Ilium Software Blog

Winners: MadLibs fun!

June 2, 2009 by Julie

12 Years The votes are in! There were a lot of strange, weird, and funny headlines from our MadLibs game yesterday, so it took us some time today to narrow down the list to four winners. But we’ve picked our favorites and now it’s time to let you know which headlines we liked best.

The first place winner of a $50 Amazon or iTunes gift card is Melvyn, for the crazy headline: “Today Microsoft announced its merger with Amazon and unveiled its plans to sell toenails to Bolivia.” Eww…gross. Can you even imagine a merger like that – or living in Bolivia and seeing toenails for sale at your local store?

Our three runners-up, who each receive a $25 Amazon or iTunes gift card, are: Paperjet, Shaun, and MikeCTZA. Well done, everyone! I’ll be contacting you via email to find out which store you’d like your gift card from. If you don’t get that email later today, reply to this post to let me know.

To everyone who played, thanks so much – the entries were great, and it was a tough decision. But don’t go far, because we’ll start a new contest tomorrow and you can try your luck at a prize again!

And just a reminder: we’ve got a big anniversary sale running on our site this week too. All of the software in our online store, and eWallet on the iPhone App Store, are discounted BIG right now. Check it out here!

Contest One: Say what?!

June 1, 2009 by Julie

12 Years We’re going to start off our week of anniversary contests with a blast from the past – er, a blast from one year ago, that is.

One of the best contests we ran for last year’s party was a fun-filled game of mobile-style MadLibs; we got a lot of hilarious responses. So, I decided we really should go for another round!

If you don’t know what MadLibs are, well, that’s just sad – they were a childhood staple where I grew up. I’ve got some fond memories of rainy afternoons sitting around laughing at the crazy MadLibs my friends and I used to make up. And that was just last week! Anyway, you can get a crash course on MadLibs here, then head on back to this post more details on our contest.

Our 12th Anniversary!

June 1, 2009 by Ellen

Today is our 12 year anniversary! Yes, we’ve been making and selling mobile and desktop software for 12 years. How amazing is that?

I wish I could take credit for it all, but I’m a little too honest for that. We’ve been smart – I’ll never downplay that – but we’ve been very lucky too. I never know what the future of mobile software will be like, but we’ll be trying hard to keep up with it, without compromising our commitments to high quality software, in-house development, ethical business practices, and world-class tech and customer support.

Of course we couldn’t have done it without our many supporters: writers, reviewers, customers, beta testers, friends, colleagues, supporters, partners, and everyone who send us suggestions, information and kind words. Many, many, many thanks to everyone.

And particularly to the people I never remember to thank (at least not on the blog) – the committed, talented, and patient people who make up Ilium Software. To develop, test, release, maintain, support, distribute, market and sell the stuff we do is an amazing accomplishment, especially given how many of us are really making it up as we go along. If you’re reading this, please join me in celebrating this incredible accomplishment.

Julie’s got a week of sales and giveaways planned, so be sure to stick around. The sale has already started in our online store, and the first blog contest will be posted soon, with lots of chances to win great prizes!

AND – we’re on Twitter. Better late than never, I hope. Check us out at http://twitter.com/iliumsoftware

eWallet for Mac, ListPro for iPhone

May 26, 2009 by Marc

My first draft of this was about four pages long. After giving it a lot of thought, I took another whack at it. I’ll try to get straight to the point in this version. I’m not going to sugar coat things or pad my comments with biz-speak. I’m just going to give you the info you need in plain English.

ListPro for iPhone and eWallet for Mac are not done yet. I’ve made some guesses about when they’ll be done but, frankly, they’re guesses. The reality is that we won’t release them until they meet the standards of quality we’ve set for ourselves. We WILL release them (we always finish what we start) but it will be when they are ready and not before.

In fact, this is how we’ve always developed software. The only difference is that we pre-announced these two products. Before this we never announced anything until it was out the door. These announcements were a mistake and I place the blame firmly on my own shoulders. I jumped the gun because I was so excited about these. (I’m STILL excited about them.)

I read every email about this. I read every frustrated comment on the blog. And I respond. I’m acutely aware that my decision to pre-announce these products has frustrated some people. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I think about this in bed at night. We aren’t just sitting around laughing this stuff off.

But no matter how hard it is for me to not release this stuff yet, I will not compromise on quality. I also won’t hack the products down to get them out sooner. If I can’t give you the features you need then I’m not going to waste your time. Until we have the very best product with the right features, I won’t release.

Does this mean some folks will give up and move to a different product while they are waiting? Sure, and we don’t blame them. If that’s what they need to do then that’s what they need to do. We’re not asking anyone to do us any personal favors. We might like a lot of you folks and you might like us, but you need to make the decisions that are right for you.

eWallet for Mac and ListPro for iPhone are coming. When we release them they are going to rock. I’m sorry that I gave the OK to announce that they are coming and thus set unrealistic expectations about when they’d come out. I’m not going to make any further predictions except to say that we will release them.

If you choose to use something else in the meantime, that’s fine. But when we do release these products, I encourage you to give them a try. See if they are better than what you are using, and if they are, switch back. I’m confident that you’ll find them to be the very best in their class.

May-be it’s time for a new contest winner

May 5, 2009 by Julie

Well, May is here and it’s off to a nice start so far. Relatively warm weather: not too rainy, not too windy. And I think – I really think – I can safely pack my snow boots away without any negative consequences. But maybe I should hold off on that so as not to jinx things.

And best of all, May means it’s time to pick another blog contest winner! Last month Marc posted some good news about Mac eWallet, and that produced a lot of comments from happy readers – including our winner: Mark. Congrats, Mark! I’ve just sent you an email explaining how to get your prize. If you don’t receive it, reply to this post and let me know.

And to everyone else out there: thanks so much for reading and leaving your thoughts. Keep coming back, because I’ll pick another winner in June (and definitely have my snow boots away by then) and who knows – it could be you!

Microsoft SYNC

April 29, 2009 by Marc

I just bought a new car yesterday and it came with Microsoft SYNC. SYNC, which apparently comes standard on pretty much every Ford vehicle these days, syncs your mobile device to your car and provides full voice control over that device. Besides the fact that it’s pretty sweet, there are a few other reasons I wanted to blog about it.

Microsoft Rocks

I know, it isn’t a phrase people say very often but frankly, they should. Microsoft takes a lot of bashing from a lot of fronts, but the reality is that they are successful not due to luck, stupid consumers, or momentum – rather, they continue to succeed because they actually do quite a lot of stuff really well.

Take SYNC – I got in the car, it detected my iPhone, and within about a minute it was up, running, and had integrated by entire contact list. In addition, it gave me full voice control over the device. Every time I get in the car now, it automatically Syncs up and is ready to roll – no extra steps.

Same with the “dumbphone” my wife carries. Boom. Synched. Running. Done. What is more, the voice recognition is almost flawless (mumbling out a command while drinking a cup of coffee won’t work, however – I can attest to that).

All in all it’s a fantastic piece of software and I think it’s a good indicator of what the future holds for Microsoft Mobile products.

A Sign of the Times (And of Good Things to Come)

This is the even bigger thing to me.

Ashtrays are no longer standard on Ford vehicles.

SYNC is.

If this isn’t a clear indicator of how completely we’ve integrated phones into our lives, I don’t know what is. And with the success of the iPhone (and WinMo 6.5/7 I hope!), I believe that the “phones” in that phrase are going to very quickly become “SmartPhones.” For a mobile software developer, that’s a beautiful thing to hear.

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