Anurag Bhandari

Software come and go. We like some, despise some and are neutral to others. Most of the good and useful software obtain a huge following and userbase, and usually survive for a very long time until either a better software appears or the technology changes. There also are software that are based on innovative ideas, but do not get sufficient attention, due to the lack of which they perish sooner than others.

And finally, there are software that initially create waves, catch all the attention due to the wonderful concepts they are based upon, attain significant fan following, and then… disappear! In this article, I am going to talk about just these kind of software, err, that were. These are such software that I would have hoped to see flourish till, at least, a couple more years. And yes, all these softwares were free.

Microsoft Reader

MS Reader was Microsoft’s noble attempt to change the way ebooks were read. Reader offered an actual book-like interface that was easy on eyes. It had two other advantages. First, the ebooks created in Reader format (.lit) were considerably smaller in size than an equivalent PDF. Second, it introduced text-to-speech in ebook reading (it would read the book word-by-word with adjustable voice speed).

In my opinion, MS Reader was a novell software. Many popular ebooks were published in “lit” format, but as time passed, such ebooks also disappeared. Today, the most ebooks we see are in PDF format.

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Remember the little, cute Jumbled Words Game I prepared in Python? More than 4 months had passed since I made it, and now it was time it got some makeover. So, featuring a host of new improvements, here I am making the improved game available for download.

Installing and playing is easy. Just to remind the readers, the game is made in Python using the wxPython libraries for the graphical interface (GUI).

The Python source was converted into a Windows executable (.exe) using py2exe. An installer was made out of the executable using InnoSetup. Both are freely available for download and very easy to use. I’ll come up with a Linux executable soon. And maybe a Python Egg?

Changelog:
1. Words are now read from a text file
2. The words read from text file are jumbled automatically & randomly
3. Changed splash image
4. Improved font system
5. Score system
6. Improved overall interface

The various downloads are:

• Setup – install the game from this like any normal application (Windows)
• Zipped – just extract the zipped file and double-click on JumbledGUI.exe to play (Windows)
• Source – the source code of the game in a zipped file (cross-platform)

I hope you like it. You may encounter bugs. If so, do let me know. Also, I would be happy to get some feedback from you regarding this little app.

Credits: The game was improved with suggestions and inputs from DaniWeb.com.

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Anwsers.com defines an easter egg as:

A hidden feature in computer software, a DVD, or a video game.

Over the past few days, I got to check out some cool easter eggs in the softwares I use often. I got to know about some of them from the Internet and the rest of them from a popular Indian computer magazine Digit. Although I was used to seeing these easter eggs in video games and movies, but softwares? I didn’t even know they existed in softwares too. Anyway, here I share 10 cool easter eggs worth mentioning:

Mozilla Firefox
Firefox needs no introduction. It’s one of the best web browsers available and is growing at a rapid rate. The following 2 easter eggs associated with Firefox work no matter which version you are using.

• Type about:mozilla in the address bar and hit enter. You’ll see a page with maroon background and white text written on it. Now what is written is in the style of Bible verses and tells briefly about the history of Mozilla and Netscape. This message varies from version-to-version, but the idea behind what is displayed remains the same. This trick even works in Netscape browsers.
  
• Another eater egg here is that when you type about kitchensink in the address bar, you are redirected to a webpage where you are shown an animated picture of a kitchen sink, designed wholly with ASCII characters.
  

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