Freeware reviews and other stuff

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vbMark

Greetings my Freeware Friends,

From the "If you care" department:

Two things:

1) I just wanted to let everyone know that I’ve added some more links to
free software on my site. Of most interest may be the freeware Flash
creation software that I found. I’ve not tested either of the two yet so
maybe you can review them and let me and other know what you think. Post
on my new message board if you want.

2) What this world is lacking is a central place for people to tell others,
or find out from others, whether a particular Freeware program is good,
bad, or ugly and which ones are better than other and why. So I’ve created
a message board specifically for this. Go to my message board under
"Freeware Reviews" and let others know why they should or should not use a
particular program. Elaborate on its strengths, weaknesses, etc. Arguing
is allowed. :)

Sincerely,
vbMark

http://www.vbmark.com
 
2) What this world is lacking is a central place for people to
tell others, or find out from others, whether a particular
Freeware program is good, bad, or ugly and which ones are better
than other and why.
Click to expand...

No, that's one of the reasons this newsgroup exists.
 
Tiger said:
No, that's one of the reasons this newsgroup exists.
Click to expand...

Agreed.... prefer the newsgroup myself (with the exception of the Freeware
Arena forums of course)

--

Regards

Steven Burn
Ur I.T. Mate Group
www.it-mate.co.uk

Keeping it FREE!
 
somexyzguy said:
Well, just a thought as I've not really seen a lot reviews here.
Click to expand...

One reason you won't see many reviews here except what somebody lamely
copies from a website is because if something would be said that goes
against the grain of the blind-sheep mentality it will quickly get trolled
down by the self-appointed keepers of the forum. Generally, a website
reviewing it's own program is going to be quite biased toward the good
points of said program. It's not going to point out it's shortcomings or
quirks.

Once in awhile you'll get a brief idea about a program from someone who
actually uses it, but I haven't seen anything come through here that would
qualify as any kind of a "serious review".

I'm sure I'll get flamed for speaking out, but if someone proves me
incorrect in my opinions on a matter I am subject to change.
 
Well, just a thought as I've not really seen a lot reviews here.
Click to expand...

One reason for that is because we do annual reviews by vote and publish
the results as www.pricelessware.org.

A second and very important reason for that is because most of the
people here understand that what works for me doesn't necessarily work
for you. Most feature lists can be found at freeware sites and while
you may prefer irfanview, I just may prefer xnview and for reasons that
are solely mine. Therefore, we make recommendations and encourage you
to try as many alternatives as you wish and find what works for *you.*
No doubt you will find people arguing over which freeware program is
"better"...but "better" is always a judgment call and in the eye of the
beholder.
 
Tiger said:
One reason for that is because we do annual reviews by vote and publish
the results as www.pricelessware.org.

A second and very important reason for that is because most of the
people here understand that what works for me doesn't necessarily work
for you. Most feature lists can be found at freeware sites and while
you may prefer irfanview, I just may prefer xnview and for reasons that
are solely mine. Therefore, we make recommendations and encourage you
to try as many alternatives as you wish and find what works for *you.*
No doubt you will find people arguing over which freeware program is
"better"...but "better" is always a judgment call and in the eye of the
beholder.
Click to expand...

Well said.

Mike Sa
 
2) What this world is lacking is a central place for people to tell others,
or find out from others, whether a particular Freeware program is good,
bad, or ugly and which ones are better than other and why. So I’ve created
a message board specifically for this. Go to my message board under
"Freeware Reviews" and let others know why they should or should not use a
particular program. Elaborate on its strengths, weaknesses, etc. Arguing
is allowed. :)
Click to expand...

Good thoughts. Appreciated. However, it's really like trying to re-invent
this news group. I find web-based forums very cumbersome and hard to
navigate anyway. If there's a suitable newsgroup, I totally avoid web
forums. Don't let my personal preferences discourage you. Throw your ideas
against the wall and see what sticks. ;)

Bob

Remove "kins" to reply by e-mail.
 
Good thoughts. Appreciated. However, it's really like trying to
re-invent this news group. I find web-based forums very cumbersome and
hard to navigate anyway. If there's a suitable newsgroup, I totally
avoid web forums. Don't let my personal preferences discourage you.
Throw your ideas against the wall and see what sticks. ;)

Bob

Remove "kins" to reply by e-mail.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the encouragment :)
 
Bob said:
Good thoughts. Appreciated. However, it's really like trying to re-invent
this news group. I find web-based forums very cumbersome and hard to
navigate anyway. If there's a suitable newsgroup, I totally avoid web
forums. Don't let my personal preferences discourage you. Throw your ideas
against the wall and see what sticks. ;)

Bob

Remove "kins" to reply by e-mail.
Click to expand...

Do you know what percentage of internet users have never heard of
newsgroups let alone found their way to one? I too prefer a newsgroupe
to a forum but way more people would find their way to a forum and maybe
that would lead to more feedback.

miskairal
 
Steven Burn said:
prefer the newsgroup myself
Click to expand...

Just some ideas tipped into a cocked hat, so don't shoot me for it ...

It's a pity that articles don't have a kind-of "karma" attached to
them, like they do in Slashdot. It might be a good filtering mechanism
for the many many posts that get added to acf.

It would be interesting to know if there were any budding editors on
the group who would be willing to present, say, the top 10/20 posts
for the month. A simple mechanism would need to be in place for them
to select a list of candidates, which they could whittle down to the
required number. Working with a scriptable newreader may provide an
additional convenience factor. I did a scan on Sourceforge, and came
across Mahogany, which claims that "Everything is configurable" (from
Python).
 
It would be interesting to know if there were any budding editors on
the group who would be willing to present, say, the top 10/20 posts
for the month. A simple mechanism would need to be in place for them
to select a list of candidates, which they could whittle down to the
required number.
Click to expand...

Actually, I discovered that Thunderbird has "local folders" - so
interesting articles could be copied there, and then whittle down.
 
Mark said:
It's a pity that articles don't have a kind-of "karma" attached to
them, like they do in Slashdot. It might be a good filtering mechanism
for the many many posts that get added to acf.

It would be interesting to know if there were any budding editors on
the group who would be willing to present, say, the top 10/20 posts
for the month. A simple mechanism would need to be in place for them
to select a list of candidates, which they could whittle down to the
required number. Working with a scriptable newreader may provide an
additional convenience factor. I did a scan on Sourceforge, and came
across Mahogany, which claims that "Everything is configurable" (from
Python).
Click to expand...

ATM we only have four filters listed on the Posting tips page:

[OT] - added to off-topic messages and responses
[AVU] - added to anti-virus update notices
[PL] - added to Pricelessware List discussions
*SPAM* - added to responses to spam posts

Those are all to allow people to filter out posts they are *not*
interested in.

Perhaps filters to help people *find* posts of special interest would be
useful. [INFO], [HOW-TO], [REVIEW] or some such. . .

Susan
 
Perhaps filters to help people *find* posts of special interest would be
useful. [INFO], [HOW-TO], [REVIEW] or some such. . .
Click to expand...

I post daily automated summaries of acf activity to urls.sytes.net. If
there were, say, widespread use of putting "sucks" or "rocks" after a
web link, then I could score the links. Unfortunately, I doubt that a
sufficient quantity of posters would adopt this convention; and there
are potential problems of people craftily abusing the system.
 
Mark said:
Perhaps filters to help people *find* posts of special interest would
be useful. [INFO], [HOW-TO], [REVIEW] or some such. . .
Click to expand...


I post daily automated summaries of acf activity to urls.sytes.net. If
there were, say, widespread use of putting "sucks" or "rocks" after a
web link, then I could score the links. Unfortunately, I doubt that a
sufficient quantity of posters would adopt this convention; and there
are potential problems of people craftily abusing the system.
Click to expand...

I don't think that kind of labeling is going to happen. . .

OTOH someone usually spots shareware - and posts a follow-up

It might be good to have a special filter added to those follow-up posts:

[$ware] perhaps - one problem with doing that would be posts
*mislabeling* apps as $ware - which seems to happen fairly frequently
with Liteware. . .

Susan
 
Susan said:
I don't think that kind of labeling is going to happen. . .
Click to expand...

Agreed.

Here's something I've run up the flagpole to see who salutes it: I
created a wiki page for alt.comp.freeware here:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AcfWiki

For those not familiar with wikis, they are online collaborative
documents which anyone can edit, add to, delete, whatever.
 
ATM we only have four filters listed
on the Posting tips page :

[OT] - added to off-topic messages and responses
[AVU] - added to anti-virus update notices
[PL] - added to Pricelessware List discussions
*SPAM* - added to responses to spam posts

Those are all to allow people
to filter out posts they are *not* interested in.

Perhaps filters to help people *find* posts
of special interest would be useful.

[INFO], [HOW-TO], [REVIEW] or some such . . . .

Susan
Click to expand...

I saw the following list on a web site somewhere
that might be useful ....

[BUSINESS-HOME]
[DESKTOP]
[FILE UTILITIES]
[GRAPHICS]
[INTERNET]
[MULTIMEDIA]
[ORGANIZERS]
[PROGRAMMING]
[SECURITY]
[SYSTEM UTILITIES]
[TEXT]
[WEB DESIGN]
 
Cousin said:
ATM we only have four filters listed
on the Posting tips page :

[OT] - added to off-topic messages and responses
[AVU] - added to anti-virus update notices
[PL] - added to Pricelessware List discussions
*SPAM* - added to responses to spam posts

Those are all to allow people
to filter out posts they are *not* interested in.

Perhaps filters to help people *find* posts
of special interest would be useful.

[INFO], [HOW-TO], [REVIEW] or some such . . . .

Susan
Click to expand...


I saw the following list on a web site somewhere
that might be useful ....

[BUSINESS-HOME]
[DESKTOP]
[FILE UTILITIES]
[GRAPHICS]
[INTERNET]
[MULTIMEDIA]
[ORGANIZERS]
[PROGRAMMING]
[SECURITY]
[SYSTEM UTILITIES]
[TEXT]
[WEB DESIGN]
Click to expand...


<vbg>

I was thinking of filters for the post(s) on how to download Lindows -
or how to add more servers to AVG's updater - or reviews of an app that
include info on the number of registry entries etc. etc. - stuff like
dat dere. . .

Susan
 
Cousin said:
ATM we only have four filters listed
on the Posting tips page :

[OT] - added to off-topic messages and responses
[AVU] - added to anti-virus update notices
[PL] - added to Pricelessware List discussions
*SPAM* - added to responses to spam posts

Those are all to allow people
to filter out posts they are *not* interested in.

Perhaps filters to help people *find* posts
of special interest would be useful.

[INFO], [HOW-TO], [REVIEW] or some such . . . .

Susan
Click to expand...


I saw the following list on a web site somewhere
that might be useful ....

[BUSINESS-HOME]
[DESKTOP]
[FILE UTILITIES]
[GRAPHICS]
[INTERNET]
[MULTIMEDIA]
[ORGANIZERS]
[PROGRAMMING]
[SECURITY]
[SYSTEM UTILITIES]
[TEXT]
[WEB DESIGN]
Click to expand...

Maybe it is desirable to try to persuade the powers-that-be to give acf
more subgroups.
 
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