NANY 2009 PROGRESS REPORT - The Volunteer Voice - December 18

The NANY Challenge is DonationCoder's annual Software Challenge where coders of all experience levels are challenged to pledge a New Application for the New Year and release it on January 1, 2009.

It's getting down to the business end of the 2009 Challenge with our coders busily polishing their entries and making things ready for the approaching release deadline on January 1st 2009. There has been a lot activity on the NANY 2009 Forum with 26 of our 37 Pledgers posting either Teasers or Releases already! It's a great place to get a sneak preview of the upcoming applications, offer functionality suggestions and even help by beta testing the pre-releases.

The Pledge Deadline has already been extended once, but we're still getting enquiries from coders wanting to Pledge their commitment to this year's Challenge. It's not easy turning people away from one of life's harmless and fun challenges: so we generally don't. If you've been wanting to join the fun but can not come up with an idea, why not check out the Communal Idea Thread, where members have offered some ideas they'd like to see entered. DonationCoder also has an active Programming School that has a wealth of ideas and opportunities that could be developed into a NANY Challenge entry. For more information about the DonationCoder Programming School see these Instructions.

Teaser / Entry Focus
JustCloseSomeTasks
JustCloseSomeTasks is an utility to let you easily close inactive tasks (windows). It saves taskbar and desktop space by allowing you to close the stuff you've not used for a while. Tasks are automatically marked for closing when they've not been used for a certain time period (expiry time). The program will learn your behaviour and adjust this expiry time.JustCloseSomeTasks knows which programs that has not used and helps manage the taskbar by closing these on mass. The application is portable.


LifeSaver
LifeSaver, on the surface, is Yet Another Diary/Journal Application, but with the very important feature of storing the data in an open format. A fundamental problem with nearly all Diary software is that the data is locked into a proprietary datastore and format. This is absolutely antithetical to the purpose of a diary: long-term tracking of thoughts. At some point in the future, our current applications and the format in which they store the data will be obsolete; it's imperative that something like this be easily extractable, in a way that can be imported into future systems. LifeSaver features: Entries formatted in rich text (HTML to facilitate export),Password-protected datastore, Multiple entries allowed per day, Browse next/previous entry, Export to XML. Tagging, Full Text Search and attached images are planned features.


Puppy Toes Dog Records
Puppy Toes Dog Records is a database application that allows dog breeders to keep breeding and medical records along with other important information on their dogs. The application keeps basic dog information, parents information, additional information, breeding records, medical records and extra notes. The interface is customisable.


HexCards
HexCards is an addictive card game in which two players strategically place hexagonal cards on a playing field to capture the other's cards. Each of the six sides of each card is assigned a numeric value ranging from 1 to 10. When you place a card on the playing field, you can capture cards in adjacent tiles if the value for that specific side is larger than the value on the adjacent card's side. Watch the video tutorial for a demonstration with instructions for more information.


MiniBrowseIE
MiniBrowseIE is a small and light web browser with advanced capabilities: The current version does not require installation and can be run from virtually any media (its under 500k in size!). MiniBrowseIE is a basic internet browser utilizing the Internet Explorer rendering engine. Features: History, LinkView, Favorites, Website security notification, RSS, Printing (w/ previews), Privacy options, General options, Keyboard shortcuts. Parental controls, Password saving, Better tab control (close button directly on tab, etc), Switch back over to the Gecko engine (eventually) are planned features.