GVAutoResponder turns your Google Voice account into a full-fledged business.  Easily respond to customers with automated messages, even have a default option for users that don’t already know the commands.

GVAutoResponder runs on Windows XP/Vista/7 and monitors Google Voice for new messages.  If they match the criteria you select, they’ll get a response.

Once you’ve entered your account information, which is securely sent to Google Voice, you’ll be able to create and manage rules that describe what kind of responses customers will get.

Creating a new rule is simple, just click New Rule.

GVAutoResponder may be purchased for a one-time fee of $15, via PayPal.

A trial version is not yet available, but will be soon
Send me an email (dave dot amenta at gmail dot com), or contact me using the widget to the right if you would like a more customized solution. Please leave your email address so I can get back in touch with you!

WPF makes creating new controls quite easy.  I decided to base my controls off of System.Windows.Controls.Toolbar, and similarly each item in the Toolbar is based off of the Button control.

Here’s the XAML that I came up with

Creating a new WPF application and using this code for Window1.xaml, you should see this:

Note that while this control is visually similar to the Windows 7 Explorer Toolbar, it does not handle overflow, or collapse menu items like the Explorer one does. Perhaps an eventual update to this control will provide more advanced support.

This control does handle the IsMouseOver, IsMouseDown, and IsKeyboardFocused states.  Adding the menu glyph is a WPF Polygon.

CamServer is a surveillance and monitoring application for Windows and Linux that lets you easily view and record remote cameras.  Simply plug one or more USB or PCI capture devices into a computer, and then view the cameras from a remote location — on the same network or over the internet.  Computers running CamServer on the local network are automatically discovered, no configuration is needed!

Screenshots:

Cameras are loaded from your computer, the local network, and over the internet.  CamServer nodes can host cameras for remote access.  Designate one instance for external use, and view all your cameras in one place.

Record video to AVI for future playback.  Cameras may be designated as public or open-access, or protected with a username/password of your choosing.

Camera feeds may include timestamp and response information.

If the connection is lost, CamServer will let you know that the device is no longer providing video.

Grab a copy of CamServer and let me know what you think!

Project Deferno is live today, and available to anyone via ClickOnce deployment.  Functionality is very limited, but development is moving quickly.

Deferno is targeted at Windows 7 with Aero, features may be limited in other configurations.

Download Project Deferno.  [ClickOnce installer]

Support/Questions should be directed to irc://irc.freenode.net/#deferno

This version adds lots of preferences–so you can use it how you like.

Check out the screenshots:

The contact list supports pinning, keep your favorite contacts just a click away.  Contact photos are downloaded from Google Contacts.

The login experience has been enhanced, if you’re still unable to login, you may send a detailed error report and I can look over the logs to determine what’s happening.

Lots of preferences have been added for key features.

Quickly call or text new people without having to open a browser to Google Voice.

Easily message contacts with multiple numbers.  Just click the number to choose where to send to.

GVNotifier 1.2 is available now, auto-update to the latest version if you already have it installed, or Download it here.

If you can’t see the video, try here.

Quickly execute code in the background:

new Thread((ThreadStart)delegate()
    {
        // code here is executed on a new thread
        // blocking operations will not block the calling thread
    }).Start();

Note that if this code is to be called often, a ThreadPool may be the better choice. ThreadPools’ have less overhead for instances when many threads would be created and destroyed.

Execute code that manipulates UI:

 if (Control.IsHandleCreated)
{
    try
    {
       Control.Invoke((MethodInvoker)delegate()
       {
            // code here is safe to interact with Control
       });
    }
    catch(Exception) 
    { 
        // even though IsHandleCreated, Invoke may throw exceptions, they should be 
        //  caught and dealt with outside the handling of actual errors
    }
}

Replace ‘Control’ with ‘this’ inside the Form class. Control may refer to any control created on the UI thread.

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Thankfully Urban Dictionary is a very scrape-friendly site, finding results is as easy as locating two div’s and extracting the contents.

UrbanDictionary.Search(string); will return a list of key-value pairs which contain the word as the key, and the Urban Dictionary definition as the value.