Adobe fail

It would be very good for my career if I really sat down and took the time to learn the Adobe line of products.  One thing that keeps stopping me is the remarkably poor performance of their showcase products (like Adobe Acrobat):

I can think of worse ways to word this, but it's pretty bad.

Related: Adobe Acrobat DC problems (aka how not to do "freemium")

Transfer files via webcam

I've been digging for a way to work with QR codes on Windows and, in this process, found, a novel way to transfer files from your desktop to Android.

Some items on the list to check for portability:

• http://www.codetwo.com/freeware/qr-code-desktop-reader-thanks
• http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/bctester-lets-you-read-barcodes-qr-codes-in-windows/
• http://www.thewindowsclub.com/barcode-scanner-app-windows

A day in the life of a moderator

I generally do things on the site in batches, usually once a week.  I decided to detail out some of the changes I did in a single day ...

---

New stuff

• Suggest the "Meld" file/directory comparison tool

Entry Edits:

• Created a screenshot slideshow (animated GIF) for FreeMeter
• Fix links for EverEdit as the freeware version has gone offline
• Try to test (and update) the WinMend File Copy file extraction process
• Updated MP3-Splt, including a new screenshot and a move from the WinPenPack to PortableApps version (there's an old version update that one caught that the other didn't)

Other

• Added some additional websites to some older threads on Pass-O-Meter and Flash Xtractor
• Get some File Data (hashes) for a few different programs on the site for safety/mirroring purposes
  Updated a few entries, including .GIF -> .PNG conversion
• Posted about FoxIt issue from earlier in the week
• Thread split - break PDF XChange Viewer and Editor posts

Why portable?

Something I'm constantly trying to answer.  Here are 3 approaches:

• Analysis of junk created by installers.
• Advantages your users gain with portable
• From a developer who writes portable software  (thanks smaragdus)

Arguments for local software (programs not run over the Internet)

Of course the worst security flaw is something that directly hurts you with identity theft or otherwise, but this is a great argument for just not doing things online.

Certainly some things can be done safely, but I paradoxically get less and less enamored with technology the more and more I learn about it.

"I don't think I'd want tools for manipulating local media tied even loosely to the uptime of a remote computer (or network connection)." (source)

Today's reason to love LibreOffice

The program can handle HUGE files with no weird crap happening to the formatting.  I've had some gigantic Word files just fall apart with some kind of formatting oddity.  I've never had that happen in the multiple years I've been working with 50+ page LibreOffice docs. (website)

Adware vs bundleware

Although we tend to avoid adware just because people hate it, strictly speaking I'm more concerned about bundleware.  If developers end up taking any route to make money off their work, adware is to usually the least bad.  Especially if it's for other, related software.

Some of this has to do with what ads developers have traditionally been putting in their applications.  If large, blinking, animated monstrosities start showing up, you might see me take a different view but that's just not what is happening.

Softpedia writers

Occasionally the templates that Softpedia employs as examples for it's writers appear in very clear terms.  My favorite and most recent example of this is GazeRecorder.

Here's text from what is obviously their "scientific entry" template:

While conducting various scientific experiments can be rewarding since you can make ground-breaking discoveries, running many of them would not be possible without appropriate tools.

However, thanks to the ever growing interest for technology, nowadays it is possible that you can choose from a wide palette of software solutions that can simplify your work.

You don't say!

I also love how the final paragraphs in Softpedia reviews all have variants on "As a conclusion".  Sigh.

As websites and journalism sources increasingly can't afford good writers, I've been seeing more and more awkward writing and badly-used templates like this.  I do love Softpedia but wish they'd forego their write-ups and reviews.

On your keychain: Easy Screencast Recorder

Although I tend to recommend a number of other programs ahead of it, it's going to be a rare day where I don't have this program handy. This program has saved my bacon a few times when other tools hesitated.  Although by default the program saves to the low-quality, low-compression .ASF format, it's reliable and sometimes that's the crucial thing.

Easy Screencast Recorder homepage and on PFW

Recent Firefox additions

I've been really impressed by recent efforts to actively customize the browser including their Test Pilot effort.  This includes additional privacy mode, video, and broken web page updates.  Another recent add-on tries to disable keyboard tracking, which is also amazing.  I'm hoping more than a few of these end up in the default browser.

My Top 5 Productivity Tools

All portable, listed in no particular order:

• LibreOffice - I mostly use the Writer component as a much better and more reliable replacement for Microsoft Word, but more and more tools are seeing use as time goes on
• PDF XChange - excellent tabbed PDF viewer with basic editor components and a great OCR addition
• ShareX - screenshot program that allows for a remarkable amount of easy, intelligent automation
• Notepad++ - my text editor of choice for 6+ years now.
• Ditto - a bit strange to learn and use but super reliable, actively developed, and very customizable

The Ribbon problem

This post is notice of updates to another post on the Microsoft Ribbon interface.  I did an article recently on Customizing Office, getting into why LibreOffice is much more friendly to customization but today I went back and spent some time detailing my problems with Microsoft.

Goals?

I tried to come up with some site goals and found myself mysteriously stuck on this.  Here's what I have so far ...

Ongoing goals:

• Help developers
• Advocate for portability; get more programs to go portable
• Promote open source and WINE capability
• More actively monitor programs to avoid garbage

Site Improvements (a lot of this depends on Andrew)

• Site update/cleanup
• Better image visuals
• BitTorrent mirror for old stuff (with VirusTotal listings and decompressed archives so it's overall smaller)
• A full listing of everything we have all in one big list
  
• Fix tagging/categories system
• Github site for tracking site changes

Suggestions welcome.

What the heck is U3?

I suspect a chunk of the current portable software world came from the long-abandoned U3 technology.  The program came with quite a few flash drives and enabled certified program system, a familiar menu, running programs from a portable device.

A view of the program:

Despite seeming legitimate, the general consensus on the site has been: if you see it, remove it.  The program came on the scene back in 2005 and then faded away back in 2010 without much notice.

Although there were only a hand full of threads on PFW that address it, mostly there to recommend use of something else as the program had serious stability and system issues:

• What is the point of U3?
  

• U3 Application Tool

• U3 can be a pain

• Retooling U3 CD-ROM partitions

​One wonders what could have been if Sandisk would have been willing to take this on as a more serious project.  It could have been huge.

Drives I use

I have two devices with me at all times:

1. High speed, high capacity drive - SanDisk Ultra USB 3 (I'm not happy with the form factor but the speed is great).  This is formatted to NTFS and is used for important operations like operating system replacement, Virtual Machines, etc.  Where possible, the contents are encrypted.  Portable programs are run from this device.


2. A low-end, broad compatibility - Stellar PNY drive that has both standard and miniUSB connections (for Android devices).  This is formatted to FAT32 but I don't trust files files saved to this device.  This is unencrypted.  Portable programs saved to this device are first copied to the host computer.


​
​

Bad Windows track

A good summary/overview of how frustrating Microsoft's recent decisions with Windows 10 have been.  I feel like I've been here before with their monopolistic tendencies, only to be replaced by an anti-consumer effort.

This hurts portability only in the way that this is going to hurt Microsoft dominance over time.  More people are going to move toward Mac and Android.

The Maxthon browser non-response

So the widely reported on Maxthon issue that caused us to take the entry offline has basically gone nowhere.  The Maxthon site has completely ignored the issue, listing nothing about it on the home page or the "about us" or "privacy" pages:

http://www.maxthon.com/about-us/
http://www.maxthon.com/privacy/

Rather than talk about it, they've evidently instead just released a new version called "Nitro" to change the subject.  I'm not going to bother linking to it.

If for some reason you have to use this program, someone on the site (smaragdus) appears to have figured out a way to turn off this behavior.  For my part, I don't plan to go anywhere near this garbage.

Textify saves SO much time

I've been doing some testing lately and, about once a week, I've been using the excellent Textify to pull the specific version out of Internet Explorer.  Before Textify, you basically have to paste this entire image into a bug report:

It's SO much easier and simpler to include a simple line of text than to paste a screenshot. Copying over those numbers is tedious and invites mistakes.  Textify fixes this.  I hover over the number I want, hold Shift+Middle Click (the default), and it pops up as a text window:

I copy the data I want:

And paste that long number sequence (11.0.9600.18376) into the bug report.

Once you have this kind of time-saver, it's painful to go back to a machine without it.

Customizing your Office suite

I've seen a lot of criticism of LibreOffice's older interface and while it's getting better, one thing that isn't talked about in the user interface behind the Microsoft Ribbon format is customization difficulty.



Just try to track down how to just add a border to an image and then add it to the existing Picture tab.  This took a half an hour and an amazing amount of of trial and error.  I never even got it into the Picture tab and instead had to create a Custom tab.  At least with LibreOffice, when you want to add a button to the tool bar, it's super easy:

 

Additionally, customizations that happen in LibreOffice Portable go everywhere with you.

Why I avoid Liberkey

Liberkey (liberkey.com) is a portable software project that's been around for a few years and suffered from attacks by the PortableApps project for not conforming to legal requirements around trademark and licenses.  Even still, the project has continued work and I had trouble finding any details about it online.  As the topic is banned on PFW as flamebait, I decided to write up a quick breakdown:

I don't use Liberkey because:

1. The response from Piriform indicating that there was no exception given to the Liberkey project.
2. The insistence that encrypting config files is a choice, no explanation needed.
3. I'm unwilling to use a closed platform like theirs when there are so many great open tools available in this area. 

You can sift through the lengthy forum posts on the site about this topic (1 and 2) or read the (somewhat old) MaximumPC article hosted on archive.org.

FAQ item: why doesn't portable software integrate with my computer?

This is unfortunately one of the trade-offs of using portable software; while PortableFreeware has easy backup/sync, transport, and generally cleaner behavior on a home system, it often doesn't smoothly integrate with the home system.

Workarounds:

• The fastest and simplest way: right-click on a file, select "Open With..." and choose a portable program, but you'll have to do this on every computer and every file association.
• Some programs have a built-in associations manager that you can enable, but must be done on every computer.  XNViewMP for example has a program called "Associate files with XnViewMP.exe" while XMind has "Associate_XMind_File.bat"
• Programs like CAFE/Coffee (and others) have appeared to try and address this integration question but generally require some energy to enable.

Related threads: 

• When I double click on a .TXT file, I want it to open in my favorite text editor
• Assigning File Types to Portable Application
• How to Make Portable Applications the Default File Handler in Windows 8 (speaks specifically to PortableApps and eXpresso users)

Developing FAQ items

The following are items I hope to recommend for addition to the FAQ in the coming months.  Some are unclear or what they're trying to describe is something I'm still piecing together.

What's wrong with writing to the registry?

Although we still accept programs that write to the registry, we generally favor “stealth” programs that avoid this behavior.  This is because the more settings written over time, the slower and less stable the computer becomes. Many people I know make it a point to reinstall or re-image their entire computer every year to deal with this.

Background:

The Windows registry is a poorly-managed toolset designed (as far as I can tell) to enable trialware. If it weren't for the registry, a lot of people wouldn't buy Photoshop and instead would just reinstall every 30 days. To enable this, settings are written all over the place throughout a complex series of files across a given system. The system resists edition because manually removing these settings can cause system instability.

(I've also thought about another designation for a long time called "registry green" which make clear that registry entries are more problematic than AppData writes.)


What do you have against registerware/registrationware?  Answer/background.
 

Should this program be added?  What criteria makes a program ideal?  Answer/background.

Do we list apps that are in beta?  Yes. (more)

What do you have against adware?

• I'm switching to adware, why is that a problem?
• Adware policy concerns (FreeFileSync)
• LeeLu Soft: labeling  

Am I running 64-bit?  How do I know which version of the program to download?  Possible answer/background.

How do I test for portability?  Possible answer.

Why haven’t you looked at this program?  Possible answer.

Various flashdrive-related links (part 2)

USB Lock – use a USB drive to lock your computer (there's a ton of programs like this that I've been wanting to test for a long time)

USB drive Letter manager – to give a little more control over you portable programs, great if your system doesn't use relative links.  For example, the "G:\" drive rather than whatever drive a program is running on.

ImageUSB – write USB images to multiple drives, great if you're giving out a lot of small, cheap drives as part of a promo

---

See Part 1

Various HOWTOs

I put together some HOWTOs that I use to solve problems using PortableFreeware.

1. Check for duplicate links (inside a single page) with Xenu Link Checker
2. A trick for helping with LibreOffice image anchoring
3. Batch Word-to-PDF conversion process that includes use of FileOptimizer to compress everything (warning: command-line based)

 Two others that are just for Microsoft products:

1. Enable old spellcheck in Microsoft Word (the new one sucks)
2. PowerPoint trick keep an object on top (great when you have to markup 100 different slides)

Introductions to portable software

I've been trying to put together a more formal introduction to portability for some time and have made some headway:

• Breakdown on the difference between portable and installed software
• A great overview of portable benefits
• Specific introduction to PortableFreeware.com

It's not a bug, it's a feature

I often wonder about the perspective of the different parties in a given bug report.

In open source and free software
 
How bug testers think they write emails:
"I noticed something was wrong!  I'm helping."

How developers probably read these emails:
"You suck at software and should give up and become a florist.  You twit."

What the bug report actually says:
"It doesn't work ... it worked before and now it doesn't (doesn't say what "it" is)."

At a company where I was a bug tester

Me:
"Your program is shit and you should admit it and give me a medal."

What I imagine they thought:
"Oh look, my Reddit post is doing well!"

Make a PowerPoint deck to a specific resolution (1024x768)

I wanted to capture some screenshots and save them to a presentation in *exactly* the format that they were recorded.  Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to get PowerPoint to set itself to a specific page size other than by Imperial (inches) or Metric (centimeters) measurements.  As such I employed the free LibreOffice Impress.

1. Start the program and launch Impress
2. Modify the size standard by going to the menu and selecting Tools - Options and then LibreOffice Impress - General
3. Under Unit of Measurement choose Point
4. 
5. Click OK and you will return to the main Impress screen
6. From the menu, select Format - Page
7. In the Page Setup window, modify the Width and Height (in this case 1024x768)
   
8. 
9. Click OK and return to the main Window

Finally, just for the rest of my team who uses PowerPoint, I exported this to the PPTX format but you can do most of this the same in PowerPoint.

Download LibreOffice.

Oracle "everything" reader program

I kept meaning to come back to this Oracle program that lets you view 100s of file formats but, in addition to recent intellectual property stuff, I've been fighting Oracle software a lot recently. I just have no patience for this company anymore.

Unfortunately this was midway into a batch of Java programs.  Though I'm not sure if the recent court case means that Java is now fundamentally more open.  The Free Software Foundation seems to think so.

LibreOffice image additions

Some stuff that's been around since StarOffice is just not getting fixed even under the rapidly evolving LibreOffice.  The issue in short is around adding an image and have it just float around tediously the page until you "anchor" it.  I can see some reasons for this (e.g. imports from Draw) but for common word processing operations, it's a huge pain.  At the minimum, default image drop behavior should be something in the options.
 
My work around for this (hilariously) is to open another word processing program AbiWord (I specifically recommend the WinPenPack version "X-AbiWord"), paste in some images, and then save it as a .DOC file.  When you import it into LibreOffice, the images automatically go to the "Anchor - As Character"  setting, which is really how it should be anyway.

(This works in OpenOffice as well.  Tested with Abiword 2.8.6.)

Update: I posted a HOWTO addressing this.

Crappy privacy settings the new normal?

With a lot of unhappiness around Windows 10 privacy violations, I sometimes wonder if this isn't just the whole industry.  Google's Android and Amazon Echo are after all actively recording you

I predict this functionality and other tools ending up in court sometime in the coming years.  There is a solid group of cases behind recording people's conversations without their knowledge.

What open source can and can't do

Having tested 1,000+ different freeware programs over time, I can say certain things about the open source options versus other tools.

What open source generally does well:

• Stability - generally doesn't crash.  Notepad++ is a rock but many "beta"-stage open tools are remarkably solid.
• Compatibility - usually opens, saves, and connects with a wide variety of different formats and services.  Both LibreOffice and SMPlayer open/play 100+ more formats than their commercial rivals.
• Speed - compared to other tools, it might not be the fastest, but it's almost never the slowest.
• Configurable - there are almost always some additional options/tweaks, sometimes hundreds of them.  The Firefox about:config tool is crammed with available tweaks.
• Roll-back options - if a new version introduces something ugly, it almost always lists older versions.  For example, I temporarily went back to an earlier version of LibreOffice recently some months back.
• Behaves as expected - commercial software will frequently take out features with the next release because it's annoying to test or too few users care, but open source tools very rarely remove functionality.  The steps or sequence you used last year to fix/modify an image in GIMP will be the same next year.

 

What it doesn't do well:

• Usability - there's almost always a learning curve.  GIMP took a long time to learn.
• Documentation/Intro - usually poor, often non-existent.  I won't name anyone specific, but many open source games generally have to be understood by mere trial and error alone.
• Interface - because features gradually increase over time and not at a steady or expected pace, a well-organized interface is the exception and not the rule.  I could name a few apps that need a revamp.
• Minor bugs generally sit still - if there's an issue that has a workaround, it often doesn't get fixed.  Firefox has an minor, intermittent address bar issue that's been around for years.  But you can hit reload so ... *shrug*

Finally, I seem to have better experience with GPL-licensed software over time versus other licenses.  I can't speak to differences in v2 vs. v3.

Portable Media Center?

This is old news now but Microsoft walked away from an advanced media hub and there are some potentially portable alternatives on the scene.

I've been meaning to test these for portability but I just don't have a setup where these tools make sense and nobody's really rallied for portable media center tools on PFW.  Although most media centers are on a dedicated box anyway, I can see a portable option being really useful if you want to stand up a quickie entertainment hub at a party or event.

Path portability when setting file associations (LibreOffice Portable)

Issue: 

I ran LibreOffice on a Win7x64 machine and did a manual association of .ODT files with it (the "Open with ..." operation).  Then, when the LibreOffice folder moved, I couldn't re-set the file association.

Resolution:

Open regedit and delete the entire .odt key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.odt

(solution source)

---

More background:

I had OpenOffice installed, opening ODT files by default.  In an effort to fix a problem with OpenOffice quickly, I downloaded the "LibreOffice Still" Portable version to my Downloads folder and set it as the default viewer.  I later moved it to another folder (where all my other portable applications are located) and just couldn't fix the old association.

Related:

More on LibreOffice "Still"

Various flashdrive-related links (part 1)

I keep wanting to draw up some kind of link breakdown on all the great USB tools and tricks.  Since it just doesn't seem to be coming together, I'll just do an informal series on it here.

• HP USB Disk StorageFormat Tool - specifically it's ability to handle formatting drives with a FAT or FAT32 filesystem makes this a must-have. I've been meaning to add this to the official PFW database for quite some time.
• Assign a custom icon to your flash drive - since all drives looking alike makes finding them somewhat difficult.
• Write images to multiple USB drives - great for giving out lots of Linux or portable software flash drives
• USB Device info ... "lets you view a variety of technical details about connected USB devices, including vendor id and product id, serial number, device type and transfer speed. Also shows USB 2.0 or 3.0."

(Two of these were thanks to an old PFW post)

--

See Part 2

Text is not going to get killed off by video

This article on how most things are shifting to a video format was something noted by someone from Facebook, but I took it as a suggestion that training and HOWTO articles aren't all necessarily going to video-only.

Related:

• 7 Rules of Great Technical Documentation

Keyboard monitor tools

When doing software HOWTOs, it's hugely important to be able to show what keys are being pressed at any given time.  Especially when you're trying to show easy shortcuts to jump through a tedious process.

A great example of this function.

This may become it's own category eventually but for the time being, I wanted to list all the tools in this group:

• Carnac - so far my favorite, used in the example above
• QiPress
• NohBoard - not portable
• ShowOff - super simple, from the developer of PushMonitOff and many other great tools:
• KeyCastOW

LanDesk shut down warning issue

This is a very specific solution to a very specific issue, but I was having some trouble with a LanDesk service that was running aggressively to shut down my system (sometimes without asking nicely).  Unfortunately, I spent a lot of time trying to resolve this problem with a program that's not 64-bit compatible, but I'll leave the info here in case someone has the same issue on a 32-bit system:

ProcessGuard

The code:

5,collector.exe,,>,3,10,Processor usage above limit!,,,0

This was setup to notify processor increase (that may indicate an update being run):

The Current State of Portable Freeware

Disclaimer: I wrote this up about 2 years ago when mobile was still in the process of pushing into the space of Windows.  I'm listing it here because the situation still exists and this is still a topic I'm trying to contend with.  Perhaps I'll continue this article in the future as I have a better analysis.

History

Our collective goal is actually a problem that Microsoft tried to fix when it created Windows: DOS had separate, unchecked programs all existing inside DOS in their own little areas. Shared libraries, the ability to backup a collective settings folder all at once, and user-specific or "all user" settings folders. A graphical, multi-user operating system customized for individuals to compete with Unix.

Unfortunately, this didn't fix things. Increasing registry entries slowly slow a computer down over time. No software maker ever seemed to store their settings in the right place (My Documents? AppData? C:\windows?), and nobody wanted to export all their settings from EACH INDIVIDUAL PROGRAM everytime they upgraded or moved from one computer to the next.

So portable advocates went the other direction:

1. Encouraging users to avoid using programs which save settings the way Windows enabled: to the registry or some random directory somewhere on the drive
2. Encourage developers to:
• Make programs reasonably self-contained so they could be moved from place to place without breaking functionality
• Avoid leaving a bunch of garbage behind after the program is run 
• Make the uninstall process unnecessary 

There are a variety of side benefits to this type of approach beyond just portability including security, simplicity, and more that are better detailed elsewhere, which is why these sites are popular. My point here is that while PortableApps.com, WinPenPack.com, and PortableFreeware.com all have similar goals, but are covering different areas of the spectrum.

The Shift to Mobile

Fundamentally, there is a shift going on in computers right now towards new operating systems. Many people in the next 5 years will invariably experience computers exclusively through Android and iOS. Could portable software solve a problem there in the same way?

 

iOS

Since iOS is a walled garden unless you're willing to hack ("jailbreak") the device, you must get apps through Apple. As a result, they save settings however they want and talking about portability there is likely irrelevant.

 

Android

This OS suffers from a very similar problem to Windows: installing too many programs and running too many of them at startup will slow your phone down in a way not unlike Windows. Again, applications are given control to install themselves in startup and looking for specific files in your average Android directory structure for local files is like whack-a-mole. Most programs seem to search the entire onboard drive and just show everything. Settings? They're assumed to be stored "on the cloud".

Portable may still have a place on Android but it's very unclear at this stage.

No such thing as perfect security

Lots of security threads I see go something like this:

1. You should use <tactic> and that will protect yourself from attackers
2. But <tactic> you can't protect yourself from really serious dedicated attackers.
3. <tactic> definitely can't protect yourself from state actors
4. Give up.

It's like mad libs.  Encryption, long passwords, keeping your stuff locked up, etc.  The only real conclusion to any of this is to stop using technology altogether.

Stop Crying License

In light of the fact that many people create their own licenses that are really just anti-licenses with tenuous legal standing, I decided to write up one narrated as a person fighting with their spouse:

---

STOP CRYING PUBLIC LICENSE

Version 3, June 2013

Copyright (C) Me

Look, you can use the damn license. It's not a big deal! Copy and distribute for all I care. Modify it, use it, change it, give it to your friends, post it on the Internet. No -- you ... look, it's fine. It's FINE. Just don't blame me when it breaks. And for god's sake stop crying!

Suggestions to freeware developers

Sometimes I wonder if freeware users think programs on websites like PortableFreeware.com or Softpedia.com are being written entirely by Microsoft as like a free extra as thanks for using Windows. It's frustrating and I've worked for some time now to help generate a clearer line between software users and software developers as people.  With that in mind, here's some ways to approach running a freeware or open source software project that won't leave you feeling unappreciated:

1. Keep in mind that you may only hear from your users when something goes wrong. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just something to keep in mind.  I have lots of programs that save me time and energy, but haven't really had a reason to reach out to the developer.
2. If you ask users to contact you if they like your product.  People like giving advice (like the guy writing this sentence) so if you ask for feedback, you'll get more responses.  Just as with the above item, asking for advice means you'll get some negative responses too. From experience, that's just how some people communicate.
3. Recognize that thanks may come in weird places. Some people say thanks by telling their friends, I spend more time writing up entries for software I like, but there are a hundred ways to show appreciation that don't include an email or a cash bump from paypal.

"Drive by" installation

This is nothing new but it's a great example of what I think of when I hear "drive-by" software installs: a meaningless, wasteful, and extremely negative install that nobody wants and happens against user wishes.

Super simple map-making tools

Sometime back I went looking for a simple map-making program for drawing out a loose view of areas either for a home, apartment, or a Dungeons and Dragons campaign.  I'm not pursuing this track any longer but I spent enough ours looking around that I decided I'd list out some possibilities:

• RPG Boss (open source, might be portable)
• Tiled  
• Other RPG Creation software (wikipedia)

I had some success once upon a time with Paint.NET (not portable) zoomed in with the "Grid" settings enabled but not much more.

Related: a portable tool for real map management

Idea: Tagging program

I had an idea for a program that I'm still fleshing out.  The primary idea is a very simple entry screen where you can type out a simple note. 

The Tagging System

What happens is that I have a note pad program where I write down a few quick notes and I've developed a shorthand for how this works.  I put down a few keywords separated by semicolons like so:

Recipe: Bread: www.whateversite.com/bread

Todo: store: buy honey

Music: Coldharbour Sessions 012

I'd like to enter these into an entry window and then view in a separate catalog window.  This catalog window would be able to view by various tags, as a nested list, view in order of creation, search, etc.  I'm thinking entries (by default) would allow carriage returns, so I'd say you'd press "CTRL+Enter" to get it added to the database.  Others would just need one line, especially for really simple ideas and todolists.

Sub-Categories

Another optional feature would be double colons for sub categories. For example:

Blog: Funny (would represent both blog and funny)

Bird:: Hummingbird (Hummingbird as a subgroup of Bird)

 I'm not sure if anyone else needs this but it's been in my head for some time now.  I might write something more detailed including mockups and use cases if someone's interested.

Todo lists

Of course, some are just notes but if we could specifically call out todolist items somehow, that would be even better.  Perhaps a multi-line system like:

TODO: Grocery: Ketchup

TODO: Research carpet cleaner

I'd like to see some of the tags get treated differently

When you click on one tab, it should show you them as a list but the TODO list items should have checkbox marks next to them. Then, when you click the checkbox, it switches the TODO tag to DONE.

Multi-line duplicates

Perhaps a multi-line system would have a "copy above" tweak where you use a "+" symbol to just copy the first tag.  So for example:

TODO:: Grocery: Ketchup

++: Lettuce

++: Mayo

 

Wear Leveling and TRIM support

For users who run their whole computer off a flash drive or SSD, Wear Leveling is important as most operating systems write a lot of small, frequently modified files to disk.  Since flash media has a limited number of writes, saving those to the same place over and over again will cut down on the life of your flash drive.

More on this:

• Wikipedia entry
• Corsair claims that they have extremely high read-write capability  

Complicating matters for fans of volume encryption, TrueCrypt doesn’t support this and VeraCrypt actually advises against it for security reasons.

Similarly, for those still hanging on to Windows XP, if you have a solid state drive, it’s a place where you might want to upgrade to get TRIM support.