I'm
REALLY happy that this publicity attempt worked!
Great timing as this marks my 1,500th post here!
I subscribe to these podcasts via iTunes and listen on my PC as I don't have a iPod...but I'm a bit behind on listening to this show...I also get "This Week In Tech" which he does...great shows for keeping up with what's going on for people who aren't too techy.
For background to others who may not know of Leo:
Leo has a very wide following here in the US, as he appears on TV on occasion (he has a show in Canada on cable, I believe), has a 3 hr call-in radio show on Sat/Sun that is syndicated in various markets around the country, and has numerous podcasts that have various amounts of subscribers (up to 280K+-, from his wikipedia entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Laporte).
During his radio show on Sunday Sept 30th, (which I listen to when I can via the web as it's not available in this area, so I listen to it from KFI 640 in Los Angeles), during the commercial breaks Leo interacts with listeners via a chat session, and has a video stream so we can hear his comments, I posted a quick msg to Leo saying that "XYplorer was a product that I thought he should take a look at, and that I was NOT financially connected to it, but was just a VERY happy user" or similar...I then posted a couple of more sentences in chatroom, and he acknowledged my comment via a "Thanks J5, I will" or similar.
So...I then sent an email with the following:
I'm "J5" on the chatroom...and THANKS for that quick voice reply during commercial break!
I'm just a regular faithful listener and have REALLY enjoyed your shows for many months!
And sorry, but since I wasn't sure which address was best/correct, I sent this to both addresses I found.
This time, I'm sending a bit more background about
http://www.xyplorer.com/ and asking if you would consider trial-ing/reviewing/testing this shareware software utility so that others may know of its existence. It's a Windows Explorer replacement that I found about 18 months ago, and have found to be one of THE best supported programs in my 20+ years of using PC's! It's called XYplorer and is written by Donald Lessau from Germany.
It hasn't gathered very much mainstream press attention, and think it deserves some, or at least recognition on a major web site and/or podcasts, such as yours.
I have NO financial interest in this software whatsoever and have actually donated to the author full price even though he was willing to give me a free copy for my work in the support forum. Over time, I have become the second most frequent poster to the support forum, which I never intended originally, but just that I fell in LOVE with the product and the timeliness and atitude of the author. So much so that I've also created a blog to help support the product at
http://xyplorer.blogspot.com . Another user has created a wiki for it:
http://www.xyplorer.com/xywiki.php
Don has, on occasion, created a new beta version within hours of receiving a suggestion for improvement or enhancement, and rarely do bug fixes take more than a couple of days. As a former mainframe COBOL systems analyst/programmer, I saw that this was SO unusual in the industry, that I think his efforts need more exposure.
I realize that a formal review may take some time, and that you get hundreds/thousands of requests like this, but I think you should consider this product for your review. And yes, your review may likely not be 100% positive, which is a risk to be taken, but any exposure should offset that. I'm sure that once you see and use the product, you'll be impressed. Ok, so it's not a dual-pane setup, but has some unique features that outweigh that aspect, such as the Catalog.
It has been listed on Gizmo (Ian) Richards Tech Support Alert as one of the best utilities. An old version, which is freeware, still exists but doesn't have a lot of the newest features. New beta versions with new features, which are 99%+ rock-solid, are often available daily!
The original need I had that this program satisfied perfectly was to be able to easily locate and work with the subset of files that were modified within a selected time-of-day span, and not just by date, as Win Expl does.
Thanks for your time and hope to hear back from you about this!
This is a similar letter to ones that I had sent to a couple of other media folks.
I then got this from his assistant on the 4th:
Hi this is Mara. Leo has hired me to help answer his email.
thanks for the link. I'll pass it on to Leo.
And on the 9th, I got this from Leo:
I'll definitely download it and try it!
I hadn't checked the podcasts for about a 10 days (too busy!), so didn't know that he'd mentioned it...and I didn't say anything here as I had no idea if it'd make it into one of his shows or not...so now it has! GREAT!!!
Hey, I even got MY blog mentioned on his site!
Update:After writing above, I listened to that part of podcast...I am now, as they say,
"on cloud nine"! Best thing that has happened to me in last month! Getting a mention on his podcast, plus a great review of XY...what more could I ask for?