Monday, December 28, 2009

NotesTracker Guide v5.1 now available from docstoc

NotesTracker, from Asia/Pacific Computer Services, is a software development kit (SDK) for enabling the usage profiling of IBM Lotus Notes/Domino applications.

Database activities such as CRUD (creating, reading , updating and deletion of documents) are logged in a common way across both Lotus Notes Client and Web Browser environments via a common reporting mechanism, in real time and via replication across the entire Notes/Domino domain.

NotesTracker was crafted to make it easy to understand how your Notes applications are being used, both at the broad level and in fine detail -- for compliance, security/privacy management, content control, knowledge management and all sorts of other purposes.

The NotesTracker Guide for version 5.1 has just been made available on docstoc (the online community and marketplace to find and share professional documents.), where it can be viewed online or downloaded as a PDF document: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/20577539/NotesTracker-Guide---Version-51

image

NotesTracker Guide v5.1 now available from docstoc

NotesTracker, from Asia/Pacific Computer Services, is a software development kit (SDK) for enabling the usage profiling any of IBM Lotus Notes/Domino applications. Database activities such as CRUD (creating, reading , updating and deletion of documents) is logged in a common way across both Lotus Notes Client and Web Browser environments via a common reporting mechanism, in real time and via replication across the entire Notes/Domino domain.

NotesTracker makes it easy to understand how the applications are being used, both at the broad level and in fine detail -- for compliance, security/privacy management, content control, knowledge management and all sorts of other purposes.

The NotesTracker Guide for version 5.1 has just been made available on docstoc (the online community and marketplace to find and share professional documents.), where it can be viewed online or downloaded as a PDF document: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/20577539/NotesTracker-Guide---Version-51

image

NotesTracker Guide v5.1 now available from docstoc

NotesTracker, from Asia/Pacific Computer Services, is a software development kit (SDK) for enabling the usage profiling any of IBM Lotus Notes/Domino applications. Database activities such as CRUD (creating, reading , updating and deletion of documents) is logged in a common way across both Lots Notes Client and Web Browser environments via a common reporting mechanism, in real time across the entire Notes/Domino domain.

NotesTracker makes it easy to understand how the applications are being used, both at the broad level and in fine detail -- for compliance, security/privacy management, content control, knowledge management and all sorts of other purposes.

The NotesTracker Guide for version 5.1 has just been made available on docstoc (the online community and marketplace to find and share professional documents.), where it can be viewed online or downloaded as a PDF document: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/20577539/NotesTracker-Guide---Version-51

image

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Tips for installing Webshots Desktop under Windows 7

Here are several tips for getting the Webshots Desktop software up and running under Windows 7.

I recently expressed my displeasure that Webshots was not officially supported for Windows 7, and (as of today, 19th December 2007) it still isn’t. Read more at my earlier posts:  Shame! Webshots.com still doesn’t support Windows 7 (updated) and How to view Webshots images under Windows 7 (updated)

This weekend, I decided anyway to try out the software, and am documenting a few points for my own future benefit and yours too.

Firstly, when you download and run the Webshots Desktop installer it’s an unfortunate fact that it assumes you want to install everything on your C: drive (the so-called “system drive”).

Note [21 December 2009]:
I suspect that you must use the Webshots Desktop Setup program version 3.1.5.7617 (or later) to get a successful Windows 7 installation.

As a general comment, too many other software products also make this unfortunate assumption. I make every effort to keep my system drive as trim as possible, so that my regular backups of it are are faster. I follow a methodology for installing non-critical applications (apps) on various other drives. (For example, I install utility apps on the D: drive, document and image editing apps of all sorts on the E: drive, Lotus Notes on the G: drive, Microsoft development tools on the I: drive, Java tools on the J: drive, and so on).

I decided a few years ago to keep all my Webshots image collections on the H: drive, thereby freeing up the system drive by more than 5 GB – amounting to nearly 16,000 Webshots images!

When you run the Webshots Desktop installer, it assumes that your image collections will be on the system drive. And it assumes that you only have the tiny example photo collection that comes with the installer.

So you have to go to the Advanced  tab and in the Photo Storage section change the location like this:
Webshots_altering_collections_location

Click the “Move Photos” button and wait some time (perhaps a few minutes, as in my case) to get a confirmation that the photos have been moved.

The trouble was that, in my case, my photo collections -- from before the Windows 7 installation from scratch mandated for Windows XP users --  were already stored in that folder (H:\Webshots Data\) and the installer doesn’t take account of this.

After exiting the Webshots Desktop program, what I had to do was to delete two files:
Webshots_deleting_collections_and_playlist_files
(Click for a larger image)

Actually, I renamed them, so providing a fall-back in case things went go awry, and deleted them when I was sure that everything had gone well.

The two files are named PlayList.txt and Collections.html (as shown in the illustration).

When the Webshots Desktop is restarted, it goes through the photo collections in the new location (such as H:\Webshots Data\) and rebuilds the two files. It might take a few minutes for this to complete, depending on the size of your photo collection.

After that, you should find your photos, stored off the system drive, are once again all available to the Webshots Desktop program.

My main reason for wanting this is that, with so many downloaded  photos, I need to activate the option “Show picture title” or else I don’t have a clue what some of the thousands of wallpaper photos are. (This is a big failing of the How to view Webshots images under Windows 7 approach.)

Thursday, December 10, 2009

How to view Webshots images under Windows 7 (updated)

Some software providers are sure dragging their collective feet when it comes to upgrading their products to operate under Windows 7.

In November, a few weeks after Windows 7 went public, I commented that Webshots.com still doesn’t support Windows 7 and followed up a few days later that I had worked out a way to make the images available for viewing under the new operating system.

But I also mentioned that I wouldn’t document my method unless asked, which Glenn has just done. So here’s a brief summary of my approach.

CYA CLAUSE:
Note that I’m not saying that you should do this, just that it’s a way that I found would work and probably would for you, however I’m making no promises or commitment. (Review the Webshots terms of use.)

Webshots_license_agreement

THE PROCEDURE:
First, download and install Ultimate Webshots Converter (UWC), kindly offered as freeware by Hervé "Setaou" Bry

As with any data migration or conversion, you must have a good understanding of how the data that you’re converting. To begin with, during the download from the Webshots.com site, the images are stored in “albums” which amount to being Windows folders, like this:

Webshots_album_folders
(Click to view a larger image)

Be sure to read Hervé’s explanation that a folder of Webshots images contains both large images that are used as your Windows desktop backgrounds (wallpapers) and small “thumbnail” images that are used by the Webshots Desktop viewer program. Thus, the contents of a small album might look like this:
imageThe large wallpaper images have file names starting with “ph” (highlighted in yellow) and the thumbnail images have file names starting with “th” (highlighted in  yellow).

Before going any further, be on the safe side and make a copy of your entire Webshots data collection then work on that and not on your original Webshots images. Don’t say you weren’t warned, because now you are going to delete all of the thumbnail images since you do should not migrate them. (You can filter out the thumbnails via the UWC software, but that will be too tricky for some people, therefore I’m explaining a simpler approach here.)

Next, open a Windows command prompt, navigate to the main Webshots copy folder (not the original Webshots collection). In my case this was Webshots_migration_copy folder on the H drive:

Webshots_migration_copy In the command prompt, navigate to this drive and folder, then issue a command that will traverse the entire folder collection (all of the subdirectories,or albums) and delete all of the thumbnail images in one fell swoop, like so:
       del  th*.*  /s

The /s parameter is what causes the recursion through all the subdirectories and saves you a LOT of work.

I’m using PromptPal instead of the built-in Windows command prompt, but that is immaterial here, and it should give a result like this:

Webshots_copy_thumbnail_deletion_process Now you’re ready to begin the actual migration, so launch the UWC program and select Batch Conversion:
Webshots_UWC_batch_conversion1Select a suitable destination folder for the migrated images (1), specify that all the migrated images should be in a single output folder for display on the Windows 7 desktop (2), and then click the target folder selection button (3). You might want to investigate other options, such as “Avoid doubles, but that’s up to you:
Webshots_UWC_migration_folders_and_options In my example, the target folder selection (3) looked like this:
Webshots_UWC_target_folder_selectionWhen you’re satisfied that all options have been correctly specified, click the “Let’s convert!” button (4). Sit back for a short while (seconds, or perhaps several minutes, depending on how many Webshots images you have), and watch the file names as they scroll past:
Webshots_UWC_images_being_convertedLet’s assume that all went okay. (Sorry, I can’t help you if it didn’t so don’t even try asking.)

You’re now ready to tell Windows 7 that you want to use the migrated Webshots images as a changing desktop wallpaper. This looks very similar to the normal Webshots effect, with the one limitation that you don’t have the option to display the image title.

Look up the Windows 7 help for details, but essentially it’s done as follows. Firstly, right-click on the Windows 7 desktop, then select “Personalize” from the context menu and click on the “Desktop Background” link at the bottom:

Windows7_desktop_background_slide_show_optionFinally, select your Windows 7 desktop slide show options:
Windows7_desktop_background_slide_show_option2The most important thing is to point to the newly-converted images (1), all lying in a single folder ready to appear in all their glory on your Windows 7 desktop..

Choose “stretch” or whatever you want at (2), the picture change frequency at (3) and “shuffle” at (4) – and play around with these three parameters to suit your own requirements.

And there you are, all done! … A simple but lengthy sequence of steps.

UPDATE [19 December 2009]:
I checked the Webshots web site again today, to see if they had updated their statement of which Windows platforms are supported and it still only mentions Windows 2000, XP and Vista

Despite the fact that they don’t state their official support for Windows 7, I decided anyway to download and install the latest version of Webshots Desktop. The good news is that it seems to work fine under 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate.

My main reason for doing this is because, over the years, I’ve downloaded so many high-resolution images -- nearly 16,000 of them -- that I needed the picture title to be displayed else I have no hope of knowing what some of the images are.