Requires: Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP

This software is "in alpha release". This means that I have finished enough of it to be able to try to use it myself to see if it works. There might also be a few other people taking a look at it and letting me know whether they had any problems installing, uninstalling, or playing with it. You can indulge your curiosity by becoming an anonymous alpha user; see the instructions below.

This software is useable but is not finished; it is an early working draft. I welcome comments, questions, and users, but please do not publish or disseminate comments to anyone else. See the "Alpha User History" below and at the bottom of the page for each free application.

Bundled Free Applications

IdeaFarm (tm) Personal Information System

Personal Information System designed to work with your speech to text software: This tool generates reports from a plain text file that you create using your speech to text software. During the day, you record date, time, activity, expenses, "to do" tasks, log entries, and journal entries onto a voice recorder that you carry with you. Each day, you combine these recordings and then use Dragon Naturally Speaking to transcribe them into a plain text file. When you paste a copy of this file into a special folder, it disappears, and a set of reports appears for you. Click here for details.

Instructions For Downloading and Installing The IPDOS (tm) Bundle

Step 1: Install IdeaFarm (tm) Service. To do this, log onto your computer as an administrator and then click ideafarm.msi (66 KB).

Step 2: Verify that installation succeeded. To do this, open the MS Windows Task Manager, open the Processes tab, click "Show processes from all users", and verify that process image "ideafarm.service.ipdos" is listed. This process does nothing except launch ("boot") instances of IdeaFarm (tm) Piggyback Distributed Operating System, which you will download in the next step.

Step 3: Download IdeaFarm (tm) Piggyback Distributed Operating System. To do this, click ideafarm.bundle.zip (13 MB).

Step 4: Unzip the zip file that you downloaded in Step 3. Unzip it into the root directory of drive C:, or the root directory of any other local nonremovable drive.

Step 5: Verify that IPDOS (tm) has started fully. Within a second or oo after you unzip the bundle, IPDOS (tm) should be launched. Nothing should appear on your display. To verify that IPDOS (tm) has been launched, open the MS Windows Task Manager, open the Processes tab, and then verify that a process image with a name of the form "ideafarm.0000xxxx.ipdos-we" is listed four times.

History:

2012.02.14: New release of ideafarm.msi and ideafarm.bundle.zip uploaded to this site. All files tested, including example.soil.txt .

2012.02.12: All files downloadable from this web site were replaced and then tested by downloading, installing, etc.

2012.01.31: This server is now secured to prevent rogue files from being uploaded to it. I deleted and reuploaded all files, and then tested them by downloading them and using them to install the service and then the bundle. IdeaFarm (tm) Personal Information System was then tested. All works. There are no known defects in the files that can be downloaded here.

2012.01.25: I began to use IdeaFarm (tm) Personal Information System and made it available as a download in the woth release of the bundle.