October 2006

Turn Any Computer into Your Personal Computer

October 25, 2006 by Julie

I just found out about this amazing new product called MojoPac that lets you shrink your personal computer so it fits in your pocket! If this sounds like a line from a really bad infomercial, trust me, it’s not; and if it doesn’t sound entirely believable, well, it is. Okay, MojoPac won’t literally shrink your computer, but it does let you install any of your programs, files, and personal settings on devices like iPods or USB drives, so you can access them safely from anywhere. Now, to switch back to infomercial mode: But wait, there’s more!

If you have eWallet on your Windows PC, you can install it on your MojoPac device and carry it with you, along with any of your other personal Windows PC programs and settings you want to add to MojoPac. When you combine the already strong security of eWallet with the safety of a MojoPac PC, you never have to worry that your personal information can be seen by anyone but you. When you disconnect your MojoPac device from another computer, all your data stays with you. You can look at your eWallet files just as if you were on your home computer, and it all stays safely on MojoPac.

Visit the MojoPac website to learn more about how MojoPac works, and what devices you can carry it on - including iPods, USB flash drives, and even some cell phone models.

You can also check out our Windows PC eWallet information to find out more about the program, and how it works alone or with MojoPac to protect your information and make it easy for you to access when you need it.

Unintentional Success Story

October 25, 2006 by Kevin

Every once and a while, Ilium Software tech support gets a heads-up about an interesting and unexpected use of one of our products. We aren’t the only ones; Patrick at MicroISV on a Shoestring had the same experience and his story prompted me to think.

Sometimes the use case isn’t much of a stretch; ListPro is a program to make lists, so it’s hard to find a use for ListPro that isn’t obvious by definition. Prayer lists, scavenger hunts, web bookmarks, flight checklists… they’re all still just lists. NewsBreak is the same way; RSS and ATOM are usually used for simple ’newspaper headlines’, but all sorts of information such as your NetFlix queue, Gmail account, eBay search results and weather reports are available via RSS. These uses are just part of what NewsBreak is designed to do.

eWallet, on the other hand, is really designed to be a program to hold your sensitive personal information like passwords, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, frequent flier mile cards. That’s it; you put personal information in, eWallet encrypts it under one password. That doesn’t stop people from coming up with their own uses.

Just yesterday, we had a user mention that she used eWallet to keep track of things she wanted to buy on the web. She would create cards with the backgrounds set to a picture of a particular item, with the weblink to the item and a description in the notes. That way, she could see at a glance exactly what something was, instead of having to go visit the website to figure out why it was in the list.

This is not something eWallet was intended to do, but it works and made the user happy. The ‘pictures of stuff to buy’ list works because eWallet supports both card background graphics and Picture Cards (useful for pictures of your dog / cat / gerbil with fruitless dreams of freedom / kid / favorite flower pot / car / boat / that really big fish you caught that was thiiiiiiiis big, really! / etc.) You know, stuff you would keep in a real wallet.

It also brings up the great can-of-worms question, “Should we pursue this with eWallet?” I definitely don’t have the answer. Questions like these are great, because they open up all those weird little opportunities you - the developer, or tester, or anyone else in software development - wouldn’t necessarily think of on your own.

Congratulations to Marc!

October 23, 2006 by Ellen

Marc Tassin, our Product Manager (who introduced himself here a while ago) has just had a story published in a real book! The book is called Furry Fantastic, and Marc’s contribution is a very entertaining and well-written story about … well, I’m not going to say what it’s about. If you want to read it, you’ll have to pick up the book yourself. And if you do, be sure to read Marc’s description of himself at the end.

Again, congratulations Marc!

You Like Us! You Really Like Us!

October 18, 2006 by Julie

The winners of the Smartphone and Pocket PC Magazine Best Software Awards have just been announced, and we are happy to say that we’ve won four different awards!

eWallet (Professional Edition) for Pocket PCs won the title of Best Secure Information Manager. ListPro (Professional Edition) won Best List Manager, also for Pocket PCs.

And our news reader application, NewsBreak, won Best News Reader for Pocket PCs, as well as Best Feed Reader for Smartphones.

And because we couldn’t have done it without you, we want you to celebrate with us. For the next week, you can get a big discount on any purchase that you make with us when you visit our Handango-powered store.

Follow this link: http://www.iliumsoft.com/site/custserv/cath1.php to shop, and when you’re ready to pay, enter the code MAGAWRD in your cart to receive your discount. But don’t wait too long – the celebration will only last until October 25th!

You can visit the Smartphone and Pocket PC Magazine website to view the complete list of winners. We would like to congratulate all of this year’s winners, and thank the magazine for honoring us with four awards.

Friday the 13th

October 13, 2006 by Ellen

I’m sure the fact that our network server seems to have completely bit the dust has nothing to do with the fact that today is Friday the 13th.

And my PC crashing every time I try to upload that picture of a calendar showing a 13 doesn’t mean anything either.

Who needs Exit?

October 9, 2006 by Marc

A big challenge developers face are requirements given to them by OEMs (the people that make your hardware) and demands from folks like Microsoft and Palmsource. There are times when these requirements conflict with what we want to do or with what customers tell us they are looking for. Microsoft just put up a great blog post about one of these requirements (the missing Exit feature in Windows Mobile discussed at the Windows Mobile Blog).

Having read that, I figured I would share a developer perspective on this often frustrating topic…

So the easy answer is to just ignore the requirements. I mean, we’re doing this for the customer after all so why would we include some annoying feature just because we’re told to? Isn’t it customer purchases that keep us in business?

Wellll, sort of.

The problem is that in order to get those sales, there are a lot things that have to happen in the background. A big one, is getting that vital stamp of approval from Microsoft, Verizon, or whoever is sending down the requirements, and you only get that stamp if you do what they want.

So why does this matter? Glad you asked!

There are a bunch of reason but here are a few from the top of the list:

• Certain online stores require application approval to get listed. No stamp of approval and you don’t get listed, or if you do, you get the second balcony seat with an obstructed view.
• If you want a lucrative ‘in ROM’ deal (that is, the application comes installed on every device the OEM makes) you have to follow their rules. The OEMs only play with folks who are on “their team.”
• Large volume purchasers may avoid ’non-approved’ applications because if the application couldn’t get approval, they don’t feel that they can trust it.

There are plenty of other examples but you probably get the idea.

The Biggest Reason There is, however, a bigger reason.

We need the Big Guys to like us.

OK, maybe I’m sounding a bit like the high school outcast longing for the approval of the in-crowd, but the fact of the matter is that we gain access to a LOT of support by going along with the Big Guys’ game.

Here are some examples. Let’s say an OEM is about to make a major change to their hardware. Do you think they tell everybody in advance? Or just their “friends”. If that happens and we don’t know, our competitor now has a working version (because they played by the rules) and we don’t, leaving us in the dust.

Or perhaps an OS developer has decided to chop out some bit of code our applications depend on. If we haven’t played by their rules, they have no reason to let us in on this. When the OS update comes out our product suddenly crashes on every updated device.

Or maybe it’s just as simple as an oddity in the OS that we can’t figure out how to work around. By staying on the side of the Big Guys we have the opportunity to contact them and say “Hey…how do we make this work?” You only get those opportunities if you’ve been going along with their game.

In each of these cases we take a blow to sales if we lose the Big Guys’ support, and if there are too many of these blows we end up being one more memory in the sea of dead Mobile Software developers.

And this matters to our customers because if we’re out of business that means no more upgrades, no more support, and no more new software from a company many people have come to depend on.

So that’s why our Pocket PC applications don’t include an Exit option, our WM 5.0 applications now use the two menu system without toolbar icons, and our Palm applications have Unfiled categories. Maybe it isn’t the way we would have done things, but what it does is allow us to continue making enough money to stay in the software business. It’s part of the reason that over 9 years after we opened our doors, we’re still coming out with updates, offering top quality support to our customers, and producing great new applications for mobile devices.

PS: And don’t tell Microsoft, but clicking CTRL+Q on your Pocket PCs onscreen keyboard or tapping 7 in the About screen of our software on a Smartphone, will “truly” Exit most of our products! :)