Author: admin

iCloudStatus not showing changes?

After only a week of launch the only complaints I have received are from users saying iCloudStatus does nothing when they add files to the iCloud Drive folder in the Finder.

I believe the problem they are having is from confusion involved in having what are basically references to iCloud directories in the iCloud Drive folder.

These “folders” appear in the iCloud Drive folder but are named by the Apple app they contain documents for such as, TextEdit, Pages, Numbers etc… If you try to use Get Info on these folders you’ll see nothing happens and you get a beep. This is because these are not actual folders and can not be tracked by iCloudStatus (as of version 1.0).

The problem can be fixed however by manually adding the iCloud references to iCloudStatus that you want to track but I will need to add this feature in the next update. After that changing documents in Pages for example will show status on your menu bar like you dragged files from the Finder.

Sorry for this omission, it will be corrected in the next update.

iCloudStatus Release

App-Icon-128x128After Yosemite was released I decided to start using the new iCloud Drive combined with rsync and a daily Calendar event to be my daily online-backup solution for projects.

Like most users I quickly found out how annoying it was to now know which files were actually uploaded and so thus iCloudStatus was born!

I imagine at some point Apple is going to add this functionality to the OS because it’s such a glaring omission but until them iCloudStatus is available.  The only reason I can think of for not having this feature is that they don’t want users to know just how slow iCloud Drive can be. It will get better with time but now I’ve had it stall for hours uploading text files.

I haven’t done much with it so far but it’s proven to not have any problems so far so I’m going to get it submitted to the Mac App Store this week (if Apple accepts it).

TaskCard and NoteCard plans for 2.0

TaskCard and NoteCard have been seriously neglected as I have stopped actively developing them over the last year and months. After struggling with a NoteCard update and making an iOS version of TaskCard I decided the app basically needs a rewrite using a modern code base. TaskCard was designed as such a simple app using a sprite engine (for fun) but the design has proved to by unmanageable and as the project expands it just gives me more and more problems.

For this reason I have decided to rewrite TaskCard as a 2.0 and merge NoteCard into TaskCard (i.e. note cards). Additionally I’m going to change some fundamentals of how the app works, using a document structured approach and start focusing more on the project management end (the original intent of the app but I’m not removing any features).

Most importantly the app will be designed to be ported to iOS from the beginning since these days not having a portable version almost renders the app useless for many users. I may even be able to release both at the same time.

I now have time to start working on this again since finishing Desktops (finally!) and with some luck I can transition most of the complicated parts of the app to the new design easily and this won’t be a project lasting longer than a few months.

Thanks for you patience!

Desktops Released!

Desktops has been released! What started out a few years ago as a simple concept for previewing/launching files became a full blown desktop environment. I wasn’t too excited about the concept so I put it on hold for a year until I eventually decided to modify the idea to save all the work I put into the original concept which eventually became the final product.

It’s still a version 1.0 and there’s a lot of ways it can be improved so please share your comments.

TaskCard is on sale at 50% off!

I’ve decided to put TaskCard on a huge sale before the release of 2.0 which will be released sometime this summer. You can now purchase TaskCard for $4.99 via PayPal on our website or on the Mac App Store.

TaskCard reached a reasonably stable version at 1.6.2 and since I was working on other projects this year I didn’t have time to make any updates. It looks like the next feasible update will an entire 12 months from 1.6.2 (in July ’11) so I decided to make this the big 2.0 release (I’ll post what features will be included closer to the release date). The most important part of the release will be an iOS companion app along with many other long overdue features.

Thanks for supporting TaskCard!

NoteCard drawing bugs on 10.7.x

I’m starting work on a NoteCard 1.1 release and discovered there is a really annoying drawing bug while adding/removing cards and moving cards to sheets (leaving ghosts and and drawing the background when cover Desktop is enabled). The problem seems to be from QuartzGL which apparently is buggy in 10.7.3 (or earlier).

I don’t think it’s serious enough to rush out an update so I’m going to work on the current update as planned and in 1.1 disable QuartGL which is causing the bugs. Expect the update early next month.

Sorry about that guys!

DockShelf 1.1 Released

The first noteworthy update of DockShelf, version 1.1 has been released today. This is usually much more than I typically add in a minor version update  but I have been slow to release DockShelf updates since the release and there’s so much more I want to do with it!

The main focus of 1.1 is new browsing features including a popup window for browsing folders (like in the OS X Dock), Smart folders which use Spotlight and Stacks for creating custom groups of browsable files. Between Smart folders and Stacks I hope you can really expand the amount of files you can launch/navigate from DockShelf.

Some other new items have been added also including trash cans, separators and the Finder. Note that all the new items in 1.1 can be added from the new Items tab in the dock info window (right-click on the dock to open).

2 new “special” docks have been added also: process docks and device docks. These docks are static (can not be altered) and show all open applications and mounted devices, respectively. In a future version I would like to make item variants of these docks which can be added to any dock and show the processes/devices in a popup window (to save screen space).

Finally there is a small feature that allows you to add AppleScripts to applications which can be invoked from the contextual menu when you right-click on an application item (see the manual for instructions).

With that out of the way the next feature in 1.2 will be custom dock themes which I hope users will be able to help create and share. DockShelf is already built for custom themes but I didn’t perfect the system for the public yet.

TaskCard & NoteCard for iOS in development

This maybe isn’t the announcement you really wanted to hear but TaskCard and NoteCard for iOS are finally in full development and I would expect to be ready late July.

iOS ports are by the far the most frequently requested “feature” so I look forward to delivering, although I’m quite late to join the iOS platform I must admit.

Expect to some updates later and screen shots but for now I’ll just say that the interface is going to remain virtually identical except cards will be displayed one-per-screen (on iPhone) and 4 or 2 cards on iPad allowing you to swipe through “pages” of cards. Synching will be handled with DropBox or iCloud.

Not much else to say except I should have done this a long time ago since the platform has been much easier to work with then I thought and TaskCard/NoteCard are easily ported due to the way I designed them for Mac OS.

NoteCard & DockShelf 1.0.1 minor updates.

Let me first start by saying I’m terribly sorry for this pitifully slow update that should have been out a week after I released both these apps. I must have got burned  out and was eager to move on to other projects and “recreational” programming projects.

These 2 mintor updates address only a couple of issues but they are important.

In DockShelf docks now appear fixed when changing desktop spaces in Lion. I know this was driving people crazy and it wasn’t hard to fix at all. Actually I disabled this from the beginning because it was causing visual disturbances when changing spaces (still not resolved) but I didn’t realize what the down side of that would be.

The other issue wasn’t very wide spread however it was serious. A couple of users reporting that after shutting down their Mac DockShelf would reset their docks! I never did figure out how this could ever happen but I did find a fix that seems to have fixed the problem for those users. Fingers crossed…

For NoteCard the very annoying “stuck tabs” bug has been fixed allowing you to detach tabs from the screen edge finally.

As usual users who bought on the Mac App Store will have to wait 1-2 weeks for Apple to review the update (buy from us direct!).

Thanks guys!