Ilium Software Blog

Our Partner Store is Open

December 3, 2007 by Ellen

We’ve just started selling a few partner products – titles developed and maintained by other companies. You may have seen other of the mobile sites doing this already, and you’ll probably see more over the next few months. We’re still a pretty small industry, and at least some of us are trying to work more closely together and give each others’ titles some extra exposure and sales. Plus, like Amazon selling shoes and hairdryers (both of which I’ve bought from them recently), we’re hoping that our featuring other titles will make it easier for visitors to find what they want, even if we don’t make it ourselves.

The support for any partner products on our site will be provided by the company that makes it – PocketInformant by WebIS, 1-Calc by OmegaOne, etc. – but we’re only selling titles that we know are well supported, and that we know we can always reach the author of. The sales will go through the Handango engine that’s the backend for our own title’s store as well.

It’s an experiment – if it doesn’t work well for us, for our visitors, and for the other titles’ authors, we’ll take it down. If it does, we’ll add more titles. We’ll never turn into a big software portal – believe me that we’ll never turn into a big software portal – but we’re hoping we can expand just a little and help our our visitors as well as ourselves and our friends.

You Can’t Be Too Rich, Too Thin, or Too Careful

December 3, 2007 by Ellen

More and more, I realize you really can’t be too careful.

I got an email this morning, looking like it was from PayPal, telling me to login to my account and update my information. I have enough experience to know what to look for before hitting any link, and also to know what kinds of emails to be suspicious of in general, but I also know that a lot of people don’t. I used to think things like the personal images and extra security questions were overkill, but I’ve changed my mind. I’m taking security a lot more seriously now, because some of the tricks the bad guys are pulling are pretty impressive.

I’d bet that people who read this blog (and thanks for reading it; I really like being able to just “think out loud” on my PC and call it working) are pretty careful and knowledgeable too, but I’d also bet that everyone has at least one friend or relative who’d read an email like the one I got today and click that link that looks legitimate. So if you know someone like that, this would be a great time to remind them that emails aren’t necessarily from who they say they’re from. And that links don’t necessarily go to the site in their text.

And now back to figuring out how to get rich and thin.

Mobile Software in an Always Connected World

November 28, 2007 by Marc

No matter how badly some folks hate them, the terms “Web 2.0” and “Web OS” just won’t go away. For many, these are the holy grail of software development…a multi-platform single language environment that allows instant upgrades with no downloads, making software available to the customer from any connected device. For others, the terms are empty promises or overused marketing phrases that never seem to live up to expectations.

But consider this. A recent survey discovered the following:

“The survey, which polled 2,062 adults in July and October, found that 79 percent of adults — about 178 million — go online, spending an average 11 hours a week on the Internet.”
– Reuters

With numbers like these, the old argument that “not everyone has access” no longer applies. The internet is now an ever present, vital part of American society. And with the proliferation of affordable all-you-can-download data plans, the mobile world is latching onto the web like never before.

As the Senior Product Manager here at Ilium Software, I need to look at things like this and ask myself “What does this mean for us?”, “What is the future for ‘on device’ applications?”, and “How can we keep doing what we do best…helping our customers to stay organized?”

Fortunately, Ilium Software has answers to these and many more questions. We’re excited and very optimistic about the future of our market. What I’d love to hear, however, is what YOU think. What do you see in the future for Mobile Device Software? How are you using the web with your mobile device? What can we offer or do that will help you to stay organized as the world of mobile devices evolves?

Thanksgiving Week

November 19, 2007 by Ellen

Well, it’s Thanksgiving week in Michigan, and I think we’re all pretty thankful that we have jobs – way too many people around here don’t. As well as that people are still buying our software, that we’re still winning awards (we just won 3 Best Software Awards from Smartphone and Pocket PC Magazine, announced today), that the guy who broke in a few weeks ago only took the one laptop, and that our offices aren’t freezing all the time (unlike the last two). And for the internet, which made this all possible, and which has given us all so many new and improved ways to goof off. And of course for our customers, friends and supporters in the mobile world. We couldn’t have made it without you.

Things Always Change

November 12, 2007 by Ellen

Things always change. I’m sure it’s true for any tech company, though I think it’s more true for mobile developers than for those who develop desktop apps. I’ve lost count of how many versions of Windows Mobile (formerly Windows CE) and Palm OS we’ve been through, not to mention different screen sizes and shapes, color depths, and even basic interface components like touchscreens and navigation controls. But I think the next few years, with the iPhone and Google announcements, will change the world for mobile software developers even more than any in the past. My guess is that Microsoft and Blackberry will split the business users, while Apple and Google split the consumers, but given that my last 2 predictions (both of which I was fairly confident of) were:

Apple will never release or announce an SDK for the iPhone
the Broadway stagehands union will never strike

were both wrong, I’m pretty much batting zero for accuracy. (That may qualify me for a paid position at one of the mobile market analysis companies; they’re always wrong too. Maybe I’ll look into that.)

But another big change this week is the announcement that PalmGear is being merged into PocketGear. PalmGear was, if not the first mobile software portal, the first one of any significance. Motricity (formerly Power by Hand) bought them, as well as PocketGear (formerly CEShopper and one other name that I’ve forgotten) and Smartphone.net. For years, PalmGear was their flagship brand, and I’d assumed it still was, but apparently it’s not. Here’s a really interesting graph, courtesy of Alexa:

So given that they’re combining the two sites, which makes a lot of sense, I guess they’ve picked the smartest way to do it. But it seems to me like a pretty loud statement of what at least Motricity believes the successful mobile OS’s of the next few years will be.

Information Security

November 7, 2007 by Ellen

I’m thinking a lot about information security lately. Not because we develop and sell eWallet, but because of two things that have happened recently:

Our office was broken into. Nothing but one laptop was taken (and it was just used for testing, so had no valuable info on it, plus was password-protected). We think that our alarm scared the person or people away, and they just took the nearest good-looking piece of equipment. While we’re all feeling a little rattled by the thought that someone was in our office, we’re also very aware it could have been much worse.

We stopped keeping the credit card numbers we get for sales several years ago, and are very careful to protect any confidential info – whether users’ email addresses or our own credit card numbers and passwords – on any of our PCs, so I know that anyone getting any of our equipment wouldn’t be able to get any useful information. And I know we’re good about keeping offsite backups of all the corporate and customer info. I hope we’re also good about keeping offsite backups of our own PCs, but I know at least I don’t do that every day. But we’d lose weeks of work if we all had to get new PCs and set them up. I’m not sure that 5-year-old PCs (mine’s at least that old) are even worth taking, but I hope I never find out.

The other thing that’s happened is that as part of two banks I use being acquired, I’m kicking off a long-postponed personal financial reorganization. Wow – there’s a lot of info to enter and keep with new bank accounts. Online security is a lot better than it used to be, which I’m very glad about. But it’s clear that no matter how excellent my memory is, there’s no way I could be without a good wallet program. And being able to enter free-form info – like my third boyfriend’s pet’s name, or the street my high school was on – is a lot more critical than it was when we first added the Notes fields to eWallet cards.

Anyway, I’m glad the banks are looking out for me, and I’m glad there’s good enough software that I can manage everything I need to. And I’m really glad we got an alarm when we moved into this office (we’d always planned to with the previous one, but never got around to it). It’s too bad we need all that, but since we do, it’s good that it’s there.

And, yes, I’m thinking a lot about mobile technology too, especially with all the new announcements lately. I just don’t have anything to say about it – yet – that hasn’t been said by many other people.

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