Sometime around the middle of this week iTunes Sync passed the 20,000 download mark. Hurray! When I wrote this application just over 2 months ago, I did so because I wanted to use iTunes with my cheap-o MP3 player. When I posted iTunes Sync for others to download I had no idea there were as many people in the same situation as me. Well, it turns out there are, as iTunes Sync has been averaging over 340 downloads per day, with a steady stream of email and forum feedback to match. Thanks to everyone who has submitted bug reports, feedback, suggestions and to everyone who contributed to the tested MP3 player's list. You've all helped to make iTunes Sync what it is today!

Cheers!

I have posted a new version of Clipboard Text Scrubber. This is a quick bug fix release, to clear up a couple of small issues. Here's a rundown on the changes:

• Fixed a bug that would cause the "Clear Clipboard" menu option to not do anything
• Fixed a bug that would cause an infinite loop (Thanks to Carsten on the Forum for finding this bug)
• Changed the icons (again) to something with more contrast

I recommend that anyone using an older version of Clipboard Text Scrubber update to the latest version today.

Today I packaged and released a utility that I have been using for a while now, called ShellSend. ShellSend is a free command line utility for Windows 2000, 2003, XP and Vista that allows you to easily send a custom email from your scripts or batch files. Just run "shellsend.exe" with the correct command line parameters (like the "to address", "from address" and SMTP server) and watch as your email gets instantly delivered. You can specify a filename as well, and ShellSend will read the contents of the file and use that as the message body. Great for emailing log files or console program output to yourself.

All of you system administrators out there, or anyone who runs scheduled tasks, check out ShellSend today!

What am I Reading? That's an excellent question, hypothetical person, thanks for asking. I always enjoy hearing about other people's daily reads, as it helps me to find new sites, so I thought I'd share my daily reading with all of you (in no particular order).

Ars Technica
My main source of technology news. I love Ars!

Exigency in Specie
A frequently updated, very well written and often insightful blog that I love reading. It covers such a wide range of topics it's always fresh and enjoyable to read. Often times there are multiple posts per day, all of them verbose and a pleasure to read.

Coding Horror
I'm not sure how Jeff manages to post an epic article every day that goes so in-depth, but my hat's off to him. I can't start my day without my Coding Horror.

Digg
99% junk, 1% good stuff. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, but I'll often find great stuff so I keep reading every day.

Formula 1
What can I say, I love my motorsports. Formula 1 just happens to be my favourite so I like to keep up on all the latest news.

Lifehacker
These guys post about so many useful tips, tricks and software utilities (including a couple of mine) how could I not read them? I have discovered more than a few great things from reading Lifehacker.

Penny Arcade
I don't often read the articles, as the light on dark colour scheme really hurts my eyes, but the comics are fantastic.

The Old New Thing
Raymond does a wonderful job covering old, nostalgic technology topics, along with up-to-date findings. His tech story of the day coupled with his interesting story of the day makes a great way to start the day.

ThousandtyOne
This blog is sadly not updated very often, but the articles that are posted are pure gold. Mostly developer oriented, but still worth a read for anyone.

When Chris and I launched ClickScore about a month ago we had no idea if the idea would work or not. Growth has been steady over the past 4 weeks and as a result I'm proud to announce that today we hit our 200th user. To date we have had over 400 people try out the application, and over 200 have decided to keep it installed. Thanks to everyone who helped with testing and for being patient with the early beta versions.

For anyone new to the ClickScore scene, ClickScore is a Facebook application that let's you review anything from things to people to places and much more. It then takes your reviews and tells you how well you "click" with your friends and everyone else on Facebook. Think of it like "Everybody Votes" on the Nintendo Wii, but on steroids.

Good work ClickScore team!

This is just a quick note to people that are waiting for help with iTunes Sync. I have received many, many emails looking for help and I am doing my best to answer each one, but there is currently a large backlog. Please be assured that you will receive a response as soon as possible.

A new version of Clipboard Text Scrubber has been released into the wild. v1.3.0 fixes an annoying bug that caused too many notifications to be shown, even when the clipboard hasn't been changed. Now, you should only receive a notification about the clipboard being scrubbed when it actually has done something. For example, copying text to the clipboard in the Notepad application will no longer cause a notification, but copying text from Microsoft Excel or Word will, because it really is being cleaned.

Check out Clipboard Text Scrubber today!

Motion Monitor was one of the first applications, if not the first, that I wrote in C# and helped me begin my .NET WinForms journey. Motion Monitor was cobbled together from various tutorials around the internet in an attempt to understand how C# worked, how class libraries worked and just generally learning the syntax of the language. Since I haven't touched Motion Monitor in years, except to migrate it to Visual Studio 2005 in May, I don't want to support it anymore. So it's only fair that I release the source code for it, so it can live on.

You can find both the binary and source code on the Monitor Monitor page.

After over a month with no new release of Clipboard Text Scrubber I decided that last night and tonight I should focus on it, to clear up some outstanding issues. Here's a quick rundown on the wholesome goodness included in the 1.2.1 release:

• Double-clicking on the system tray icon scrubs the text on the clipboard
• Removed the "invalid format" message when non-text data is on the clipboard, it was annoying
• Now saves application settings so you don't have to keep setting it up every time
• New application icons
• Significant memory usage reduction
• Provides HTML scrubbing - this will remove any HTML tags from your clipboard
• Setup now detects whether you need to install the .NET Framework 2.0 and will open a download page automatically

Wow, looks and sounds good to me! Take a peek today.

Just a quick update about iTunes Sync and the planned localization support. I have had an overwhelming response to include a German interface option in the next release of iTunes Sync. Amongst this response I have had about 1 person per day volunteering to help translate the interface. Fantastic! I have had to start turning people away because I have enough people already to help with German, but if you're interested in a different language just drop me a line. You can be sure that I will try my best to get German support into the next release.

Thanks to everyone!