years. If you know what the hell I'm talking about and can help (or just want to commiserate), email me. I had an old Brother WP-80. Uses 3 1/2" floppy disks but I can't read them on any machine. Feh.
Not so useful for me, since I own neither an iPlod or a Mac, but for those that do own such things, this looks useful. See? It's not all about me.
Tue, 04 Jan 2005
Backup da Wiki
A simple cron backup script for the world's easiest Wiki.
Coral: The NYU Distribution Network
Coral seems to be like FreeCache, except that FreeCache seems to be gone (at least, it hasn't worked lately). Are you tired of clicking on some link from a web portal, only to find that the website is temporarily off-line because thousands or millions of other users are also trying to access it? Does your network have a really low-bandwidth connection, such that everyone, even accessing the same web pages, suffers from slow downloads? Have you ever run a website, only to find that suddenly you get hit with a spike of thousands of requests, overloading your server and possibly causing high monthly bills? If so, Coral might be your free solution for these problems! A great thing.
Lucas say:
Thinking: Flickr and Last.fm are both popular and heavyweight. Web 2.0 applications are supposed to expose very little (visible) functionality so that they can do one thing well. Flickr and Last.fm, in contrast, never saw a doodad they didn't like. What's going on here?
For what it's worth, I tried setting up a Flickr account and it didn't work because my email client (Eudora, not exactly something nobody uses) couldn't read their HTML mail link. The message said to email a certain address if there was a problem with the link. I did. This was 2 or 3 months ago. No response. Not saying this is the end of the world of course, but it's worth noting that Webjay, though more complex, doesn't have problems like that. Why should something as dumb as an HTML mail message render a popular web app unusable to me? I could re-register and use a different email address, but then I would have to pick a new username, since mine is trapped in Flickr Limbo (or Lmbo). Clearly, this is low on the list of things that are real problems in this world. But maybe the surface simplicity masks a larger and potentially problematic complexity.
(Caveat: I am not a programmer, so take those comments for what they are, which is just my comments.)
Installed Wiki! today and it was verrry easy to do. I had started trying to install Kwiki via CPAN and that was NOT easy. Granted, I'm not a programmer, but I'm comfortable with the command line. Next time something says 'type this and CPAN will install everything for you, you can just sit back and relax!', I will not believe it.
Anyway, Wiki! is cool. Sets up new 'nodes' (editable pages, really) just by typing the name of the page. Kept it private by password protecting the directory. Fairly simple, but most of all, I installed it and had it running in less than an hour (except for some random fiddling). Thank you Sourceforge.
Wed, 29 Dec 2004
SysInternals Freeware
From Kev, a whole bunch of Windows utilities. Not screensavers and crappy games, but actual useful things.
Free Microsoft Office-Compatible Suite
EasyOffice+PDF Filter 7.41: Free Word and Excel-like software, also handles PDF's.
How to erase a hard drive - KillDisk
KillDisk is a hard drive eraser that fits on a CD-ROM. They have a free version which will probably do the job for most people; the paid version gives you military-grade data destruction. Easier than a
sledgehammer.
MP3 Gain is tremendously handy software for evening out the
volume levels on your mp3's. MP3Gain analyzes and adjusts mp3 files so that they have the same volume. Used to be
on a Geocities page, I was glad to see it on SF. Found it looking for
href='http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=121'>audio software so that I, like everyone else
with a computer, can do a Jay-Z Mashup.