Monday, March 20, 2006

Hey! Free Program!

Hi folks.



How's it going?



I've been sequestered away for the last couple months working on my genealogy program. Had a couple job interviews over the last couple weeks, but still the same old same-old - it's been five years, now! Unbelievable.



But I have high hopes - I think this program is going to fly. It's one I've been working on it for over three years now, and it's just gotten bigger and bigger - I keep thinking of cool new features to add to it. But last December I hit a wall - scope creep got to me - it was just too much. It had gotten up there to compete with the big guys - Family Tree Maker, Legacy, AFT, and PAF (hard to compete with a free program!). But I'm a one-guy shop - it just got to be too much. I was daunted. So to encourage this old shoe-maker to get back to his last, I promised myself I'd nip the scope creep in the bud and stop with the add-ons - after I add just one more really cool feature that just HAD to be in there (because absolutely NO one else had it) - namely, a glorified copy/paste function that would speed up data entry from genealogy websites by a factor of about 1000.



And it was about that time I heard Marilyn's voice saying, "Chunk it down, Ricky!"



And I thought, you know? This feature is just so cool it could stand alone all by itself. I can do that, and have it ready to go in a couple months. So let's! And then I thought, you know? I could even do that with the rest of the cool features. Instead of providing one great big program full of tools, I could make those tools available seperately - like snap-ons. And that was just the ticket. I've been running with that epiphany ever since, and now the first of the bunch is ready for Beta testing, with a couple more following shortly.



So. Have a free program!



Due to present budget constraints I can't offer much more than that at the moment, but next year, who knows. Hey, I'd hire you in a heartbeat!



You can download the zipped install program from here:



http://www.gentlespirit.com/Rick/Text2GED.zip



And the install instructions and mini-manual here:



http://www.gentlespirit.com/Rick/Text2GEDminiManual.doc



I'll be leaving for Florida tomorrow morning. My sister Karen and I will be there for a week, visiting our dad. Probably have a story to tell when I get back on the 28th.



See you around the word-world. Wish me luck?



~Ricky

3 comments:

Ricky said...

So here I am in Florida, trying to show off my program to my dad, only to find out at this pregnmant moment that Text2GED doesn't run in Windows XP like it does in Windows ME - it won't read or write saved files! Who woulda thunk it! I'll figure it out, but after I get back. So if you keep up with the tech Jones (unlike some!), sorry!

Having a wonderful time, even so. It's lovely here - the orange trees are in blossom, and everythings all a green. Very warm, very moist, very sweet. And the weather's not bad, either.

Later, gators.

Anonymous said...

okay...

It's tweaked.

Try it once more, from the top...

Anonymous said...

would you balieve...

I posted the wrong file name for the installation download. And no one said anything. Oh well!

Anyway, it's now majorly tweaked and goes by the right name - Text2GED.zip.

Try it! You'll like it!

Back on the 2nd.

~Ricky