Following the recent 1.2 release comes this 1.22 bug fix for the highly versatile media player BSplayer.

“BSplayer and BSplayer Pro version 1.22 (b817) (26 Feb 2005)

• fixed broken VMR9 renderless mode

• fixed problems with Win9x/ME”

I ran this the other day to play some Transformers .avi's and almost overdosed on options. There were so many of 'em that I fled back to plain old Media Player classic which has just a start and a stop button and that's basically it. || craeonics | comments

And while we're in controversy-land, what to think of the recently released WinAmp 5.08e maintenance build:

“Winamp 5.08e:

• Updated Windows Media DRM License”

DRM stands for ‘Digital Rights Management’. A fancy name for all kinds of nasty and unhappy things lawyers get a kick out of.

For those of you who have been paying attention, this ofcourse has everything to do with the recent ‘discovery’ that it was possible to save .wma streams to disk with WinAmp. Or as one download site put it:

“Latest Changes:

• Saving output of WMA streams is no longer supported

• You must upgrade to this release in order to listen to WMA files”

Be sure to check the comments on that last one, by the way. No I haven't been chuckling. It's a sad state this player is in. || craeonics | comments (20)

Here's an interesting one: over at the Samurize site, the devs say:

“The next release has been released to the VIPs ETA for the public release is not yet definite but it is likely to be within a week or so.”

…but in the meantime, the unrelenting sryan one found the beta over here (the post date not withstanding). So has someone been leaking or is this deliberate? || craeonics | comments (3)

A new release candidate of everyone's favourite calendar, Rainlendar.

“A new beta version or Rainlendar can be found from here.

To install just overwrite the old files. But before you do, take a backup of everything! I haven't tested this version very much so there can be still some nasty bugs that might destroy/corrupt your current events. So consider yourself warned.

I haven't updated the docs and language files yet so they are not included.

If you find bugs, you can write about them to this thread.”

As always, the release notes are a mile long, so no point in echoing 'em here. Ofcourse I could summarise things, but you know me: I'm far too lazy for that. || craeonics | comments

And the widgets keep coming. Earlier this week (just when I was too busy to post news) those observant saw the release of version 1.2 of AveDesk:

“The third release of this desktop enhancer tool focusses on a better user experience. With a new Installer, Theme-support, Tools and much more AveDesk 1.2 is a worthy successor of the 1.1 version.

AveDesk 1.2 will enhance your desktop experience by making your desktop visually more pleasing and to give the possibility to add interactive icons and tools, called desklets.”

AveDesk is donationware. No (good) screenshot nor homepage to be found, so I'll leave it at that. || craeonics | comments (8)

StarDock figures that since just about every replacement shell out there uses highly customised right-click-on-desktop popup menus, they should bring this to the boring world of the Explorer user as well.

Enter RightClick.

“Stardock has released a trial version of RightClick. RightClck is a program that lets users extend or even completely redesign the Windows desktop right-click mouse menu. When a user right-clicks on their Windows desktop, RightClick's custom made menus comes up. Users can add short-cuts, tasks, system commands, and much more to the menu. It's also fully skinnable and can be set to automatically inherit the user's current WindowBlinds visual style. For users who normally have their desktop covered up, a hot key can be set up so that will activate it at any time.

RightClick supports displaying running tasks, the Start menu, the system tray and virtually anything else one might imagine having on there allowing the user to replace the Start bar if they so chose (and in fact RightClick supports hiding the Start bar).

RightClick is a free download. Users can purchase it stand-alone or as part of Stardock's Object Desktop.”

Trial? Free download? Purchase? Huh? Uncle crae explains: they won't charge you for downloading, but you are supposed to pay for it ($14.95) in order to get the ‘full’ version.

In other words, crippled shareware. || craeonics | comments (27)

Slow period. And for once, it's not because I am a lazy bastard, but simply because there was no news.

Andymon probably thought the same, for he released his own branch of LiteStep, dubbed xStep:

“What is ‘xStep 0.24.7 Final’?

Well, it's basically a 100% source clone of Litestep 0.24.7-RC3! The only real differences are:

• It is compiled with the actual stable zlib and libpng Librarys

• It is compiled with the actual stable STLPort Librarys

• It is compiled with the actual Windows Core SDK

Why ‘xStep’ and not ‘Litestep’?

Since the main development maybe starts(has started?) again, we doesn't want to make much interferences.

What are the advantages?

• Some people have said, that it is faster then RC3, but that's totally unproved

• Bugs and Problems in the included Librarys have been fixed in the actual versions.

• The Librarys have evolved since RC3 was released

• It's no longer a ‘Release Candidate’”

So I swapped my LiteStep 0.24.7 RC3 for this one. So far, I haven't noticed any differences, other than that xStep requires msvcr70.dll, like previous LiteStep release candidates did. New must be better, so I'll stick with this one for now.

Be warned though, this is a ‘core’ release, so it has to be installed over a previous copy of LiteStep, since it comes without themes, modules or instructions.

For those that need a complete package, the new dist.ru installer was also released, already updated with this new core. Things move swift in the land of 'Step. || craeonics | comments (9)