News

Aeris Calendar – weather feed

The weather feed that Aeris Calendar uses has been disabled by AccuWeather without warning. AccuWeather provided a feed for Aeris to use back in 2008 (when weather.com decided to aggressively change their plans) and while I did receive one email from AccuWeather several years ago starting a conversation about a paid subscription, they continued to allow the weather feed. Unfortunately, Aeris does not generate enough revenue to pay for a weather subscription.

However, the good news is that I’ve been planning for this kind of event. While Aeris has not been the focus of my attention, there has been significant work made for v3.0 with many new features and also has the capability to support additional weather feeds. I am working hard to make v3 available as soon as possible.

If you have a license for Aeris Calendar v2 and you are interested in upgrading to v3, please send an email. There will be an upgrade fee, but this was planned regardless of the current situation. If you are sending from a different email address than the email address registered with your license, please let me know that email address (or your license key).

This post will be updated when more news is available.

Update (Aug 8): AccuWeather did not reply to my request for comment.

Update (Aug 8): Aeris v3.0 is ready and those that emailed me have been sent an email containing information to upgrade. This version supports NWS for USA-based locations and, because of this restriction, this version is not publicly available yet. An update which will support other countries will be available soon.

Update (Aug 31): Aeris v3.1 is now publicly available; more information

POP Peeper v5.4.5 released

Download POP Peeper

See what changed

Notable changes since the last official release:

  • Voice Notifier can now show additional voices: Enable “Additional voices” on the “General” page and then access the list on the “Notification” page (in Voice Notifier settings).
  • Fix for Yahoo IMAP issue showing empty headers for messages containing attachments (Yahoo server bug)
  • Fix for cases when messages were removed from the server externally and POP Peeper didn’t detect this

Voice Notifier — to add new voices, follow these basic steps:

1) Open the Windows start menu and type and open “Speech settings”
2) Click “Add voices” (bottom) and install whatever voices you want
3) In POP Peeper, go to main menu: Tools / Voice notifier -> settings
4) Enable “Include additional voices” on the General page
5) Go to the “Notification” page and you should now see the voices available that you installed on step #2

Outlook SMTP Oauth2 error

Outlook’s SMTP server currently has an issue with Oauth2. It may be temporary but it has already lasted several days at this point. It should be fixed by Outlook eventually, but to fix this immediately, you can switch POP Peeper to use the password method instead of Oauth2:

  1. Edit the account in POP Peeper
  2. To the right of your “Login name”, change the selection to “Password”
  3. Make sure that you have the correct password entered
  4. Press “Update” to save and then you should be able to send any queued messages (press “Check Mail”)

Gmail and POP Peeper

As of October 3, 2022, the Oauth2 method used by POP Peeper v4.x is being phased out by Gmail and Oauth2 for Gmail accounts will no longer work. It is possible that accounts will continue to access email until you need to re-authenticate Oauth2, but it’s recommended that you switch to a solution before that happens. POP Peeper v5 supports the new Oauth2 method that Gmail requires.

Update: Older Windows OS’s (e.g. Windows 7) may not support the mechanism required to support the Oauth2 login required by Gmail (even with POP Peeper v5 unless POP Peeper is launched with elevated/admin privileges). In this case, it’s recommended that you use the “app password” option (note that for “app password” this is a substitute for Oauth2; you should set the option in POP Peeper to use “password” instead of “Oauth2” in the dropdown to the right of your “Login name”).

If you are using Windows 10 or better, it is recommended that you upgrade to POP Peeper v5 and use Oauth2. Otherwise, if you are using Windows 7 (for example), using the app password is recommended; however, Gmail does require you to enable 2-Factor Authentication to use app passwords.

  1. Update to POP Peeper v5: https://www.esumsoft.com/download/
  2. Use an app password: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833?hl=en

POP Peeper v5.4.1 released

Download POP Peeper

See what changed

Notable changes since the last official release:

  • Oauth2 support for POP3 (Gmail, Yahoo, AOL)
  • “Prior unread” has been added as an available view-message toolbar button and an option for delete action; note: “prior” is used instead of “previous” for width considerations
  • Configuration files added for @verizon.net and updated for AT&T-based domains
  • Plus Pack: Sent Mail Viewer adds keyboard shortcuts to access the Message/Account/Folder lists (Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3) as there was no other way to access these lists via keyboard

POP Peeper v5.2.2 released

Download POP Peeper

See what changed

Notable changes since the last official release:

  • Right-clicking on a message in the list has a new ‘Search’ sub-menu which allows convenient search for sender and subject
  • The ‘Oauth2’ button in Edit-account has been changed to a dropdown for better transparency; you can still reset Oauth2 by re-selecting Oauth2 from the dropdown
  • Skin Notifier: Hovering your mouse over the notifier will prevent it from fading/sliding out

Website Update

The website has been updated and utilizes new software (WordPress). The main look and feel of the website is very similar, but it should now be easier to navigate to find more of the obscure pages (such as the POP Peeper reference pages).

Why was the website updated?

The previous website — which had been used since the introduction of “esumsoft.com” (POP Peeper v4.0) — was built using Concrete5 (v5). Unfortunately, soon after, Concrete5 updated their software and did not provide a way to upgrade; which means that the entire website would have to be rebuilt from scratch. The website continued to work, so I didn’t feel compelled to upgrade. Until August 2021, and things started to seriously break down.

The first indication that something was wrong was that the contact form no longer worked (if you tried to send an email in early August using the contact form — I apologize! I did not receive it) and I could not find a solution. Soon after that, I realized that I could no longer even edit the content of the website, and that’s when I knew it was time to update.

Why WordPress?

I first looked at the latest version of Concrete5 and Joomla but, unfortunately, they both had problems right out of the gate (one failed during installation and the other had errors when trying to add the first page). My third choice was WordPress and this was ultimately the right decision. I’ve used WordPress for the (old) blog for many years; it auto-updates and I’ve never had an issue with the update. It also has the most community support and is the least likely of any CMS to call it quits. There was a learning curve after using the older version of Concrete5, but once I learned the details, I realized that it has a lot more power than I had before, as well as being more accessible.