Direct Access 2.0 has been completely redesigned for increased usability and seamless integration with other applications.

Here’s a sample of the new features:

• Quickly add/modify and remove your commands using shortcuts
• Launch command from the group menu which is displayed as you type
• Clipboard history to quickly store and retrieve the last used text clippings
• Enable/Disable group of commands
• More powerful macros
• Ability to execute autotext from inside other autotext

You can look at some screenshots of Direct Access, at the Direct Access Beta page

Customers will receive an email with the link to download the beta version. Your feedback is very appreciated.

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If you are not careful, this could create some unwanted interactions with other application, sending them keystrokes that may have unexpected consequences.

Here’s a simple macro, created with Autohotkey, that solves this problem, allowing you to select the taskbar before typing an abbreviation: keystrokes are then sent to the taskbar preventing unwanted interactions with other applications.

How to use focustaskbar
Run the focustaskbar.exe. An icon  will appear on the taskbar. When you are ready to type an abbreviation to launch an application or open a website (no meaning to use it for Autotext when you want Direct Access to send keystrokes to the active application), type the WIN+C key combination. The script will intercept it and focus the taskbar. You can then type the abbreviation knowing that it won’t have any side effect.

The script assumes that the taskbar is aligned at the bottom of the screen. It that’s not the case for you, you can easily modify the script; similarly you can also change the key combination.

The Script
The script contains just one line: #c::MouseClick, left, 4000,4000
that says: when you detect a WIN+C key combination, send a left mouse click at coordinates (4000, 4000). If your taskbar is not attached to the bottom of the screen, you can easily change the mouse click location accordingly.

So, to be on the safe side, whenever you type an abbreviation for launching applications, type WIN+C followed by your abbreviation.

Download

• Download the executable, focustaskbar.exe
• Download source, focustaskbar.ahk

Choose abbreviations that are easy to remember

Abbreviations have an advantage over key combinations: they are easier to remember (if you choose them wisely). My suggestion is to use the first letter of the first word of the sentence you want to type. For example, if you frequently type, “Thanks for your help.”, tha can be a good abbreviation. You may also choose the initial letter of each word but this can be challenging if the phrase is long.

Another advantage of using the first letters of the first word is that the confirmation tooltip will appear while you are typing (as the abbreviation is part of the phrase you want to type) allowing you to quickly enter the phrase pressing SHIFT.

Add phrases as you go

You don’t need to setup your environment at the beginning but you can add your phrases incrementally as you work with other applications.

Let’s say you notice that you are using the some phrase over and over answering your customer emails or entering your website. Just select the text and press CTRL+SHIFT+W. Direct Access opens the ‘Add New Autotext’ window with the selected piece of text. It’s just a matter of adding the abbreviation and that piece of information will be available in any program.

Create an universal autocorrect and spell checker

Are you always misspelling a word? Create a new Autotext in Direct Access that enters the correct word and has the misspelled word as the abbreviation. You can also use it to expand words and acronyms. You can also import all your auto-corrections from Microsoft Word and use them in any application.

Group your phrases by context

Define a group for similar phrases and assign an abbreviation to it. When invoked, Direct Access will show a menu with all the contained commands so that you can easily choose the desired phrase from a list. For example, you can define a group support with abbreviation supp which contains all the customer support phrases you normally use. Type supp and Direct Access will show a list of phrase which you can easily insert into an email, document or webpage.

Easily change and tweak your abbreviations

If you want to change an abbreviation for a command that you have just executed, simply press CTRL+SHIFT+E in any application. Direct Access will open the Edit window of the last executed command allowing you to modify it.

Likewise, you can add or remove the confirmation to multiple commands and add suffix and prefix to your favorite abbreviations to adapt the way Direct Access works to your personal taste. For example, you may like adding the “..” suffix to the commands with no confirmation to avoid accidental triggering.

If you don’t know Direct Access, you can learn more at nagarsoft website and download a free trial.

Direct Access 1.6 includes more than 20 new features (you can read a full list of changes at http://www.nagarsoft.com/versionhistory.aspx), but I would like to point your attention to the following ones:

1. Quickly confirm a command using the SHIFT key: you can now use SHIFT to confirm a command when you see the confirmation tooltip. It’s really quick and convenient just pressing SHIFT instead of reaching for F12 or any other key.
2. Easily share and create commands with the Create Commands Wizard: a new Wizard simplifies the process of importing commands from command packs or creating commands from the desktop, quickstart or documents folders. It simplifies the process of exporting the commands from a PC and importing it to another one detecting and overwriting existing commands on the target machine.
3. Automate applications with the Send special keys macro: this was a major request and now it’s there. You can send key combinations to other applications to do basic automation and fill forms. If you are doing repetitive operations through menus Direct Access can help controlling the target application using keyboard shortcuts.
4. New sendtext engine: the new engine works at a much lower level and is more reliable in sending text to any application. On top of that, it detects the lengths of the text to copy and can decide if typing the text directly or use the clipboard. This ensures that the text is always inserted quickly and precisely. Direct Access can now ignore soft keys: these are virtual keystrokes generated by other macro tools (like Macro Scheduler). This prevents any interference with your pre-existent scripts.
5. How much time are you saving with Direct Access? Find it out with the new usage statistics: with the usage statistics you can actually see how much time you are saving with Direct Access. I encourage you to enable sharing usage statistics: the data are completely anonymous and they help us understand how you use Direct Access to serve you better.

Direct Access 1.6 includes also a number of minor interface tweaks and a consistent number of bug fixes. A screenshot tour of Direct Access is available at http://www.nagarsoft.com/Screenshots.aspx

The lastest version of Direct Access is available for download here.

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Direct Access, on the 3rd May, was featured on Giveaway of the day. This is a Russian website which, each day, offers a special deal on a software application. Here’s a brief report on how the thing works and how it can help market your software. I got convinced on using it after learning the experience of my Italian friends at Incomedia with their web authoring tool Website X5 and our fellow entrepreneur Chris Thompson with GoCRM.

What is Giveaway of the day

When you list your software on Giveaway of the day you are basically offering it for free to anyone that requests it for one day only. Your software is listed on the main page of this site (which really gets a lot of traffic) for one day. The licensing process ensures that people get your software for free only for the promotion day.

The licensing can be handled directly by Giveaway of the day or you can create your custom registration system (which I warmly suggest). They package your application with their executable so that it installs only on the day of the promotion (users have to install and activate that software that day).

Why would you want to give your software for free? Basically to increase your visibility and future referrals. So, the idea is quite different from other deal of the day sites, like Bits du jour, which are meant to increase your sales for a day.

Normally, the license you offer has the following limitations: no support, no commercial use, no upgrades.

My experience with Direct Access

The Setup
I have my website hosted so I was a little scared not being able to handle the traffic, especially as I decided to use my own registration algorithm that generates the licenses and sends them via email to the users. So I asked my good friend Marcus Tettmar to host a backup of the registration server application which ended being handy as I had a couple of problems with the main server (very slow DB).

As you can see, the traffic is consistent: almost 12,000 visitors and about 37,000 page views and about 15GB bandwidth. As you can see from the charts, the peak is at 9am (Italian time) when the promotion starts with people who are lurking to get their giveaway: then traffic decreases to rise a bit around 3pm when Americans get up. I got a big number of users from Italy, too. Maybe it’s time to start localizing Direct Access.

Data for the 3rd May

Data for the 4th May

Comments arrive at bunches as they are approved by the moderator. I replied promptly and it looks liek that very appreciated by the community. In fact, although, the term say no tech support, I and Marcus – who helped me answering the comments –  walked every user through the registration process (which proved more complex than I anticipated). Also the number of email I received was conspicuous: more than 400. Fogbuz along with Direct Access proved to be of great help to quickly answer emails.

Andrew Klein, of BladedThoth.com, wrote a mini review of Direct Access (he reviews all the software listed on Giveaway of the day). He made good comments and gave me good starting point for future improvements of the product.

The problems I got
Fortunately, things went pretty smooth and the vast majority of users got their registration email in few seconds. The major problem I had was, as expected, with the license file delivery. My license is delivered as a lic file (which is a signed XML file). A number of support requests were related to license problems (email not received, spam filters, corrupted license file, license file embedded into the email instead as shown as attachment, people not proficient with using their pc and requesting assistance…) and some others to installation problems (mainly, people not having the .NET framework). In addition to that, as I used the term “register on my website” a number of people went to the register link on the nagarsoft.com website instead of the specific page for Giveaway of the day.

The Results
I still need to finish analyzing the data, but about 3,500 people registered Direct Access and got their license (which registration coming at a rate between 120 to 180  per hour). I assume that a number will stop using it but it will nevertheless give me a solid user base that will help me discover new uses of the software and shaping the development of the product and provide useful support and a number of them, hopefully, will upgrade to the future versions.

What kind of software performs best

Giveaway of the day is visited by people with different IT background and you get a lot of novices with very little experience. So it looks like that the software that work best is the one with no learning curve where the user can immediately start using it. Niche market tools won’t probably work very well and will get you overwhelmed with support questions.

How to get your software listed

To get your software listed, just write to the support team of Giveaway of the day and you’ll get a reply in few days. If they are interested in listing your software, they will be back to you in a few days and you will even get paid for it. You will send them a brief description of your software (and optionally a description of other software of your company) and you are all set.

Here are some suggestions to make things smooth:

1. Get your server ready: prepare to handle a peak of traffic (I got 12.000 unique visitors in 24 hours). So check with your provider (especially, if your website is hosted) if this will be ok with them or if you need to do anything. Fortunately, your application will be hosted by Giveaway of the day so downloads will not suck up your bandwidth. The Giveaway of the day people will package it in their own executable which will work on the promotion day only.

2. Monitor the forum and your email: people will come up with any kind of question about your software. If you are unresponsive, it’s very easy to get bad comments. Be ready to promptly answer by email and monitor the forum. I replied to each message and sent step by step instructions on how to complete the registration process if necessary. If you sending the registration code via email, problems will happen so be ready to handle things manually.

3. Have a backup ready: if you are implementing your own registration system, if you are on a hosted server, have a backup ready on another server, just in case. My server at webhost4life managed the load pretty well: I just had a couple of problems and having the backup registration server on Mjtnet server worked perfectly. Things can and will get a bit crazy!

4. Make things as simple as possible: try to simplify the procedure to register your software and provide instructional material on your website (screenshots and video tutorials work best). The video tutorials I have at http://www.nagarsoft.com/VideoTutorials.aspx convinced many people who were a little skeptic to download and try the software.

Conclusions

I think that Giveaway of the day is a valuable marketing tool. It will put your software in front of thousands of people. If you are a startup and would like to give your business a boost, this is a tool you should definitely try.

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Building a company is something that really energizes you: lots of new challenges to win and obstacles to overcome. I would like to thank my family for their support and all the customers, partners and fellow entrepreneurs who take an active role in helping Direct Access development, pointing out bugs and providing useful suggestions.

The biggest thanks goes to my good friend Marcus Tettmar, an invaluable business partner in this new and exciting venture!

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