Software Updates

R10Clean 2.2.1
The grid Font and Size can now be changed using the onscreen controls.

R10Cipher 2.0.8
Minor Bug Fixes.

macVCR 2.4.1
Minor Bug Fixes.

www.artenscience.co.uk
Quality Commercial Software and Custom Software Development

Useful Tools 2 of ?

2nd Post in my series on tools that I find extremely useful and form part of my everyday development environment.

My MacPro can, and regularly does, run four operating systems consecutively. OSX 10.5, Windows Vista, Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. This is essential for the testing of my Cross Platform software. You can see this in the screenshot below:



This is possible due to the virtualization technology from those clever guys at VMWare.

VMWare Fusion. http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/

There are other alternatives to Fusion, but since I discovered it I have never looked back. Essential.

www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

Useful Tools 1 of ?

Your choice of development software is only one step towards creating a workable development environment. To supplement your language and compiler you will accumulate a wealth of tools and utilities that will make your life easier and your development more fun.

This one, for me is invaluable.

http://bradrhine.com/pages/maskextractor.php

PNG Mask Extractor by Brad Rhine. It's Freeware, it works and it works well.

Using this utility I can drop an icon on the window and automatically create the mask for any icon quickly and easily making me a very happy coder.



Cheers to the author :-)

www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

R10Cipher Final Screenshots

R10Cipher will be released in a few days, below I have the final screenshots from Mac OSX, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Ubuntu Linux.









www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

macVCR Update to 2.1 - Better OSX Screen Recording

The 2.1 Version of macVCR was primarily to optimise the function of the pointer, how it is shown on the screen during recording, how to switch it on and off quickly and how to make it more intuitive and slicker.

Now you can use the hotkey combination of Shift + Option + P to turn the pointer on or off. When the pointer is on it will follow the mouse and be recorded on the video output. Mouse clicks will be shown as a ‘Target’ crosshairs. This is a more intuitive and convenient method of recording the pointer. Note: The pointer will not follow the mouse when macVCR is the foremost application. This allows you to control macVCR without it being recorded and without switching the pointer off.

2.1 has slightly tidied up the interface with all the options now being shown on the Settings drawer. In addition you now have two additional options which are just for fun. You can Invert the colours of the recorded movie and you can Mirror the movie so that it appears upside down ! See the Screenshots below, it’s iTunes Inverted, Mirrored then Mirrored and Inverted :-)







There is also a bug fix in 2.1 which was caused by checking for a Microphone when one was not available. macVCR 2 does not yet support sound so the code should not have been active.

macVCR v2 has been very popular so far and I’d like to thank all my customers for their patronage. - Steve

www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

macVCR Screen Recorder v2 Released for OSX

macVCR Version 2 has now been released. macVCR 2 contains the following new features:

Live Camera Feed Option
Resolution Presets
Date and Time Overlay Option
Performance Adjustment
Enhanced Area Selector with Snapshot
Magnify Area at Cursor
Unlimited User Presets

It’s a significant upgrade from version 1 and is free of charge to existing customers.

macVCR can be downloaded from here: http://www.artenscience.co.uk/artenscience/macVCR.html





www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

macVCR Preview Part 3

An overlay can now be placed on the screen thats shows you a continually updated date and time. This overlay can be dragged anywhere on the screen and will be captured by the screen recording.

macVCR Trial Version available here: http://www.artenscience.co.uk/artenscience/macVCR.html



www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

macVCR Preview Part 2

Part 2 of my preview of some of the features that will be available in macVCR Version 2, which will be available from next week.



Record Mouse Pointer
There is a new ‘Pointer’ menu. From this menu you can turn the Pointer on or off. The Pointer is designed to be used when you are recording screen activity for training or demonstration purposes.

When the Pointer is switched on, it appears in the centre of your screen. It is a small circular loop with targeting cross hairs. It does not follow the mouse automatically. To move the pointer grab the edge of the circle and move the Pointer to where you wish to perform a mouse action. When you release the mouse button the Pointer is ‘zeroed’ on the object you wish to manipulate, ie: a menu, folder, a button etc. You can then select or click the object through the middle of the loop.

By making the movement of the Pointer with the mouse a conscious decision, it leaves you free to use the mouse on the screen without it being seen in the resulting video, maybe you wish to move the mouse to a second monitor and perform some action, or you wish to manipulate the screen environment without being seen to do so. Using this method that movement will not be seen in the final video.

Use of the Pointer does introduce some additional CPU overhead.

Resolution Presets
The default screen record area is determined by the resolution of the selected monitor. This can be changed manually by overwriting these figures. Now in version 2 you can select from four presets. These are 50%, 25%, 16:9 and 4:3. These presets all work on the currently displayed resolution figures. For example if your default resolution on your Primary monitor is 2560 x 1600 then pressing the 50% button will set this to 1280 x 800. Pressing the 50% button again will reduce this by a further 50%. To reset these figures to their defaults just reselect the radio button for your Primary or Secondary monitor.

www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

A Preview ... macVCR 2 - Usability Testing Facility !

macVCR Version 2.0 is due for release next week, all current customers and those that purchase before 10th October will get a free upgrade to Version 2, the introductory price for macVCR ends on the 10th and a price increase will be announced.

One of the major new features in version 2 is the ability to display a live feed from your webcam on your desktop. Ideal for usability testing as the subsequent screen recording records both what they did on the computer along with their facial reactions as they are doing it. A screenshot from a demonstration movie is shown below.



Another new feature is the enhanced Area Selector with the ability to capture a high resolution (300 dpi) snapshot, as well as determine the portion of the screen that is subsequently recorded.



I'll release more information soon.

www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

ScreenAudit 1.3 Released

This version introduces a Tools Menu. From this menu you can choose to create a QuickTime Movie / Slideshow of all your archived images in chronological order.

Once the movie is created, it along with the images that make up the movie are moved into a new folder called Archive_Date_Time within your ScreenAudit destination folder. The movie can be used to easily view the captured activity.

Download Here: http://www.artenscience.co.uk/artenscience/ScreenAudit.html



www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

macVCR 1.1.2 Released

Another update for macVCR featuring some functionality requested by customers and potential customers.

Todays update adds the following features:

Feature: Export Quicktime Movie, from the Tools Menu (Many Movie Format Options).
Feature: Compression is now shown as nn% as well as showing the Slider
Feature: Check for Updates menu now available.
Tweak: Refined the AutoUpdate Procedure.

The trial version allows 60 seconds continuous recording and cab be downloaded here: http://www.artenscience.co.uk/artenscience/macVCR.html

This Sample Movie was recorded with macVCR using the settings shown below, it was 16Mb in Size. It was then exported as MPEG4 using macVCR and is now 2.1Mb in size.



www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

macVCR 1.1.0 Released

Following the release of macVCR yesterday evening I have received a deluge on emails. Most complimentary, some critical and many with suggestions on how to make the product better, or more useable for a particular purpose. I also had quite a few sales as well which suggests I did something right :-)

Todays update adds the following features:

Adjustable Resolution for the saved movie. The default is for the original resolution of your screen but this can now be changed.
Multiple Monitor Support, record from either of your first two monitors.
New Tools Menu with the option to calculate the Theoretical Maximum Frames Per Second.
FPS and Frame Interval (ms) shown prior to recording.
The settings screen has been re-designed to support the new options.

I have also resolved a small timing issue.



The latest version can be downloaded from here: http://www.artenscience.co.uk/artenscience/macVCR.html

The trial version allows 60 seconds continuous recording.

www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

Arten Science Releases macVCR Screen Recording Software

We've just released macVCR 1.0.0.

macVCR allows you to record what happens on your computer screen to a Quicktime movie which you can then replay later at your leisure. macVCR doesn't require any form of installation, just double click the Icon and the program will launch.

* Specify Recording Length or Operate Manually
* Adjustable Compression Quality
* Choice of Codecs
* Specify Frames Per Second
* Low Disk and CPU Usage
* Trial Version Available for Download





www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

ScreenAudit Minor Update 1.2.2

A minor update to ScreenAudit. A customer requested that I make it possible to screenshot the contents of the primary monitor only. This can now be done by selecting an option in the Preferences screen.



www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

ScreenAudit 1.2.1 Released

ScreenAudit 1.2.1 is a minor release with an option to specify the size of the image captured by the webcam. In addition ArtenView, which is included with the download, has been updated to correct a minor display problem.








www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

Automatic Serial Number Generation and Order Fulfillment

So, I'm having emails arrive from Kagi notifying me that somebody has bought one of my products. At that point I fire-up my Serial Number generator software that I wrote, input the users name and click the button for the product they have purchased. This generates a serial number and email to the customer.

Their serial number is an encryption of their user name using a 16 digit key that is unique to each product. Encryption duties are handled by AES128.

So far so good. However if I take a few hours to respond this can be seen as less than ideal. The user has paid their money and they want their serial number - NOW. At least I would in their shoes. During the hours of sleep with the best will in the world I cannot get a serial to the user until morning, my morning, bearing in mind that my users are mainly from the states and in a different time zone.

I need to look at some kind of automated service. A web service to take a user name and respond with a serial number is the easy part, the difficulty is how do I restrict this to users who have actually purchased something ? Do I setup something with Kagi that gives the user a password that allows them a (one time only) access to the serial number web service, with a different password depending on the product they have purchased ? Do I capture the Kagi emails, scrape them for details and pass that through the serial number generator and send a response back that way ?

It's tricky but has obviously been solved many times before. What do you guys do ?

www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

ScreenAudit 1.2 with ArtenView

I’ve been working hard on adding all the features to ScreenAudit that my customers are requesting.

Version 1.2 of ScreenAudit comes with ArtenView, a utility to list, find and view images from your ScreenAudit archive.
1.2 is of course a free update to existing customers.




www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

ScreenAudit 1.1.6 Released

Another small update to ScreenAudit:

Updates for 1.1.6

Allows you to store the captured webcam and screen images anywhere on your hard disk or any attached network storage. Use the Choose button to navigate to the required folder.

Option to Speak a warning 3 seconds before image capture.



www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

ArtenSPEAK for Special Needs ?

I just came across an article on the Alltogether blog http://alltogether.wordpress.com/ which mentioned my freeware program ArtenSPEAK.

I'm thrilled that it is mentioned on a site for people with special needs, it gave me a buzz to think that a little program I created in a couple of hours may be of use to someone disadvantaged. I never designed it with that in mind - and I feel rather ashamed it never occurred to me. It was designed so I could put me feet up on the desk, close my eyes and still catch up with my email or web page reading ...

As Samual Sennott mentions in one of his posts on the site (on a completely unrelated topic) 'imagine what could be done if thousands of people gave just one hour of their time'. The world would be a better place no doubt.



www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business

ScreenAudit 1.1.4 Released

I've released an update to ScreenAudit. 1.1.4 gives the user the option of configuring ScreenAudit to capture the Camera, the Screen(s), Both or Neither (!!). Previous to 1.1.4 the assumption was made that screen capture would be the predominant use for ScreenAudit.

Feedback from customers has indicated that they would like the ability to perform *only* webcam capture for some kind of 'time lapse' / security recording purpose. This is a small update and was released a few minutes ago. It can be downloaded from the following location:

http://www.artenscience.co.uk/artenscience/ScreenAudit.html

Since sending the Press Release for ScreenAudit the traffic to my site has been many, many times more than usual, so I apologise if it seems slow. I will be increasing bandwidth from next Tuesday.



www.artenscience.co.uk
Honest Expert Independent Technology Advice for Business