A great tool for getting screenshots ... and it's free

A couple of years ago I was needing something to help me get screenshots to use in the Donor Manager user's guide and I found and downloaded the free screen capture tool from GadWin systems.

I just went to their site and downloaded the latest and greatest and all I can say is "Wow." This little tool is fantastic. It was good before ... it's great now!

Most folks never need something like this, but I find it very, very handy. Highly recommended.

And, it's still free. They have several commercial apps there for sale, and they look interesting as well.

Search engines / some interesting things

Since I put up the donor manager website, I haven't given too much thought to search engine placement. I figured, sure, it would be nice if people could find the site through a search, but I really expected most people to come through word of mouth referrals or through a link on some other website.

And, I still think that is true.

But, I ran across an interesting artice on a www.webmasterworld.com. I don't recall how I ended up there but found some fascinating discussions.

One headline that caught my eye was about MSN's new search engine. The title of the article is "MSN Bot on the Prowl with a Healthy Appetite."

Microsoft has decided to compete with Google and Yahoo and get into the search engine business in a big way. Their search engine "bot" or "spider" has been "crawling" the internet for some time building an index of pages in anticipation of the launch of their service sometime in the fall of 2004.

Now, the interesting thing is that the MSN search engine is indexing the entire DM web site every day, to the tune of about 3 megs of data... every day! That is 10 times more than Google or Yahoo are indexing.

Every day, at least for the past few weeks.

I'm impressed. If they are doing that elsewhere, when they launch this puppy, it's going to be something to see. No one every accused Bill Gates of doing anything half-way, except perhaps getting the bugs out of Windows and Office without calling a bug fix an upgrade and charging for it.

But, that's a topic for another post some day.

At any rate, the agressiveness of Microsoft in searching the internet is very impressive. Hey, they found my little site, and I didn't pay anyone $ 49.95 to submit it for me.

If I were Google, I'd be a bit concerned. There's a new kid in town.

A change of pace for the week

Most of last week I was out in the country at a campground, helping teach the "Sharpening Your Interpersonal Skills" course to a group of new missionaries with the Free Methodist Church (http://www.fmcna.org).

What a delightful group of folks. One couple was in their late 20s, another in their late 30s, another in their late 40s, another in their late 50s and another in their early 60s. I think they represent a cross-section of the new missionary candidates with a lot of organizations.

In the evenings I had a chance to work on some background code in the Donor Manager, continuing to move some of the behind the scenes code to a more object oriented programming style. Plus, for a diversion, I continued my reading and learning of ADO.NET (another Microsoft database programming system), and watched some episodes of the first season of The West Wing. For Christmas, I got a set of DVDs of the West Wing (I had probably only seen 2 or 3 episodes of this in the past several years). I was very impressed with this show. I didn't agree with the political perspective of many of the characters, but am looking forward to finishing the set.

This weekend I completed beta 10 which I posted Sunday evening. Not many new features, but a lot of behind the scenes changes. Plus, there is a major enhancement of the filtering routine in the works thanks to Doug Thomson. Doug wrote the compression library that makes the "Pack and Go" and the "Live Update" routines possible. He's also got some database synchonization code and screen resizing code that will probably make it into the program at some time in the near future.

I had a birthday last week. I was out teaching at the SYIS workshop, and my wife and daughter had bought me a very nice digital camera for my birthday. It is the Canon Rebel EOS Digital, and they spent way too much money for it. But, it is a really, really nice camera. I'm looking forward to using it!

This week I need to help write some new software to link the Christian Union's new accounting system to the Donor Manager. I had written the original code several years ago to create DM posting files for their missionaries, and a major upgrade in their accounting system has just been completed, so the DM synch needs some tweaking.

Visual FoxPro 9.0 was released a few days ago for beta

The public beta release of Visual FoxPro 9.0 (aka Europa) was released for download just a few days ago. I doubt that this is of much excitement to most folks, but for me it's quite exciting.

I've been programming in Microsoft's Visual FoxPro for about 15 years, and it is a delightful (most of the time!) database programming languge. Lately it has been loosing support in Microsoft who is now favoring Visual Studio .NET (or as some folks say, .NYET). VS.NET has some great things in it and is, I believe, a superior platform in many ways. It has some real drawbacks, but I'm trying to learn it. I feel like I'm in language school again.

Anyway, back to Visual FoxPro. This new release will go into a formal public version in September, but in the meanwhile, it's being released for anyone who wants to do the download to help get the last bugs out of it. If you're curious, go to www.microsoft.com/vfoxpro.

The new version has some very, very nice items in it and I have no doubt that the Donor Manager will be upgraded to Fox9 this fall. Just a word to the wise! And it will be worth the shift.

I'll post a bit from time to time as I get a chance to play with this new release.

Start talking to yourself ... don't listen to yourself talking

This has nothing to do with the Donor Manager, but I thought it was interesting.

I've been helping a bit with a website with resources for Mission Care / Member Care: www.missionarycare.com.

There is a very nice database on the site (by Dr. Ron Koteskey) with short summaries and outlines of over 700 resources related to mental health and missions.

Here's a gem of a quote that I ran across in the database this morning.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones drew my attention to the need to start talking to myself instead of listening to myself talking. So instead of listening to my own catalog of woes, I started cutting myself off rudely in midsentence and telling myself that what I needed was a good dose of perspective restoration.

It struck me and I thought others might benefit as well.

Proxy servers, PDAs, and Synchronization

In between helping Holly (our daughter) get out a prayer letter, I had a chance to tinker a bit with several things yesterday.  

 

I've got about 75% of the coding done on the routines to allow unlimited e-mail addresses (and perhaps alternate phone numbers).  It requires a number of changes in several places in the program, but it's going pretty well.  It seems that many people have many e-mail addresses (hey - I've got 6 of my own), so hopefully it will prove handy.

 

I'm continuing to look for a way to build bulk email sending into the program.  Doing straight text messages is no problem at all, and I may go ahead and implement that pretty soon.  Even the personalization is not difficult.  Now, HTML email is the challenge!  We'll see how that goes.

 

I've been using the Infacta Group Mail program for sending mass e-mails and find it quite nice.  It takes a little learning, but it's pretty easy to use.

 

I ran into an interesting problem yesterday getting the DM "live update" routine (new in 5.25) working behind a proxy server.  When an app starts talking to the internet, firewalls and proxy servers kick in and do their thing (as they should).  So, I'm getting a quick education on that kind of stuff thanks to some extremely helpful people both at WGM headquarters and at JAARS.  I still don't have all of the kinks out of that system yet.

 

I got some sample code sent to me the other day that holds great promise for putting in true 2 way synchonization.  I'll probably put it into the "Pack and Go" routine first, then tackle the whole "2 way Synch with Outlook" issue next.  If I can get the Synch with Outlook issue solved, then I have a natural pipeline for synching with PDAs.   

 

I continue to be amazed at the tremendous willingness to help that I find in the computer commmunity as well as within the misisonary community.  It's truly a joy to be able to contribute and to receive the contributions of others.

PDAs, Synchronization, Multiple email addresses, and Proxy servers

In between helping Holly (our daughter) get out a prayer letter, I had a chance to tinker a bit with several things yesterday.

I've got about 75% of the coding done on the routines to allow unlimited e-mail addresses (and perhaps alternate phone numbers). It requires a number of changes in several places in the program, but it's going pretty well. It seems that many people have many e-mail addresses (hey - I've got 6 of my own), so hopefully it will prove handy.

I'm continuing to look for a way to build bulk email sending into the program. Doing straight text messages is no problem at all, and I may go ahead and implement that pretty soon. Even the personalization is not difficult. Now, HTML email is the challenge! We'll see how that goes.

I've been using the Infacta Group Mail program for sending mass e-mails and find it quite nice. It takes a little learning, but it's pretty easy to use.

I ran into an interesting problem yesterday getting the DM "live update" routine (new in 5.25) working behind a proxy server. When an app starts talking to the internet, firewalls and proxy servers kick in and do their thing (as they should). So, I'm getting a quick education on that kind of stuff thanks to some extremely helpful people both at WGM headquarters and at JAARS. I still don't have all of the kinks out of that system yet.

I got some sample code sent to me the other day that holds great promise for putting in true 2 way synchonization. I'll probably put it into the "Pack and Go" routine first, then tackle the whole "2 way Synch with Outlook" issue next. If I can get the Synch with Outlook issue solved, then I have a natural pipeline for synching with PDAs.

I continue to be amazed at the tremendous willingness to help that I find in the computer commmunity as well as within the misisonary community. It's truly a joy to be able to contribute and to receive the contributions of others.