RSSPandora Desktop has been updated! In September 2011, Pandora changed how they deliver music to the desktop. Instead of a player that used Adobe Flash as the application platform, it has now been updated to be fully HTML5 compliant. Due to this change on Pandora.com, I have updated the player available for download from my site to support this new format. The new version has only been tested with Internet Explorer 9 installed on my system, so if you run into problems, I recommend upgrading your browser to the latest. If you are running Windows XP and find that you can no longer use the application, please let me know so I can save others the trouble of downloading the application if it will not work for them.
Like always, you can grab the latest version from the application information page or download it directly by clicking this link.
A new version of TrueIP was released on April 15, 2011. The application now supports email servers that require SSL authentication before allowing to send messages through their SMTP service. Websites that require this include Gmail and Hotmail. Please let me know if you have any issues with this feature, as it is new and may contain a bug or two. Also in this latest version is the ability to change the refresh rate. Somewhere along the path, version 2.0 lost the ability to modify the refresh rate, and it was stuck at 30 seconds. The new version now gives you a wide range of options as well as the ability to specify down to the millisecond how often you would like your external address refreshed. Some other minor features/fixes were also included in the latest version. You can download it from the application details page or directly from this post.
Also released about the same time was a new version of Zune Playlist Editor. It now supports command-line parameters so that you can call it from a batch script, as well as basic support for batch scripting built in. Please feel free to download it from the application details page or directly from this post.
A new update is available for SMTP Mail Sender. It now supports carbon copies and blind carbon copies on outgoing messages. This was a request made by numerous users and I am proud to have included it in the latest update. Please report any problems with the latest version. You can grab the latest version of SMTP Mail Sender from the application information page, or by downloading it directly.
I have posted a new application called Remote Manager. It is an application that helps you manage your remote connections using PuTTY, TightVNC and Microsoft Remote Desktop clients. It is designed to act like a chat program buddy list, with a vertical window that makes it easy to expand and contract the different types for easier management. I wrote the application because after upgrading to Windows 7 at work, I determined the explorer interface sucks. I used to keep all my remote connections in a single folder (via shortcut files, ini files, etc) but everything in Windows 7 is too large! My folder that easily fit in a quarter of my monitor in Windows XP takes up almost the entire screen in Windows 7. The same amount of icons, but all the padding and fancy graphics and useless toolbars make for less usable space. Remote Manager solved this problem for me, and actually made it smaller than even in Windows XP, while making it easier to access all my connections. I hope it helps other SysAdmins in their day to day tasks as it has helped me.
As always, you can get the latest version by visiting the application information page or via directly downloading Remote Manager.
Hi Everyone!
Today I am releasing an updated version of Pandora Desktop. It doesn't have any feature changes, but it does now work on 64-bit versions of Windows. 64-bit versions of Windows ship with both a 32-bit version and 64-bit version of Internet Explorer. The 64-bit version is basically useless though, as there are very few plugins available on the internet that support 64-bit browsers. Flash player is not one of them, and that's where the problem occurred. In order for Pandora Desktop to function, it needs the Flash plugin working properly, and by default, .NET applications that use the Internet Explorer control run in true 64-bit mode. There is a way to compile .NET applications to target a specific platform, i.e. x86 or x64, but you need to be running a full version of Visual Studio. Since I don't make any money from my applications, I write everything in the free Visual Studio Express, which doesn't allow you to target a specific platform. Alas, there was a solution, and a fairly easy solution at that, and I was able to implement the solution to release a 64-bit version of Pandora Desktop. I am already getting into too many technical details for this blog post, but if you want to know more, feel free to post a comment and I will post more details there.
As always, you can download Pandora Desktop from the application details page, or click here for a direct download. Have fun rocking out!
Update: I have discovered that the latest version fails to launch after updating. A file is missing from the installer called settings.txt which needs to be placed in the same directory as the application, usually C:\Program Files\Pandora Desktop. The file can be blank and the application will start properly, but until that file exists, it crashes at start up. There will be a fix posted to the site later today (2011-01-28), but if you want to get the application working immediately, just right click in the Pandora Desktop folder and create a new Text Document and name it settings.txt. Sorry for the inconvenience this problem has caused.
Update 2: The new installer includes the proper file and should work fine now. You can either reinstall over the top of the previous version, or uninstall and reinstall the latest version.
PS: I now have Windows 7, so I will be working on updating all my applications to work properly under Windows 7, including all the security changes that currently require most of my apps to run in Administrator mode.