It's been a long time since I've posted on this thread.

But I recently played a game that I feel compelled to talk about: Chronicles of Crime.



This is a cooperative deduction board game where you play as detectives trying to solve crime stories.
You don't replay this game over and over, you only play each scenario once (each lasting a few hours), which tells a story as you try to solve the crime.  More downloadable scenarios are coming soon.

The game makes excellent use of a phone/tablet app, where you can scan item cards in order to ask certain characters about certain evidence.  It's a brilliant design and it works.

This will probably be made into a pure computer game soon -- as the actual physical pieces are not essential -- but for those of us who appreciate the tactile element of board gaming in a group, it works.

I'm a huge fan of these deduction mystery games like Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, but where this one really shines is in scratching that open-ended itch that you find in classic computer adventure games, where you can basically ask anyone about anything and really have to sit and think and discuss clues while you try to figure things out.

Highly recommended. 

Note: The crime stories are for mature players, not young children.

Recently Yahoo changed their weather API, which ended up breaking a weather application written by DonationCoder member Skwire (Jody Holmes), called sWeather.

It was interesting because it immediately became clear that there were a lot of sWeather users who had been silently enjoying the program, and they all came out of the woodwork when the program stopped working..

Skwire dived into the new Yahoo API and has just released a new version (v1.81) that works with it.  So all of you new and old sWeather fans can go back to enjoying this lovely app. 

And a small reminder: If you enjoy Skwire's apps and his commitment to his users, why not send him a little donation and a message of encouragement!  You can do so: here.

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Name	sWeather
Short Description	Tray-based weather app featuring multiple location support.  Tray icons for conditions and temperature (optional).  Tray icons and images are customizable.  Weather data is provided by Yahoo! Weather.
Supported OSes	Windows 7.  Probably works, but not tested, on Windows XP/Vista/8/10
Website	http://skwire.dcmembers.com/fp/?page=sweather
Download Link	Download
Author	Jody Holmes - Skwire Empire

Since 2007 we have held an annual event that we call NANY (New Apps for the New Year), where we ask the coders who hang out on DonationCoder to create some new piece of free software and share it with the world on January 1st of the new year.

NANY is really the funnest thing we do on this site, and it's one of the few times we can all play together.  There are no winners or losers, it's simply a celebration of programming and creating new software and sharing it with the world.  You can target any operating system (desktop or mobile) or even make a web-based tool.  It can be a game, utility, large application, whatever.  DC takes makes no claim on your software, it's just an event to encourage you to share a creation with others.  Best of all, everyone who participates gets a free commemorative coffee mug.

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Thank you everyone who participated for a wonderful event!!! We had some really interesting entries this year.  Some of the entries are polished professional caliber apps, and many are just hobby creations.  Read on for the full list..

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SCURLed
A very flexible tool for MS Windows that allows (mass) editing of shortcuts (.lnk or .url files), with ability to do search and replace, and flexible mass editing.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46985.0

Author: Skwire


RegexCaptor
Simple tool for MS Windows that lets you extract matching regular expression patterns from multiple files, with list of favorites and patterns to ignore.. Extracting email addresses was motivational use case.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=45497.0

Author: mouser


Process Watcher
A bare bones minimal utility for MS Windows that watches and remembers and logs new and changed processes found running on your pc.  So you will easily be able to see a log of when a program has run for the first time or has been updated.  More features to be added soon.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46631.0

Author: mouser


Fasting Schedule
Android app that lets you define a custom schedule of eating and fasting time windows and can remind you when each is opening and closing.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46721.0

Author: mouser


Streak Tracker
A flexible Android application to help you track how long you can keep different streaks going.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46587.0

Author: mouser


Point Motivator
An Android application that lets you keep track of your score, earning points for activities that you configure yourself.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46586.0

Author: mouser


Rating List DC
A simple Android application that lets you keep a list (organized into tabs) of items that you can assign ratings to (from 1-5).
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46588.0

Author: mouser


cStatus
MS Windows application for monitor network traffic and scanning networks.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46074.0

Author: hugo Nabais


TextWorx
Tool for MS Windows that provides a nicely organized context menu of text manipulation routines (change case, search+replace, etc.) that can be used on text in other applications.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46970.0

Author: BGM


Current Printer
Small tool for MS Windows that lives in the system tray and shows the default set printer on hover, as well as other connected printers when clicked.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46455.0

Author: c. gingerich


startHERE
Open source portable application launcher that uses PortableApps data files to help you launch your portable applications.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46075.0

Author: c.gingerich


DblEscClose
Background tool for MS Windows which lets you tap Escape key twice to close the current window or tab.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46749.0
Auhtor: c. gingerich


AHK Script Center
MS Windows utility to help you managing and run a collection of AHK (scripting tool) scripts.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46944.0

Author: mat2016


Process Started
A tool for MS Windows that displays and continuously updates a window of recently executed processes.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46978.0

Author: anandcoral


StringSimilarity
GUI tool for MS Windows to calculate text-similarity metrics between two snippets of text.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46653.0

Author: Ath


FFFilterGUI
Early release of a tool for MS Windows that provides a GUI front end for FFMPG (video processor) filters.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46986.0

Author: worstje


Shorthand 3_2
An open source GUI tool for MS Windows that uses the Everything search engine API to provide a nice way to search for files.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46878.0

Author: Maestr0


Mass JSON Viewer
GUI tool for MS Windows that lets you easily view, browse, validate, etc. a large directory of json files.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46976.0

Author: wraith808


AudioMarker
A languages learning helper tool for MS Windows that helps you keep notes on translated segments of audio files.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46583.0

Author: Stephen66515


Explorer List
Small MS Windows utility to help you jump to your favorite directories in Microsoft File Explorer.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46846.0

Author: limelect


DisplayOff
Simple non-gui tool to turn off the current monitor and exit.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46783.0
Author: SwanKnight


Cryptogram
Web based (javascript/html) tool to help you solve substitution ciphers (where each letter is swapped for another).
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46981.0

Author: jroman


impd
GTK Application for Linux/mac that plays music through the mpd service
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46514.0

Author: Sjc1000


remv
Commandline tool (open source with binary for MS Windows) to rename files using regular expressions.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=45923.0

Author: Tuxman


reddit Whisky expose
Racket language based tool to help you write whiskey liquor reviews on reddit (how's that for a niche application?)
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46809.0

Author: Tuxman


libvldmail
Open source C library for coders that can validate e-mail addresses according to RFC 6531 with a fallback to RFC 5321.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=45924.0
Author: Tuxman


logpad
vim/gnuemacs script for adding timestamps to top of log files
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=45927.0

Author: Tuxman


gdpr blocking for php
Simple php snippet social commentary script that blocks users from EU ips.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=45926.0
Author: Tuxman


The Decision Sieve
Simple web based (html/js/css) utility to take a list of weighted items and remove all but the top n ranked items.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ndex.php?topic=45925

Author: Tuxman


Net Console Program Generator
Programmer's commandline tool for MS Windows, that speeds up the creation of console utilities.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46408.0

Author: kyrathaba


Huge text/Log file reader
MS Windows Utility that can be used to view huge files by loading only chunks of a file at a time.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=45921.0
Author: chesterw


ScrabbleScore
Simple MS Windows utility that calculates the score of a word for the game Scrabble
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46465.0

Author: dmytron


Color Mixer
Web based (html/css/js) utility for choosing a color that is a weighted blend of two other colors.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46662.0

Author: shinkarom


Shiloh Feeding Metrics Panel
Niche use tool for MS Windows meant to aid people recovering from eating difficulties
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46752.0

Author: camerb


Drive Letter Enumeration tool
Mini tool for MS Windows that just lists all connected drives
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=45728.0

Author: KodeZwerg


Process Lister
Simple tool for MS Windows that lists the running processes
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46551.0

Author: KodeZwerg


Assignments Warlock
Simple tool for MS Windows to help a teacher create class assignments for the entire week (5 days) of classes that you teach.
Download and discuss: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=46987.0

Author: hamradio

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You can show your support to the participants by sending some DonationCredits to an author whose entry you especially liked -- just click on their name and look for the link to donate to them.
Or browse the profiles of your NANY 2019 participants: here.
Or go directly to the page to send some of your donationcredits to all of the participants: here.

Since 2007 we have held an annual event that we call NANY (New Apps for the New Year), where we ask the coders who hang out on DonationCoder to create some new piece of free software and share it with the world on January 1st of the new year.

NANY is really the funnest thing we do on this site, and it's one of the few times we can all play together.  There are no winners or losers, it's simply a celebration of programming and creating new software and sharing it with the world.  You can target any operating system (desktop or mobile) or even make a web-based tool.  It can be a game, utility, large application, whatever.  DC takes makes no claim on your software, it's just an event to encourage you to share a creation with others.  Best of all, everyone who participates gets a free commemorative coffee mug.

You can browse and download the 2019 Nany forum section here: https://www.donation...ndex.php?board=328.0

But a proper round-up summary of all entries will be posted in the next couple of days.

What are your 2019 New Years Resolutions? Here are mine:

• Major update to Find and Run Robot
• More regular updates to Screenshot Captor.
• Major update and merge of my Process-related applications (process tamer, process piglet, process watcher)
• Find a couple of dc members to try to make the DonationCoder blog a must-visit page by making it more timely/relevant/active/etc.
• A new website project.
• Experiment with new programming languages / frameworks (cross-platform mobile?)

How about you?

It's not a bug, it's a feature.. The more clicks and views (fake or not), the more money can be made from advertisers.

How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. For a period of time in 2013, the Times reported this year, a full half of YouTube traffic was “bots masquerading as people,”