Adaptigo Blog

Here is a digg widget that displays items that I have dugg on digg.com.
 

Today on digg I spotted an article about a software program called Miro.  From what I could tell it works something like a TiVo, but lets you search and download video from lots of different sources.   I have tried a similar program called Joost but the interface for Joost was really odd and I didn't like the way it worked.  Miro has many more features and channels, is still free, open source actually, and seems much better to me.  I watched some interesting shows with it this evening.  Diggnation is one of the shows they have listed.  I saw a listing for channel102 which is awesome.  Hopefully someone will set up channel101 videos to be available through Miro too.  A lot of those channel101 and 102 shows are so entertaining.  I really enjoy the idea behind them.  Anyway, I am very impressed with Miro and I will be keeping my eye on that project to see how it progresses.  The only problem I saw with it was that the fast forwarding and rewinding of videos didn't seem to work correctly.  I eventually found that in order to fast forward and rewind videos I can use the scroll section of my touch pad on my laptop to make it work.  I hope this will be fixed soon to function in the same way as all the other video players out there - and allow normal mouse drag movements to change current point of playback of the video.

(Above: Miro video position/fast forward/rewind thing.)

Update:  11/16/2007 - The problem with the fast forward and rewind seems to have cleared up.  Either the software auto-updated itself with a fix or a reboot was required to get things straighted out.  I noticed that it was working correctly after I had rebooted - so maybe that had something to do with it.  Hopefully, you will not have to worry about this little Miro bug.  On a side note - check out TV Show BitTorrent Downloading Made Easy With Miro.
Update:  11/19/2007 - The fast forward problem is still an issue and the reason I thought it had cleared up was that it seems to only affect videos that come from YouTube.  So I suppose that stopped noticing it when I started looking at more non-YouTube videos.  Videos that don't come from YouTube seem to not suffer from the bug.  Also, I have changed my opinion about Joost.  Joost is pretty cool because it has some good shows that you can't get on Miro without using 'less than ethical' means (tvrss.com).

I have always thought that the start menu in Windows was very inefficient. About two years ago I figured out a way to use something simple and different as a more efficient substitute. For example if I want to run Windows Notepad.exe I just press the WindowsKey (the one with the flag) and R - this opens the Windows Run dialog box. Then in the Run Box I type the letter n and press enter. This opens Notepad. For all the programs that I run most often, I have a created one of these shortcuts.

Here is the script I use to create my Run Box shortcuts. Just copy the text and put it in a file called c:\create-shortcuts.vbs. Then run it one time. After that you can type ED in your Run Box to edit the script (and save it). Then type CS (this stands for create shortcuts) to get rid of the old shortcuts and create new ones using the information in the script you edited (using ED).

You'll see that this is much faster than trying to locate shortcut icons on your desktop or start menu.

 (Note: There are some problems with this on Windows Vista.  I will create a new version soon that will show how to make it work on Vista too.)

Copy the text out of the text box below and create this file as: C:\create-shortcuts.vbs and run it to give it a try.

' This will setup your computer so that you can use Run Box shortcut commands.
' Just edit the code below to add the shortcuts you want.
' To use the shortcuts just press the window's key and the R key to display the Run Box.
' After that just type in your Run Box shortcut and press enter.
' For example: pressing Win+R, C<enter> is a lot faster that tracking down the calculator
' shortcut link in the start menu.
'
' Thanks,
' Jason Stracner
' Adaptigo.com
DIM sRunboxShortcut(9999)
DIM sTarget(9999)
DIM sArguments(9999)
DIM sStartIn(9999)
DIM sComment(9999)
intItem = 0
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "A"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\MSACCESS.EXE"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\"
sComment(intItem) = "Access"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "C"
sTarget(intItem) = "calc.exe"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = ""
sComment(intItem) = "Calculator"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "CP"
sTarget(intItem) = "control"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = ""
sComment(intItem) = "Control Panel"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "CS"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\create-shortcuts.vbs"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = ""
sComment(intItem) = "Create shortcuts"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "ED"
sTarget(intItem) = "notepad"
sArguments(intItem) = "C:\create-shortcuts.vbs"
sStartIn(intItem) = ""
sComment(intItem) = "edit this script"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "f"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\FRONTPG.EXE"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10"
sComment(intItem) = "Frontpage"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "ff"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox"
sComment(intItem) = "Mozilla Firefox Web Browser"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "i"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = "%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%"
sComment(intItem) = "Internet Explorer"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "ib"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE"
sArguments(intItem) = "about:blank"
sStartIn(intItem) = "%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%"
sComment(intItem) = "Internet Explorer - Blank Page"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "ir"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\IrfanView\i_view32.exe"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = "%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%"
sComment(intItem) = "IrfanView"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "l"
sTarget(intItem) = "%windir%\System32\rundll32.exe"
sArguments(intItem) = "user32.dll,LockWorkStation"
sStartIn(intItem) = "%windir%"
sComment(intItem) = "Lock the computer"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "m"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player"
sComment(intItem) = "Windows Media Player"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "n"
sTarget(intItem) = "%windir%\system32\notepad.exe"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = "%windir%"
sComment(intItem) = "Notepad"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "o"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\OUTLOOK.EXE"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10"
sComment(intItem) = "Outlook"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "p"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\PalmOne\Palm.exe"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = ""
sComment(intItem) = "Palm Desktop"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "r"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Rememorizer\rememorizer.exe"
sArguments(intItem) = "/w 1020 /h 1175 Rememorizer Rememorizer fCou"
sStartIn(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Rememorizer"
sComment(intItem) = "Rememorizer"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "rp"
sTarget(intItem) = "Appwiz.cpl"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = ""
sComment(intItem) = "Add/Remove Programs"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "s"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Clip2Speech\Clip2Speech.exe"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Clip2Speech"
sComment(intItem) = "Clip2Speech"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "t"
sTarget(intItem) = "%windir%\system32\taskmgr.exe"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = "%windir%"
sComment(intItem) = "Windows Task Manager"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "ts"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\Data4Backup\vbscript\datetimestamp.vbs"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = "C:\Data4Backup\vbscript"
sComment(intItem) = "Time Stamp"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "tw"
sTarget(intItem) = "E:\__Staff\Stracner\wiki\Jason'sDDriveWiki.htm"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = "E:\__Staff\Stracner\wiki\"
sComment(intItem) = "My TiddlyWiki wiki"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "v"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE"
sComment(intItem) = "VB.Net"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "v6"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98\VB6.EXE"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98"
sComment(intItem) = "VB6"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "w"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\WINWORD.EXE"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10"
sComment(intItem) = "Word"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "wm"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\WinMerge\WinMergeU.exe"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\WinMerge\"
sComment(intItem) = "WinMerge"
intItem = intItem + 1
sRunboxShortcut(intItem) = "x"
sTarget(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\EXCEL.EXE"
sArguments(intItem) = ""
sStartIn(intItem) = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\"
sComment(intItem) = "Excel"
'----
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
strCommand = ""
strCommand = strCommand & "cmd /c "
strCommand = strCommand & "DEL " & WshShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%WINDIR%\") & "*.lnk" 
' Send command to system:
WshShell.Run strCommand,7,true ' 7=minimized true=wait for return
For intCount = 0 To UBound(sTarget)
 if sRunboxShortcut(intCount) = "" then exit for
 set oShellLink = WshShell.CreateShortcut(WshShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%WINDIR%\") & sRunboxShortcut(intCount) & ".lnk")
 oShellLink.TargetPath = sTarget(intCount)
 oShellLink.Arguments = sArguments(intCount)
 oShellLink.WindowStyle = 1
 oShellLink.Description = sComment(intCount)
 oShellLink.WorkingDirectory = WshShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings(sStartIn(intCount))
 oShellLink.Save
Next
 

Today Adaptigo released a new version of TiddlyWinFileMerge which lets people who use TiddlyWiki merge their files with files that others have edited. So if you have a bunch of notes in a wiki file and you email it to a friend that adds more notes and edits some notes then this tool will let you easily combine your work together into one file. By the way, TiddlyWiki is an awesome tool and even better is the MonkeyGTD 2.1 alpha (preview). These tools are so incredibly good for organizing your thoughts, tracking projects and keeping notes. I use it everyday.

Today (2/9/2007) Adaptigo contributed money to a a person on Kiva.

See Jason's links at: http://links.programmer1.com/