Ed Piskor wrote in to tell us about a very cool project he's been working on.. A self-published LONG graphic novel called "WIZZYWIG", which is published in multiple volumes.  It's fiction, and follows the life story of a phone phreaker/hacker, but seems to be based somewhat on the life of Kevin Mitnick.

You can actually download several hundred pages of it to read in PDF format -- but if you like the stuff and want to support the author, be sure to purchase it.  I can't wait until more and more authors are creating and selling their own stuff.

VOLUME 3: WHEN WE LAST SAW KEVIN "BOINGTHUMP" PHENICLE, HE DECIDED, RATHER THAN GETTING ARRESTED FOR VIOLATING HIS PROBATION, HE WOULD VANISH. NOW HE IS ON A TURBULENT RUN FROM THE LAW USING HIS HACKING PROWESS AND INGENUITY ON AN EPIC ROLLERCOASTER RIDE OF EVENTS. KEVIN DUCKS THE AUTHORITIES AT EVERY TURN, ESTABLISHES FALSE IDENTITIES, RIGS RADIO STATION CALL-IN CONTESTS FOR FUN AND PROFIT, WIRETAPS SPOUSES, SETS UP PHONE SERVICE FOR PIMPS AND SACRIFICES HIS SANITY ALONG THE WAY RESULTING IN SILLY MISTAKES THAT PROVE DANGEROUS.

http://www.edpiskor.com

A DC member writes:

"I wanted to tell everyone about JumpTo, a freeware app I have been working on for the last couple of months.  Here is a brief description from my site:

JumpTo is a menu based launcher that holds static links to files, folders, programs, websites, and even command line parameters. The links can be held inside of 4 customizable sub-menus or alternately launched through a text command. JumpTo also offers quick note taking, window management (hide and show windows), a runbox replacement with added functionality, along with other smaller less used functions like, importing the date & time to the clipboard for easy pasting and formatting the contents of the clipboard to plain text or converting a copied file or folder to its full path.

Best of all JumpTo is small (under 1mb), quick, and can be shown anywhere on the screen and in any program through various hot keys (including one that doesn't involve the keyboard for extra quick access)

JumpTo was written is AHK and is currently under development.
I have also been thinking about opening the code up. If anyone is interested in helping develop JumpTo let me know, I love working with others!"

You can watch a screencast of and get the latest version of JumpTo here:
http://sites.google.com/site/apathysoftworks/home/jumpto

Here's a utility that corrects a bug in the system tray tooltips that hasn't been corrected until Windows Vista: “Tool Tip Fixer 2.0” by NeoSmart.
http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=10

If you use a version of windows lower than Vista, this could be of use to you. Here is a quote from the site:

Ever since Microsoft invented the Windows Shell with explorer.exe back in the days of Windows 95, there's been a bug that's gone from one version of Windows to the next; and with each upgrade it became worse and worse - until Vista where it only rears its ugly head every once in a while instead: tooltips appear behind the taskbar, where you can't read them and they are of no use to you. And there's nothing you can do about it!
NST ToolTipFixer patches this bug for once and for all, doing what Microsoft hasn't been able to do in 13 years.

Every year on DonationCoder, we run a special community event called "NANY: New Apps for the New Year".  And once again the event has proven to be great fun and exciting for everyone involved -- we've watched as coders of all levels pit their skills against themselves, as they worked to fulfill their NANY Pledge and release a new free application by the first of the new year.


A total of 23 coders pledged to release a new free application by the 1st of the new year.  And in the end there were 26 NANY Releases (and several small mini-releases).

As we always do in this event, we saw a wide range of submissions, from full professional-quality applications, to small toy experiments by novice coders, and everything in-between.  And all of the releases are now available and free for public use -- just click on a link below to go to the release page and download link.

This year we've also tried something new -- we've made screencast videos of most of the entries so you can take a look at the entries in action without ever leaving this page.

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Anuran
Anuran is a rotating, automatic-prompting personal text log.  All files are stored as plain text for easy manipulation, and the program includes powerful search functionality and archiving features.

This is one of my favorite entries; it's a really elegant and unobtrusive tool for keeping track of time spent on a project and quick notes. -- mouser

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What's My Share?
What's my share is an online web page that lets you put in a total amount, a list of people and their percentages, and then it will calculate how much each person owes.  Includes features for automatic normalization and easy equalized splitting.

This is another one of my favorites; takes a simple idea and implements it perfectly, with a few cool new twists -- mouser

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Piggy Banks
Piggy Banks makes it easy for you to keep track of 'fund' accounts where a little money is put away each day.  For example, your family might decide that every day $1 will be put aside to help pay for a new board game.  Piggy Banks will make it easy to see how much money is saved up in the board game fund at any time.

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ClipTrap
ClipTrap watches the clipboard and accumulates clipboard-copied text in its window.  A minimalist clipboard tool which can often be more useful than the big boys -- it simply appends each new clip into the memo for subsequent use.

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Bestimate
Bestimate is a utility designed to help you become more accurate and realistic about your predictions and promises.  Add items like "Number of pages I will write this week" or "Number of pounds i will lose this month", and provide your predicted/promised values.  Then, at the end of the time period, record your actual achieved values.  Bestimate keeps track of how far off you were from your initial prediction/promise.

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SubDiv
SubDiv was built to organize folders that are constantly being filled with new content, such as a 'Downloads' folder.  When you are continually throwing files from the Internet into a folder on your computer, that folder becomes very disorganized -- SubDiv will take those files and put them into folders based on the day they were created.

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FarrWebMetaSearch
FarrWebMetaSearch is a generic web retrieval FARR plugin -- it performs live search-as-you-type seearching of certain websites and parses results for display in standard list mode.  You can even add your own custom regular-expression based search configurations to query new websites.

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FARRSpell
This is a plugin for Find and Run Robot to help people who quickly need to spell a word or look up synonyms.

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FARR Plugin ProcessInfo
This is a plugin to display information about running processes either on the PC or a remote PC. 

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Leap of Faith
This is a proof-of-concept platformer game where the goal is to climb to the top of the screen and reach the exit, while the world shifts all around you.

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Twigatelle
Twigatelle is a simple game developed in Java inspired by any number of those pachinko-type games where little thingies bounce around hitting other thingies in a slightly hypnotic way.

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Page Countster
The application is a small, portable, fast, & simple to operate programme that reports on network printers: model, page counts, serial numbers & etc.

This program stirred up a lot of interest on various blogs when it was first previewed and seems to have been a big hit and satisfied a real need out there -- mouser

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LittleRunner
A little application for runners to help them log their runs and track their performance over time. 

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Multiboot ISO Maker
Multiboot ISO Maker is a very powerful graphical front end for creating multiboot ISO images. It uses the free mkisoft back end and supports all mkisofs options.

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Create Dummy File
This is a program for creating large dummy files in several different ways.  One notable feature is the ability to fill the free space on a USB disk, so that it's hard for malware to put new files on the drive.

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Reimbursement Tracker
This is a tool created to help a user manage his/her reimbursable expenses and designed to create an attractive, easy to read, and easy for the boss to understand list. It has the ability to print, or to print a professional-looking receipt to a thermal printer (receipt printer) or normal printer.

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SwoopoSpy
SwoopoSpy keeps track of several auctions at once on the Swoopo auction site.

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Startup Bully
Every once in awhile you come across an otherwise good application with one single nasty little fault: Every time you run it, it insists on sticking a shortcut file in your Startup folder and has no option to opt out of this behavior. You delete the shortcut and the next time you run the application it comes right back. Startup Bully will opt out for you by removing this unwanted shortcut each time you run the offending application.

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TrayUpTime
Small utility to place an icon in the system tray which shows the system up time as a tooltip when you hover over it with the mouse.

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j2key
A small autohotkey app that lets you map your typical 10-button joypad (think dualshock clone) to keyboard keys. Nothing too fancy, but if you open the thing up you'll see it's pretty easy to solder buttons. I used to use this when doing kiosks (is far easier than mapping a keyboard).

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DupFind
DupFind is a cross-platform Python script that will search for the duplicate files on your harddrives. Because it is a Python script it will run on any OS where Python is installed.

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Open Menu
By providing a single, controlled specification for restaurant menus Open Menu will ensure that restaurant menus can be easily shared and used by others. From Restaurant Locaters based on a menu item to tools for finding restaurants based on what you're looking to spend, Open Menu provides the foundation for such tools.  Includes an online tool for creating menus in the xml-based OMF format.

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Library Management System
Library Management System is a web-based tool written in Python for keeping track of your personal book collection and who you've loaned copies of your books to.  NOTE: Requires a webserver with WSGI and SSL capabilities (such as Apache with mod_wsgi and mod_ssl) and lxml and python-amazon-product-api packages for Amazon support.

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Crush MCP
This program is an early proof-of-concept tool for monitoring launched applications and reporting when new ones are found running.  It's not yet suitable for real deployment but suggestions are welcome from the author.

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Artwinauto BlitzType
BlitzType is an early alpha build of a utility that aims to perform autocompletion of frequently typed words and phrases and abbreviations, by automatically learning and saving repeated phrases as the user types. Not yet suitable for real deployment, but suggestions are welcomed by the author.

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fenixContacts
FenixContacts is a customizable contacts book with support for completely customizable fields.  Still in early development but the author welcomes feature suggestions.

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You can find the mini-nany entries scattered throughout the NANY 2010 forum section, including:

• Gobbledegook: Mix up your sentences and keep readability.
• Gamers Alarm Clock: GAC is a simple alarm clock, albeit with a slight twist.
• Miranda Alias pack for FARR: Let's you control Miranda with FARR.
• DisablePortableAppSplashScreen: Disables the splash screen of Portable Apps
• BigTimer: A small timer app with big top left corner digits
• VideoJug.com downloader: download videos from the site
• World Cup Predictor 2010: An update of the 2006 betting adviser

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Relive Twiggles NANY journey:

• Follow the Yellow Brick Code
• Technology Boom
• The Pursuit of Sappyness
• Round and Round She Goes
• Plight Before Christmas
• Whats in a Name

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New Apps for the New Year (NANY) is an annual event at DonationCoder where we ask coders of all skill levels to Pledge that they will release a new free application before the new year. The rules are very simple and are posted in the Instructions Thread.

There is always a lot of interest from the general computing public who are keen to offer suggestions and ideas for possible projects; the 2010 Suggestion Thread contained lots of discussion and ideas for this year's projects.

This year we had 29 people make a pledge in the Pledges Thread, 23 of whom were successful in posting their application on the NANY Boards before New Year.

Feedback can be given to the coder through his NANY post, and the NANY board generally stays pretty active through the year as coders polish their entries and implement new suggestions from users.

NANY events were held previously in 2009, 2008 and 2007. The next NANY event will open in November 2010 -- please join us!!

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My sincere thanks to everyone who participated:

• Entrants
• Volunteers
• DC Members who tested and gave valuable feedback and suggestions
• And the others NANY Team members: mouser, nudone, hamradio; without whom I'd look more nonproductive and unprofessional.
• Thanks to Head in the Clouds for allowing us this view into the whole NANY process!

-Perry Mowbray, NANY 2010 Coordinator

A highly important tool for 2010: a list of important stuff when time-traveling:

http://www.laboiteve...oyage-dans-le-temps/

It’s always curious to think about what one would put in this type of list. Perhaps asking "What pieces of knowledge and artifacts would you like to take with you to the past, in case you can time-travel?"

In 2008 I posted about RoboKill, an amazingly polished flasharcade-style game.  One of the most polished game of it's type that i've ever played.  And now here comes the sequel! You can play a big chunk of it free, and purchase access to the full version.

From JayIsGames:

Fans of the original will find a lot to like in Robokill 2, and newcomers with a taste for robots and top-down mayhem may well be wooed. Even if you don't decide to buy the game, the demo itself is tremendously fun and offers substantial meat for you to dig into. Robokill 2 doesn't revolutionize the top-down shooter genre; it just shows how it should be done.

http://www.rocksolid...com/games/robokill2/