Marcus' Macro Scheduler Blog

Someone emailed me a link to a page on a crack site which purported to offer a crack for the Macro Scheduler 8.1 evaluation version. So I fired up Windows 2000 in Virtual PC and downloaded the “crack”. It contained two executable files. I scanned them with AVG Antivirus. One of the files contained a trojan. Since I was running under a Virtual PC environment it was safe to try this “crack” out anyway (I can easily trash/recreate the Virtual environment and the host PC is protected). Well, as expected, all it did was make some changes to the system and install the trojan. It didn’t do anything to Macro Scheduler. Macro Scheduler wasn’t cracked at all, but the O/S is now potentially compromised. Proves my point about how dangerous cracks can be. More often than not they aren’t cracks at all. Just trojan horses, keyloggers or viruses. Do yourself a favour, don’t download software cracks! Instead, if your issue is one of cost, email the developer and explain what you need the software for. You never know, they might even offer you a discount.

I’ve been thinking about creating an area of the site for people to upload tools they’ve created with Macro Scheduler Pro to. It could be free tools and utilities, or even demo versions of commercial products you’ve created. It would be a great way to demonstrate some of the things Macro Scheduler can do, as well as give developers some extra exposure. If you write tools that you give away, or sell, with Macro Scheduler Pro, please let me know what you think of this idea. If there’s enough interest I’ll get to it!

Wow it’s been a busy few weeks since we announced the beta. But I’m pleased to say that pretty much all of the issues found so far have been minor UI tweaks. There have been no reported backwards compatible problems with running old scripts and the new functions and scripting features are working well. I’ve had some great feedback on the new code builder enhancements too. It seems they are going down well. The new code builder features really do seem to have made writing code easier for experienced users as well as newcomers, which is exactly what we wanted to achieve. It’s also good to see people making the most of the new image recognition functions.

Many thanks for all your feedback and assistance so far. The new manual is now at the printers and a proof should be on its way to us. So we’re now well on track for official release in January.

If you haven’t tried version 9.0 yet you can download the beta in the registered user download area. The current beta build is 033. Please report any issues at the beta forum. Oh, and if you’re holding off purchasing Macro Scheduler because you’re waiting for 9.0, there’s no need, because anyone purchasing now will get a free update to v9 in January.

Over here in the UK, climate change and the environment are finally well and truly on the agenda. Green issues get a mention in almost every TV evening news bulletin and our political leaders, gearing up for the next general election, are giving green policies great importance. But this time it appears to be more than just waffle and token gestures. The environment has become an every-day issue. Ordinary people really are worried about the effects of climate change and the government is beginning to realise the impact it will have on the economy. It’s not just an emotional issue any more. It is beginning to hit wallets.

So I was interested to read in this week’s Computer Weekly that Hillingdon Council, in London, have made an 82% power saving by moving legacy systems that were running on 40 servers onto three modern servers running VMWare. By virtualising 40 legacy servers into 3 they have cut power consumption down from 18,720 kVAs to a total of 3,450 kVAs. Nice work.

And last week 100% of IT professionals who took part in a survey by Computer Weekly agreed that it was important for IT to be environmentally friendly. But again, these environmental issues are also hitting firms in the wallet. According to technology analyst firm BroadGroup, power now accounts for 30% of datacentre operating costs!

What are you doing to save power? There are free versions of VMWare and Virtual PC available. So there’s no excuse not to be making the most of them. And don’t forget you can use Macro Scheduler to automatically shut down your PC each night!

Just for the heck of it I set up a Macro Scheduler Lens on Squidoo a while back. I didn’t expect much to come of it but recently I’ve noticed a small number of referrals from it, and its lens rank has jumped up to 4,538. Not bad considering it was as low as 20,000+.

Not really sure what I make of Squidoo. It’s a neat idea that might work well for people with no web presence wanting an easy way to create a page. But otherwise I’m not convinced.

The nice thing is that you can choose to donate any income the lens generates to charity. Great, but so far my lens has made only $0.42. So it’s not going to cure world poverty just yet!

I love the Image Recognition functions in Macro Scheduler 9.0. They make it easy to automate anything. I made a quick and dirty demo showing how to use the Image Recognition functions in v9 to automate a remote Citrix session. You can watch the demo here.

Update: The video was produced way back in v9 before a number of improvements. With the current version it is no longer necessary to get the screen resolution and capture the screen as you can simply specify SCREEN in the haystack parameter of the FindImagePos command and it will automatically scan the screen. This cuts down the amount of coding while also improving performance. Since v12 it has also been possible to specify the number of pixels to match or whether to do an exhaustive search.

But imagine being able to build an automation script that will automate anything, regardless of the GUI technology or operating system – Web Sites, Java Applications, Desktop Applications, whatever – without writing a line of code. Just tell the computer what to click on by highlighting a screen object, what to do when it finds the object, what to do if it can’t be found, what objects to wait for etc. Wouldn’t that be cool? Well it’s not just a fantasy. We’re doing that right now and some customers are already using it. With this tool you just “teach” your computer what to do. Automation Scripts that took days, can now take minutes. I’m itching to show you, so watch out for a demo soon. If you can’t wait and if you think your company could benefit from something like that, give us a shout.