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XOnline XSync
XOnline
is a program that should seriously improve your dial-up related tasks and might even
bring important gains (money and/or time) to your monthly telephone bill!
There is no installation currently - just unzip the files in the
destination folder! (the INI must be in the same folder as the EXE and
DLL, and in the same folder the LOG will be created!) If you have a
previous version of the program please take care not to overwrite your
old INI file!
The program is currently not using any registry setting and to uninstall
it you only need to delete all the files in the installation folder!
You might also want to add a link to the program in your StartUp folder
so that it will be started automatically.
This version (0.30) is free for non-commercial use and will never
expire! However, please note that all copyrights of XOnline are
exclusively owned by the author - Caranfil Catalin - and XOnline IS
DISTRIBUTED 'AS IS'. NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND IS EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED.
YOU USE XOnline AT YOUR OWN RISK. THE AUTHOR WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR DATA
LOSS, DAMAGES, LOSS OF PROFITS OR ANY OTHER KIND OF LOSS WHILE USING OR
MISUSING THIS SOFTWARE.
The user interface is probably less than 10% completed but the program
is quite usable even at this point - and it can do right now the following:
- it will give you a tray icon that is also a "hint" if any dial-up connection
is active (green = 0 active, red = one or more active connections);
- it will give quick access to the list of possible connections from your
phonebook - you can dial or hang-up those connections from the Xonline menu!
- each time a dial-up connection will become active (no matter how it is
activated, so you don't have to only use this program to dial) Xonline will
detect that and the tray icon will change;
- optionally a list of programs (that at this point you have to define in the
XONLINE.INI file) will be started - that's a very good way to run specific
programs only when a connection is active; among the programs that you
should/can run in this way are AboutTime (a program that will sincronize your
system time with special servers on the Internet), NetPerSec (a program that
will measure the speed of the connection), probably all the usual messenger
programs (we like Trillian, which can connect you with users from AOL, MSN,
ICQ, Yahoo and probably more), and programs like STUNNEL (which can add
security to a "plain text" protocol like POP3, SMTP or FTP and avoid exposing
your valuable passwords to "network sniffers");
- when any connection is stopped a line is added to a special XONLINE.LOG file
with some details (about when it was started, how long it was active and so
on); that log file will help you (in the final version of the program) to
calculate some things (like the amount of time that you have spent online or
eventually the costs for that!!!);
- when all the connections are finished the tray icon will change back to a
green one and the programs started (as described above) will be stopped!
- finally another very interesting feature is a "connection time optimizer" -
the vast majority of the phone connections are metered using specific "units"
and once such a unit has started you will pay for the entire unit, even if for
instance you will only use the first 5 seconds from a "unit" of 600 seconds!!!
Now with Xonline you can have visual and/or audible feedback when such a unit
(again, as defined by you in the XONLINE.INI file) is almost finished - and as
a result you will either pay less money or at least you will be able to use
more efficient any connection! (the only "catch" is that at this moment you
will have to (manually) define in XONLINE.INI the way how those units are
calculated, but that shouldn't be too hard and in the future we plan on putting
together a small "library" of such definitions!).
You can download the current version (0.30 - free for non-commercial use) from here ! (it will never expire)
Please contact us with any observations or suggestions and especially if you are interested in defining parameters for other providers / countries!