We've Made It - 10 Years!!

I can’t believe it - Ilium Software has been in business 10 years.

We’ve grown to 9 fulltime (or close) employees.

We’ve released 12 products, discontinued 5, and converted 2 to freeware. We also have 8 currently supported free titles.

We’ve rented 4 different offices, as our space requirements changed, or needs of the people renting us space changed.

We’ve used 6 different web hosting companies, 5 different merchant services (credit card) providers, plus at least 39 different distributors (in our database, 9 are flagged as “gone”, 11 as “discontinued”, one as “should be gone” and one as “don’t ask”. I’m not sure why, but I’d bet it was me who wrote that).

We’ve somehow survived any number of stupid mistakes, made a few brilliant decisions, and had a lot of good luck and help from our friends.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this amazing milestone possible.

Of Course We're Celebrating

Here we are, celebrating:

OK, not really. The party is next week. But I made everyone put on a hat and pose for the picture so I could use it in this post.

Check out our home page for Julie’s fabulous falling hat show.

A New Contest Winner (and a little something extra....)

Thank goodness for little electronic reminders - without them I never would have remembered that today is June 1st. Where did May go; it’s such a long month but it just flew by! Ah, well, I didn’t forget, and I’ve just waved my magic wand (or clicked my magic mouse, rather), so now it’s time to give stuff away!

This month the lucky blog contest winner is Scott B., who commented on the post eWallet 5.0.2 is out (and other news). Congratulations! I just sent you an email explaining how to get your prize. If you don’t receive it just reply to this post and let me know.

Now, as for that “something extra” I promised. Let’s just say you might not have to wait until July for our next fun blog contest. Perhaps you should tune in next week and see for yourself…

eWallet 5.0.2 is out (and other news)!

We’ve released a tiny update to eWallet. It’s version 5.0.2 and it fixes a couple of little things that were bugging us. For 5.0.1 users, you don’t need to download this one but it doesn’t hurt. It primarily smooths out the experience for new and upgrade purchasers in the future.

ListPro 5.0 Closed Beta continues apace. So far things are looking quite good. We’ve got a few more features that have to go into it still so the release is undetermined. Sorry everyone! It will be worth the wait!

We have an update to one of our free products “in the pipe”. Can’t say which one just yet but we’ll announce it soon I hope! Thanks for all your comments on the Extreme Makeover blog post!

Finally, we have some additional cool announcements we’ll be making in the coming weeks. Can’t say much more than that yet but we’ll keep you updated!

GTD + ListPro, Take 2

The GTD ListPro template that I made has turned out to be quite popular. As in, it’s been in the top 3 most-downloaded List Exchange files list pretty much since I posted it almost 1 year ago. It’s even been #1 quite a few times.

In that time, I’ve had an on-and-off relationship with David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Starting up with GTD is like trying to get a new habit. When you don’t want a new habit, it’s very easy. When you want one, it’s very hard. I’ve had almost 26 years to get in the habit of brushing my teeth when I wake up, and that’s not a very complicated task. Organizing myself using GTD is about 100x more ’things to do’, and it’s a lot more difficult.

In any case, I’d planned on posting a differently-organized ListPro template for GTD that was much simpler and put everything in one place. Then, new versions of our software happened. Luckily, an intrepid ListPro user beat me to the punch, and he really beat me. He wrote a great blog post about how to use ListPro to manage your GTD actions, and sent us the associated template. The template is so simple, it makes mine look like “War and Peace”. As a result, it’s probably a lot easier to stick with!

So go get the template, read the article, and get something done!

(P.S: Why do I feel like Matt Foley, the motivational speaker played by Chris Farley on “Saturday Night Live”, when I make so many links in a short blog post? You know, like when you “bunny ear” things you’re “talking about” with “other people”.)

Extra Security Questions

Are people being tripped up by the extra security questions the banks, credit cards and insurance companies seem to be adding lately? I was.

I’ll admit it was my own fault - I didn’t read their page very carefully, and just assumed that I’d have to answer the questions to convince someone on the phone to reset a password I’d lost. And since I never lose passwords, I didn’t bother keeping track of the answers I gave.

So when it turned out that I had to answer a question once every 20 or so logins, of course I didn’t remember exactly what I’d answered (and close doesn’t count), and had a little trouble getting into my account.

So I’ve learned to record exactly what I answer to any of these new extra security questions. Fortunately, the Notes field in eWallet works great for these; I’d hate to have to find another program.

And I’ve also learned that it’s probably worth reading - or at least skimming - the documentation.