Hi everybody!

I finally released version 1.5.1 of Simidude. This is mainly a bug fix version that improves upon version 1.5.0:

• Bug Fix: I tried to improve the way Simidude finds its own IP address.
• Bug Fix: Some people experienced creashes on older versions of Ubuntu
• Bug Fix: Some people experienced crashes when a hard coded network address was not available in the current network.
• Feature: I updated the used UI libraries to their respective latest versions. This might bring some improvements especially on Mac and Linux platforms.

This version is recommended for all users.

As always if you have any feature requests please let me know- loud and clear.

Feedburner sent out a pretty messed up news mail to my subscribers yesterday and I sincerely want to apologize.

The problem might have been that I changed the setting of posts in my RSS feeds. That might have caused Feedburner to reset it’s internal markers and make it misbehave.

So in the end, it’s my fault.

I hope the problem ist solved with this last message to you folks. I really value your interest in Simidude news and it was not my desire to jeopardize that.

So, have a great day, anyway.

Torsten.

PS: Please let me know if further problems exist.

Hi everybody,

this is a short notice to let you know I released version 1.5.0 of the Network Clipboard and Drag&Drop utility Simidude.

It took me a while to finish this version but I believe I did hunt down and kill some bugs and also introduced some features.

The release notes for this version can be found here.

You can download or buy Simidude here.

Have a great day,

Torsten.

Our last BitsDuJour sale is a couple month back and it was quiet successful, so they invited me back for a new round.

So here we go. This time’s BitsDuJour sale will be on October 29. If you tried Simidude and find it useful then this is your great chance to get Simidude for a mere $9,95.

If you didn’t yet try Simidude download it now so you can make up your mind until October, 29. Simidude comes with a free 30 day trial license, so there’s absolutely no excuse for not trying out

During the last sale I gathered quiet a couple of nice reviews and comments about Simidude- you can still read them on their page…

Oh, did I mention? Here’s the BitsDuJour link: http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/simidude/

The current version of Simidude is 1.4.0 with 1.4.1 in the making. A license you buy now will be valid for all current and future releases of Simidude version 1.

Also one license of Simidude can be used on multiple computers as long as you use these computers as one Simidude group. So if you want to send clipboard contents and files to one or more computers in your house you only need ONE license.

I hope to hear from you on October, 29.

As always if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask…

Have a great day,

Torsten.

Just now I released version 1.4.0 of Simidude, the cross platform network clipboard and drag & drop utility.

I have added quite some features to it, for a complete list of new niceness please look here.

The problems with the Windows 7 update installer are gone as well.

Grab the latest release from our download site and tell me what you think!

Have a great day,

Torsten.

I admit, the Simidude user manual was very sparse and lacking much information.

I have worked for the last few days to write up a new user manual that will hopefully be more informative for your and will answer more of your questions.

Special thanks to very helpful user P. Jansen who provided me with a great starting point for this documentation.

The manual is available as PDF from here. I will also include it in future releases of Simidude.

Please let me know any things that I have missed in the manual, also if you’d like to see the documentation in any other format than PDF.

Download the manual here.

Have a great day,

Torsten.

A few days ago I release version 1.3.3 of Simidude, the cross platform network clipboard and drag & drop utility.

And now, after I’m sure its working this time I can even write about it

This one is a maintenance release that doesn’t add great new features but it fixes some bugs, renews used libraries and makes it all together more stable. A list of new features and bug fixes is available here.

However I did realize that the update installer for Windows 7 is not working. So when the update checker of Simidude notifies you of an update you can download it but the update installer will then fail (only Windows 7). You can then quit Simidude and start the downloaded installer by hand. I’m sure we’ll figure that one out as well…

Anyway, go grab the latest release from our download site and have fun!

Have a great day,

Torsten.

Finally!

After a short beta period I have now released version 1.3.0 of AGYNAMIX Simidude, my cross platform network clipboard and file copy tool.

I did not get around to create new and shiny screenshots yet- I’ll post them as soon as possible!

This one is a pretty big release with huge improvements in usability and features. Here is a list of new features that were added since version 1.2.0:

• An embedded HTTP server. The embedded HTTP server allows you to access Simidude entries from any machines that has a browser installed. This is useful if you want to access Simidude but have no permission to install your own software, maybe because you’re setting up your client’s machine and want to use Simidude to transfer data back and forth. Here is a more in depth article about this new exiting feature.
• Save compressed… Simidude now offers a way to quickly save any text, image, file or directory in ZIP compressed format. To do this simply right click on an entry and choose “Save compressed…”. That is actually the most efficient way to get some text stuffed into a compressed file: copy the text passage to clipboard, after it occurs in Simidude click “Save compressed…”, change the file name if you want and hit that big “Save” button. That’s it you’re done.
• Restore the Clipboard after a reboot. There is now an option in the preferences, if set the current content of the clipboard will be saved to disk. After a restart Simidude  checks if the clipboard is still empty. If that is the case the saved entry will be restored. It was a bit hard to test because I didn’t find a way to really empty the clipboard (on Mac) other then rebooting the machine…
• Some minor GUI improvements. There is no Exit-Button in the toolbar any more that might have caused trouble.
• Finally there are 64bit releases for Windows and Linux. I have tested them on Windows 64bit and Ubuntu 64. If you have a 64 bit machine please make sure to try them out and report back any misbehavior.
• A list of IP addresses or network names to connect after launch. In the preferences you can now add IP addresses or network names of machines you wish to always connect to. This option is intended to be used to connect to machines in different subnets or in those rare cases when your network configuration prohibits the sending of broadcast messages which Simidude uses to find other clients.
• The modifier key can be changed. Available options are: “Ctrl” on Windows or “Apple” on Mac, “Shift” and “Alt”.
  The modifier key for instance alternates the behavior of a double click on a Simidude entry. Without holding the modifier key the entry will be opened in the chosen application (see below), holding the modifier key activates that clicked entry (puts it into the clipboard)
• Select an application for opening Simidude entries. In the preferences you can now set an application for each entry type (Text, Image or File/Folder). When double clicking of a Simidude entry that data will then be opened within the specified application.

This new and exciting version can be found on our download page.

If you have suggestions or questions please use our helpdesk or email address to contact us. We are excited to hear from you!

Have a great day!

Hi everybody, thanks for waiting so long!

Today I release the first beta of Simidude 1.3.0 to the public. I’m using this version internally but still, it’s not as widely tested as 1.2.0.

These are some of the new features of Simidude 1.3.0:

• An embedded HTTP server. The embedded HTTP server allows you to access Simidude entries from any machines that has a browser installed. This is useful if you want to access Simidude but have no permission to install your own software, maybe because you’re setting up your client’s machine and want to use Simidude to transfer data back and forth. Here is a more in depth article about this new exiting feature.
• Save compressed… Simidude now offers a way to quickly save any text, image, file or directory in ZIP compressed format. To do this simply right click on an entry and choose “Save compressed…”. That is actually the most efficient way to get some text stuffed into a compressed file: copy the text passage to clipboard, after it occurs in Simidude click “Save compressed…”, change the file name if you want and hit that big “Save” button. That’s it you’re done.
• Restore the Clipboard after a reboot. There is now an option in the preferences, if set the current content of the clipboard will be saved to disk. After a restart Simidude  checks if the clipboard is still empty. If that is the case the saved entry will be restored. It was a bit hard to test because I didn’t find a way to really empty the clipboard (on Mac) other then rebooting the machine…
• Some minor GUI improvements. There is no Exit-Button in the toolbar any more that might have caused trouble.
• Of course there where some bugs left for the purpose of being cleaned up later.
• Finally there are 64bit releases for Windows and Linux. I have tested them on Windows 64bit and Ubuntu 64. If you have a 64 bit machine please make sure to try them out and report back any misbehavior.

So here we go. I do not yet add the beta release to the update notifier. If you want to try it out please download the beta from here.

• Simidude 1.3.0b1 for Windows 32bit
• Simidude 1.3.0b1 for Windows 64bit
• Simidude 1.3.0b1 for Mac OS X
• Simidude 1.3.0b1 for Linux 32bit
• Simidude 1.3.0b1 for Linux 64bit

Please send your suggestions or bug reports to contact@agynamix.de or better yet use the web form- thanks!

It has been quiet around here for a while, I know. I had been way too busy with that boring stuff that pays my bills.

Yet I managed to scratch of time to work on Simidude. I got a lot of feedback from my customers and with the next version 1.3 and the following one I’m trying to incorporate those requests.

So here’s a first sneak peak of a major new feature in version 1.3:

Version 1.3 will come along with an embedded HTTP server. I have implemented that thing myself and didn’t take some out of the box servlet container to make sure the memory footprint doesn’t jump into the skies.

The HTTP server is very simplistic- in this version it will allow you to browse all entries, select a specific one for preview and then download that entry as is or as a ZIP file.

This feature was requested by people who use Simidude to install new machines where they’re not allowed to install their own software. Since a browser should be present on any machine with some kind of windowing system they can drag their setup files unto Simidude on one machine and then access that list of files via a browser from the machine they wish to setup. They just need to make sure the browser is installed before trying to use it

As another new feature I have added compression of entries. You can now save an entry as a compressed ZIP file which might come in handy for instance if you quickly want to convert clipboard text into a compressed file. This is a new option which I will add to the main Simidude gui before releasing 1.3.

Please note that when downloading directories via the browser view they will always be compressed and then served as one big file.

Some users have requested an option to save the latest clipboard contents before Simidude stops and then reload that contents later. Using this feature Simidude could restore the clipboard contents after a reboot for instance. This is a small and handy feature which I’m also trying to put into 1.3.

After the 1.3 release which I want to send out beginning of June if no show stopping bugs are found I will do some gui cleanup and improvements that make the application easier and more fun to use.

If you have feature requests for Simidude for an upcoming release please let me know!

I’m working hard on this release over the coming weekend. If someone would like to volunteer as a beta tester please give me a note! The communication protocol did not change so you do not need to update all your Simidude installations, just one. The new version will talk to the older ones just fine.

This update will be free to all existing customers.

Have a great day,

Torsten.

Now you can even make money with Simidude!

I have partnered with ShareASale.com to find new ways to bring Simidude to the people. ShareASale is a well respected affiliate system that connects affiliates and product vendors.

So if you would like to earn some money by spreading the word about Simidude you can apply here.

You will go through a registration process with ShareASale. After they have accepted your application (this is to make sure that no one gets betrayed) you can start advertising and selling Simidude through your website.

I’m in the process of creating banners and other graphics that will aid you in the process- these will all be available through the ShareASale site.

To promote the software you could write reviews on your website and link to Simidude through the links provided by ShareASale to make sure you get your “share form the sale” (nice pun, eh).

Again, here is the link to apply as my affiliate.

Thanks for your interest,

Torsten.

I’d like to announce a substantial price drop for the Simidude application. Simidude will from now on be available for just USD 25 or 20 Euro.

Due to the exchange rate between Euro and USD the previous USD I felt the price was too high. Considering the fact that most purchases come from within the United States I adjusted the price accordingly.

In the last few weeks I received a lot of great comments about Simidude like this one:

“Patrick J. Says:

Hi Torsten,
just ordered it, a big thanks for this very useful product!
As Alexander D. said, the ‘one license per cluster’ scheme is very kind.
Please keep on the good work. “

I’m thankful for all encouraging words and helpful suggestions! Currently I’m working on an exciting next release which will be free to existing customers. In this release I will polish some of the remaining rough edges. I also will implement a small web server embedded into Simidude. This will allow you to access you clipboard’s content or files and folders that you have dragged unto Simidude directly from your web browser. This is useful if you don’t want or cannot install an extra Simidude on one of the machines…

Feel free to download Simidude and try it for free for 30 days. I also won’t stop you buying Simidude right away.

Have a great day!

I’m pretty excited to finally release version 1.2.0 of AGYNAMIX Simidude.

Based on the feedback of customers and testers I have implemented some exciting new features:

• Clipboard entries can now be saved to disk: With a right click on the item in the clipboard table you get a new menu entry “Save as…”. Every type of clipboard entry, even clipboard images, can saved to disk this way! For images, just choose the extension “jpg”, “png” or “bmp” to save the image in the corresponding format. Simidude is now an easy way to copy part of an image and save it to disk!
• Activate item in default application: Choosing this menu entry from the context menu will open the clipboard entry with the registered default application. Clipboard images will be saved as “jpg” files and Text as “txt” files and open by the registered application. Contents of remote files or directories is downloaded prior to opening them.
  BTW, Simidude automatically recognizes an URL within a Clipboard text and will open the URL in the default browser when you double click on it or press enter when the entry is highlighted.
• Easily create a text entry: Simidude now contains a simple text dialog that you can use to write some text directly into Simidude.
• Remove entries from all connected clients: There are now menu entries to clear the clipboard table on all connected clients, or only the selected entry. Pressing the “Shift” key along with the two remove buttons in the toolbar has the same effect. The “Shift” modifier changes the remove action from just altering the local client to effecting all connected clients.
• New keyboard shortcuts: I’ve introduced some keyboard shortcuts to access Simidude’s features more easily. For instance you could press “Del” or “Backspace” to delete an entry. Using the “Shift” modifier works here, too. Pressing “Enter” the selected entry will be opened in it’s default application.
• Update checker can be disabled: In the preferences you can now set when you want the Update checker to run. This can be “Never”, “Once a week” or “On every start”.
• Of course I also fixed a bunch of bugs.

Please go ahead and download the new version.

You can order Simidude for just €26 from our order page. You only need to pay once for any number of connected clients!

If you have questions, ideas or comments please drop me a note.

Enjoy, Torsten.

Today I released version 1.1.0 of AGYNAMIX Simidude.

This new release comes along with a load of new features that just were not ready for version 1 but are now.

New Features of Simidude 1.1.0:

• Automatic Updates: Simidude now automatically checks if new updates are available. In such a case you’ll get notified and asked if you’d download the new release.
• Image Thumbnails: if you drag an image onto Simidude or copy the path of an image to the clipboard, Simidude will show a thumbnail view of the image so that you can visually distinguish Simidude entries much better. Please note that a thumbnail will not be created if the image is too large (over 2 Mio. bytes).
• Copy Images from Clipboard: If you copy an image to the clipboard it is now processed by Simidude. Simidude will show a thumbnail view of the copied image as well as its pixel size. The image will be sent to all connected clients and can from there be dragged onto a target application or copied into the clipboard of the target machine.
• Double Click on Files: Double clicking on a file now tries to open the application registered for this file type. If the content of this file has not yet been retrieved from the source client this will be done prior to launching the registered application.
• Double Click on Urls: Double clicking on text that is recognized as an Url now opens the standard browser with that Url. It is now even easier to copy a Url to the clipboard on one machine and open it by simply double clicking on it on another machine.
• Filtering of Simidude Entries: In the upper right corner of the main Simidude window there is now a little search box. Type some text there and after hitting “Enter” only entries that contain this text will be displayed. This will make it easier for you to sift through a larger number of entries.
• Buttons to remove on or all entries: To make using Simidude more comfortable there are now menu entries and toolbar button to remove the currently selected entry or to clear the whole list.
  The currently selected entry can also be removed by hitting the “Del” or “Backspace” key.
• Better Mac OS X integration: Simidude now supports the standard OS X application menu with entries like “About”, “Preferences” and “Quit”.
  Simidude now comes with a proper Macintosh-Icon now that does not feature that ugly scaling artifacts as the previous one did.

I am very pleased with the current version.

I would encourage you to download our free 30-day trial version and test it.

Today I’d like to announce, after much sweat, the release of Simidude 1.0.0.

Simidude is an easy to use cross platform Drag&Drop and clipboard synchronization tool.

During the last weeks I have cleaned up the code and made the program easier to use and to install (I hope). Simidude clients now install pretty much hassle free- if you have computers whitin the same subnet (which usually is the case for small companies or home networks) the clients connect to each other automatically.

If you put something in one computers clipboard it will be synchronized to all other connected clients. From there you can activate the item on the target machine and paste it to where it should go.

I had the original idea for this application while surfing the net on my developer machine, looking for information how to setup a certain thing. When I found what I needed I searched for a way to transport the URL between those machines. I found several options:

• USB stick
• email the link
• network share

While all of the alternatives above do work they are not really smooth. In addition to this I sometimes work with virtual machines where I do not setup a shared folder or I do not have a network share available.

Now Simidude solves the above problems. I install it on all the systems I want to hook together, enter a group name and a password and Simidude starts looking for other instances. When it found other clients it exchanges information with them. So if you already have information in one instance it will eventually travel to all connected clients.

If you have similar problems then please don’t hessitate and drive over to the Simidude download site and grab a trial version yourself.

Simidude is available for an introductory price of €25,95 for Windows Vista and XP, Mac OS X (Tiger and Leopard) and Linux.

Please not that there might still be some rough edges in the application. Please report any missing features or bugs at our helpdesk.

A version 1 license will be valid for all version 1 updates, so you don’t loose money if you buy early. On the contrary, you will benefit from our introductory price and our polite support.

Thanks for reading this far!

Have a nice day,

Torsten Uhlmann, Founder

You don’t believe all the steps involved in creating an application!

One of those things you forget most easily is having a logo for your aplication. Something your app is identified with.

Now since my artistic skills are rather underexposed I wisely decided to hire someone to create a logo.

Thankfully the guys at BOS discussed this matter in a recent thread so all I had to do was to check out the mentioned and recommended artists.

I ended up with Arslogodesign and I’m very pleased so far. At first contact you basically fill out some briefing information that tells them about your company/product, your ideas etc.

They then develop 5 drafts for you from which you can choose one which in multiple steps would be refined afterwards. Here are these 5 logos:

After some discussion we settled on the first version. I feel it represents the nature of the application quiet well. Another side effect is that I can use the joint squares as theme for an application icon.

Oh well, an application icon is the next thing I need to get done…

I had some slight problems with my Wordpress installation that prevented me from uploading files. Since I corrected the problems now I’d like to present the first screenshots of Simidude.

To not offend any particular platform or their followersI will present the screenshots in alphabetic order :

Mac OS X:

Simidude on Mac OS X 10.5

MS Windows Vista:

Simidude on Vista

Ubuntu Linux 8.10:

Simidude on Ubuntu

Now Simidude still feels pretty rough around its virtual edges but it’s already pretty usable.

I hope to post a first beta version before the end of November. I restrain myself from adding new features. Instead I’m gonna make the available features more robust and the whole thing easier to use.

In a Simidude network one of the installations acts as a server. This server will accept connections from other Simidude clients and will coordinate the traffic from one client to another. Apart from that the server is nothing special.

I choose this setup to be able to connect clients which are in different subnets, for instance a virtual machine that runs through a NAT network connection. The NAT will give the VM their own address realm. Using peer-to-peer here would only work if you had a relay kind of server that would initiate the connection between two Simidude installations.

So instead I choose to let one installation play the part of the server. The user has to tell Simidude through its preferences whether it should act as a server or as a client. When acting as a server Simidude can self detect it’s current network address and use it to listen for incoming requests. When acting as a client however the user has to give it the server’s address so the client can setup a connection.

I want to make this part easier. I might use a network broadcast to find out if there is a server somewhere in the same subnet listening and automatically set the found network address. That should work in most cases. People who use NAT networks know how to set an IP address anyway

So if you are interested in this kind of application please let me know what kind of features you’d expect.

The above statement is the tag line for my new software, Simidude.

The name means something like “similar dude” which reflects the nature of the thing. The application synchronizes the clipboard of your computer over its border with other computers that also run Simidude.

It also allows you to drag a file, folder or text unto one Simidude window and, after wandering over to your other machine, drag it from there to its destination.

Why?

I often work with different computers. I have one development machine. On this computer I have several virtual machines for testing purposes. Then I work on a client’s machine which he gave me specifically for the work in his projects.

Now it happened often enough that I was searching the web for some information. When I found a URL I needed to transfer it to one of the other machines. To do this I would either send the URL via mail and grab the mail from the other machine or put the URL in a text file which I would then copy to a network drive or usb stick. Well, most often I would just rewrite the URL on the target machine.

I now from people I work with at my client’s offices that suffer from the same problem. Multiple machines but no easy way to quickly transfer this kind of data between them.

That was when the idea for Simidude was born.

Simidude beta

Develop an application that would run on different platforms. It sits quietly in the background and monitors your clipboard. Whenever you copy something into it it would send the contents over to the other connected machines. From one of the machines you could then activate the previously copied item and paste it to where you need it.

To spice the thing up some bit I thought Drag&Drop might be a great idea, too.

So now you can take a file, url, text or even a folder and drag it unto one Simidude instance. From one of the other connected Simidude instances you drag the item and drop it to its destination- drop a url into your browser, text into a word processor or files into the file system. It’s actually pretty simple.

So this blog will hold information about the development status of Simidude as well as other stuff I run across while developing it.

If you have questions please don’t hesitate to contact me, please see Simidude’s support page for contact options. I always welcome your feedback!

Enjoy the ride,

Torsten.