What are your favorite apps?

My current favorite app, and it changes often as does the 'net, is Virtual Places. I started Topic 10 to cover VP. With VP, you can meet and talk to other folks and interactively tour web sites either as a pilot or a passenger. And they are adding video and audio capability via VDOPhone. Cool stuff!

What is the location of this Karen?

There's a really good shareware plug-in called PhotoGif that does interlacing and transparency. http://www.aris.com/boxtop/

Caveat: It's a Mac product.

Just a small suggestion.... Do you people think this service would be better on an NNTP server instead of Web based?

This system runs on telnet at the same time it runs on the web. Is that what you mean? We use basically an extended version of the software they use on the WELL.

WELL? What's WELL? Anyways, NNTP server = Usenet. But it doesn't have to be public like the majority. By the way, this is just a suggestion. Please, by no mean take that as a critisism. :-)

The WELL is one of the first online communities to get started, it's in the Bay Area and the letters stand for Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link. The Spring is a similar concept for the Austin area and Apps is only one of many conferences sponsored by NetRabbit, the Spring and other organizations. There's probably a way to link one of these topics to a newsgroup. We could try it an an experiment. But newsgroups are too clunky compared to the elegant interface that Dave Thaler has designed here. If you stick around a little while longer, you'll find that you can create your own conference list, you can 'forget' topics you aren't interested in and you can read only topics that you haven't read before every time you re-enter here. In the Yapp Conference, the topics are linked to Dave's email. It wouldn't be that much harder to link to a newsgroup. Forrest has his own set of newsgroups on our news server, we just haven't pumped them up yet. Should we pump these up?

Pump 'em up!

Oh yes, please! Pump 'em up! :-) I like Usenet because I just have to fire up Agent, let him do his work and come back later to find all the latest posts waiting for me to be read. I don't have to stay on-line. But that's okay. I'm enjoying this place so anything will suit me. :-)

I use a telnet program a lot to edit the html files on our web server & so far the best telnet client I have found is CRT. I have tried Yawtel but it doesn't allow me to use the whole screen. When I try to use VI I have to read past line 25 one line at a time. With Trumpet telnet it seems to work great until the display doesn't get updated. Can't do anything if I can't see what I'm doing. So far I haven't had any trouble what-so-ever with CRT.

Well, I am moving around your site first time. Let us wait for some time to find out my favourites.

I'd love to hear your choices when you try some out.

I have tried almost all the available Web browsers and have determined that Microsoft would do good by adding one single feature to it's Browser to make it King. That feature is; right click = back/forward. Period. I would be using IE right now if it wasn't for that, because of it's ability to display the text first faster. Until then, IE sucks! There seems to be nothing worse than having to go find the BACK button. It needs to be on my mouse. I use other apps for Mail and the USENET so they don't ount. If either one of those companies(Netscape/Microsoft) want me to use them for Mail or the Newsgroups then they better get faster and handle errors better. Agent and E-mail Connection fill the void. Ashley

Agent or Free Agent needs one more thing... It need to be able to decode binary files other than UUENCODE. Why is it that netscape can decode files that Agent can't? Netscape has all this other crap to do, but still it decodes B64 and other stupid encoded types of files. Why can't they all just get along and decide which Encoding scheme to go with and make us consumers happy? I will purchase the first program to come along and decode everything and recognize multiple attachments and so on... I have any friends who surf and browse the internet. They all agree. The company that completes the task above will be king. Ashley

E-mail. What is it and what is it good for? Again, I have tried just about every E-mail program available and I have come to the conclusion that E-Mail Connection is the best. It handles attachments just fine. It gives you an excellent address book. It is small. It adds addresses automaticly. What more can you ask for? I have tried Pegasus mail. It was good, until I tried to update to the newest version. BOOM! Wouldn't install correctly... Didn't recognize my Winsock (Trumpet Winsock). Wouldn t let me log on. E-Mail Connection has performed all tasks perfectly. I frequently x-mit mail from home to work and vice-a-versa, E-Mail Connection has recognized every attachment (I use CC:Mail at work). Stroud has unfairly given Pegasus a higher rating. Ashley

Have you looked at TranSoft Mail Control. Tis may be a comer!

Well, my favorite 2 so far are PaintShopPro and GifConstructionSet. I teach with both of these programs (on win3.1) and my high school kids love 'em. Very interesting. We're just beginning to do gif animations, etc. I teach HTML and am getting into c++ but for graphics, I prefer to use well-made idiot-proof software that beginners can use.

Dave, have you tried Microsoft's gif animator? It might fit in to your criteria.

My favorite application is HomeSite 2.5. It has the best interface of anything that I've ever used. Everything is located right where I can reach it. I can load files by clicking on a file list box. There is a tabbed toolbar for reaching many of the tags. I can also browse my document using Internet Explorer with the click of a tab. Instead of using that standard MDI that is a pain for me, I can use the tabs on the bottom of the screen to switch between documents. In short, I have never found an ap lication that is better designed than this one. David Ancell

The apps I use (aftrer exhaustive research) are as follows: News/Email: Agent Graphics: PSP 4.1 WWW: IE 3.02 FTP: FTP Explorer It's pretty ordinary up untill FTP Explorer. I have to say that having used WS FTP, Cute FTP and FTP Explorer there is no doubt in my mind which is best. It has the best interface, a transfer resuming function that actually works and, best of all, it's free! FTP Explorer is often seen as 2nd or 3rd best of the big FTP clients but I'm here to say it ain't so.

When is the new IE coming out?

New IE: check Microsoft homepage, heard IE PR 2 will be out next month. BTW Microsoft homepage has been hacked last week, those using IIS servers beware, a fix can be found at MS homepage.

I ran across this review in www.cooltool.com/todaystool.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Drip. Drip. Drip. flopflopflopflopflop... SPOOOIIIINNNGGGG! Wow... Yes, those were just a few of the noises coming outta Cool Tool World Headquarters today when we first took a gander at the new Drumbeat 2.0. Drool dripped. Tounges flopped. Eyeballs literally "spoing-ed" outta Andres' head. But many of us just reverently bowed our heads and whispered a stunned "wow...". It's amazing. We just gotta say it now, get it off our chests...this thing is REALLY FREAKIN' COOL! Yes, there, we said it. And we mean it. Really. We see lots of tools around here. Gobs. We've got stolen milk crates stacked to the ceilings stuffed with review software that's been sent to us in a desperate attempt at garnering a coveted "Cool Tool of the Day" award. Many don't make the cut. Some do. And a few, a wee few, a small set of shining stars stand at the tippy-top of our esteem and make us glad we're in this crazy biz. Drumbeat 2.0 is one of those tools. Why the hype? Could it possibly be as cool as we insinuate? Have we lost our ever-lovin' minds? Have they sent us a chunk o'cash in a desparate attempt to curry favor? Yes. Maybe. Definately not (though that tactic may work in some cases). Let's tell you why. First of all, the documentation. The documentation? Yup, the docs. Whoever wrote these things needs a Pulitzer (or tech writing equivalent) quick. Clear. Concise. Easy to follow. Printable in a Word document (no juggling online doc windows). It made us see the power of this thing quick...really quick...and helped us see how easy it was to use this powerhouse to do the stuff we wanted to do. A good tool let's you realize your ideas. A truly Cool Tool let's you realize your ideas and inspires you to new heights. Drumbeat did that to us today. First, we dove in to the program. Super easy to set up with a very clear and intuitive interface. Following the docs we loaded the asset files from the sample site, set up a site structure, and created the home page in about 10 minutes. Then, using the super-simple effects editor, we assigned nifty DHTML effects to the buttons we created and then flipped over to the "Preview" window to see 'em in action. Cool. But then we really got down to biz. Popping into Page Set mode, we opened a database, made some quick modifications to it -- adding a field for images -- and saved it. A few clicks later we took that database and dynamically generated a whole new set of pages based on the database (including using IE 4.0 DataBinding features). Poof. Database pages done. Time elapsed, 25 minutes. OK. Big deal. Other programs'll sorta do this stuff, right? Sorta is right. We've never seen such click-n-drag goodness before...not like this. But we weren't done yet. We'd generated static pages from a database...but what if we wanted live database files that could be updated, deleted, and browsed online? No problem! Flipping to page 26 in the docs, we rolled up our sleeves and dove in. First we chose the database. Then we chose the SQL fields to query. Then we setup all the ODBC stuff (from handy dandy dialog boxes). Popped in a description. Picked the fields to return. Checked the database. Set up the page structure in the DataForm Wizard. Finally, we tweaked our page designs, added some navigation features, and published our site to the Web, complete with ASP code and all the hooks to make it work. Done. Just like that. A beautiful, live-data, database driven site up online. Time elapsed, 65 minutes. Good grief! OK. OK. So it took 5 more minutes than the tutorial promised. You know we're a little slow. But it worked. It worked!. No coding. No obscure scripting commands. No complicated server stuff. No hassles. Just Web, baby...pure Web! What more can we say? You gotta check this thing out. Right now it's in sorta-beta "preview" release form so some of the features aren't completely implemented yet. But there's enough here to keep you goin' until they are. Dynamic HTML. Cascading Style Sheets. No-coding Interactions. Smart Pages which automatically conform to the browsers your users have. Layout Inheritance for superquick template-driven designs. WYSIWYG editing. And that's just stuff for the designers! Drumbeat also includes an integrated Asset Manager for keeping all your site pieces in one place, automatic updating of site text via RTF file import, extensibility for build-it-yourself Java, JavaScript, and Active X. The works. We may be a bit giddy today, but we really think this thing could change the way you do Web sites. Give it a whirl. And be prepared to be blown away. Home Page http://www.drumbeat.com/

Drumbeat, at least the name is no longer, this link just led to Adobe's site.