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Freeware Tools by Stefan Trost Media

Posted: Mon May 03, 2010 10:11 pm
by I am Baas
Quite a few freeware tools by Stefan Trost Media:

Image Converter, Index Author, Converter, WordCreator, Filelist Creator, Sudoku, Pipette, AnswerCoach, Easy MP3 Player, Print My Fonts, and Slippy Clerk.

All seem portable and stealth but I haven't got the time to test and submit. If you guys want to do it (and take the credit for doing it), please go ahead.

Re: Freeware Tools by Stefan Trost Media

Posted: Tue May 04, 2010 10:55 am
by guinness
Interesting little collection!

Re: Freeware Tools by Stefan Trost Media

Posted: Tue May 04, 2010 11:43 am
by Checker
@ I am Baas: Very good find :!:
@ guinness: A lot of work for you :wink:

Re: Freeware Tools by Stefan Trost Media

Posted: Tue May 04, 2010 12:38 pm
by guinness
What does that mean :shock:

Re: Freeware Tools by Stefan Trost Media

Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 5:29 am
by webfork
Wow, what an annoying and lame license.

I'll let you know if I ever figure out if you can make copies, redistribute the software, or use it commercially. The license makes that REAL hard to understand, chock full of useless legalese doublespeak.

Also, I'm a little confused by some of the product descriptions. Example: what the @#$% does slippy clerk do? I read the description twice -- maybe I've gone cross-eyed from trying to read the license. Specialized programs that do unique things like this call for a video howto of some kind.

Re: Freeware Tools by Stefan Trost Media

Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 7:02 am
by guinness
I think it's some 'Numerical HotKey' program that when you push a correpsonding Number Key it inserts pre-defined text into the active window. I got this from the ScreenShots, so I might be wrong. Or it could be a puzzle? :)

Re: Freeware Tools by Stefan Trost Media

Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 7:34 am
by webfork
guinness wrote:I think it's some 'Numerical HotKey' program that when you push a correpsonding Number Key it inserts pre-defined text into the active window. I got this from the ScreenShots, so I might be wrong. Or it could be a puzzle? :)
Oh okay -- well that sounds pretty cool. I think they need to hire you to write their website.

Re: Freeware Tools by Stefan Trost Media

Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 8:35 am
by guinness
And you for the license confusion! :)

Re: Freeware Tools by Stefan Trost Media

Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 1:42 pm
by webfork
guinness wrote:And you for the license confusion! :)
Ha! Definitely.

Re: Freeware Tools by Stefan Trost Media

Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 2:15 pm
by MiDoJo
Seems straight forward (once you cut through all of the :twisted: language)

Here are the sections what pertain to us
A-Software" can be downloaded and passed on for free (more on this in sections II (Licence) and III (Restrictions)).
The user is permitted to use this software freely and without limits. The user is also permitted to make copies and give copies of the original software to anyone, as long as these copies are exact copies without any modifications. The distribution with magazine CDs, internet pages or links in online offers are also permitted. In this case we ask for a free copy of the magazine and (or) to send a message to us.
Commercial Use: At a commercial use of A-Software an adequate donation is mandatory. If A-Software is used commercially for a longer time, an adequate donation must be paid at regular intervals (like licence fees).
It is however written badly and includes a section about "acts of god" I guess this means if a tree falls on your computer, it is not the fault of the software maker.

Re: Freeware Tools by Stefan Trost Media

Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 3:21 pm
by ashghost
webfork wrote: I'll let you know if I ever figure out if you can make copies, redistribute the software, or use it commercially. The license makes that REAL hard to understand, chock full of useless legalese doublespeak.
I think at least part of the problem is that the author has used software to translate from German to English, both the website and the license. The syntax is pretty unique, and is often very close to good, common English usage, so it's either pretty good software, or the author is translating a few words and phrases here and there. Maybe a German speaker can confirm this.

Freeware: With the exception of customized software requests, all of the downloads except ImageConverter Pro and TextConverter Pro (both of which are pretty clearly marked as payware on their download pages) are freeware.

You can copy and redistribute but not modify freeware. Commercial use requires written consent of Stefan Trost after a donation "based on a similar product that was purchased in the private sector and must include at least 15 euros per workplace, time period, and transaction".

On the other hand, there's this text on the "Donate" page:
Alternative support: Perhaps you do not like any of the three described possibilities, but nevertheless you would like to support us. In this case, there are many alternatives, simply take one of your talents and help us! For example, if you are a jurist, you can check elements of our general Terms and Conditions, if you know about the English language, you can check our English pages for faults. Come up with something and write us!
Perhaps you can get a license for commercial use if you help out with the English or the terms and conditions!
webfork wrote: Also, I'm a little confused by some of the product descriptions. Example: what the @#$% does slippy clerk do? I read the description twice -- maybe I've gone cross-eyed from trying to read the license. Specialized programs that do unique things like this call for a video howto of some kind.
Based on the screenshots, it looks to me like a program that can create text interspersed with a series of numbers, which you could do similarly with Excel (put your text in one column, then use the "fill series" to put a sequence of evenly spaced numbers in the next column). It doesn't seem to use a hotkey, just that "copy to clipboard" button.

I think there are some nifty, unique little tools there, but I don't see a need for Slippy Clerk. ;)

Re: Freeware Tools by Stefan Trost Media

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 8:01 am
by JohnW
I use Directory Lister to produce a list of files in a folder (including several sub-folders). About 9000 files in all.
When I saw FileList Creator I thought it would be interesting to see if this provided any extra features.

Instead of running for less than 1 sec (Directory Lister) it ran for around 5 minutes. On completion, a list started to flash up and the the program gave the "stopped working" message.

So ... FileList Creator is unusable.

Re: Freeware Tools by Stefan Trost Media

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 3:45 am
by guinness
Tested Filelist Creator: Portable

Re: Freeware Tools by Stefan Trost Media

Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 1:30 pm
by webfork
I went back and looked at some of the software on this site. I think the trick is just to look at the screenshots, but there are some amazing language / writer tools here. I really don't understand the application of many of them, but that sort of makes them more interesting.


WordCreator - http://www.sttmedia.com/wordcreator-screenshot - Includes a crazy number of odd language tools including Syllable and Unicode Counter, letter counter, and text creator. I can see language researchers using this to try and find patterns in language, including unknown languages. What an interesting software.

I can also see this as an interesting password generator program that works by creating normal-sounding words that don't appear in any dictionary. Also, creative types could generate interesting-sounding words to sort of trigger the creative process.

TextImage - http://www.sttmedia.com/textimages-screenshot - Can see a lot of uses for this, but primarily having your email address as a weird fot that's difficult for machines to read, making it spam-resistant. I think this would be a good add to the database.

Pipette - http://www.sttmedia.com/pipette-screenshot - Probably the most number of color analysis elements I've seen in one program. Some of these I don't even recognize.

Text Converter - http://www.sttmedia.com/textconverter-screenshot = You probably already have a search and replace, but you can't replace line 7 with line 3 and then insert some other text. Very cool.

Word Creator - http://www.sttmedia.com/wordcreator-screenshot -

Re: Freeware Tools by Stefan Trost Media

Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 5:36 pm
by Midas
Sudoku and Index Author look interesting to me. 8)