Punto Informatico ha pubblicato oggi 3Doku nella sezione Download: un articolo che vale la pena leggere se non altro per la simpatia

Ok, la moda per il Sudoku c'è da un bel pezzo... ma ne avete mai visto uno a 3 dimensioni?

Ad un mio collega ed il sottoscritto è venuta la balzana idea di crearlo. Adesso stiamo a vedere se a qualcuno verrà in mente di giocarci

Disponibile sia per Mac che per Windows.

Avevo intenzione di dare un nuovo look al sito da un bel pezzo, poi finalmente un paio di settimane fa ho trovato un minimo di ispirazione e un po' di tempo da dedicarci...

Infine oggi è stato inaugurato

Spero piaccia!

...poi arrivò Google!

L'altro giorno ho aggiunto a LogMiner un grafico per mostrare la distribuzione dei motori di ricerca che hanno portato gli utenti sul sito di cui si sono analizzati i log.

Almeno guardando le statistiche dei miei siti, è un grafico totalmente inutile :-)

Giusto per capirci, questa è la distribuzione di Luglio 2006:

Non c'è da stupirsi che "to google" sia entrato anche nell'Oxford English Dictionary.

Mentre guardavo quel grafico mi è tornato in mente che secoli fa ero un fan di Altavista... Sono andato a vedere indietro nel tempo alla ricerca di una situazione diversa: i primi dati che ho sono di Aprile 2002 e già si notava il predominio:

Di questo passo, dove vorrà arrivare Google? :-)

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who replied to my previous post or on the mailing list for their support.

I still haven't made up my mind about MP3 Cat's future. I guess I'll try the shareware way and see how it goes.

Anyway, while I'm thinking about it, I've started porting its code to .NET 2.0: I used to like C++ Builder a lot, but nowadays it starts to give in to its old age (considering I'm still using version 3, first released in 1998!).

Using C# and the .NET framework will allow me to focus more on the features I'd like to put in MP3 Cat and less on trying to find workarounds to make C++ Builder compile what I need ;-)

Don't expect a new version tomorrow, but you can prepare yourself for it by installing .NET 2.0 anyway :-)

I've been thinking about the future of MP3 Cat for a while.

It's been more than a year since I've done some real work on it, and my lack of motivation is due to several reasons:

• I don't actually need more features for my personal use: the whole project started out to fullfil a need I had, which I've accomplished after a few releases. Afterwards, all I've been implementing were requests by users.
• The giftware license has been largely misinterpreted (most sites which list MP3 Cat report "freeware" as license) or ignored. I'm grateful to those who did send a gift: it's also thank to them if from time to time I've released a new version, typically prepared right after receiving a parcel from Amazon ;-)
• I don't have much spare time to spend on this project just for the sake of it. When I started MP3 Cat back in the year 2000, I had much more free time, being a student then ;-)
• The internal architecture of MP3 Cat badly needs a refactoring to implement some asked for features, such as saving the categories in the DB in order not to loose them should you reinstall the system or open the DB on a different machine, being able to keep multiple search results windows open, and so on. Adding such features requires time.

So, what now?

I see two possible outcomes from this situation:

1. Abandon the project, change the license of the latest and last release to Freeware. This means no more support, no more bugfixes, no more releases.
2. Change the license to Shareware, rewrite what's needed to implement the new features I've mentioned before (and more) and release MP3 Cat 2.0. It'll be a time-limited trial version and it would cost more or less 15-20 EUR (depending on the amount of new features I'll implement). If it becomes an income source, I'm sure my motivation will be back soon enough ;-)

I still haven't reached a decision though. Even if I chose the second option, I'd like to know in advance if there's a slight chance it'll be the right one: it would be a pity to release v2.0 and then immediately abandon it because noone buys a license ;-)

To conclude, I'm asking you MP3 Cat users what you think about everything I've just said.

Should it be the red or the blue pill?

[Updated: follow up]

I've just released my second MacOS X application: Music Box.

It's a database that allows you to keep your MP3/Ogg/AAC files organised and to find where you stored them when you need them ;-)

It should be familiar for those who have seen MP3 Cat on Windows: it's mostly a porting of its features.

Si vous avez une grosse collection de fichiers audio, les organiser avec MP3 CAT pourrait grandement vous faciliter la vie. MP3 CAT permet de créer une base de données référençant la totalité de vos fichiers MP3. Vous pourrez par la suite, trouver facilement un fichier, voir ses informations ID3tag,...

I've found this little guide about MP3 Cat among the referrers to my site. I thought I'd mention it here in case it comes handy to other users.

If you know about other articles dealing with a piece of software of mine, please let me know.

This blog category has been empty for too long, let's start posting in it :-)

I've just released an Apache log analysis tool that I wrote to replace Webalizer on my setup.

Check out the LogMiner homepage to read about some differences between the two packages and to see some example screenshots.