eWallet for Mac, ListPro for iPhone

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

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

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.

Mac eWallet

That get your attention? Thought so! Well, Mac eWallet isn’t out yet but it is being worked on. After the latest in a long line of challenges getting this project finished, I’ve pulled the project back in-house (it had been assigned to contractors). We now have one of our in-house developers assigned to the project full-time.

I still can’t tell you too much about it BUT I will offer a few tidbits. First, it looks every bit as good as the iPhone version of the software does. Second, it has a distinctly “Mac” interface - we didn’t just port over a copy of desktop eWallet - we know full well that you Mac folks have certain expectations and we’re doing what we can to meet those expectations. At the same time, the end result is something you’ll still recognize - one look and you’ll say “Hey! It’s eWallet!” Getting it that way was tricky but I think you’ll be please.

Of course not as pleased as actually GETTING it I imagine. I’m still hoping for a release mid-year, but that’s as close as I can get at the moment. We’ll keep you updated, though!

No joke: we have a winner

Well, the contest is now officially over - the secret text on the secret page has been changed back to normal, and I have a winner to announce!

I got a lot of great entries - thanks to everyone for playing! There were only three correct guesses, so it’s interesting to find out that some of you took other “serious” text on our site as a joke!

I put the three correct guessers’ (is that a word?) names into my magic contest hat, and the winner is: Greg. Congrats, Greg! I’m going to reply to your entry email now to get the details I need to send your prize out.

If anyone is curious, before I fixed the website I took a screenshot of the fake text:

(What’s fake? We’re in Ann Arbor, MI - not Canada, and yeah… those aren’t our real names. Click the image to see it full size.)

Thanks again to everyone who played - be sure to keep coming back, and next month we’ll return to your regularly scheduled blog comment contest, so you’ll have another chance to win!

Ilium Software to give away millions in cash and prizes!

As you may already know, the first day of the month is when we pick a winner from our ongoing blog comment contest. And as the headline of this post suggests, boy do we have a great contest today for one lucky winner! That’s right - cash and prizes totaling more than one million…more than two million…could it be more than three million? Read on after the jump to find out all the details about what may possibly be the coolest contest ever!

Are you still with me? Great! That can only mean one of two things: either you’re really hyped up and ready to find out how you can get a chance to win millions of dollars in prizes, or I didn’t fool you at all, you know exactly what day it is, but you’re such a good sport you decided you wanted to read the rest of my post anyway. I’m sure it’s the latter - I know you’re way too clever to be fooled by something like this on April 1st, right? Good for you. And as a reward, let me tell you about the contest I do have lined up today.

While I may not have millions of dollars in prizes to give away, there is a slight twist to this month’s blog contest. And we do have an extra-special prize to give away. Since I couldn’t fool you with my little lie about the gigantic prizes, I have a backup plan. Somewhere on our website, I’ve changed some text as a little April Fools Day joke. What could it be? Well, that’s for me to know and you to find out. I will say this: it’s more than just a couple of words. And I think you’ll know it when you see it. Or, at least, I sure hope you won’t read it, believe it, and keep on scrolling!

So, what do you do when you think you’ve found it? Well, first of all, DO NOT post it to the comments below. That will do nothing but get you disqualified and BOOed by the rest of the readers, and they might come to your house and throw rotten tomatoes at you. Seriously, we want everyone to have a chance to find our little joke! Please send your guesses via email to: julie at iliumsoft dot com. In your email, include a link to the page where you think you found the fake text, and be sure to quote the text you think is fake. I’ll pick a random winner from all the correct entries.

What do you stand to win? This time around we’ve got a different sort of software to give away: a brand-new, never-before-opened copy of Expression Media 2 by Microsoft. This is some pretty snazzy software that lets you store all of your media visually.

All right, hurry up and find the trick text! As soon as I get here tomorrow morning, I’m taking it back off the site. Because let’s face it - something that’s funny on April Fools Day looks just plain foolish if you read it the next day! I’ll update this post tomorrow after I pick the winner. So, off you go - good luck and happy hunting!