W2 Software » Shareware from Dave Wolf and Jim Weller

Random Playlist Creator with Genres - Version 2.1.0.14

Release Date: 6-07-2007

Random Playlist Creator with Genres (Yeah, long name, I know...) is a nice little app that will generate a random M3U playlist from a larger collection. In other words, a random playlist generator. When generating the playlist, you also have the option of being able to exclude specific genres based on the mood of the playlist you are trying to create. If you are one of those people that have 50,000 tunes in your collection, you know how it can be sometimes when trying to figure out what to dump to your portable player -- to listen to. No where on the Net could I find a simple application for this. Sure, there were apps that would allow you to create a random playlist (ie. Winamp), but I couldn't find anything where I could exclude specific genres. And, of all the genre based apps I did find, none of them built the genre table based on your collection. So, you had to go through 300 genres to pick what you wanted. So, here it is. Hopefully, you'll find it as useful as we do.

Some of the more useful features:

Update app's internal library against your MP3 collection to build custom genre table
Exclude or Include what genres you want in your playlist
Exclude by Artist, specific artists will then not added to the playlist
Option to limit the no. of times any one artist's tracks will be added to playlist
Option to reduce duplication of any one track within the playlist or no. of future playlists created
Generate random playlist based on of number of tunes, by total size, or by duration specified
Copy tunes to location where playlist is saved (useful for some audio players)
When creating playlist, playlist paths can be made relative to your audio collection
Manually include specific tunes in addition to random tracks by specifically selecting them
Added auto-update feature that checks to see that the latest version is being used
Play songs (multiple or single selections) straight from library
Now Supports MP3, WMA, M4A, MP4, OGG, & FLAC
See ChangeLog.txt for detailed information regarding changes from versions & builds

Random Playlist Creator with Genres

Smart Screensaver Stopper - Version 2.1.0.7

Release Date: 4-18-2007

Smart Screensaver Stopper is a system tray applet that will prevent the screensaver from launching, explicitly or by some set percent threshold of CPU currently in use. The app is helpful if some automated tasks that run take a lot of CPU. If these tasks, in conjunction with a CPU hungry screensaver, run at the same time, the CPU easily gets maxed. This app will allow the system to "intelligently" determine whether the screensaver should present, allowing the former task to run without having its cycles chewed up by a screeensaver. The app is helpful for those running backup applications, servers with intermittent load stress, etc. Having the applet reside in the system tray allows you to perform all of these operations with only a couple of clicks. This allows much easier management of the screensaver -- rather than using the conventional 'Display Properties' dialog.

We had some issues trapping the screensaver (i.e. having it work) in earlier builds; well, this version works now!

Some of the more useful features:

Disable screensaver with just a couple of clicks
Ability to determine the current CPU in use, if above set threshold, the screensaver will not launch
Ability to have applet startup when Windows starts
Settings persist even after machine is rebooted
Added auto-update feature that checks to see that the latest version is being used
Nothing else on the Net available that performs the same functionality (We think...)
See ChangeLog.txt for detailed information regarding changes from versions & builds

Smart Screensaver Stopper

File Chopper - Version 1.0.0.2

Release Date: 9-7-2005

File Chopper is a small utility that allows you to "chop" the front or back end of data off of a file. We use it to (very ugly-like) chop MPEG files into smaller pieces. Often we need only some small pieces of larger files for analysis; chopping them makes them easier to send to other associates over the Net or via e-mail. The utility is also helpful in reducing the size of huge log files. Often, huge logs won't even open in most text editors (i.e. Notepad, etc.) so File Chopper comes in handy in allowing us to knock the size down into something a little more manageable. So, small and almost unworthy, here it is. . .

Some of the more useful features:

Chop front end of file
Chop back end of file
Dictate byte offset into file and number of bytes to chop

File Chopper