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In this Issue:
·DVD PixPlay V2.66 Released ·Very Minor updates to Smart Pix Manager and MegaView ·Seeking MailList King and Power Print Beta Testers ·Program Tips ·Removing yourself from this List
Dear Xequte Software User,
Strangest Bug Ever
Sometimes you have a bug reported that seems so implausible that you quickly check the calendar to see if it’s April 1st. This happened last week with a report that one of our programs was stripping place names from text. Words like Atlantic Ocean were simply disappearing. What would our software have against such locations? And without any specific logic to handle it, how could the software even recognize such words to treat them differently from others?
So I requested some sample text and tried it on our test system. Sure enough the words disappeared. It seems that a certain program (which will remain nameless to protect the guilty) embeds non-standard tags whenever it recognizes a place name. When the text is then pasted into software such as ours, it doesn’t understand how to process the unknown tags that obscure the place names. I’ll be working on a fix for that over the next few days.
It reminded me of my strangest bug report ever. Someone reported that our image viewer was changing the expressions on peoples’ faces, “e.g. a smile would become a frown”
It sounded like a fantastic trick, but alas when I requested further information I heard nothing more. So next time you are wondering why you can’t find any smiling visages of Great Aunt Edna, you can blame our software for magically manipulating all of your photos ;-)
2006
It seems I blinked and another year has slipped by. Thank you to everyone who supported us in 2005. It was a good year for us, and hopefully we can do even more for our customers in 2006. If you have any comments or suggestions please e -mail us at sales@xequte.com
Regards
Nigel Cross Xequte Software nigel@xequte.com
* DVD PixPlay V2.66 Released
DVD PixPlay allows you to create slideshow discs from your digital photos and videos for playback on DVD players and computers. V2.66 is a minor update with various improvements and fixes.
Here is a top five list of changes since our last newsletter:
1. Can now display a preview during slideshow conversion (see program tip below) 2. Test Disk function now supports DVD and image format disks 3. Enhanced memory manager 4. Now guesses a user's NTSC or PAL setting based on their locale 5. May encounter error when creating slideshows longer than 75 minutes
Complete Change List: http://www.xequte.com/pixplay/changes.html
More info and download: http://www.xequte.com/pixplay/ (Simply install the new version over your old one. No new key is required if you are already using v2.*).
Upgrades: http://www.xequte.com/pixplay/upgrade.html
* Very Minor Updates to Smart Pix Manager and MegaView
Smart Pix and MegaView allow you to manage and view your multimedia, documents and digital image collection. V8.05 is a very minor update that addresses some issues in v8.04. You do not need to install it unless you are having problems.
Change List: http://www.xequte.com/smartpix/changes.html
Smart Pix Manager:
More info and download: http://www.xequte.com/smartpix/ (Simply install the new version over your old one. No new key is required if you are already using v8.*).
Upgrades: http://www.xequte.com/smartpix/upgrade.html
MegaView:
More info and download: http://www.xequte.com/megaview/ (Simply install the new version over your old one. No new key is required if you are already using v8.*).
Upgrades: http://www.xequte.com/megaview/upgrade.html
* Seeking MailList King and Power Print Beta Testers
There will soon be upgrades for MailList King and Power Print (which will be free to all purchasers/upgraders since late 2005) and we are seeking assistance from users to trial the updates and advise us of any problems encountered.
MailList King Beta:
We expect the MailList King beta to commence towards the end of the week. If you are interested in participating please go to: www.xequte.com/beta/
We anticipate a final release in February. It will be a free upgrade for all purchasers since late 2005.
Power Print Beta:
The Power Print beta has just started but we still need feedback from more users. Please sign up at: www.xequte.com/beta/pwp.html
We anticipate a final release in February. It will be a free upgrade for all purchasers since late 2005.
* Program Tips
- DVD PixPlay: Displaying a Preview during Slideshow Conversion
A new option allows you to view the slideshow as it is being converted. After clicking Finish on the "Burn Slideshow" wizard (File>Burn Slideshow) a progress window will be displayed. On the bottom left is a small options button. This button allows you to specify settings like extra processing information, Shutdown on completion and now an option to display a preview of the slideshow as it is converted.
Note that displaying the Preview requires a certain amount of work by the PC so it may slow down the conversion by a small amount.
- MailList King: Updating the E-mail Address of Everyone on a Domain
Occasionally you need to add a feature that will almost never be used. Why, I hear you ask. Because the one time you do use it, it will save you hours of work.
Have you ever had the misfortune of being with an ISP that sells out and then informs all of its customers that as of Wednesday their e-mail address will no longer be something@suckyisp.com but will be changed to something@suckyispwithnewname.com
Now if you have many of Sucky ISP’s customers on your mailing list suddenly all of their e-mail addresses are bouncing. So how can you update all of the addresses of that domain in your mailing list?
Surprising easily; select Edit>Update Email Address. In the old e-mail address specify asterisk followed by the old domain name, e.g. *@suckyisp.com and then specify the new domain in the second box, *@suckyispwithnewname.com
- Smart Pix/MegaView: Slideshow Control Bar
If, like me, you often use Smart Pix or MegaView to play a “slideshow” of all the music files on your computer, you might like the new mini slideshow toolbar that hovers over all other windows. You can then minimize Smart Pix/MegaView and use the toolbar to navigate between songs (or images or videos), assign them a file rating or add them to your favorites list.
To display it right-click the slideshow playing icon in the toolbar and choose “Slideshow Control Bar”
- Diji Album: Using Special Fields in Image Captions
As most Diji Albums users will know you can set the captions that appear above and below an image by right-clicking the image and choosing Properties. But did you also know that you can use special fields that Diji Album will automatically replace with valid text.
Some of the most useful are %CREATE_DATE% and %CREATE_DATETIME% which display as the date and/or time that the photo was taken. If you are a user of Photoshop or Picasa you might want to use %IPTC_DESCRIPTION_FIELD% which reads the description that such programs insert in the IPTC fields of an image. Another popular one with Photographers is %DIGITAL_CAMERA_FIELDS% which displays key details read from the EXIF digital camera fields. |