If you are new to Addiction Manager, read on. If you have used an earlier version of Addiction Manager, you may want to skip to the What's New? section further below.
Contents
•Overview
•System Requirements
•Example Walkthrough
•Usage Notes
•What's New?
•Price
•How to Register
•Legal Stuff
•How to Contact Me
•Version History
Overview
Addiction Manager is a program for helping people manage addiction to computer games and other stuff. It creates aliases to programs just like the finder does. However, with Addiction Manager's aliases, you can restrict access to your programs.
System Requirements
Addiction Manager requires System 7. It's 68000-based code, not PowerPC code. To use the speech capabilities of Addiction Manager, you must have the Speech Manager installed, preferably the latest version of PlainTalk.
Example Walkthrough
Let's say you should not be playing games during the week. Using Addiction Manager, you can make aliases to your games, restricting access from Monday to Friday. Then, when you double-click on a game's Addiction Manager alias, it will not work during the week. Instead, it will display a little message. If you double-click on a game's Addiction Manager alias during the weekend, however, it will open the game like an alias usually does.
To make an Addiction Manager alias to a game, just drag the game to the Addiction Manager icon and "drop" it in.
Addiction Manager will then ask you to set access restrictions for the file for each day of the week. You can restrict access during the entire day, or only for certain times of that day. You also enter the message that you want Addiction Manager to display when access is restricted.
When you're done setting the access restrictions and the message, click "OK". Addiction Manager will close and you will see a new file in the same folder as your game. Its name will be the game's name plus ".am". This is the Addiction Manager alias. Double-click it to see what happens.
In this version (1.0), you can also set various options for your Addiction Manager aliases. See the What's New? section below for more information.
If you want a visual walk-through on how to use Addiction Manager, double-click the Addiction Manager icon. If you need additional help, turn on balloon help when using Addiction Manager.
Usage Notes
You can put the Addiction Manager aliases into your Apple Menu Items folder as you would normal aliases. If you want, you can then hide the original game somewhere on your disk or make it invisible so you can't get to it easily. Addiction Manager 1.0 can now make the original invisible for you. See the What's New? section below.
Obviously, this doesn't completely solve the addiction problem since you can always get around the access restrictions by finding the original game. However, by reminding me that I should be working and not playing, Addiction Manager has been effective in reducing the amount of time I spend playing games. Aside from actually deleting the games from my hard disk, I've found that using Addiction Manager is the most effective way to deal with my addiction to games.
If someone can find another use for Addiction Manager, that's great. It will make aliases to any program, document, or folder. You could use it, for example, to restrict access to your internet programs if you happen to be addicted to the internet (like me).
What's New?
Addiction Manager 1.0 is a major update to the previous versions of Addiction Manager and includes many new features. Many of these features were suggested by users. Thanks to Terje Bless, Scott Bryant, Alex Gottschalk, Anandaroop Roy, and Andrew Starr for their suggestions. If anyone has a suggestion for further improvements, drop me a note at the e-mail address given near the end of this document.
Here's a list of what's new:
• You can now edit Addiction Manager aliases. To edit an alias, hold down the command key () while double-clicking the alias. You must hold down the key long enough for Addiction Manager to start up and see that you're holding it down.
• You can now use the original file's (or folder's) icon for the Addiction Manager alias. This option is turned on by default.
• You can add passwords to your aliases so that, during restricted times, only someone with the password can open the original file using the Addiction Manager alias. The password is also required for editing the alias itself. This option is turned off by default.
• You can make the original file invisible using Addiction Manager. To undo this operation and make the original file visible again, edit the alias (by command-double-clicking it) and uncheck the "make invisible" option. This option is turned off by default.
• If you have the Speech Manager installed, you can have Addiction Manager speak your restriction message out loud. You can also choose which voice Addiction Manager will use – and you can set a unique voice for each Addiction Manager alias. This option is turned off by default and is not available if the Speech Manager isn't installed.
• There are now "weekday" and "weekend" options in the pop-up menu where you set the day for restriction. This way, you don't have to go through every day setting the same restrictions. If you select "weekday" and set access restrictions, those restrictions will apply to all the days from Monday to Friday. Simimarly, selecting "weekend" applies restrictions to Saturday and Sunday.
• There is now a space on the left side of the main dialog box that summarizes all the access restrictions you have set so that you don't have to move from day to day just to review your settings.
• Addiction Manager now supports balloon help.
• In the last version of Addiction Manager, you could not make a file invisible and then use the alias to open it (this is a problem with the Finder, not with Addiction Manager itself). In this version, that problem has been fixed through a small work-around. However, this work-around doesn't yet work with folders. You can still use Addiction Manager to make folders invisible but they'll just open and close when you open them from the Addiction Manager alias.
Price
Because of the extensive additions to this version, I think it's a much better and more useful program and so I've made it shareware. I hope you like it and find it useful and will support my efforts to improve Addiction Manager and write more good software for the Macintosh by paying the shareware fee.
Addiction Manager has the following pricing:
• Single User License: US$10
• Site License: US$150
• World-Wide License: US$750
A single user license applies to one person. A site license covers all locations for your organization within a 160 km (100 mile) radius of your site. With a site license you don't need to keep track of how many people at your site are using the software. A World-Wide license covers all locations for your organization on the planet.
How to Register
Payment is relatively painless. Open the Register program that accompanies Addiction Manager. Enter your name, your e-mail address, and the number of single user licenses you desire (or site or world-wide licenses). Save or Copy or Print the data from the Register program and send the data and payment to Kagi Shareware. Kagi Shareware handles my payment processing.
If paying with Credit Card or First Virtual, you can email or fax the data to Kagi Shareware. Their email address is shareware@kagi.com and their fax number is +1 510 652-6589. You can either Copy the data from Register and paste into the body of an e-mail message or you can Save the data to a file and attach that file to an e-mail message. There is no need to compress the data file; it's already pretty small. If you have a fax modem, just Print the data to the Kagi fax number.
Payments sent via e-mail are processed within 3 to 4 days. You will receive an e-mail acknowledgment when it is processed. Payments sent via fax take up to 10 days and if you provide a correct internet e-mail address you will receive an e-mail acknowledgment.
If paying with Cash or US$ Check you should print the data using the Register application and send it to the address shown on the form, which is:
Kagi Shareware
1442-A Walnut Street #392-HG
Berkeley, California 94709-1405
USA
You can pay with a wide variety of cash from different countries but at present if you pay via check, it must be a check drawn in US Dollars. Kagi Shareware cannot accept checks in other currencies, the conversion rate for a non-US$ check is around US$15 per check and that's not practical considering that Addiction Manager only costs US$10.
The Invoice option is for companies with purchasing departments. If that's you, then enter all the data, print three copies of the form, and send it to your accounts payable people. They must include a copy of the form with their payment.
Please do not fax or e-mail forms that indicate Cash, Check, or Invoice as the payment method. These need to be sent through the postal mail with payment. Payments sent via postal mail take time to reach Kagi Shareware and then up to 10 days for processing.
Legal Stuff
Portions of Addiction Manager 1.0 use James W. Walker's "FindIcon" routines. These portions are not included in the Addiction Manager copyright. Thanks James Walker!
You may copy and distribute Addiction Manager but you may not sell it for profit. If you want to include it in a shareware/freeware collection, contact me at the e-mail address below. If you distribute it in any way, you must include this "Read Me" file and the Register program along with it.
Use Addiction Manager at your own risk. I make no warranties as to performance of merchantability or any other warranties whether expressed or implied. No warranty of fitness for a particular purpose is offered. If the program does something weird, like damages a file or disk, I am not legally responsible. However, if it does something weird, I'd like to know so I can try to fix it in future versions. Please send bug reports to the e-mail address below.
How to Contact Me
If you find a bug, have comments, or just want to say hi, my e-mail address is gherrick@kagi.com.
Version History
February 1996
Addiction Manager 1.0 is a major update to Addiction Manager and is now shareware. Changes include the ability to edit aliases, making the original file invisible, using the original file's icon for the alias, adding passwords to the alias, adding speech capabilities, adding "weekday" and "weekend" options, adding a summary display, and supporting balloon help.
Thanks again to Terje Bless and Alex Gottschalk for suggestions. Thanks also to Scott Bryant, Anandaroop Roy, and Andrew Starr.
November 1995
Addiction Manager 0.91ß fixed a couple problems with buttons in the dialog boxes, and I added support for making aliases to folders.
Thanks to Terje Bless and Alex Gottschalk for suggestions / bug reports.
November 1995
Addiction Manager 0.9ß is the first public release of Addiction Manager.
