Paperless in MacUpdate Promo!

Another bundle deal, another set of great apps! This time, however, Paperless (formerly ReceiptWallet), is part of the bundle. MacUpdate is offering a bunch of great apps. You’ve probably heard of most of them. This is the first time that one of my applications has been offered as part of a bundle.

I have a strange hobby of collecting software, so I’ll probably bite on this deal despite owning a few in the collection. It’s hard to go wrong for the price. If you decide to buy the bundle, click on the link on the right side of the page advertising the bundle to support my blog (running this blog isn’t free :-) ).

Paperless 1.0 Shipped

Mariner Paperless (the new name for ReceiptWallet) 1.0 shipped last week! I’m quite happy to see ReceiptWallet moving forward. While this 1.0 version of Paperless has mostly cosmetic changes, I’m sure that more changes will be coming soon.

There is so much that can be done, I just didn’t have enough time to dedicate to it.

Congratulations, Mariner!

Bye, Bye ReceiptWallet

Today brings to an end my active involvement in ReceiptWallet. As readers of my blog know, Mariner Software bought ReceiptWallet. Today was the official passing of the baton. We initiated the domain transfer that could have taken up to 6 days, but within an hour, receiptwallet.com was in the hands of Mariner Software. All email, support, sales, etc. is now handled by Mariner. I’m not going away and will be available to Mariner as needed and I hope that they tap into my wealth of knowledge every now and again (I have learned something in the last 2 1/2 years of doing receipt/document management).

Now it’s time for me to close my PayPal account associated with ReceiptWallet, purge stuff off my virtual private server, and do some more housekeeping.

I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad. I have very mixed emotions; ReceiptWallet has been part of my everyday life for a long time now. I’ll no longer be answering support tickets everyday and won’t be getting the “I love your software” email messages. However, I won’t be doing support which will be a big relief. Now I have to figure out what to do with my newly found free time.

The end of an idea

Ever since the iPhone SDK came out, I had planned to write ReceiptWallet for iPhone as it seemed like a logical thing to do. A few users asked for it, so I thought it was a good idea. However, today is the day that ReceiptWallet for iPhone ends. I’ve toyed with it for the last few months, but just don’t have my heart into it as it isn’t something that I see myself using. As much as I wanted to do this product to answer the needs of the public, it just isn’t going to happen. I was going to finish it to get it out the door, but then I’d have a crappy product that wasn’t my best work.

In addition, there are some serious issues that have to be overcome before it could become usable.

First off, the camera on the iPhone can’t focus close enough to get quality images. As you can see, these pictures are awful. I’m not sure they would be acceptable for any form of documentation. (Who knows, maybe the IRS would accept something that can’t be read.)

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Second off, the synchronization mechanism with the desktop would not be seamless; you would have to launch ReceiptWallet on the iPhone, click on sync and run ReceiptWallet on the desktop. Apple has not provided a plugin mechanism (like Palm did with HotSync Manager) for third parties to sync data.

Third, I’m not happy with the data entry mechanism. ReceiptWallet on the desktop uses combo boxes to allow you to type a few characters and then a dropdown menu shows everything close; nothing like this exists on the iPhone.

The future may change things with ReceiptWallet for iPhone, but ending this today takes a huge weight off my chest and will let me move on.