Until the end of July August 2013, everyone can get a 10% discount on our programs.
Just use the Discount Code SUMMER10POFF in our webshop to get the discount.
Make a donation to the Alzheimer's association (or an Alzheimer's organization in your country) of at least $10 (or Euro) and email me (gert at gdpsoftware dot com) some kind of proof. You will receive a 20% discount code in return for your kindness.
(discounts can not be used with other discount codes)
I found a nice review of File Viking on the FindMySoft website, it also includes a short video.
...You can easily create several other baskets and assign any action you want to them: copy, delete, email, filter with regular expression, filter by size, filter with * and ? wildcards, convert images, create thumbnail, move, run, uncompress, upload, or ZIP. You can customize the basket you create by giving it a name, description and caption; you can also choose its color, the image it uses, the overlay placement, and the overlay icon.
The functionality File Viking has to offer integrates with the right click context menu. So instead of dragging and dropping a file onto a basket to move it, for example, you can right click it and access the copy basket from the context menu.
Read the Full Review on FindMySoft. Until the end of 2012 you can use the 33% discount-code FINDMYSOFT in our webshop if you decide to buy File Viking.
As you probably understand, we can not offer support for extremely old versions of our programs, especially not on Windows versions for which Microsoft has ended support. In this blog I will explain the general rules and those for specific programs.
When we need to "fix" something or implement a new feature, it will always be a fix on the most current release. We do not release patches on old releases.
WatchDirectory version 1.x, 2.x and 3.x are not supported anymore.
WatchDirectory v4.x is the current release and all subversions (4.1, 4.2 ... 4.6.7B) are free upgrades for customers.
Just install the current release "on top" of your version so
it will keep all your tasks and settings. No need to uninstall the old version first.
Before you report an issue, please see if the most recent release has fixed it.
WatchFTP v1.x and v2.x are not supported anymore.
WatchFTP v3 is a free upgrade for all current WatchFTP customers so please install the latest version from our website. Note that you need a new (free) license key for version 3. You can lookup your license key here.
File Viking v1.1 is supported and all v1.x releases are free upgrades.
WxRemote v1.8 is supported and all v1.x releases are free upgrades.
Until the end of September we have the following promotions.
Use File Viking to automate your Drag & Drop actions for files. Always copying, moving, zipping or uploading to the same destination? Save some time with File Viking!
File Viking is available in English, German, French and Spanish. 64-bit and 32-bit supported.
Use the discount-code FVSUMMER12 in our webshop to get the discount.
If you already own multiple WatchDirectory and/or WatchFTP licenses WxRemote is a perfect add-on.
Remotely start and stop tasks from your webbrowser, mobile phone or from a dedicated Windows Program.
WxRemote is available in English, German,
French and Spanish.
Use the discount-code WXSUMMER12 in our webshop to get the discount.
WatchDirectory and WatchFTP customers can get a 15% discount on WatchFTP! Contact Us for a discount-code.
WatchDirectory and WatchFTP customers can get a 15% discount on WatchDirectory! Contact Us for a discount-code.
Yes, our programs will support Windows 8
Below a picture of the (German) customer preview with WatchDirectory installed. Yes, the WatchDirectory icons look a bit out-of-place. But it is great to see Microsoft did a fine job (again) to keep their OS compatible with our programs. Or is it the other way around?
GdP Software is a Dutch (Holland) company, but most of our customers are from the USA. At least 50% of our profits is from sales to US customers.
Earlier we supported a little kid in Serbia and a Good Cause in Australia.
We understand we are not alone in this world.
I read what Google is doing for American troops abroad, free telephone calls to their family during the Christmas season. I was touched.
America has always been on the frontier for democracy. You have saved most of Europe in the second world war. You saved us again with the Marshall plan.
As a little Thank You to America, GdP Software donated $1000 to Blue Star Families (they also appreciate $10 donations, by the way).
Gert Rijs
Owner of GdP Software
File Viking stores all its settings (configured baskets) in 2 files (baskets.cc and repository.cc). If you want to "copy" your File Viking settings to another computer, follow the steps in this post.
Exit File Viking
Open the directory with File Viking Settings. The exact location depends on your operating system.
Vista & Win-7 (Win2008)
Enter %LOCALAPPDATA% in the Search box of your start menu, this will open C:\Users\YourLoginName\AppData\Local and you will find a FileViking sub-directory there.
Earlier Operating Systems (Windows XP, 2000 and 2003)
Enter "%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data"
in the "Run..." box of your start menu, this will open the directory which has the FileViking sub-directory.
From this File Viking directory, copy the files baskets.cc and repository.cc. You can ignore the Backup files.
Install File Viking and Run it once so the settings directory will be created. Exit File Viking.
Depending on the Operating System, see the steps above to open the proper File Viking settings directory.
Copy the 2 .cc files from the old computer here, overwriting the 2 files already there.
Move your WatchDirectory install to another Computer
Move your WatchFTP install to another Computer (soon)
I run a local medical transcription service company. I subcontract many medical transcriptionists throughout the United States. Doctors upload voice files to me, I distribute the voice files to my transcriptionists, and the transcriptionists upload finished, transcribed documents back to me.
We follow strict naming conventions so we know at a glance what is new, what needs QA, and what is finished. When I receive finished work, I open the folder of work, QA it for errors, then rename it appropriately and place it in a File Viking basket to be placed into the correct finished location on my system.
I process approximately 50 folders of work per day. Using File Viking keeps this entire process virtually seamless.
Maneuvering around in Explorer to get things into the right spot can make your head spin, especially if you do it as often as I do. This product has been wonderfully useful. And I keep thinking of new things I want to try with it to see if I can streamline even more of my day!
Lori Miller
USA Transcription Services Incorporated
A few days ago we released a new version of our innovative file manager File Viking. This is a free upgrade for customers, just download the current version from the File Viking website.
We implemented 2 new actions to manipulate pictures:
Both actions can be used as a parent or child of other actions so, for example, you can use the "output" of the Create Thumbnail action as the input of the Upload and/or Email action.
Future releases will add more image manipulation actions, for example to "watermark" your pictures.
Also new: the French language version of File Viking. File Viking is now available in English, German, Spanish and French!
A customer, Kai, asked a few questions on our forum how he could configure WatchDirectory's Start any Program task to run Handbrake on newly detected video files. He was able to figure out most of it himself (what do *I* know about video conversion?) after a few tips.
HandBrake is a highly popular open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows. It includes a command line version, called HandbrakeCLI which allows for easy automation when used together with WatchDirectory or File Viking's Run Action.
Here you see Kai's setting for his WatchDirectory task. He uses a rather long line for "Parameters for this program", so here is the plain text version:
-i "%WD_FILE%" -f mp4 -w 720 -l 400 -e x264 -b 1000 -2
-a 1 -E faac -6 dpl2 -R 48 -B 128 -D 0.0 -v 1
-o "C:\Converted Videos\%WD_FILE_B%.mp4"
I added a few linebreaks, but obviously they should be on 1 line. You will notice he uses 2 variables:
The full list of supported variables
When you are transcoding videos with Handbrake and WatchDirectory like this, please be aware that video transcoding is a very slow, time consuming process. WatchDirectory has no way of knowing if a program started by it is "hanging" or just busy working. In this case Kai has set "Wait for program to exit" to 14400 seconds (4 hours), which should be more than enough if you run this on a reasonably modern computer. If you set this too low, WatchDirectory will "kill" the Handbrake process prematurely.
If you disable "Wait for program to exit" and multiple video's are detected by WatchDirectory, WD will start multiple Handbrake processes to transcode multiple video files. This is only advised for the most powerful computers.
File Viking's Run Action can also run HandbrakeCLI, but its environment variables have slightly different names:
File Viking currently always waits for the program to exit, there is no need to set a timeout.
A lot of our customers are Sysadmins, and they love to create little scripts to make their work a little easier.
All our programs have the option to run batch files, (power) shell scripts and real programs. Maybe that tells you something about our background in computing.
Our new program, File Viking, has a Run Action that can run programs or scripts. Every file you drop on a File Viking basket will be passed as an Environment Variable to your bat script or program.
A subdirectory, called SampleScripts, of File Viking's install directory has a few bat files to get you started. Convert pictures to PDF or PNG, Resize Pictures or UNRAR files.
Remember, you can get File Viking at a 25% discount in August! See this blogpost.
Our very first released program (2003). Currently, WatchDirectory can do a lot of things when it detects new files in your Windows directory. When we first released WD (version 1.0) it could only run batch files and obviously it still can.
There are lots of example scripts on this blog. Most scripts can be used, with minor changes, for our other programs as well.
When WatchFTP downloads a file it can run a script on that file. For example to import the file into your database or copy it somewhere else.
Your customers upload files, WatchFTP downloads them to your computer.
Our WxRemote program is a different animal. If you have multiple WatchDirectory or WatchFTP installs it allows you to start and stop tasks from another computer. It also allows you to run Remote Scripts for selected WatchDirectory or WatchFTP tasks. A future version (free upgrade) will have an HTML interface as well! Control your tasks from your phone!
This is a program you really want if you manage multiple WatchDirectory and/or WatchFTP installs. In August use the discount code WXAUGUST to buy WxRemote with a 25% discount.
A few days ago we released our new program File Viking, The Drag & Drop File Processor.
With File Viking you can automate your repetitive file handling tasks. Create several "baskets" (icons floating above your desktop) and
configure what File Viking should do with files you drop on those baskets. For example, ZIP the files and
upload the ZIP to your FTP server.
Alternatively, instead of using Drag & Drop, use the right-click context menu in Windows Explorer to add the selected files to a basket.
Several other "Actions" are available and we expect to add a lot more in the near future. All version 1.x releases will be free updates.
File Viking is currently available in 3 languages: English
, German and Spanish.
We expect to release a French version soon.
If you buy File Viking in August, use the discount code FVAUGUST in our webshop to get File Viking with a 25% discount.
Oh boy, we are never going to release this great program. Every single time I think we are ready to release, a new "perfect" idea comes up. Surely, we can not release without *this killer feature*.
Last beta - one or two weeks from now. Yes, there are hundreds of little (and big) ideas we can implement, they will have to wait until version 1.1 (which will be a free upgrade).
Lots!
We have concentrated on usability for this last (really!) beta. Make File Viking easier to use. The little things.... (do you know how much work goes into "easy"?)
We are getting closer to the last beta-release of File Viking. This new beta will be released somewhere this or next week. ~1 month after that, version 1.0 is expected.
Among other things (lots and lots of small fixes, tons of little usability improvements), we added a few new Actions ("Uncompress" and "Upload to FTP").
If you want to join this last round of beta testing and receive a free license in exchange for your comments, let me know: support @ FileViking . com.
The current File Viking beta doesn't include an Action to resize pictures yet. However, if you configure the Run action, it is easy to write a script to call, for example, ImageMagick to resize pictures you drop on a File Viking basket.
The script can use environment variables so it knows which files were dropped on the basket. The variable %FV_FILE% contains the full path to the file dropped on a basket, %FV_FILE_B% contains the "title" of the file without its extension. Below is the example script.
rem Where did you install ImageMagick (www.imagemagick.org) SET IMA=C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-6.5.8-Q16 rem Where should resized pictures be stored SET OUTDIR=F:\Testing\Target rem call convert, make pictures half their original size. As % is a special character in rem batch scripts, we need to "double" them. "%IMA%\Convert.exe" "%FV_FILE%" -resize 50%% "%OUTDIR%\%FV_FILE_B%_50percent.png" rem call convert again, making pictures fit into a 200x200 rectangle while keeping the rem correct aspect ratio. "%IMA%\Convert.exe" "%FV_FILE%" -resize 200x200 "%OUTDIR%\%FV_FILE_B%_200x200.png"
And below you see 2 pictures showing how to configure the basket. First we add a Filter action (new in yesterday's beta) so only pictures are allowed for the piped Run action.
The Run action is configured to run a script called F:\testing\fv_resize.bat, this is the script shown above.
This is just a small example how you can create your own actions for File Viking. If you can imagine it, you can do it.
I must admit, my French and Spanish is really bad.... That is why we hired Jacob (French) and Hans (Spanish) to do the French and Spanish translations of our programs. More important: French and Spanish Support!
Currently, WatchFTP is already available in Spanish. Jacob is busy with a French translation of WatchFTP, it should be ready early 2010.
Our new File Viking program will be translated to French and Spanish as well, "really soon now". When we release v1.0 (or really soon after)
For WatchDirectory, we will start French and Spanish "slowly". A first release will have Spanish and French helpfiles and support, a later release will also have a translated User Interface.
We also have a new website, very much under construction at the moment. Our "Contact Us" and "Buy Now" pages will be moving to this site soon.
All our email addresses will also move to @gdpsoftware.com, our old email addresses will redirect to the new domain so you should not have a problem with this change.
You know the book series XXX for Dummies?? (Networks for Dummies, Windows for Dummies...) I always thought it sounded quite stupid, but the books are a huge success. You know what? These books are not about Stupid, they are about Easy.
We added "Pipes" to the next File Viking beta (yes, I know, that term is far to technical). The simple idea is the output of one Action is the input of a follow-up action.
For example, the ZIP files action has a zip file as output. You can configure the Email files action as a follow-up, it doesn't email the files you drop on the File Viking basket but the output of "Zip" instead - The zip file is emailed.
I have been testing this pre- pre- pre- beta-3 a few days now and can only say: this is a huge improvement over previous versions.... Charles, we owe you, thanks again!
Wow! Next Beta, Next Week! Join us!Yes, we will make this "programming" even better in future "1.x" releases. For example filtering comes to mind (only do this branch of the tree of actions for *.txt files)
The beta for our new File Viking (Drag & Drop File Processor) started last week. The first bugs were found and quickly fixed.
For those who tried beta 1..... Did you find "Settings -> Options -> Move Baskets shortcut"?
For example, use CTRL+SHIFT+/ to "move them".
See vikings dancing on your screen - press the shortcut to move those baskets out of the way (quickly press again and again to have some fun!)
The new beta release adds ZIP support... Drag & drop files on an icon floating above your desktop and they are zipped to
D:\MyBackups\{yyyy}{mm}{dd}\{hour}{min}.zip.
Missing directories are automatically created. Yes, {yyyy} is replaced by 2009.
New: 64 Bit downloads are available.
New: When a basket is processing the files you've dropped on it, it will show you a progress indicator.
Fixed: Crash when repeatedly closing an empty "configure basket" window (Thank you for reporting, Dees).
Fixed: Tooltips on Windows XP (and probably other compatibility issues on XP and Win2000).
Send me an email (support at fileviking dot com).
Below are some mockups Nataly made for File Viking (click for a larger version). I wish I could link to her website, but I don't think she has one yet. Anyway, don't you agree even the mockups look great? Do we really need 64mln "True Color" pictures? Personally, I like this charcoal style. But sure, full color images will be added.
These are exciting days! Expect File Viking early 2010, we will add a lot more features for you before we release!!
Are you already getting bored by messages from software-vendors telling you their programs are "7" compatible? I won't bore you with the details, but rest assured, our programs are compatible with all current Windows Operating Systems.
We now also have a German Language Blog.
Progress on our new File Viking program is great. We hope to have the first beta ready next week. On the website are a few (clumsy) demo video's and helpfiles available for you to look at.
English Blog
deutscher Blog
Blog en Español
