Tom Revell's Stickies is a cute little entry into the Stickies-type software. I use it as the second half of the capture process from taking a square screen snip with Screenshot Captor.

http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/

He maintains a forum where he responds to bugs, features, and a new version every year or two. I haven't "version controlled" my copy in a couple of years, but for example he put in a multi-undo into one of the Beta versions after I remarked that it was too easy to work on a sticky over a long period of time, only to ruin it with a stray mouse click with the paintbrush.

http://tomrevell.conforums.com/

1. Newsletter Editorial

Greetings dear readers, it's been 2 months since the last newsletter, so we have a full plate today.  I'll start as I normally do, with some abashed self-promotion.

First up is call for assistance in funding the purchase of a "Cody Mobile" (just a fancy term for a cheap used car to be adorned with a DonationCoder decal).  A grand total of $307 has been raised so far -- so any bit you can add will help.

Next up is a long blog post I've written on the idea of putting advertisements on the DonationCoder.com website, and some thoughts on the Project Wonderful ad service vs Google Adsense; we occasionally experiment with putting ads on the website and we're doing so again through June.  I'm going to try to write some more longer original essays on the site, and hopefully with your encouragement see if we can't get a few more DC regulars to do the same.

You'll also find in this newsletter some interesting project announcements from members of our forum.  In section 4 you'll find links to a very cool new open source music learning tool called Musicope by forum member czb and a fun science fiction magazine by forum member TaoPhoenix, as well as several new small coding snacks.  And don't mix the new invention we came up with in the long-running gadget thread (section 2).

Finally, I want to reach out to those of you who might have never posted on our forum -- and ask you to take a leap and make a post.  Everyone is welcome on our site and doesn't matter how knowledgeable you are -- and if you aren't sure where to start, check out the "User-to-User" items below.  We're still a small community site whose value depends on user participation. I know I speak for everyone on the site when I say that seeing a first post from a new member is one of our favorite things.

• Micro-Fundraiser for the Official DonationCoder CodyMobile!
• Some thoughts on the Project Wonderful Ad Network and web advertising in general

2. User-to-User: Your Input Requested

We love nothing more than having interesting discussions on our forum -- and we love when new people participate in the discussions.  In each newsletter we try to highlight a few topics that we think might interest casual readers and that are good candidates for making your first post.

• The DonationCoder.com 30-Day Healthy Eating and Exercise Challenge!
• What are Your Favorite YouTube Channels? Here are Mine for Board Games
• Gadget Weekends - we even invented something new this weekend
• Movies or films you've seen lately?
• Recommend free image hosting site?
• Have you ever gone Geocaching or Letterboxing?
• Best method for a dead simple web site?
• Help needed with computer hardware problem
• Some guidelines and rules about posting on the forum

---

When DonationCoder.com opened it's doors in March of 2005, one of the sites that was most welcoming and supportive of us was Shell Extension City.  Many of our early and most enthusiastic supporters found us through the Shell City website.

Shell City was one of the best places to discover new small freeware tools coded by small developers.  It's always been a no-nonsense style site -- the front page just lists short paragraphs about newly discovered freeware with a link to the author's page.  Part of it's appeal was that a small developer could email bob the site admin and tell him about their software, and if Bob thought it was worth passing along, up would go a nice paragraph about your tool.

---

Anyway, throughout the years Shell Extension City has gone through some quiet periods, but today a post on the forum has announced they are attempting a comeback! Yay!

Sounds like from the relaunch announcement that there will probably be a few bumps in the road as they get the old content and structure cleaned up, So make sure you go check them out regularly. 

You can read the relaunch announcement: Here.

And visit site homepage: http://www.shellcity.net

Very cool and just a little bit nostalgic.
More info at the link

If you ever connected to the Internet before the 2000s, you probably remember that it made a peculiar sound. But despite becoming so familiar, it remained a mystery for most of us. What do these sounds mean?

http://windytan.blog...dialup-pictured.html

---

from random perusings of the web

Apparently there's a new wrinkle in the crowd funding world called Patreon. This one escapes from the Kickstarter project model and proposes ongoing financial support based on actual creative output.

TechDirt just did an article on it. And while I'll reserve an opinion as to how workable this will prove to be, it's still nice to see the experiments with alternative financing models are continuing. Link to TechDirt article here.

Cool New Platform For Supporting Artists: Patreon, From Jack Conte
from the nicely-done dept

I'm obviously a big fan of crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, but I've always argued that it's just one of many models that content creators can use to succeed today. In fact, for a long time, I've felt that the biggest thing that was missing from Kickstarter was any sort of ongoing payment system. It's entirely project based, and thus it's not the best tool for ongoing revenue. For many years I've been interested in ideas for more ongoing revenue streams, and even proposed the idea of "subscribing" to a band's output nearly a decade ago. So it's good to see that some folks are exploring some of these ideas in much more detail.
.
.
 

There's a video up on YouTube which explains it all a bit more:



I'm not completely sold, either on Patreon's basic concept, or its long-term viability as a financing mechanism. But I've been wrong so many times when it comes to this sort of thing that I'm not inclined to dismiss it out of hand either.

Time will tell if this is workable. I wish them luck.

The DonationCoder.com 30-Day Healthy Eating and Exercise Challenge!

I hope we can do more projects and challenges that improve our lives -- this is the first one that came to mind.

The challenge: Eat healthy (no junk food) and Exercise (every other day minimum) for 30 days.
When: Saturday May 25th to June 25th.

How to participate:

• Reply to this thread and declare your solemn oath to participate until the deadline.
• Check in once per week on the weekends and report your progress/confess any failures.
• At the end of the 30 days, report in on your results and whether you succeeded.

What do you win:
Maybe we can send one random person who completed the challenge something.