So i'm playing with the latest "alpha" of thebat! email client (found here on betanews; ritlabs doesn't like to post their betas on their homepage), and wanted to post some observations.

It doesn't seem or look much different from version 3.  When ritlabs moved from version 2 to version 3 there was a LOT of complaining from users that they just hiked up the version number to be able to charge for an upgrade and it happend so soon after the change from version 1 to version 2.

It seems to me that on one hand this is a bit like an arbitrary version change rather than a major change, BUT in all fairness it has been a long time since version 2 came out and version 4 hasn't been released yet.  And i give them credit for the non-stop constant improvement of the program in small increments, which has to be worth something.

The alpha still is a tiny bit buggy, but quite usable (it is after all really just an improved version 3 not a major rewrite), and i didn't find any showstoppers.

What compelled me to post though was 2 things:

The first thing is that I am a longtime user and fan of thebat and after a couple years of suffering with this bug where the program occasionally loses its connection with a mail server and enters a hung state which requires program restart, it looks like they have FINALLY fixed it!  This fix has been so long in coming and they should be ashamed it took them so long to fix it.  But i am thrilled it is fixed.  It was the one thing i hated and it's fantastic that it finally seems fixed.

The second thing is a double edged sword.  The backup and restore functionality, which ritlabs has obviously put a lot of work into, and which seems wonderfully powerful, FAILED to properly work for me.  It backs up fine, but gives an unintelligible error during the restore process, making it unusable.  Thankfully this issue is not very servere because one of the nicer things about thebat is that it saves all mail in a file directory in a way that can be simply copied or moved between machines.  This is actually one of my favorite features about thebat, that i can see all of the files and manage and backup my mail data manually, and it doesn't mind being moved around.  But this is a warning -- do NOT assume that just because the backup function worked that the restore function will.

There you have it, some early observations.  For me, I remain a fan of the program and am happy to keep using it.

Hey folks,
DonationCoder has very kindly agreed to host a page for me which will hold some of the software I have written in my spare time. I hope you like it - the first upload is called "Deductoid" and is a simple logic puzzle game.

The link's here: http://timns.dcmembers.com/

DC member veign says this may be the best online form generator he's seen.  It really does look extremely nice, with drag and drop support for re-arranging your forms and a visual editor for building them.

Seems like a great way to create an initial form for a page.  After you construct it visually the site lets you download the html code to put on your website.  Very well done.

http://www.phpform.org/

A few months ago we posted about a gamespot review writer who was rumoured to have quit after being pressured to retract a negative review.

Looks like the true story confirms those initial reports and a few articles now expose the ugly truth behind the whole corrupt enterprise.. Here's a little snippet:

As a marketer, if you recognized you needed more traffic to your product, you could buy it. You could even buy a top placement for your title on the GameSpot homepage, pretty much assuring clicks to coverage on your title, regardless of whether there was organic interest or not. And we're not talking about just banner advertisements here -- we're talking about buying one of the top stories on the front of the site.

http://www.1up.com/d...publicUserId=4561231

They look so real, yet there is nothing natural about it. Unless we dive into a philosophical debate...


The artist, Alex Dragulescu, takes code of found malware and has his software analyze it. After some time of number crunching, stunning images appear.

This is a tiny little how-to guide that will show you how to handle cookies in a way that preserves your privacy, but lets you browse the web conveniently, and requires minimal effort on your part.

Cookies are tiny files created on your computer when you visit certain websites.  Most often they are used to enable websites remember who you are.  They are also occasionally used by advertising services to track your behavior across multiple sites [Read more].

For people who are very concerned with their privacy, their are tools that act as watchdogs over all cookies (e.g. CookieCop), and you can configure browsers to block all cookies except those you approve, and get an alert any time a new website tries to add a cookie (firefox extensions).

The main problem with these utilities and addons is simply that they can require too much trouble on your part, approving and rejecting cookies every time you visit a site.  And it may seem like a waste to run one of these tools constantly.

Plus, it's increasingly the case that a site simply requires cookies be enabled in order for you to navigate around the site, so blocking cookies completely while you are on a site is just not going to be an option sometimes.

I've found that the most sensible approach is to use a cleaning utility which allows you to keep a whitelist of cookies you want preserved, and then simply delete all non-whitelisted cookies occasionally.