Catfood Software Blog
Protesting SOPA and PIPA
Catfood.net will be dark on January 18, 2012 to protest against SOPA and PIPA. Learn more on my personal blog.
Tags: sopa, pipa
History
Tweet from the Command Line
I’ve just released Catfood Cleat, a tool that tweets from the Windows command line.
Use cleat to automate tweets from Task Scheduler, tweet from batch files, or just when you want to share without leaving the console.
Cleat supports multiple Twitter accounts and will automatically shorten tweets to 140 characters if necessary so you don’t need to worry about the exact length when using Cleat for automation.
Download Cleat and let me know what you think.
Tags: twitter, tweet, command line
Cleat
Winter Solstice 2011 in Catfood Earth
It’s the start of Winter in the Northern Hemisphere, Summer if you’re of the negative latitude persuasion. Image rendered using Catfood Earth.
Tags: winter, solstice, earth
Solstice | Earth
Catfood Follower 1.40
Catfood Follower 1.40 is now available for download.
Follower is now integrated with Klout, a service that measures the influence of Twitter users with a score ranging from 0-100. You can choose to only follow people above a certain Klout score, or to remove followers below a certain Klout score.
I’ve also added support for using Twitter Lists as unfollow exceptions. This is much easier than remembering to run Follower and add an exception for each account that you want to always follow. Just add people to a private ‘don’t unfollow’ list and then check this off in Follower Settings. You can add as many lists as you like as unfollow exceptions.
1.40 also includes a big performance boost. Under the covers accounts are now processed using Twitter APIs that return up to 5,000 friends or followers at a time. Before 1.40 Follower would process around 200 accounts per API call. This change means that Follower runs faster and is less likely to hit Twitter call limits.
If you already use Follower upgrade today. If not, and you’re looking for a way to manage your Twitter account check it out and read Getting the most out of Catfood Follower.
Tags: follower, twitter, follow, unfollow, klout
Follower | Twitter
Catfood Follower 1.40 Beta
I’m close to releasing a new version of Catfood Follower.
The update has some cool new features including Klout integration and a switch to bulk twitter APIs that allow the follow engine to run much more quickly. I’ve also mopped up several bugs and generally tidied up the interface.
Download Catfood Follower 1.40 Beta and leave a comment below if you have any problems, questions or suggestions. Thanks.
(Updated 2011-10-22: 1.40.0136, improves Klout integration so that processing an account does not fail because of temporary Klout failures.
Tags: twitter, follow, Follower, unfollow, klout
Beta | Follower
Catfood Weather 2.10.0016
Catfood Weather 2.10 is now available for download.
This release allows you to ignore weather alerts based on keywords or phrases. Double click the tray icon to open settings and enter a comma separated list of alerts you don’t want to see. I get a ‘Small Craft Advisory’ daily in San Francisco and it’s been driving me nuts! I get it, the bay isn’t very safe for sailing pretty much of the time. I want to ignore this alert but still get notified about high surf and other less frequent National Weather Service Notifications.
2.10 also fixes a bug that caused a crash when the National Weather Service website is down (like today) and a request is made for a weather icon that isn’t already in the local icon cache. Weather will now just skip the icon, which isn’t pretty but is better than the current alternative.
Tags: weather
Weather
Autumnal Equinox 2011 in Catfood Earth
Tags: autumn, spring, autumnal
Equinox | Earth
Catfood Earth Patch (3.10.0252)
I’ve just released a small patch for Catfood Earth. The patch fixes a crash on the trial expired window that has affected a number of people running the free trial. It also improves the algorithm used to detect corrupt cloud downloads. This is a very small update, but I’d recommend upgrading if you have the clouds layer enabled.
Tags: earth, patch
Earth
World Time Lapse
A time lapse video created using the Catfood WebCamSaver web cam directory:
Tags: webcam, web cam, time lapse, timelapse
WebCamSaver
Catfood WebCamSaver 3.10
Catfood WebCamSaver 3.10 is now available for download. Thanks to everyone who participated in the beta.
3.10 is a free upgrade for existing customers. There are quite a few new features and bug fixes:
- The WebCam Directory has been completely overhauled. Many duplicate WebCams have been removed, and you can browse by country as well as from the complete list. Each WebCam page now includes a feedback form, so if you spot a bad location or timezone it’s easy to let me know and the quality of the directory can be improved for everyone who uses WebCamSaver. I’m also in the process of adding time lapse videos for each WebCam. It will take some time to complete this project. You can see the new videos as they get added on the Catfood Software YouTube channel.
- When displaying 4 or 16 webcams updates now occur simultaneously. This improves both the startup time and the viewing experience.
- You can now jump to the directory page for a WebCam directly from the screensaver. Just press and hold down any key and then click on the WebCam using your mouse. WebCamSaver will exit and the directory page will open in your web browser. If you’ve added custom locations this feature will open the image page instead of the directory.
- The WebCam list in WebCamSaver Settings is now fully sortable and includes new columns for the country and the directory ID. There is also a new option to display the directory ID for each cam when the screensaver is running. This makes it easier to exclude locations that you don’t want to see.
- WebCamSaver now supports proxy servers.
- Non-integral time zones are now supported (i.e. UTC + 9:30 in Australia).
- Several bugs have been fixed in WebCamSaver Settings, including deleting a single WebCam and a failure to import some WebCam lists. I’ve also fixed a crash on startup that was affecting some users and moved the location of the file that stores the settings as this has also caused some problems in previous versions.
If you’re an existing WebCamSaver user I hope you enjoy the new version. If you haven’t used WebCamSaver check out the first bit of feedback on the beta and then give it a try:
“What can I say? This isn't just the best screensaver ever, it's one of the best life essentials ever. When I first discovered the magic of the Liveview webcams, I was delighted. It was like being able to visit awesome locations from may armchair. So when I found a screensaver that could act like a window on these wonderful places, I was in Heaven. Seriously, I don't understand why some people are happy to let a line bounce around their monitor in its downtime when it could be beaming in scenes of bustling French squares, chilly ski-lifts and far-flung Tokyo neon signs.” – James
Tags: webcamsaver, webcam
WebCamSaver