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Latest Forum Posts
The Almighty Dollar
Well, you've got me hooked now. You are a rare breed these days! Someone who operates on higher principles than the almighty $.  Keep up the good work!

Read more…

B.H.
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Our daily Blog

This page spotlights the most interesting posts collected from our forum every day.

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Re: Window Tags 

blog clipart
Here's KeySwitch - Use hotkeys to switch windows!

 1: Press Ctrl-T to start assigning a hotkey.
 2: Press Ctrl and 0 through 9 to assign that hotkey to the active window.
 3: To swith to a window, press the assigned hotkey.

To change modifiers and hotkeys, edit the modifier= and addkey= lines below.

-Skrommel

Click here to download the utility written by DC Member Skrommel to solve this request..

posted by skrommel donate to skrommel
(permalink) (read 11 comments)

mibbit.com - high quality irc chat via the web

Screenshot - 4_14_2008 , 11_51_11 AM_thumb.png
This is the best looking irc gateway over the web that i've seen.  Really nicely done.
And they have a widget you can embed on your site as well (http://wiki.mibbit.com/index.php/Widget)

http://www.mibbit.com/

posted by mouser donate to mouser
discovered on www.webware.com via downloadsquad
(permalink) (read 5 comments)

Secret Hidden Page for Tracking Firefox Extension Updates

Screenshot - 13_04_2008 , 21_35_28.jpg
DonationCoder member suleika found the address of a browse function on the add-ons page which appears to be hidden from normal view.

It's a nice page of all extensions, sorted by their last update date -- very useful!

https://addons.mozil...at:all/sort:updated/

posted by suleika donate to suleika
(permalink) (read 5 comments)

Mold your RSI

Screenshot - 04_02_2008 , 2_39_56.png
This is very cool. Lite-On, known for being one of the top optical drives manufacturers, recently won the Red dot award for the "Best Design Concept" with its "Moldable Mouse" proposal, that just does what it suggests.

http://www.red-dot.s...o/06/13pw/R094MM.htm

I wonder if Lite-On will manufacture it, expanding its market out of its lone field of expertise, or if they'll just sell the design to major manufacturers so they can make cool devices out of their idea.

posted by Lashiec donate to Lashiec
discovered on http://techreport.co.../discussions.x/14055
(permalink) (read 4 comments)

MiniReview: Breakaway Audio Processor for Windows System

Breakaway_Audio_Enhancer.gif
App NameBreakaway Audio Processor for Windows System
App URLhttp://www.claessone...ards.com/winmore.htm

Breakaway is an audio processor that runs in WinXP/2K/Vista. It's main function is to enhance whatever comes out of your speakers.  I found it really interesting, because it made my crappy laptop speakers to sound... well, actually, pretty nice.

The website says it all:
   • Multi-band dynamics processing restores spectral balance to your music library.
   • Multiple look-ahead peak limiters provide distortion-free transient control.
   • Makes tunes sound louder and punchier, while bringing out subtleties you never knew existed.
   • Automatically adjusts volume dynamics and spectral balancing.
   • Corrects song-to-song volume shifts and overdriven speakers.

posted by scancode donate to scancode
(permalink) (read 14 comments)

Coding Horror Blog Essay On Free Software vs. Commercial Software Trends

Screenshot - 4_10_2008 , 1_44_04 PM_thumb.png
Jeff Atwood has a knack for writing about things that are relevant.  Even when he's not adding too much to the conversation, he just has a way of keeping things interesting.  His latest essay is on the increasing dominance of free software:

But there's something else going on here, too: the free software alternatives keep getting better every year. Consider how immature Linux development tools were in 2000 compared to what's available today: Eclipse, Subversion, MySQL, Firefox. These tools either didn't exist, or have come astounding distances in closing the gap between their commercial counterparts in eight years.

And then quoting an article by Steve Frank (read this too!):
A free program need not be glamorous or even completely bug-free. It can garner a respectable following simply by not costing anything.

I've seen many times people struggle and struggle on with a clunky freeware app just because they're not willing to pay $20 for a significantly better alternative. There's nothing wrong with that particular brand of masochism. People prioritize differently, and money is more valuable than time to a whole lot of people. It's Capitalism in action.

The people who are most tenacious about exclusively using freeware whenever possible are usually incredulous that anyone would buy a commercial product when a free alternative is available. I've heard many times, "how can you guys make a living when free command line file transfer clients are included with the OS?"

Some interesting points being made and definitely worth a read.

http://www.codinghor...archives/001097.html


What I think is missing from this article is the "third way" that i hope we start seeing in the future, which is "community-funded open source" software.  I think (hope) we are in a transitional stage in software, where we have a struggle between on one hand closed commercial software and on the other hand free, open source, unfunded software.

My experience is that there are some real, significant, persistant problems with the quality of a large proportion of open source projects.  These problems have to do with the lack of motivation to work on the "unfun" parts of software engineering (documentation, bugfixing, etc.).  These problems aren't just because of a lack of funding -- they stem from a different mindset in the open source community, but the lack of funding exacerbates these problems.

I do believe that we will see a move towards finding ways to community-fund open source projects, which if successful will lead to more willingness to work on the unfun aspects of coding.  The end result will be more polished, responsive open source software which is sustainable and supported in a way that most open source programs aren't currently.
posted by mouser donate to mouser
(permalink) (read 4 comments)

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