Existing users, 
User Name spampronemail
Member Since 2005-05-30
Total number of Feedback Posts: 6
Total number of comments: 5
Last 10 Feedback Posts by spampronemail [ Search for All ]
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How can a crappy program be VersionTracker's "Editor's Pick"??? 
I've used Quicken since buying my first computer about ten years ago. I have hated Intuit from the start. They screwed me then, their customer service was ridiculous, and I have watched them parsimoniously piece out tiny improvements like clockwork in order to make us buy the program over and over again. I am so happy to learn there are other programs out there. I will start 2006 with a new program, new company!! My reason for this post is to ask the people at VersionTracker how they can make this 2-star program the top "Editor's Pick" for the week. What good are their recommendations in general, if they pick THIS thing? (I'll click the "Alert Admin" button after posting, in hopes they'll see this.) . [alert admin]
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Saturday, August 06 2005 @ 04:22 PM PDT
Apple iPhoto 5.0.2 (Mac OS X)
I'm big on slideshows and have looked at numerous programs, free to expensive. I don't think anyone could say my expectations are unreasonable--here they are, and iPhoto does NOT meet most of these simple requirements, as I will discuss after the list: 1. A slideshow that I can share with others must show full screen (not as a small thing in an interface window). 2. I don't need dozens of transitions, just a few good ones that work smoothly. 3. I must be able to share my slideshows with others, and know they will work across platforms. 4. I must be able to point to a file on my computer and say, THAT is my slideshow... so that I can back it up, email it, burn the file to a CD the same as any other file on my computer, for archiving, to share, or whatever. 5. I must be able to include music with the slideshow, starting a song at any point in the show, and using more than one song if I want to, when the first one finishes (instead of it playing over and over). One of the most horrible things about iPhoto is how the program is designed to hold and protect your data. Get this: your slideshows are stored in the preferences file!! We all know how easily corrupted those are. There is NO single, identifiable file that is your slideshow, that you can copy, email, back up, archive, etc. It is all buried, hidden within the program. If you have five slideshows, they are all strung out in your preferences file. You can't identify and email slideshow #3 to a friend who also uses iPhoto, much less anyone else. And when the data for one of your slideshows gets corrupted (as it will), you cannot just trash the preferences file and re-save, because all your other slide shows are in that file! In fact, not even the preferences file contains the whole thing. Your photos themselves and your soundtrack are stored elsewhere. Even to share your slideshow with another iPhoto user, you'd have to copy the correct preferences file, copy your ENTIRE iPhoto Library, copy your song, and then send them to your friend, who would have to temporarily remove all those things from her own program, substitute yours, and play. And she would have to have iTunes installed. This, of course, is so nonsensical as to be no way to share a slideshow at all. As seems to be the trend of Apple now, iPhoto forces you to let it take over your stuff. If you have thousands of slides (or only a few) in organized folders, anything iPhoto looks at, handles or in any way processes is COPIED into the iPhoto program, so that you must now have duplicates of everything. (Imagine keeping a slide "synchronized" in two places as you edit it). iPhoto puts the copy of your slide into its Library, which--trust me--cannot be tampered with. Looking into the Library folder is like reading Greek (you are not supposed to go in there at all), with bizarre folder arrangements, nothing identifiable. So the program controls everything itself... you don't know what's happening, can't do anything but view the interface. I used 100 slides in a slide show and ended up with four copies of all the pictures! I had my originals, I had the ones duplicated by iPhoto, plus two sets of different size thumbnails that iPhoto creates and uses whenever it needs them. Arrrggh!!! Your slideshow will work fine on your own computer, and show full screen. But what about sharing it with others? It says you can export to a QuickTime movie, but this is totally unacceptable. First, it only creates a small movie, viewed through the QT interface, not full screen. (This really insults your slideshow!) The timing on a one or two-song slideshow can be off by as much as a whopping 20 seconds--and that's on my own computer; imagine how far off it could be with other computers of differing speeds and memory! For me, the transitions were SOOOOO jerky, that I would never dream of showing the pathetic little QT movie of my slideshow to anyone. Totally unworkable. This cannot be the fault of my own computer's capability, because I create fullscreen QT slideshows with other programs where the transitions work just fine. I later learned QT is a bad choice for sharing across platforms (see note at end). Another bizarre thing is that you cannot save as you go, as you work on a slideshow. There is no Save under the file menu! Since a slideshow is very work intensive, requiring hours of careful tweaking, you must save frequently. (iPhoto definitely does crash!) So it's crazy that every time you want to save the work you've done so far, you have to Quit the program and reopen it--because the only way it saves is by automatically saving when you Quit. Even as I typed these words, I thought, This cannot be true! I checked again! Indeed, you cannot Save in this program. Even putting a slideshow together--moving slides around--is a tedious pain in iPhoto. All the slides you want to use are strung out in a straight, single line across the top of a window, meaning you have to do lots of scrolling every time you want to change the order of a slide--as opposed to having a real catalog where dozens or even hundreds of slides can be seen on a page, making it easy to drag slides around. Some other programs do this too, but not all. If you want to run your slideshow for a friend, from within iPhoto (the only way I can do it, since the Quicktime export doesn't work, and since I want it to be full screen), the effect is somewhat spoiled, because your friend can view the slides (the thumbnails) in iPhoto's interface before you click Start. Seeing the slides in advance of the show, even in icon size, diminishes the effect of the slideshow. A small annoyance, perhaps, but still annoying. Back to major complaints. A huge disadvantage to iPhoto is that you can play only one song with a slideshow, which can only start at the beginning. If you want more than one song, you have to patch them together into a single file using a sound editing program. And what's really horrible is that when you are tweaking the timing of your slides, which can require playing the show many, many times, you have to start from the beginning and play the whole thing straight through. If your slide show is half an hour long, and you have to test your tweaking ten times, that's five hours you've spent doing nothing but restarting the slideshow and waiting for it to play up to the section you're testing. (The Preview button only previews a single slide's transition, plus does not include the music.) If a song could be inserted anywhere in the slideshow, hours of time could be saved, as the work could be tested in sections. But all you are allowed is one song, and you cannot start it where you choose. This puts the program squarely in the Beginners category. Even telling the program what song to play from the beginning is a pain. You cannot just drop your selected song into the program, and you can't even use a dialog window to select the song from anywhere on your computer. Get this: you cannot play ANY song unless you use iTunes and put your song in the iTunes library! [Editorial commentary self-snipped here.] Also, in my own experience, something got badly corrupted, because in one slideshow I couldn't even choose which song I wanted; the iPhoto just grabbed its own song from the iTunes library (the wrong one), and I could never get that corruption fixed. Alas, you cannot just trash the preferences file to fix this corruption, because all your other slide shows are buried in that preferences file!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Slideshow settings and transition effects you set in iPhoto are not included in slideshows you share over the Internet. What a bummer. If I wanted to put slideshows on the internet, I'd want them to look their best. A couple of good things about iPhoto (though lost, if you can't use the program because of its disadvantages) are (1) good transitions, when running from within iPhoto, including a pan and zoom effect and (2) the ability to order published coffee table books published commercially. And finally, here's that reference about Quicktime: As an aside about the shortfalls of Quicktime (since I think it relates to using iPhoto). Using a different program, I created a QT movie of my slideshow, believing the Apple hype about how QT works across platforms. I gave it to a friend who has Windows. She had trouble getting the thing to open properly, centered properly (and once it did, it strayed on the screen as the show progressed). PLUS she was unable to use the spacebar and arrow keys to pause, to toggle between manual and automatic. During further research, a technician gave me this advice, which I intend to follow. Excerpt: "Full screen playback from a QuickTime file is not recommended as it is difficult to get it to consistently work on the variety of computers with different speeds, memory, and screen resolutions. So unless you have a specific target computer, I would just recommend [using the slideshow program of your choice, and then using iDVD to burn the show onto a DVD, which anyone can then play on any computer OR even on their TV using any DVD player]." In other words, Quicktime is a bummer for sharing; there are better ways. [alert admin]
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Saturday, July 09 2005 @ 07:17 AM PDT
Apple QuickTime 7.0.1 (Mac OS X)
All of a sudden QT hangs. Have to force quit. Trashing prefs didn't help. Guess I'll have to dump my copy, download again. Reinstall. Arrgh. I use Tiger. [alert admin]
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Tuesday, June 14 2005 @ 11:49 PM PDT
Folder Player 1.4.8 (Mac OS X)
Thanks for this beautiful, simple player, making it a simple thing to just drag & listen when you don't need a fancy search or other bells & whistles. DEVELOPER! Listen up now... Please fix it so it can collapse to just the controls window (and the part showing what song is playing). When we are forced to keep the two upper windows open, it takes up too much room on the desktop. Clicking down to just the controls and display, once we've started playing it, would make it absolutely slick looking and be the last touch to make it just perfect. Thanks. [alert admin]
Saturday, June 11 2005 @ 10:36 AM PDT
Save Your Screen 1.4 (Mac OS X)
Why is it needed, if it just does what OS X does?
Product descriptions & user reviews sometimes leave out the most obvious questions. In this case, what does this do that I can't already do, and easier, simply by using the built-in screen saver that comes with OS X? Would be nice of a reviewer would cover that. [alert admin]
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Saturday, June 11 2005 @ 07:20 AM PDT
SlideShow 1.1 (Mac OS X)
Not being customizable, it is just a 2-minute toy.
Yeah, this is wordy, but I'm mainly wanting to give detailed feedback to the creator of SlideShow--I'd love to have one that fully suits my needs. Look, if I want to see someone else's photos, then I will be looking at them pro-actively, to learn and enjoy and appreciate—in which case, I want to view them in a regular way, not in a little widget. But if I want pictures on my desktop to remind me of family, friends and loved ones, then it doesn't matter how tiny, and a widget is perfect for that. Someone I love is always there. Point being: I'd be surprised if there is much market (freeware or not) for widget slideshows that aren't customizable. For example, the Ashed widget is great... you can enjoy the photos that came with it, once through, then you can dump them and from then out use your own. You can set it to change at any interval you choose (I like an hour). Hopefully the creators will soon enhance it to remember its preferences, and where it left off. A creator could even require scrolling through all the original pictures before it can be customized, thus fulfilling his motivation for exposure as an artist. (But to tell me I can include my own if I write and get a price for it???) I looked at only half these admittedly great photos, but knowing I could never put my own in there, I quickly lost interest. I would have watched them ALL for their beauty, but like I say, on a tiny widget? How great can a great photo look at two inches wide? (But a picture of Grandma is great no matter what the side, to be redundant.) The SlideShow widget at hand is also a tad to large for my purposes. For me, a slideshow widget is of little use if I don't FLOAT it on my desktop, down in a corner or somewhere; otherwise, it is just a toy, visible only when you call up Dashboard. So I float it, and for that, you do want it to stay quite small, or it covers up your work and gets in your way. But small is just fine, if you are using your own pictures and just want the reminder of your loved ones there, rather than using it to enjoy and explore great photos of other photographsers. (The photos with SlideShow are great, btw, but....) The transitions did not work anything even close to smoothly on my G4 with 335 megs of RAM. (This alone makes it impossible to keep this widget, even if it is your own system's fault and not the widget's.) Note: float any widget by pressing your hot key DURING the process of dragging the widget; doing it again will return it to Dashboard behavior. [alert admin]
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Saturday, June 11 2005 @ 06:49 AM PDT
Last 10 Comments by spampronemail [ Search for All ]
Here’s one American who agrees with you. Sure, you could have written the same thing in a better tone, but your comments are valid. If a developer touts a program for the world, then it is fair to expect that it will be a little more broadly designed, with all users in mind, and it is okay to state your disappointment when you feel that’s not the case. Don’t be surprised that some Americans would…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Saturday, April 01 2006 @ 07:30 AM PST
I have to agree. Any song you find in wma and want in mp3 format, you can probably get elsewhwere without much trouble. Since I only occasionally run across the need, I think as little as $5 might make it worth it to me. True, $10 isn't a lot, but for me, and I suspect a lot of others, this app is merely a small convenience, not a need, and I figure if I…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Friday, December 16 2005 @ 12:03 PM PST
Maybe I misunderstand "recursively," if you mean play music in subfolders... I dragged in a folder that had subfolders and sub-subfolders--several levels--and it appears to me that every single song plays, through all levels. Perhaps I misunderstand your suggestion. ============ •Recursively: Computing relating to or involving a program or routine of which a part requires the application of the whole, so that its explicit interpretation requires in general many successive executions.
Original feedback item : Read More
Saturday, June 11 2005 @ 10:28 AM PDT
Thanks for answering the "dumb question." You are far more appreciated than the goofball who came on merely to confirm it was a dumb question. Too many times the product descriptions are more technical than they need to be. I agree with the original questioner... Even if it is a technical thing, give us a hint! Thanks
Original feedback item : Read More
Saturday, June 11 2005 @ 07:40 AM PDT
eyeHide is a great little application.
I wish this otherwise useful review would have stated whether the hidden folder contents is protected from Spotlight's prying eyes. I have lots of art (yes, both real and revealing), and I don't care who knows it. But it is still embarrassing when you're doing a search on something serious and up pops a graphic that is inappropriate for the setting. (Would somebody please bring back, as an option, the OS 9 simple Command-F(ind), PLEASE?)
Original feedback item : Read More
Saturday, June 11 2005 @ 07:04 AM PDT
