Official Began Software Blog

Ok so i haven’t posted any news here in a few months… development has practically stopped and i’ve been to slack to update our blog.

Tornadows development has been paused due to the fact that our software affiliate hasn’t/won’t be implementing the features we need for our own software to work correctly. Until i can find software to do the tasks required, i have no option but to pause development of Tornadows.

In the time since i last post something here on the blog, i’ve been playing with more batch scripting, some GUI design and explorer.exe replacement… and most recently, chat room hosting with client and server applications. GUI and explorer replacement is a lot of work, and i don’t have a clear goal or defined task to work with for it, so i’ve only experimented there… just to get ideas on what i might like to make.

In regards to chat room software, it’s coming along well… a public release will definately be within the next month at latest. Stay tuned.

Our system cleaner Tornadows has been put on hold for a little while now. We’ve been waiting on another company to get their new release version of their software out the door. Why? Because it allows us to better integrate components and APIs in an enhanced and more secure manner. I’m also debating whether to drop themes support for the first public release of Tornadows, and re-introduce it in a future build… just to get a public release out the door sooner! Stay tuned.

YouTube is our latest advertising medium.  I just registered our YouTube account and uploaded our first video, featuring Recycle Sack!  There isn’t any audio, because I’m unable to do so at the moment.  Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/user/BeganSoftware2009

Have you ever asked yourself why the Recycle Bin isn’t named Recycle Sack?  I know i haven’t… but for laughs i made a virus back when i was in school which did exactly this!  It wasn’t harmful or malicious in any way, just renamed the recycle bin… which i guess could be called an annoyance?  Anyways, a friend of mine has requested i give him a copy of the program.  Instead I’ve re-designed the application to not be self-replicating as it originally was, and am hosting it as a ‘prank’ application instead.

The zip file includes two files, one file for renaming the Recycle Bin to Recycle Sack, and another file to reverse the change.  I’ve only tested this with Windows XP Home & Pro, so if it doesn’t work for Vista and you would like a copy of this application developed for that operating system, just contact me via the contact form on this site.

Download link:
Recycle Sack - 64kb
Downloaded 32 time(s).

At the moment I’m working on a firewall type application which practically does what Peer Guardian does. The primary use of Peer Guardian is to block IPs from government organizations like RIAA MPAA and Bay TSP whilst you are downloading illegal copyright material such as music and movies. Peer Guardian also blocks other known ‘nasties’ in regards to IP addresses.

The application is currently named ‘Hacker Firewall’ because i wasn’t feeling very creative yesterday whilst my red bull reserves had dried up. It’s at v1.0 ‘Alpha’ for the moment, but there are some additional features and security I’d like to build into the program before i release it. I’ll hopefully rename it too!

TSAC (The simple addition calculator) is a very simple application, the result of playing with Microsoft’s Small Basic programming environment for a few minutes.  The user enters two numbers and the application adds the two numbers together, displaying the result for the user.  Source code is provided.  If i work on this anymore, i’ll add support for other numeric operators, such as multiplication, division, and subtraction.  The main reason I’m posting this application is for laughs and humor, as i realise it’s of little practical use.

Download link:
TSAC v1.0 - 132kb
Downloaded 13 time(s).

Now Began Software is on Facebook. This makes it easier to spread the word of who we are and what we do. It’s also easier to announce new software releases, news, and updates without spamming emails at people… or something like that.

I’m currently thinking about getting a graphics person on the team since GUI design is the biggest slowdown for myself in regards to the development of Tornadows… So having a person to do the GUI work for me whilst i do the code would free up a lot of time and get development going a lot smoother, thus resulting in sooner releases of our products.

Michael Hall has joined Began Software now, whilst still directing operations over at Ub3r Studios/Media. He’ll be managing and developing in the area that Adam and i have so far neglected, games development.

Originally i was working on Critical Outbreak, a game idea I’ve worked little on here and there within the past few years… and don’t really have anything to show for it. Due to that project becoming paused & stagnant I’ve invited Michael into the team to help us put out some game material. Michael has informed me that he’s starting off small, working on some basic game concepts & demos for now, and will likely develop bigger and better games and maybe even GDKs (Game Development Kits) later on. If you wish to contact Michael, please use our contact form via the ‘contact us’ link above, which now has Michael as a contact option from the drop-down menu.

In other news… I’m planning on building a ‘Lite’ version of Tornadows for users on older systems with less resources to spare on things such as an aesthetically attractive UI sporting themes and so on. Development is still progressing with the ‘Full’ version of Tornadows. The slowest thing about development currently is the themes design which takes many hours per theme/form using GIMP. More news soon.

I’ve been talking with Meyer Diedericks from ESET corporation in regards to obtaining a NFR license to ESET’s NOD32 anti-virus scanner on our products before release.  This will help to ensure we don’t have another incident like what occurred with the trial beta of Tornadows a few weeks back.  Nothing is official yet, but soon, we hope to be official affiliates of ESET corporation.

In other news, I’ve finally got the new API working smoothly for custom scans.  I just need to fix up some small code and everything for the custom scan feature will be running smoothly and glitch free.  After the integration of that new feature, i’ll be working on themes for Tornadows, the Tour, getting the hyperlinks on the forms active and adding in a form which tells you when a scan is running and an estimate of how much data was removed by Tornadows.

The reason for the last for-mentioned feature is that people were confused about why Tornadows instantly said “General Cleanup & Maintenance Completed!” upon clicking ‘Start Scan’.  The reason for this was that Tornadows actually ran an invisible application in the background which transparently cleaned files from the computer.  This application could stay in memory for a few seconds, to anything as long as several minutes… depending on how much ‘junk’ data was floating around on the user’s hard drive.  The new build of Tornadows will change all of this and be easier for the user to understand what is going on.

So a few days after the trial beta of Tornadows has finished… my Bit Defender anti virus installation at work reports a malware detection in the Tornadows executable. Turns out that one of the compilers I’ve used for Tornadows is injecting Trojan code into the executable it compiles. We’ve now switched to a new compiler…

In other news, testing is taking place with new APIs for Tornadows to get custom scans to work more smoothly. More news soon.