General

Proof the Google Tablet is Coming!

February 4, 2010 by Marc

I found the most convincing proof I’ve seen that Google is making a Tablet. I found it while hunting down screenshots and pictures of the Apple iPad using Google Image Search. No matter how hard I tried I kept coming up with everything but pictures of the iPad.

So I did something I very seldom try - I used Bing…and suddenly I have tons of pics!

Now I love a lot of things about Microsoft, but Bing isn’t one of them. In all honesty, it very seldom returns the thing I’m actually looking for. And trust me - I’ve used Bing a LOT. I was in the beta program and used it enough to get a free copy of Zoo Tycoon.

I gotta say, it really looks like Google is “cooking the books” on this one. Missing the mark on a search this badly  just doesn’t fit. Even if you yank the image size criteria I entered, you still get a bunch of images that very clearly are not an actual iPad.

I’m sure folks will come up with all sorts of reasons that it makes perfect sense that Google has completely failed to return the search results I expected, but they’ve never missed this badly before - it just doesn’t make sense!

What do you think?

Search Criteria:

Text = Apple iPad

Image Size = Large

iPad, Kindle, and an Idea for Amazon

February 1, 2010 by Ellen

A lot of people are writing their opinions on the effect the iPad will have on Amazon’s Kindle sales, and their ideas of Amazon should be doing in light of last week’s Apple announcement. Here’s mine:

Turn their eBook collection into an online, cloud-based lending library.

What I mean by this is to offer a service like the one LaLa now has, where I can buy songs for 1/10 of what I’d pay for the downloadable mp3, but I can’t download the songs. I can, however, listen to them any time I want - I “own” the listening rights, but the songs stay online.

If Amazon could do this for books - charge me something like US$1.00 per book, but only let me read the cloud’s version (or maybe download it to a device for a limited time - I’ll let them work out the details), I’d buy a Kindle right now, just for that.

Apple, of course, could do the same thing, and maybe they will. They’ve bought LaLa, after all, though it’s still not clear what they intend to do with it. But they’ve probably got their hands a little full right now.

Why I think this would be a great idea for anyone to do - it’s conceptually no different from a regular, brick and mortar library. There are a lot of people who read a lot, but don’t buy many books. I know; I’m one of them. I go through a lot of books, and I’m completely spoiled by the fact that I can borrow almost anything I want. I’m not going to give that up just for the convenience of eBooks. I read less than I used to, but I still go through 2 or 3 books a week. I’m not willing to pay $10.00 or so for each one.

But if I could “borrow” a book for $1.00 - especially with the Kindle’s existing ability to let me try out the first chapter before I make up my mind - that’s a no-brainer. And not only would it be exactly what I want, Amazon and the publishers would do great on it too. I can easily see people like me spending $150 or so a year on a service like that, plus of course the cost of the Kindles.

How about it, Amazon?

The Weird World of Promos

January 25, 2010 by Ellen

It’s not the promotional calendar I got a few weeks ago that was so strange:

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.

CES Minus Apple Equals Showtunes

January 10, 2010 by Ellen

One thing you may not know about Marc is that he’s a really good singer.

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!

eWallet 7.0.2 for Windows and Windows Mobile

December 21, 2009 by Marc

As promised, eWallet 7.0.2 for Windows and Windows Mobile is now available. You can download the latest version here. BlackBerry and iPhone users who own the desktop version should update their Windows PC version, but they don’t need to upgrade their device version.

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!

A Nice Thing You Do

December 11, 2009 by Ellen

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!