I've tried using Ketarin with limited success and also Update Notifier also with very limited success. I was wondering how everyone here keeps their favorite portable apps up to date on their thumb drives. I have resorted to just monitoring the RSS feeds until something better comes along.
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Yep, that's pretty much what I do.
Oh btw, forgot to mention that if you use the PortableApps menu, version 2 will feature an app updater. Won't help me because I don't use it, but will definitely be useful for a lot of folks!
> PortableApps menu, version 2 will feature an app updater
Awesome news! I use portable apps on my wife's laptop, my kids laptop (so they don't automatically see everything I use), my desktop at work (for personal stuff), my work servers (keep 'da registry *clean* man!), my site-visit technical support portable hard drive, and of course my thumb drives (one for movies, another for learning python, one just to keep handy). That's a lot of app-updating, especially for those that only get used a few times a year.
-matt
PS: the new account registration form only lets you pick *one* device for "How do you use portable apps?" It should be a checklist instead.
I follow PortableApps on Twitter.
Some apps 'look' for updates when started.
For apps that do not fall into #1 or #2 above, I periodically check manually.
Like DarkBee started saying, the PortableApps.com Platform 2.0 will come with a built-in updater, this allows you to update, and install new packages right in the platform.
The beta with this feature in it is comming out pretty soon. I would check the Feeds and RSS, until it comes out.
I just watch PortableApps.com.
The only app that really needs you to stay on top of its updates is Firefox IMHO... everything else, you can wait for that new feature, and you can probably wait for that bug fix that applies to 3.2% of users (probably not even you). VLC is next in line because it deals with codecs (rather, internal plugins that work like codecs) and keeping your VLC current means, or at least implies that you will be able to play the latest formats, and current formats with the greatest efficiency.
I wish PortableApps posted updates to Facebook as well as Twitter. Twitter is like a worthless, limited version of Facebook. Twitter is to Facebook what Paint is to Photoshop, and when comparing free web services, there's no real good reason (for me) to accept those limitations. And I don't want to devolve to 1337-5p34k just to save characters to get under the arbitrary 160-character limit.
Twitter is nice because people expect continuous updates, so we post to Twitter as well as our RSS feed. Facebook, on the other hand, users don't really have filtering options, so if we posted everything, people would get annoyed.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Language is constantly evolving to meet the demands of the people that use it my friend. LOL
I think Twitter has it's place, how many characters do you need to say "FirefoxPortable updated to version X.x.x [link]"?
I detest when it's used to convey a person's every bowel movement, but nevertheless, there is a place in this world for Twitter IMHO. (Is "IMHO" considered l33t 5p34k btw?)
that FF is all you need to keep right on top of..
I am not my signature.
"Twitter is to Facebook what Paint is to Photoshop" I just copyed and posted on both my facebook and my twitter accounts...
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report
I follow RSS feeds of sites like FileHippo.
I use the RSS feeds from this site, have them checked in my Thunderbird email client. I think its nice that there will be a app updater in 2, but I use geek.menu because of the feature set it has and until the PA menu gets most of the features I use I will probably just keep using geek.menu so it looks like RSS feeds will continue to be my method of learning about updates for a while.
I update my apps every one or two years. It's time consuming and wasteful always having to update to the latest version. If it works well, I'm happy with it. I have better things to do than be enslaved by my computer.
that's usually a reasonable policy for most apps, except those that pose potential security risks like your browser and email client. I'd be inclined to give those a little more attention but that's just my personal opinion. I suppose it comes down to how extensively you use your computer and what you use it for.
In addition, sometimes updates may be unavoidable as failing to update my render your current version as good as useless. An example of this would be if you use some kind of messaging client and the protocol changes making previous version incompatible, then you have no choice but to upgrade. It's happened to me with Pidgin (I believe MSN and Yahoo), and also Skype. In the case of Skype the application was still compatible with previous versions, it was just that certain features weren't.
Anyway,the point is well taken, as with many things in life you could dedicate a large portion of your time to updating portable apps constantly.
to avoid problems if there is a big underlying infrastructure change - the kind that usually happens during major releases (like when FF went from 2 to 3).
Or if I find that a significant bug is fixed.
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.