Last week before I left for Macworld, the screen on my Parrot CK 3100 car kit went blank. I sent email to Parrot and even though the kit was far out of warranty, they said they’d send me a new screen. They never asked for my serial number and a new screen arrived today. I’ll box up the old one and send it back. This, I must say, is one of the best customer service experiences I’ve had in a long time. Thanks, Parrot!
More UI Overhauling in ReceiptWallet
Another part of my UI overhaul is to redo my preferences. They’ve completely gotten out of hand and everything has been in one window like this.
I like how iTunes and other apps (including the Finder) have a tabbed toolbar interface, so I went that route. Using Matt Gemmell’s SS_PrefsController as a base, I re-worked my preferences into different panes. The source uses plugins for the preferences which I don’t need, so I modified the code to embed everything. I’m waiting to hear back from my icon guy, but things are looking better. Ignore my icons for now.
Wow, what a huge difference a few tweaks can make to a program. I also turned on autohiding of the scrollbars. Due to some bugs in the OS, I had to do some magic to get things drawing correctly. Having a blank toolbar looks bad, but I didn’t want to deal with it before.
Tech Support is the bane of my existence
ReceiptWallet and DocumentWallet have done fabulously well, almost beyond my wildest dreams (OK, maybe not, I dream that I can sell 100 copies a day and then I could just sit back and relax). One of the downsides with this success is that support requests are on the rise. Some of the questions are simple and are just inquiries as the documentation could use a lot of help. Some of the requests are crashes; a majority of these crashes are due to poorly written scanner drivers and there is nothing I can do about them. A small number of requests have to do with bugs in the software. While I don’t (usually) mind some of the requests that are nicely worded and relatively short (the longer the message, the less inclined I am to read it; bulleted questions have a higher chance of getting a good response), some just drive me crazy. I answer every question myself, even if it is a canned response. I don’t like questions unanswered, so I feel the constant need to check my email and answer right away.
This, of course, causes me a great deal of stress as I’m not a very patient person. I do my best to answer questions in a professional manner, but sometimes I feel like answering questions with flippant responses.
Proposed Tax Rebates send the wrong message
President Bush’s proposed tax rebates send the wrong message in my opinion to the American people. The rebates stop if you earn a certain amount of income which might be fine, but the purpose of the rebates is to get people to spend money. Americans already have a negative savings rate and this tax rebate (if it is to work as designed) sends the message that people who get it should spend the money instead of save it. Those who earn less money already have a hard time saving money; something should be done to encourage people to save and use credit wisely.
This poor plan didn’t seem to go over with Wall Street as it is doing too little to late. I think it is a complete waste of $185 billion dollars that our government doesn’t have anyway. While I don’t have a fix for this recession, getting those that can’t afford to spend more money to spend money by giving them a rebate is not helping anyone. This is completely politically motivated and unfortunately, those that fall for it and think that it is going to help, just don’t know any better.
While I’m not a fan of Mike Huckabee, his tax plan is interesting in that it taxes what you spend thereby (in a little way) encouraging people to save. We need more saving and less spending.
Are Chargers fans fair weather fans?
There have been articles recently saying that fans of the San Diego Chargers would only come out in good weather, but that was proven wrong in a recent game when it was raining. However, this post isn’t about that type of weather. This is about fans that wear the Chargers colors/gear only when they are doing well. In the past week, we’ve seen people wearing Chargers jerseys, have bolts on their cars, fly Chargers flags, etc. This is not normal for San Diego. There are some rabid fans that always have their Chargers stuff around, most fans don’t. It is only when they’re doing well that people come out in full force with their support for the team. Wouldn’t true fans fly the Chargers colors in good times and in bad?
Stairs to nowhere
I’ve been to the Handlery Hotel in San Francisco at least twice, but kept forgetting to take a picture of “the stairs to nowhere”. I finally snapped a picture. It always makes me chuckle when I pass by it.
You know you’re in trouble when…
you step onto an elevator and there is an employee that says “count to 3 and hope this goes up”. Well, that’s what happened today when we were out at the San Diego Wild Animal Park today. We go on their new elevator (today was the first day that it was open), when it wouldn’t go up. The employee hit the button a few times and after the door opened and closed, it eventually went up. Also, the employee had a radio in case it got stuck! As we were leaving the park, I heard over one of the employee radios that the elevators (one was already out of operation when we were there) were not working. Not a good opening day for the elevators!
MacHeist, another round of cheap software
MacHeist is back with another bundle of software. In case you’re not familiar with MacHeist, it is a really well developed series of games that when you solve gives you free software and at the end of all the “missions” you get a discount on the full bundle. The free apps are an interesting marketing tool. Most of the developers that put their apps in give one version of the software that isn’t upgradeable. Most of the software, I had no use for, but a few apps caught my eye, including 1Password which has changed how I browse the web! I wasn’t planning on buying the current bundle, but I needed a graphics app and while I think the UI of Pixelmator is awful, and the bundle price was less than a normal license, so I bit. I don’t have a whole lot of use for most of the apps, but they donate 25% to charity and I might find some utility to the apps.
I used to have mixed feelings about the deal as it is a great deal for consumers, excellent revenue generator for the people behind it, donates to charity, but the developers only get a small portion of the profits. Last year there was some debate over this. After talking with one developer this past week, he indicated that when they do these types of deals, the sales on their own site doesn’t decrease! I’ve seen similar trends when I’ve done the MacZOT! promotions. Those people that know about these deals is very small and if the deals spread the word, then how bad can they be?
Kudos to MacHeist for another job well done and for putting together an excellent way for developers to get their software known.
ReceiptWallet UI Overhaul
I’ve started to do some work on the ReceiptWallet UI based on some ideas I got this week as well as customer feedback. I found that I personally had a number of “recent” smart collections, so I decided to make them a standard part of the interface. Also, I used some features of Leopard to get the “Source List” view (it looks OK on Tiger, but isn’t as slick). For some reason, this was harder than it should have been; I had to verify that drag and drop still worked and lots of other things didn’t break such as contextual menus, adding/removing collections, etc. However, I think it is all working now.
I am still working on some things, but will be putting out a beta next week.
Don’t chop off your finger!
As I mentioned in a previous post, UPEK has their software written in Prague and that sometimes leads to odd wording of dialogs. I installed their latest software today and had to chuckle at this dialog. Better not harm yourself!