General

It’s done! InScribe 2007 is finished and it’s now available for download. And the best part (besides being a really great piece of software) is that it’s FREE! That’s right. Call us crazy but we’ve decided to offer InScribe 2007 for free. Just pop over to our website and you can download it from there!

I also want to take a second to thank everyone who helped to make this possible including everyone here at Ilium Software (it’s always a group effort at Ilium Software!), our fantastic beta team, JkOnTheRun, and of course Lora, Ken, and Elliot over at Microsoft. It was a lot of work and at times a bit of a whirlwind but we’re really proud of the result.

So what are you waiting for? Go grab a copy!

The two leading analysts in the mobile space, IDC and Gartner, came out with their quarterly reports this week:

Gartner Says PDA Shipments Reached Record High in Second Quarter of 2006

Worldwide Handheld Market Experiences Tenth Quarter of Year-Over-Year Decline, According to IDC

I know, they definite “PDA” and “Handheld Market” differently, but general, it’s why I don’t put much faith in what the analysts say. That and the fact that their predictions have been consistently wrong about the mobile market for the last 13 years, starting with the Newton.

Patrick Jordan of Just Another Mobile Monday has published a Who Makes This Stuff article about us:

“For our second post in this series, we are very happy to have Ilium Software, makers of eWallet, ListPro, NewsBreak and other great titles. Two of their principals have provided some great answers and thoughts on what makes a useful and useable app, which other developers they rate highly, the future of Windows Mobile, and lots more!”

Read the full article here.

Thanks Patrick!

Our friends over at Laridian have recently added a blog to their website. Laridian offers first-class bible software for Windows Mobile, Palm OS, iPod and BlackBerry devices — check out their new blog when you have a chance.

I’ve been running into more and more crazy corporate policies that might help the business in some fashion, but do nothing for the customer. In fact, a lot of these policies are downright bad for the customer and yet they still exist.

My personal theory is that if a policy is “Good for the Business” but “Bad for the Customer”, it isn’t actually good for the business at all! Read on!

*When I wrote this today I saw Kevin was getting ready to post and I was going to hold off until tomorrow. As it turns out we’re talking about the same basic topic (great minds think alike!) So I’m going to post it today anyhow as a complimentary piece!

[Read more…] about Good for the Customer vs Good for the Business

With the recent announcement of the Microsoft Zune I just felt a need to talk about naming products. I’ll give Microsoft a little credit. It’s really hard to name a product these days. Most of the good names are already taken by something. That leaves new products stuck with either made up names or names that squish two words together and pretend that it is one word (yes…we’ve done this too…I know).

Now, some of the made up names end up being quirky cool, like WOOT! and Google. Unfortunately, it seems that this has led big corporations to think that a wacky new word for their product name is the smart way to go.

[Read more…] about A Good Name is Hard to Find!