My first interview at 1000 Inspirations
After a long pause, I’m back again. A number of things have hindered my blogging, among which a new day job and hectic working on the new release of Direct Access (currently in beta) which is expected to be officially released the next week. You can read more and download a beta version of Direct Access from the Direct Access Beta page
1000 Inspirations is a blog run by Alex Choo is a MicroISV: as he says in his manifesto, he wants to give a voice to ordinary people working on their MicroISV. He’s also the cofounder of TipTap and has developed the TicTap Amazon Contextual Ads to show Adsense-styles Amazon product ads in your webpages.
I had the pleasure to be the first to be interviewed. You can read my story at http://1000inspirations.wordpress.com/2007/01/28/question-time-with-andrea-nagar/
If you run a MicroISV and would like to be interviewed, Alex will probably be very interested in publishing your story.
1000 Inspirations
http://1000inspirations.wordpress.com
Technorati Tags: microisv
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New features of the upcoming Direct Access 1.5
Here are some anticipations of the new features you’ll get in Direct Access 1.5, which I expect to release in beta in January. Here are the main new features of 1.5:
- support for Windows Vista
- reduced memory footprint
- new, redesigned, easier to use interface
- instant search to quickly find your abbreviations
- new powerful functionalities for Autotext commands
The new interface of Direct Access
Office 2007 style tooltips
Commands are displayed so that you can get the maximum amount of information in a very reduced space. For each command you can clearly see its description, abbreviation (the word you have to type to activate it) and the preview. The little yellow ball tells you if the abbreviation requires a confirmation or will be fired immediately.
Instant Search
With Instant Search you can quickly locate your favorite commands typing a few keystrokes. The commands list is updated instantly to reflect your request.
Redesigned edit dialogs with a number of new features
The dialogs used to create commands have been redesigned to be much clearer and easier to use. A number of new commands have been added to perform special tasks:
- insert a manual text input: this allows you to perform a number of tasks: when the command is executed, a pop-up window is displayed asking for additional information: for example, you will be able to search google, wikipedia, a dictionary from any application and compose personalized messages executing a command and typing a parameter of your choice in the input window.
- insert the current date (using the time/date formats of your choice)
- insert special keys like TAB, ENTER
- insert an ASCII character typing it’s ASCII keycode
- have the cursor positioned at a certain place in the inserted text
OSD Command execution confirmation
Direct Access shows an OSD text confirming the execution of a command. So, you immediately know if the command has been correctly triggered.
I’m expecting to release Direct Access 1.5 in beta in January. All registered users will get the upgrade for free.
Technorati Tags: Direct Access, autotext, Nagarsoft
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In Vista do not run your application from installer
I’m working on a new version of Direct Access which, among other new features, will add full support for Windows Vista. Thanks to the help of my good friend Marcus Tettmar, I found that the reason why in some cases drag and drop from Explorer to Direct Access didn’t work was due to the privileges Direct Access was running with. The behaviour happened only when launching Direct Access directly from the setup application.
The “Run the program now” checkbox that appears in many setup installations present a security risk with Vista: as all the processes that setup spawn inherit the same privileges as Setup (normally full administrative privileges) your application will be run with full administrative privileges as well.
This will not only create a security problem but may also cause other interaction problems between applications (for example, drag & drop from explorer to Direct Access doesn’t work).
The suggestion, therefore, is to remove the “Run the program now” from the installation final screen, as it’s suggested in the Innosetup FAQ at http://www.jrsoftware.org/iskb.php?vista
Technorati Tags: Vista, Installation
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Make sure your application is not identified as a malware
A fellow ASP member mentioned the Virustotal website. You can submit any file and have it scanned with many different antivirus, so you can be sure that you application is not mistakenly identified as a virus or malware.
You can upload the file to the site or alternatively, send it via email. The service is free.
Virustotal
http://www.virustotal.com
Technorati Tags: antivirus
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Look for domain names availability the easy way
PCNames allows you to look for domain names the easy web. When you type a name it instantly checks availability (thanks to its AJAX interface) and shows a list of used a free domains.
This makes it easy trying for name variations when looking for a free domain name.
PCNames
http://www.pcnames.com (via Larkware)
Technorati Tags: domain names
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Euroconference 2006
On the 4th and 5th November, I went for the first time to the Euroconference (held in Cambridge), which gathers MicroISV people from around the Europe and the world to discuss about software. The MicroISV work has the tendency to get you isolated from the rest of the world whom you interact just firing emails or chatting online. It’s great to meet these people that you have known for months online and know them in person.
The conference touched many topics dear to the heart of software entrepreneurs, like email marketing, customer support, SEO, Adwords, e-commerce and software protection. If you missed the event, you can find an in deep coverage of it at the Obligatory Blog, run by Gavin Bowman who is also the mind behind the Oriador staff scheduling software.
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Nagarsoft server down resolved
We experienced a down time from 1pm to 7pm (CET), today due to an issue installing the new customer support software, FogBugz.
Things are working properly now. I thank people at webhost4life for promptly fixing the issue.
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Keep an eye on the competition with UpdatePatrol
RSS is a great technology for monitoring news on websites but it’s kind of limited to blogs. What can you do if you want to monitor a website which doesn’t offer an RSS feed? For example, monitor your competitors websites for changes?
A good solution comes from a new product: UpdatePatrol from Bitberry Software.
UpdatePatrol monitors a number of websites of your choices and notifies you of changes.
I installed UpdatePatrol on my system and loaded a bunch of my competitors websites. You can insert your websites manually or with a simple drag and drop. Once set, UpdatePatrol monitors your websites (at the schedule you set) and notifies of any update, highlighting the changes. It uses a smart algorithm to ignore dynamic data in page comparisons, e.g. number of visitors, dates, timestamps etc. This is configurable using regular expressions (a pattern matching syntax) for maximum flexibility.
UpdatePatrol lets you monitor RSS feeds too. Although its a nice built-in feature, if you are used to a feed reader, you’ll probably stick to your old habits: I personally prefer to monitor my feeds using Google Reader, as I detailed in this post.
If you find yourself looking at a number of sites, just to check for changes UpdatePatrol can save you a ton of time. The only thing that I miss is a more tight integration with the browser to add sites more easily. Definitely, I warmly suggest that you give it a try.
UpdatePatrol costs 49.95$ and comes with a 30-day money back guarantee. You can download a fully functional 30-day trial at http://www.updatepatrol.com/download.html
Bitberry Software Update Patrol
http://www.updatepatrol.com
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Direct Access 1.2 Released
A new version (1.2) of Direct Access has been released today. It’s mainly a maintenance release. Here are the main changes:
- the command detection has been improved reducing its impact on the system (some user, with v.1.1 reported issues typing certain key combinations on some programs)
- Multi monitor support
- Reduced delay when sending text (autotext) to other applications (can now be reduced to 20ms)
- Autotext can be now used in the command prompt window (cmd)
- The Hub does no longer appear in the window list (when ALT tabbing)
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150 icons to use in your nifty web application
150+ clean and clear icons to use in your nifty web application, licensed as creative commons so commercial use is fine. Include photoshop source so you are free to edit them.
Sweetie
http://sweetie.sublink.ca (via Larkware)
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