When I announced our open beta I promised that I’d let everyone know how it went. I mean this is a ‘behind the scenes at Ilium Software’ blog after all! I’ll start by saying that overall, this was a great experience. We got some really excellent insights into how people reacted to changes, caught a number of bugs, and found out how folks liked the new features. Without question I plan to run additional Open Betas in the future.
Happy Birthday Aximsite!
We want to wish a very happy 4th birthday to Aximsite. We watched Aximsite wade into some pretty deep waters four years ago as they went up against a lot of well established PDA and Pocket PC sites. They’ve proven their worth and have not only survived but thrived. Congratulations Aximsite, from everyone here at Ilium Software! You’ve got a great site! Here’s to your continued success!
It’s crazy….but it just might work!
It’s official! We’re going to hold an open beta for eWallet 5.0. Although we’ve been doing this software developing thing for quite awhile, we’ve never done an open beta before so we’re heading into uncharted territory. Will it be a smashing success? Will we regret it each and every day for the next couple of years? Only time will tell!
As soon as we’re ready I promise we’ll make some noise about the open beta so you can go grab your copy! In the meantime, for those of you who are reviewers and old friends, we’re sending emails this afternoon so you can get a sneak peek! If you don’t get one by tomorrow morning, drop us an email and we’ll set you up.
And as for this whole “open beta thing”, I’ll be sure to blog about it once eWallet is released so you can find out just how it went!
A Whirlwind of Activity!
“Hey, remember those Ilium guys? Didn’t they used to have a blog?”
We’re not gone! It’s a whirlwind of activity here at Ilium Software as we rapidly approach the completion of eWallet 5.0. Needless to say everyone has their hands full and it wasn’t until today that someone finally said “Um…has anyone updated the Blog lately?”
So please pardon the long silence! You’ll hear much more about eWallet 5.0 in the coming weeks and we’ll likely talk about it first right here!
Who needs Exit?
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…
The Danger of Cleaning House
I had to share something that came up in a support call yesterday. It’s either really horrible or incredibly funny depending on your point of view.
We received a panicked call from someone trying desperately to access an eWallet file that they didn’t know the password for. This isn’t all that unusual. We all know that it’s easy to forget the “really good” password you came up with (one of the things that makes eWallet so handy!) The problem of course is that eWallet, being a secure information manager, really IS secure. If you forget your password there is NO backdoor, NO way to reset the password, and NO reasonable way to hack the wallet*.
In this case though, the problem was that Company A bought out Company B and laid off all the IT staff from Company B. Unfortunately for “A”, the IT staff at “B” stored all the vital IT info in eWallet and no one bothered to ask them for the password when they laid everybody off.
Needless to say, panic ensued. As a person who knows how bad it would be if we lost access to all our passwords, I can feel their pain…but on the other hand, as a guy who has seen his friends dumped out on the street during a merger, I can’t help but snicker.
* There are numerous articles about hacking 256-bit encryption. Estimates to do so typically involve a few hundred thousand computers linked together and working continuously for tens of thousands of years. Yeah…pick a good password and you’re all set.