So – we’re fine, thanks for asking. We’ll be posting as we have news, announcements, or some thoughts we think are just too profound to keep to ourselves, but otherwise we’re going to try to be a little more productive and less distracted. It’s a new approach, at least for me, but you never, know, it just might work.

And, yes, we are working on both eWallet for Mac and ListPro for iPhone/iPad, and will post when we have something ready for release. I can’t give a date or an estimate – all I can say is that they’re in process, and I am sorry the wait has been so long.

It was a good question, and one that a good marketing person should be able to answer. Too bad I’m not a good marketing person.

So rather than trying to figure it out from not enough information, I’m just going to ask – if you’re reading this, how did you first hear of us? An ad? A review? A friend? Browsing an app store? Something else?

Please help us out and let us know. Leave a comment here – you don’t have to create an account or send us any info – or just tweet me an answer. As an incentive, we’ll give away some Amazon and iTunes gift cards to a random selection of people who respond.

And, of course, our sincere thanks.

And while I can see a need for password recovery, I admit I’m having a hard time seeing the line between recovering a password of your own and hacking someone else’s.

But, that’s actually not my point. My point is that apps like this exist. Security holes exist. Sites are attacked and passwords stolen.

If you’re using the same password on a lot of sites, you’re asking for trouble.

If you’re using weak passwords, you’re asking for trouble.

I get so frustrated when people tell me they keep their passwords in Excel. Or Notepad. Or TextEdit or iWork. Or “I just let my browsers keep them”, or “I use the same password everywhere”.

Let your browser keep your Twitter password, by all means. Use Notepad for the passwords you have to create just to comment on some site. But don’t be that careless with the passwords to your bank accounts, IRA accounts and credit cards.

It’s your money. I can’t make it any clearer than that. If someone gets your passwords, they can get at all your money online. And except for what’s in your pocket, purse, underwear drawer, and the floor of your car, all your money’s accessible online.

Be careful of your passwords. Get and use
a password manager – a good one, with strong encryption. And then use strong passwords, use different passwords for each site, and change them regularly.

Don’t let the bad guys go off with what’s yours.

It was the envelope it was sent in:

We used to get a lot of strange promotional stuff in the mail, but it’s trailed off in the last few years, for which I thank the recession. That’s a sincere thanks: I don’t need – or want – cigars, bicycle shorts, melted candy or dog biscuits.

Anyway, to the senders of the calendar, it’s not the kind of thing that makes me think well of your company. But I appreciate the laugh.

One thing you may not know about me is that I really like musicals.

So when Marc and I decided to bet on whether Apple would exhibit at CES after announcing they were dropping MacWorld, the obvious stakes to put up were that he’d sing a few showtunes of my choosing.

Now that I’ve won (I’m pretty sure that Marc was just humoring me with the whole thing, but I’m not letting that get in the way), I’m working on my choices. I’ve got a big list of songs – my problem is narrowing them down.

But since I know that at least a few people who read this are also musicals fans, I thought I’d ask for suggestions before I make my final decision. So if you’ve got an idea for what you think would be good to have Marc perform, post it here, or reply on Twitter.

And watch this space for the final picks, as well as the release of the videos to YouTube!

For the details, read on after the jump!

I don’t typically do bug lists on new releases, but since I know some of you have been waiting for these I’ll make an exception. This isn’t everything we fixed but they’re the ones we’ve talked about here. Most people never saw these but for the folks that did I think this will be a welcome update!

The following bugs are fixed in eWallet 7.0.2:

• Windows 7 64-bit Explorer Crash
• Problems with synching custom icons to Windows Mobile
• Error when running from two users on one computer
• Fails to retain card list pane size between uses
• “Non-Com” Exception when synching BlackBerry after entering password
• Some sites didn’t work with AutoPass and FireFox
• Problems with eWallet on 144 DPI displays
• Problems with sync on close to a folder as a destination
• CTRL + X produces an error
• Global card display options reset on sync
• Problems saving text pasted from a note card
• Problems with passwords longer than 28 characters
• Passbuilder Copy & Close button failed to copy

Again, we made many other minor tweaks but they weren’t things you’ll notice or they are things you likely never saw. And as I said – odds are you never saw any of the things listed here. I just wanted to list some of these for people waiting to hear about the fixes!

If you are still having trouble, please email our support team at support@iliumsoft.com. We really can’t do support in the blog comments.

And yes – the free upgrade emails are going out as we speak. If you didn’t receive yours, they will all be sent by middle of next week!

Take care, happy holidays, and don’t forget – we close for the holidays. Find all the details about our holiday hours here!

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!

Most of the people who are running into trouble are already working with Kevin, Lee, and myself on getting the issues ironed out but I wanted to just take a minute to explain why you are seeing bugs! Understanding the developer end of things may not make everything better, but it might help give some insight into what is going on.

I’m also going to mention a few of the bugs we’ve seen at the end of this post. One reminder, however…please send us email if you need support. We just can’t do it here in the blog comments!

That said…read on if you want the full story!

So what is so different about eWallet 7 on Windows PC?
The underlying challenge is this…with eWallet 7 we literally rewrote every single piece of the eWallet program. The program you were all using before was over 10 years old and while the original code base was strong, it had some issues. None of that is left in eWallet 7. It’s a brand new application.

But why did you change it?
First, it was rigid, meaning it was exceptionally hard for us to do things that people felt “should be easy to implement.” We needed flexibility so we could remain relevant going forward.

Second, it saw a lot of add-ons over the years. eWallet 6 was a LOT different (feature-wise) from eWallet 1. At some point, all that adding on takes its toll and makes it really expensive (in time and money) to improve the application.

Third, the user interface needed a major face lift. I know a lot of our long term users didn’t mind it (I kind of liked it!) BUT many old customers felt we weren’t keeping up with the times (and said so!) and for new customers it made it hard for us to compete (once they TRIED the apps they chose us, but in a screenshot to screenshot comparison it was tough for us!) Just sprucing up the old version wasn’t an option (see the first and second points!)

Didn’t you test this thing?
Did we ever! We had over 100 people actively using eWallet for around two months straight. In addition, we’ve been using eWallet 7 in-house even longer than that! Plus we did all our usual automated and manual testing that we do with every release. So yes – we tested this – A LOT!

So how did bugs get through?
Remember the part about rewriting the entire application? When you do that, no matter how carefully you test, it is impossible to find all the bugs. With Windows PCs there are literally an infinite number of installation and configuration combinations. There is NO WAY to test every condition. You test as many as you can and catch as much as you can, but you’ll never catch everything. It’s a mathematical impossibility.

Even now, with people helping us work on the bugs that have come up, many of these we can’t even replicate in-house. It is exceptionally difficult BUT we’re working on it and we will work these out. Believe it or not, the last version of eWallet had its problems – we worked through them and the same will be true here. We’ll do everything we can to help you in the meantime.

In the end it’s what we had to do…
We knew we’d be facing challenges like this when we went into this. We had a 7.0.1 update release on the calendar prior to eWallet even going out. If we didn’t do this overhaul now, however, there would have been costs down the road. We had to bite the bullet and make it happen – it took a long time, a ton of work, and we’re working through some challenges now, but in the long run eWallet will be a better app for it and will be poised to serve you for the next decade.

So what is a customer to do?
First, let support know what you saw by sending them an email. LOTS of people want eWallet 7 so we are getting slammed by questions, orders, and requests but we WILL answer you. If you don’t email us, however, we won’t know what is happening.

Second, if you’ve got one of the uglybugs and you decide you want to use eWallet 6 for now, that’s fine – just say so in the email and we’ll send you what you need.

Finally – talk to us! We really do want to make things right and we’ll do everything in our power to do so – so let us know what YOU need and we’ll work with you.

Sincerely, Marc

PS: Here are some things we know folks are seeing right now -

Windows 7 Explorer Crashes: Can’t replicate this in-house but we’re working with some customers to figure out what is happening.

BSOD: Holy crap! A couple of people have seen really bad crashes – again, for the life of us we can’t replicate this but we’re working with some folks and will get this ironed out as well. The strange thing here is that we quite literally aren’t touching anything in Windows that should allow this! It’s nuts but we’ll figure it out!

Blank Text: Can’t see the text? We found that some customers using particularly high DPI settings are running into this. We have a solution we’re testing so hopefully we can get it into the next build.

Error 1010 On Sync: If something goes wonky during install (maybe from other programs running or something like that) it might damage your sync partnership. If that happens just delete the partnership from sync setup and re-add it. You should be all set!

These are a few that I wanted to mention just because they are the most likely to make you nuts if you get them! As I said – most people aren’t having any problems - seriously, we’ve got thousands of people using eWallet 7 now and only a handful see these – these bugs suck – we know – but odds are you won’t see them…and again…IF YOU DO, PLEASE EMAIL US! We can’t do support on the blog. It just isn’t setup for that!