Starship Asterisk*

A new APOD software is available for Astronomy Picture of the Day fans.

This software automatically brings Astronomy Picture of the Day to the desktop, along with the picture explanation. It is usefull, and also sets a new beautiful astronomy wallpaper every day. Of course, it is free, and does not contain Adware, Spyware etc'.

http://nightskylive.net/software/apod

my MS SP2 warns that the digital signature is not valid on this download. would the publisher please authenticate the download by signing.
FYI digital signature guarantees that the software has not been tampered with and MS suggests not running any invalid signatured software

And yet you trust M$

Our software (downloaded from nightskylive.net domain) is perfectly clean from spyware, adware or badware of any kind, and is not hacked in any way. Being aware of the fact that some web sites have listed this software, we strongly recommend to download the software from the nightskylive.net domain (here), as we cannot guarantee that copies of this software product listed in other web sites are clean.

Thanks, this is just what I've been looking for.

Unfortunately, when I try to use it on Windows 2000 Professional, it installs fine, but the little wallpaper window shows only the words "Astronomy Picture of the Day" and a link to the Explanation, without showing the picture itself. If I click on the Explanation, I get the text, overlaid on a blocky section of the picture, but not the whole thing.

bhawthorne wrote:Thanks, this is just what I've been looking for.

Unfortunately, when I try to use it on Windows 2000 Professional, it installs fine, but the little wallpaper window shows only the words "Astronomy Picture of the Day" and a link to the Explanation, without showing the picture itself. If I click on the Explanation, I get the text, overlaid on a blocky section of the picture, but not the whole thing.

Are you using some kind of an active desktop?

I love the APOD software, but when I downloaded it and began using it I experienced internet connectivity problems. It may be a coincidence and my network card may have gone bad at the same moment. Anyway, I have to uninstall and then reinstall my network card each time I restart the computer. I want to see if this is caused by some kind of conflict going on between APOD software and something else.

But I can't find an uninstall function within the APOD program and the APOD program doesn't show up in my add or remove programs list in my control panel.

Do I just delete it? I don't want to mess up my system, and all the other software I'm aware of on my computer has a correct way to uninstall.

I think I figured it out. I still don't know if the problem was related to any interaction between APOD software and something else, but I found the fix. I just turned off the Firewall in the new big Windows service pack and that seems to have fixed the problem.

But if you can tell me how to uninstall it I would like to reinstall it from ground zero.

As it doesn't install any registry entries you should be fine with just deleting it.

Okay, I'll try just deleting the whole APOD folder and then reinstalling.

Thanks

Also, if you want to use the uninstaller you can use "control Panel" and choose "Add/Remove software". Then you should select "APOD" from the list.

Yet, it is safe to just reinstall the software on a previous installation.

I cannot get today's photo to download. APOD has been working OK since it first was released.

If I look at Task Manager, APOD is still processing after 30 minutes.

Any suggestions please?

Regards

Peter
Windows XP Home Edition SP1

Yes. We got several similar reports yesterday. The best thing to do here is to close apod.exe and run the file:

http://nightskylive.net/software/apod/apod_inst.exe

This will instantly solve the problem.

Great, that has done the job, thanks

Can I say thanks for a most welcome piece of software. It is great to have a new desktop each day.

Peter

Great idea, but I have had several times where the APOD program starts taking up 99% of my CPU and slows my computer to an absolute halt (requiring me to shut it down with the Task Manager). Because of this, I have been forced to remove the program.

Also, it would be nice if the program (a) kept the aspect ratio of the source pictures when enlarging them (although the picture wouldn't fill the screen if it didn't have the same aspect ratio as the desktop, a black background would be fine) and (b) used a bicubic resizing algorithm so that the resized images weren't so blocky.

ahecht wrote:Great idea, but I have had several times where the APOD program starts taking up 99% of my CPU and slows my computer to an absolute halt (requiring me to shut it down with the Task Manager). Because of this, I have been forced to remove the program.

Also, it would be nice if the program (a) kept the aspect ratio of the source pictures when enlarging them (although the picture wouldn't fill the screen if it didn't have the same aspect ratio as the desktop, a black background would be fine) and (b) used a bicubic resizing algorithm so that the resized images weren't so blocky.

Thank you for your comments. APOD.exe is rather new, and we will definitely intend keep imporving the software.

About the CPU consumption, we believe that if you download and reinstall apod you will not face this problem.

Could you put something on the download page to show when a new release is there please - date or version number for instance.

Peter

lior wrote:Thank you for your comments. APOD.exe is rather new, and we will definitely intend keep imporving the software.

About the CPU consumption, we believe that if you download and reinstall apod you will not face this problem.

Great, I'll try that. I was previously using a hack job that included a Perl Script, a command line image editor, batch files, and scheduled tasks (I wrote up instructions at http://zansstuff.com/rotatedesktop.html#apod). This is much nicer solution, especially since the text option is there.

The ImageMagick software suite that I used for resizing in my hack job is free and open source, and their licence allows you to include any part of the suite (or just their code) in your software as long as you provide clear attribution to ImageMagick Studio LLC. You can intrgrate the source, run from a command line, or use their API. It would be an easy way to add a high-quality resizing algorythm to APOD.exe

Anonymous wrote:

lior wrote:Thank you for your comments. APOD.exe is rather new, and we will definitely intend keep imporving the software.

About the CPU consumption, we believe that if you download and reinstall apod you will not face this problem.

Great, I'll try that. I was previously using a hack job that included a Perl Script, a command line image editor, batch files, and scheduled tasks (I wrote up instructions at http://zansstuff.com/rotatedesktop.html#apod). This is much nicer solution, especially since the text option is there.

The ImageMagick software suite that I used for resizing in my hack job is free and open source, and their licence allows you to include any part of the suite (or just their code) in your software as long as you provide clear attribution to ImageMagick Studio LLC. You can intrgrate the source, run from a command line, or use their API. It would be an easy way to add a high-quality resizing algorythm to APOD.exe

We consider adding optional image resizing, so a user can decide not to automatically resize the pictures. This will be probably used by more experienced users.

PeterTheBike wrote:Could you put something on the download page to show when a new release is there please - date or version number for instance.

Peter

Newest versions are always available for download at http://nightskylive.net/software/apod

Anonymous wrote: Newest versions are always available for download at http://nightskylive.net/software/apod

But how do we know there is a new release?

PeterTheBike wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Newest versions are always available for download at http://nightskylive.net/software/apod

But how do we know there is a new release?

There is a label of the date in which the last release was updated, right below the download link. Apod is still in "beta" it has no formal versions, but the date of the last update should be an indication whether a new release is available.

lior wrote:There is a label of the date in which the last release was updated, right below the download link.

I had an old version of the page still in my cache that did not show a date. When I refreshed the page I saw it.

Thanks - that was what I was looking for.

Peter

A new version of APOD.exe is available at http://nightskylive.net/software/apod
This version includes several fixes.