Ilium Software Blog

One really nice thing that a lot of people have done is to call and tell us that we’ve been mentioned in a magazine.

We’ve gotten a lot of mentions and writeups over the last 12 years – I’ve got several shelves of a bookcase dedicated to magazines in which we’ve been written up – but it’s always a thrill to go into a bookstore and find our name in print.

So many thanks to whoever called today and told Marc that eWallet was mentioned in the January 2010 issue of Consumer Reports. And thanks to the person who told us earlier in the week that we’d been included in an NPR segement. And to everyone else who’s gone out of their way to tell us about seeing or hearing our name somewhere, thank you too! We really appreciate it!

Someone here – and I won’t name names – forgot to pick up our physical mail for a few weeks. Like 12. And none of us noticed.

If we’d done this years ago, we’d be in trouble. Our phones would have been turned off, as well as our internet, and we’d have racked up some serious late charges on the credit cards, if not had them cancelled as well.

But since we’ve been moving more and more of our bills to electronic only, it turns out that ignoring our paper mail for over two months wasn’t a big deal. Macworld sent a few testy “reminders” about our bill, and at least a few of us now have bigger than usual piles of stuff to read, but the only real problem was that Marc had ordered some live tadpoles to be sent here, and by the time we found them, they weren’t live anymore.

Sorry guys.

But it pointed out very clearly how unimportant physical mail has become. I wonder how long daily delivery will hang on.

Hey everyone! Marc asked me to write a quick little post on his behalf, to let you know that he’s at the WWDC this week – and he’s twittering (tweeting??) all about it.

Marc has been twittering like crazy since he got there – so there’s a whole lot to read: http://twitter.com/iliumsoftware

I’m sure there will be more to come so keep an eye out for his updates all week. And if you’re at WWDC – try to find Marc (that’s his photo with this post) and say hi!

With help from Marc, Dan and Lee, I learned a really bad – albeit effective – way to format a hard drive yesterday:

It turns out that:

• It’s a lot easier than you’d expect to snap hard disks.
• They break into many, many little pieces that fly everywhere.
• And the pieces are extremely sharp.

If you’re wondering whether we take our data security seriously, yes, we do. That’s my personal blood on the disc pieces and the desk.

I don’t recommend trying this.

If you’re attending MacWorld (or if you live in the Bay Area) come have coffee with me tomorrow morning! I’ll be camped out at Starbucks in the Marriott lobby from 8am to 9am, stocking up on caffeine to get me through the day.

It’s your chance to ask me your burning questions (yes, we’re working on the Mac version), offer up your ideas, and find out what we have planned for the future. We’d love to hear from you so come on over.

And if you can’t make it tomorrow, I’ll be there again on Thursday morning!

Just look for the stunningly handsome bald guy with an Ilium Software shirt on!

See you there!

Todd Ogasawara, who runs one of my very favorite blogs: the really excellent MobileAppsToday, did a podcast interview with Marc and me yesterday. It’s published on his site and I’m going to add the player here once I make sure it will work.

We talk about products, platforms, trends and how to find us at CES and MacWorld next week.

Here’s the player, if you want to hear it directly:

Thanks, Todd, for including us!

I just wanted to take a moment to reinforce how much we appreciate all the input we’ve received from all of you. Even if we aren’t able to add something that you’ve been waiting for, much of what we do here is based directly on customer feedback. From features, to fixes, to new applications, we always look to what our customers tell us as we go to make decisions.

Does this mean that we can always do the things you ask for? Unfortunately no, if for no other reason than that for every person who asks for Feature A there is a person asking for Feature B, and at some point we have to make a choice. At the same time, we never take requests or comments lightly, even if it only comes from one person.

So thank you again for all of your feedback, and absolutely keep it coming. And over the coming week, expect to see some posts where we specifically ask you for your input on some of the challenges we’re facing!