Well, our anniversary contest is all wrapped up now. I spent some time this morning toiling over the entries to pick the winners - there were quite a few repeat songs, and I wanted to make sure to pick the first commenter in each case!
So who won, you ask? Hit the jump to find out….
And the winners are:
Scott S.
Roy
Adam - who pointed out that our company name has 13 letters in it; not a song entry, but we all thought that was pretty cool as we hadn’t noticed it, so I decided it was worth a prize!
NetCaptive
Ravi Penumaka
Mark S.
d..ecay
Kaur
Allen S.
David
Singh
czarbucks - from Twitter
Mouseboots - from Twitter
I’ll be emailing everyone (or sending a DM to the Twitter winners to get their email addresses) with the info for their Amazon gift card this morning. If you don’t get your card, reply to this post and let me know.
And that concludes our 13th anniversary celebration week. We had lots of fun and I hope you did too. Thanks to everyone who joined in our contest! And once again - many, many thanks to everyone who helped us get where we are today. We wouldn’t have made it 13 years without you!
See you next year, as we unveil whatever is we’ll come up with for the number 14 - good thing we have a whole year to think about it!
Today is our 13th anniversary! Isn’t that something? We’ve been working in the mobile (and desktop) app game since 1997. And in an industry that changes so often - especially in recent years - we’re very happy to still be here, doing what we love and making software that we’re proud of.
Of course, we know we would never have made it this far without you: our loyal customers, reviewers, friends, colleagues, supporters, partners, beta testers - everyone who has helped us out over the last 13 years, and kept us moving forward. We couldn’t have done this without you, and while we’ll never be able to thank you enough, I’ll put this in all caps so you can tell I’m really serious: THANK YOU!!
You know, some people say that 13 is an unlucky number - but that’s not always the case, especially not today! Hit the jump for some fun factoids about our new favorite number. And did someone say contest? Because we want to celebrate with you and give away some cool prizes.
13 doesn’t always have to mean bad luck - I know someone whose favorite number is 13. After a little bit of digging, I found out some interesting things (okay, granted this is from Wikipedia, but I’m going to assume it’s all roughly true):
Some buildings don’t have a 13th floor thanks to superstition (this one I knew - I stayed in a hotel once where the elevator buttons went from 12 to 14!)
No driver in Formula One racing has had a 13 on their car since 1976 - I wonder if the 13 car had a bad accident that year?
There are 13 cards in a suit
Friday the 13th is my favorite horror movie series. Well, right behind Nightmare on Elm Street. Okay, and Evil Dead. So never mind, it’s my third favorite (alright, that’s not on Wikipedia - just wanted to make sure you’re paying attention)
Here’s the one I found most interesting: The Apollo 13 mission was launched on April 11, 1970 at 13:13 CST and the explosion happened on April 13th. Lots of 13’s in that instance
And this one isn’t from the Wikipedia page either, but Ellen read it while looking up info about the number 13, and it’s another weird little fact so I wanted to share: Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Theodore Bundy and Albert De Salvo all have 13 letters in their names
So you see? 13 is a complex and interesting number, and not necessarily always bad luck. And now that the lesson is over, let’s move forward to our:
REALLY AWESOME ANNIVERSARY CONTEST
Do you think it’ll have something to do with the number 13? If you’ve picked up on that theme, then you’re absolutely right. It’s pretty simple to enter, all I need is an answer to this question:
Can you name a song with the word ‘13’ in the lyrics?
That’s it! But it might be harder than it sounds. I’ve been trying to think for days, and have only come up with one song so far. I won’t spoil it and say the song, just in case you’re thinking it too.
So, how do you enter? Well, you can leave a comment below, of course. Or you can send us a tweet with a reply. Enter as many times as you’d like. In the event of multiple people with the same guess(es), the first person to get their reply in will be put in the random drawing.
I’ll keep this contest open until Friday morning, then I’ll dust off my ol’ contest hat and choose 13 winners . Winners of what, you ask? How about a nice hearty handshake and a great big smile from all of us to you. No good? You want stuff? Okay - each winner will get a $20 Amazon.com gift card so you can buy whatever stuff you like.
So that’s it - dig through your CDs (or shuffle through your iPods, whatever it is people do these days) and start thinking about songs with the word ‘13’ in them. Good luck to everyone, and I’ll see you back here on Friday!
We had an exciting time last week, when we were asked to take part in not one, but two, interviews on some popular mobile websites. In case you missed them, I just wanted to take a minute to quickly point out where you can find them online:
First, Ellen answered some questions in a great five-part interview over at MediaBistro. You can catch up on all five days worth of posts from this page (this is the final part, and there are links at the top of the post to all the previous days).
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!
We are extremely excited to announce that eWallet 7 has just been released. Not only does eWallet 7 include a completely revamped Windows PC version, a working preview of eWallet for Mac, and a host of new features, we’re working to create a new approach to selling mobile software.
Also - if you’re just coming back to the blog, make sure to read the update at the bottom of the post!
For the full story on eWallet 7, read on after the jump…
Software is for People, Not Devices I love the new features in eWallet 7, but I’m going to start with something that I think is the biggest news. With the release of eWallet 7 we’re reshaping the idea of how people buy mobile software. For years there has been an idea that you buy software for your mobile device. This doesn’t make sense to us. People aren’t buying the software for the device. The software is for the person. That’s why with eWallet 7 we’ve completely re-imagined how you buy the product.
Now, for $19.95, you can use eWallet on any device we support. No extra versions. No extra purchases. When you buy eWallet it’s for you - not your device. This is true even for iPhone users (see the information here for details on how this works for iPhone.)
And for our existing customers, upgrading just got better (and cheaper!) For just $10.00 you can use the latest version of eWallet on your Windows PC, Windows Mobile device, or BlackBerry, and get full access to the Mac Preview.
A New Desktop Version The next big news is that we’ve rewritten eWallet for Windows PC from the ground up. With eWallet 7, the Windows PC version is easier to use than ever before, offers more options for customization, brings you some great new features, and looks amazing. We even included a way to get the Old School eWallet feel for folks who aren’t ready for a big change!
eWallet for Mac Preview
With eWallet 7 we’re also releasing a special 30 day preview of eWallet for Mac. It doesn’t include everything, but this special preview edition is ready for you to try. We even built a special tool into the iPhone version that lets you manually transfer files from your iPhone to your Mac so you can try it with your own wallets!
And if you’re an owner of the complete eWallet package, use your eWallet registration codes to unlock the Mac Preview for unlimited use!
Image Synching and More…
And that’s not all…eWallet 7 adds a number of other new features as well, including synching for inserted background images. Now, you can create an amazing wallet on your desktop complete with background images and sync it over to your iPhone or Windows Mobile device where you’ll get the same, great looking wallet!
What Do You Need to Do?
We’ll be sending out upgrade notifications over the next week with all the information you need to get eWallet 7. If you purchased within the last 90 days, we’ll upgrade you to the full eWallet package at no charge. If you purchased before that time, it’s just $10.00 to upgrade the entire package.
iPhone customers will get the upgrade to eWallet 7 for free, but please be aware that if you purchased the desktop version more than 90 days ago, you will need to pay for the upgrade if you wish to use the eWallet 7 Windows PC version.
And if you use the iPhone and DON’T WANT TO UPGRADE your desktop software, we have a special version of eWallet 6 that you can use. Read all about it here!RELEASE UPDATE 12-1-09
As you can probably tell this is a HUGE release. We’ve changed more things in more places than we ever have in any release of our software ever. We aren’t surprised to hit a few bumps along the way. SO here is what I can offer as far as how things are going!
People Love It! OK, I couldn’t resist mentioning this - in part as a pat-on-the-back to all the folks who have busted their tails on this project here at Ilum Software. Thank you to EVERYONE OUT THERE who has been emailing and posting compliments about this release. It’s great to hear so many positive comments!
Non-English Windows Installs: It looks like some folks running non-English installs of Windows are getting errors when they run eWallet 7. We are working on this as we speak and getting very close to discovering why this is happening!
BlackBerry Unlock Codes: We’ve also had some folks hitting snags when they try to register their BlackBerry version. Again - we’re working on this and will keep you updated.
Support Calls and Emails: We WILL respond to everyone, but right now Lee and Kevin are absolutely swamped - mostly good stuff but still swamped all the same - we apologize for the delays but at this stage we’re going as fast as we can. SO we’ll try to post on the biggest issues here on the blog and will try to get through all the request for support before the week is out. Sorry for the wait and thanks for your patience!
iTunes Reviews: We totally understand the frustration a lot of folks felt over the trouble with the iPhone update and we’re really sorry for the grief it caused. Even though we provided a fix, I imagine that not all of that has disappated - HOWEVER - if you feel so inclined to either provide us with a positive review OR improve a negative one, we would REALLY appreciate it. We’d really like folks to know that when something goes wrong we don’t just sit back and ignore it - I really hate asking for reviews but in this case we’d really appreciate the support if you feel so inclined. Thanks!
And that’s it for now! We’ll keep you updated as we go. It’s an exciting time here and I think as the year progresses you’ll find that this is just he beginning!
Someone here - and I won’t name names - forgot to pick up our physical mail for a few weeks. Like 12. And none of us noticed.
If we’d done this years ago, we’d be in trouble. Our phones would have been turned off, as well as our internet, and we’d have racked up some serious late charges on the credit cards, if not had them cancelled as well.
But since we’ve been moving more and more of our bills to electronic only, it turns out that ignoring our paper mail for over two months wasn’t a big deal. Macworld sent a few testy “reminders” about our bill, and at least a few of us now have bigger than usual piles of stuff to read, but the only real problem was that Marc had ordered some live tadpoles to be sent here, and by the time we found them, they weren’t live anymore.
Sorry guys.
But it pointed out very clearly how unimportant physical mail has become. I wonder how long daily delivery will hang on.
Well, our anniversary contest is all wrapped up now. I spent some time this morning toiling over the entries to pick the winners - there were quite a few repeat songs, and I wanted to make sure to pick the first commenter in each case!
We had an exciting time last week, when we were asked to take part in not one, but two, interviews on some popular mobile websites. In case you missed them, I just wanted to take a minute to quickly point out where you can find them online:
We are extremely excited to announce that 
Someone here - and I won’t name names - forgot to pick up our physical mail for a few weeks. Like 12. And none of us noticed.