Ninite Blog

Scott Adams Gets It

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 10:45:47 -0700

Nice post by Scott Adams (of Dilbert) on the benefits of having fewer options and less features. We’re big believers in this idea.

MediaMonkey

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 08:08:08 -0700

We’ve just put MediaMonkey live on Ninite. Check it out, and keep sending in app requests.

TeamViewer + Custom Pages

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 08:40:02 -0700

It’s gotten a ton of requests and I’m happy to say that TeamViewer is now on Ninite. Go get it!

Also, similar to our earlier collaboration with Lifehacker, we recently launched a page of app picks by MakeUseOf. Their writeup is here.

We really like these stripped-down app selections targeted at different types of users. Even though we try to keep the Ninite front page selection small, it can be overwhelming sometimes.

If you’ve got a selection of apps to share with a big group of people, please get in touch with us. We’d love to work with you.

SumatraPDF added to Ninite

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:37:06 -0700

We just put SumatraPDF live on the Ninite homepage and Ninite One. It’s been available on our Lifehacker Pack page, but we’ve gotten so many requests for it that it’s earned a spot out front too. It’s a great lightweight PDF reader.

Truecrypt is now on Ninite

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:52:53 -0700

We just added Truecrypt to the lineup. Go grab it from Ninite if you’ve got some data to protect.

Ninite is distributing the 2010 Lifehacker Pack

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:58:44 -0700

Ninite is distributing the 2010 Lifehacker Pack:

Lots of great app choices in there. Check it out, or go straight to the download page.

As May comes to a close we’ve got a few big Ninite...

Mon, 31 May 2010 17:32:03 -0700

As May comes to a close we’ve got a few big Ninite updates.

First off, we’re incredibly pleased to announce that since our launch last fall Ninite has installed 10 million apps on PCs all around the world.

We’re also releasing a new product today called Ninite One. It’s a version of Ninite that lets users choose apps to install without visiting our website. It’s for PC technicians to keep on their USB sticks and it streamlines their workflow even more than using our site. It’s free for all Ninite Pro subscribers and available at http://ninite.com/one

Finally, with more of our Pro subscribers using Ninite One we’re excited to make Ninite.com work better for day-to-day consumer downloads.

If you don’t count phones, downloading software hasn’t changed in 15 years. If anything it’s gotten worse with aggressive and deceptive toolbar offers. We want to get people skipping download.com and using Ninite to install apps fast without worrying about toolbars or repeatedly clicking Next.

That might not sound like a big deal if you haven’t used Ninite yet, but the time savings really add up. Last Friday Ninite did over 75 days of install work, and that’s a lower bound on time saved since our automation works way faster than human speed.

How Ninite was named by a computer program

Fri, 21 May 2010 15:46:23 -0700

Naming is easy. I like to pick something that suggests the concept and has a good sound to it. Our product was initially Volery. The internal name for the web code is dancecard. You get the idea.

The problem is the flat .com namespace. Context disappears. In the real world apple can refer to a fruit, a computer company, a record label, and lots of other things. Online there can be only one.

Search helps, but to most people a website lives at name.com, maybe with a www in front. Our stats seem to reflect this: 60% direct traffic, only 20% search. 17% of those searches are ninite.com or www.ninite.com.

We were actually set to launch at getvolery.com until Paul Graham brought us to our senses. I do believe the web should tolerate name sharing better, and 37signals does fine with decorated domains like basecamphq.com, but I bet that’s just one of many exceptional things about that company. Much of our early press actually thought the product was named Get Volery instead of Volery. The name.com idea is deeply ingrained, even in technically-adept bloggers.

So the problem morphs from finding a name to finding a .com. Unfortunately squatters have snapped up most of the good, bad, and even terrible .com domains.

Instant Domain Search is OK for searching by hand, but we’re an automation company. Naturally, we wrote a program to generate nonsense words that have the .com available. N-grams from the dictionary made terrible names, but simply combining three-letter prefixes and suffixes worked well.

We’re called Ninite because that was the best looking output. It also explains my pronunciation of NIN-ite since it’s a prefix and a suffix. Most of our users seem to have settled on NI-nite, which is also fine since it can be spelled correctly either way.

A surprising discovery from this name search was that there seems to be a certain name-iness to some words. We found a number of people and towns with the name Volery. We’ve heard from people with the surname Ninite. Even the runner-up from our naming program, Refria, shares its name with people and towns. If it sounds halfway decent, it seems a name is already in use somewhere on Earth.

If you’re interested, the code is here: namer.py

It’s public domain, so have fun. The dictionary file path is set for OS X, you may need to change it on other systems. I have no idea if this violates WHOIS terms of service. Be polite and don’t run it all day long.

While we keep our app selection curated to just the best, our...

Wed, 12 May 2010 13:40:05 -0700

While we keep our app selection curated to just the best, our page was getting pretty tall to make people scroll to the bottom to get their Ninite installer. Now with any browser better than IE6 a convenient Get Installer button will appear in the lower right as soon as any apps are selected.

Ninite is first and foremost a tool for getting stuff done and we’re excited about anything that removes tedium. In our testing over the past few days we’ve found that the new button increases installer creation by 3%. We were losing a fair number of users on that long scroll down to the bottom.

We’re also excited that this feature makes it more natural to get single apps from Ninite.

Many people think of Ninite as a tool for installing lots of apps when they first set up a new PC. Ninite is great for that, but we also want to save people from the terrible more day-to-day experience of getting single apps from download.com, FileHippo, or SourceForge.

Nobody wants to get lost in complicated hierarchies, see blaring ads, click through pointless installers, or get pitched (perhaps tricked) by worthless toolbars. Ninite just lets you get your software and get on with your life.

Check it out.

If you don’t know what a proxy is, this isn’t...

Tue, 11 May 2010 13:29:14 -0700

If you don’t know what a proxy is, this isn’t important.

But if you do:

Ninite now supports proxy authentication. As always, make sure your proxy configuration is set up in Internet Explorer since Ninite uses the same settings.

Updated Ninite Documentation

Mon, 10 May 2010 14:10:20 -0700

Updated Ninite Documentation:

We’ve improved the Ninite documentation. Some of this stuff (like forcing the install language) has been in the product for a while but the only way to find out about it was to email us. We’re going to try to keep advanced users better updated on new features.

Of course, the standard use of Ninite to install apps is still simple enough not to need any documentation. We’d like to get Ninite simple enough that you don’t even need to know how to read to use it.

Auslogics Disk Defrag is live on Ninite

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 08:33:45 -0700

I just put Auslogics Disk Defrag live on Ninite. We’re constantly testing the apps we list and we’ve found this to be the best defragmentation solution out there. Now you can get Auslogics (and many other apps) at Ninite.com.

Let us know about any other great apps we don’t have listed using the form at the bottom of our homepage. We love getting suggestions from users.

FastStone Image Viewer is now on Ninite

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 09:03:41 -0700

FastStone is a quick image browser, converter, and editor. We just added it to Ninite, where you can get FastStone and over 70 other apps all at once with no toolbars or clicking Next on installers.

Ninite is Microsoft's Startup of the Day

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 07:17:18 -0700

Ninite is Microsoft's Startup of the Day:

It’s an honor.

Offline Installers

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 13:52:24 -0700

A lot of people have asked about running Ninite installers offline so we’ve added a feature to Ninite Pro that makes this possible.

Sign into your Pro account and create an installer like usual. Pro installers now support a /freeze command line switch that creates a new, self-contained offline installer .exe in the current directory. This new installer can be burned to a CD or placed on a USB key to install apps on machines with limited or no internet connectivity.

Normal Ninite installers always install the latest versions of apps, but these offline frozen installers are fixed to the versions that were current when they were made. This may be helpful if you want to make sure that many PCs get exactly the same software versions.

The /freeze command line switch only works with Ninite Pro. You may only use frozen installers while your Ninite Pro account is active and you may not publicly distribute frozen Ninite Pro installers that you’ve created.

Let us know how you like this new feature or about other functionality you’d like to see in Ninite via our contact page. Thanks!

SuperAntiSpyware's on Ninite

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:49:08 -0700

SuperAntiSpyware is now available on Ninite. One more way to keep your PC malware-free.

K-Lite Codec Pack on Ninite

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:51:55 -0700

Just put the Full K-Lite Codec Pack live on Ninite. Enjoy!

The recent Ninite improvements have been under-the-hood

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:10:19 -0800

Ninite has gotten much better lately, but that fact hasn’t been obvious from the posts on this blog. Let’s correct that.

The biggest update has been properly internationalizing all apps that support it. People all around the globe use Ninite and we’re proud to give everyone a first-class experience. If an app has a version for your PC’s language, that’s the one we install. This is similar to our automatic support for 64-bit apps on 64-bit Windows.

Another improvement has been reducing the startup time of Ninite installers. Ninite is now faster than ever at getting your apps installed so you can get on with your life.

Finally, we’re going to start using this blog to share new features, tips, and use cases of Ninite. The past few posts have been about new apps added to Ninite, but just posting those announcements would make for a boring blog because Ninite isn’t about adding every app out there.

Ninite users have spoken and they really like our curated catalog of great Windows apps. While our selection will expand, we’re setting a high bar for inclusion.

It shouldn’t be possible to end up with a bad, or even mediocre experience after using Ninite. We’re about making your PC great.

As always, thanks for using Ninite!

Ad-Aware is now on Ninite

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 11:58:46 -0800

One more way to clean out malware.

Get Ad-Aware at Ninite.

Everything Search Engine now on Ninite

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:48:45 -0800

Everything is Windows file search done right.

Get it now at Ninite.