Allow me to present to you: DoThisNow for Linux.
What is DoThisNow? So glad you asked!
DoThisNow does things. It is a “Thing Do-er”.
The idea is this:
Take something you want to do (say… change your desktop background) and then set DoThisNow to do it… whenever you like. You can set an action to occur at a specific date and time, or repeating at whatever frequency you’d like (every 5 minutes, ever 20 seconds, ever 4 days, etc.).
Plus you can run any of these actions via the DoThisNow menu in the gnome panel.
DoThisNow is capable of quite a lot, but words don’t do it justice. A screenshot is in order!
To get you started, here’s a few examples of things you can accomplish (quite easily) with DoThisNow:
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Set your Desktop Background to change every 15 minutes.
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Set your Desktop Background to change for specific holidays.
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Play an “On the hour” chime.
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Take a Screenshot and save it to any folder with date and time stamps… on any schedule you like.
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Display ergonomic break time reminders.
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Run backup scripts when you are asleep.
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Auto-insert any text into any application with a quick click of the menu.
DoThisNow 1.0 is currently in Beta (though a very usable, stable, awesome Beta).
Packages for Ubuntu (32 and 64bit), along with a tar.gz archive for other distros, are available from the DoThisNow page.
Pricing is $19.95 $9.95 from the Radical Breeze store. (Or in a bundle with every Radical Breeze application, for $40 $35.)
And, as always, I am open to your suggestions! The current development plans include: adding new actions as well as adding new ways to trigger those actions (hot keys? file changes? drive mounted? etc.).
Update:
Based on popular feedback: DoThisNow’s price has been lowered to $9.95!
April 6th, 2009 - 6:20 pm
the price is somewhat high, for such an application.
I would lower it to $9,95, so its more attractive to buy, and you might would sell more? what do you think bryan?
April 6th, 2009 - 6:21 pm
ps: a openSUSE rpm package would be very handy as well.
as for now i still prefer opensuse over ubuntu, and i dont like compiling from source. so lets hope a rpm package will be available shortly!
April 6th, 2009 - 7:01 pm
So your next application has arrived and still no sign of the mythical gpl app you spoke of
April 6th, 2009 - 7:24 pm
Mike: OpenSuse is coming.
Lord Drachenblut: You feelin cranky?
I talked about that very topic in the last post. KINDA feels like your trolling. Just sayin’.
April 6th, 2009 - 8:10 pm
10$ and I’m buying!
April 6th, 2009 - 8:12 pm
Bryan, dont avoid the main part…pricing?
April 6th, 2009 - 8:58 pm
Bryan good to see that an osx app from 2004 has found new life on a good platform.
as for trolling come on man is that the best you can say. You have been saying the gpl software has been coming in a matter of days for weeks now. My comment is no more trollish than things you say on this blog or on jupiter broadcasting.
cheers
April 6th, 2009 - 9:31 pm
Mike: Considering the pricing thing. You’re not the only one to make that same suggestion.
Lord: So you’re unhappy that some software that will be released as GPL (that you don’t currently know much about or use) is not quite yet released? And might be -gasp- weeks later than originally planned?
April 6th, 2009 - 10:12 pm
ok, according to your tweet about the price, i still say 9,95$.but also for other apps of the radical breeze collection.
You have to consider that a lot of people who use linux use it, because the source code is open, but the main thing is, that it is free of charge, just like the apps in the repos. free office, free cd/dvd burner etc..
I think it will be hard to sell software for about 20$ on linux at all. thats why i am saying 9,95$ for a good app like “DoThisNow”.
April 6th, 2009 - 10:19 pm
Mike: You make a good point there. The general feedback is that 9.95 is a great price for DoThisNow.
As for the other applications… it’s an interesting thought.
Typically (on Windows and OS X) there’s a perception issue with applications lower than, say, $19. People view the cheaper apps as not quite worth it.
But, perhaps, the sweet spot is different among the Linux world…
April 6th, 2009 - 10:49 pm
Well bryan, because people on windows/osx say that apps under 19$ are not worth reviewing/buying is just wrong. there are also a lot of free applications on windows that are worth it, and we both know that.
Linux is a free platform that is also free of charge. thats why people would not like to spend money, when they can have apps for free. In the windows world it appears that people download good software illegaly, so they dont like to spend money as well.
The challenge for you would be, to show that applications under 10$ can be very good and usefull as well, and you have the crowd/customers to prove it.
The trend nowadays shows that appstores like Itunes or the iphone app store, and soon windows mobile app store with low prices for apps (under 5$) are very hip and worth buying. and if the app. sucks, its only 1$ or 2$. People are more attracted to buy it, because the price is low, and they dont feel bad if the app is not as good as they would hope it would to be.
My suggestion would be to create a cool web 2.0 “Radical Breeze App Store” with software for 9,95$ that even would attract linux users to buy it. It would be even cooler to have it all just for linux only. Maybe do a bit CNR style (1 click to install) after payment, so people dont have to do anything anymore.. just pay,click and run! *.deb and *.rpm are ideal for that.
I think this whole idea would crank up the sales, and in total you would earn more than just a few sold 20$ items.
Everybody knows “Bryan needs food” but as a programmer who wants to sell apps, you first to throw out some seeds, before you can harvest
April 6th, 2009 - 10:54 pm
to put it all under 1 motto:
” Radical Software for radical prizes! “
April 6th, 2009 - 10:54 pm
Mike: The idea is absolutely solid. Wish there were a few more commercial Linux software (shareware, etc.) devs around. Would be nice to pow-wow this stuff.
April 6th, 2009 - 11:11 pm
the last time i coded was on a Commodore 64 man…
10 rem *** my first application ***
20 rem *** by mike-linux-nl ***
30 rem ****************************
40 clrscr
50 print”hello, whats your name?”
60 input a$
70 print”hello” “a$” “how are you?
80 ….
man i still know that stuff…hehe creepy!
April 7th, 2009 - 3:04 am
Bryan
nope i’m looking forward to seeing what you might put out as foss software but I want you to stop teasing it and then slapping out another piece of proprietary code to turn around to tease gpl code some more. I also would love to see these patches you have to help improve the underlying system.
Also I love how you are still trying to twist what people say to try to make yourself look better or to try to avoid a point. I was sincere when I said it was good to see a 2004 osx app get new life on a good platform but you had to try to twist it to make it seem like I have a problem with foss software being released
Cheers
April 7th, 2009 - 4:19 pm
[...] Yesterdays release of DoThisNow was met with a pretty strong, positive response. I am extremely happy about that. [...]
April 7th, 2009 - 5:13 pm
Bryan, your an application making machine! I just wish all you apps were open source. I understand why you are doing it though and as soon as I see another way I will tell you
.
April 9th, 2009 - 1:47 pm
hey bryan i know you like comic books here is my idea for a comic book http://fiction.wikia.com/wiki/Mateia_Andrew_2099
tell me what you think about my idea do you like it is creative? just wanted the opinion of an awesome geek:)
April 11th, 2009 - 6:23 am
[...] few days ago I rolled out DoThisNow 1.0 Beta for Linux. Today DoThisNow 1.0 final is [...]