Deja vu! I feel like I've said that before... :) In this festive spirit of giving that Thanksgiving represents, I've decided to make the updates a day early! I know, just when you thought your holiday couldn't get any better, I top it off! So, there's three things to cover; two updates, and a new song (yes, you heard right, a new song)! First off, AnalogX POW! has been updated to support the new banner ads that feature a date in the title; we won't need to worry about those anymore - also new in this version is that it keeps track of how many windows it's closed for you; not terribly useful, but fun none the less! Next, AnalogX AutoTune has been updated as well; the major improvements in this version is the ability to have it automatically change the sample depth from 8bit to 32bit, plus it now sports a spiffy resizable dialog box with a more compact design - a real winner! They're both available in the downloads area, in the Network and Audio sections respectively.
    Oh, did I forget to mention there's a new AnalogX track available? Yes, this holiday truly is special, with the first new song that I've released in almost 9 months! It's available on my page at MP3.COM , so just click on that link and download the song entitled 'Another Day'; it's very short, and the first song from the latest album entitled 'HackSaw'.

    Originally I had slated this to be purely an access control program for game servers (like Quake3), but because of some changes they made in their authentication, I've expanded it into a general purpose access control and port mapping program... Oh, and it's called AnalogX PortMapper, if you couldn't already guess! This makes an EXCELLENT expansion to AnalogX Proxy, especially for adding functionality that it normally doesn't contain, such as Telnet... So just what can you do with it? Simple, you can forward any port on your machine to any other port (either on your own machine, or to any other machine); you can also limit access based on the IP address of the incoming connection, giving you more security and control than you normally might have with most servers. It's available right now, in the downloads area, specifically the network section.
    The voting/survey program is working very well, so if you haven't already taken it, make sure to head into the Online area of the site and check it out! Already it's helped me in better understanding some of the issues people have with the Internet, and I'm thinking of some creative solutions as we speak (or read).

    Well, I have a new beta component on the site - a voting section! Yes, that's right, now you can make your will known, in the spirit of freedom and democracy! Right now I have some generic questions up there, to help me test the program, as well as get a better idea of what everyone out there is like, and to help me decide on what types of programs I'm going to do in the future! So, without further ado, check out the Online area of the site to see what survey's are currently happening! Oh, I will be releasing this program after it's underwent sufficient testing on the site, so you have that to look forward to as well! :)

    That's right, there's a new installer in town! Actually, the installer is still the same, I just added more functionality to it, so now after you've installed any of the apps from here, it also creates a shortcut that lets you check for new versions automatically! Very cool, and very easy to use, just connect to the net, and run the program, and it let's you know if you're running the latest version or not... Best of all, it only added about 3k to the overall install size, so it's definitely worth the extra few bytes!

    I know it's been a while, but I've just finished a new article on the site entitled "So you want to be a Programmer...", can you guess what it's about? I figured as much. :) It basically addresses one of the more common questions I get, without going to deeply into the whole tech side of things. Definitely a good read if it's something you've been considering; it's located in the Articles area of the site.

    I must say, it feels good to have a new release after all the chaos of the last couple weeks... This weeks release is entitled 'AnalogX PortBlocker', and it's basically a very simple way to ensure no one from a remote computer can access a server (port) on your machine. So, for example, imagine you had a little webserver or FTP server running on your machine, but you don't want people on the internet to be able to access it. Just run PortBlocker, tell it to block the port the webserver runs on (port 80), and that's it! Not only that, but when anyone attempts to access this port on your machine, it will notify you, AND tell you their IP address - very cool! It's available right now, in the downloads area, specifically the network section.
    In other news, I'm in Go2Net's 100 hot Windows-related websites, which is very cool! Also, if you haven't checked this out before, I'm almost in the top 10,000 websites in the world according to Alexa (which is a neat program, I must say; if it wasn't free, I'd make one as well). I'm almost like PBS - it's all thanks to viewers like you! :)

    Well, I had hoped that I wouldn't have to tell this sob story, but my hard drive died on me, and I lost a whole bunch of data, primarily related to the site (like all my server logs, the new version of Proxy, the list goes on and on). I spent this weekend picking up the pieces of my system, and trying to get back into a position where things are flowing smoothly again... The good news is that it was very productive for me, and I was able to redo quite a bit of what I lost (it's always easier doing something a second time, although not quite as rewarding), so I should have a new program ready for release this Friday. If you would like to read more about the crash, I wrote a ramble about it; boy, October just wasn't my month for hardware... I guess some of those ghosts must have attacked my computer! :)