Now that Today 2.0 is officially released, we are starting to get a few smaller projects that were put on the backburner out there. One of those is our new Facebook fan page. Everyone on earth (my grandmother included) is on Facebook, so we wanted to make it easier to interact with our customers.
We’ll be using the Facebook page to post product announcements, tips & tricks and hopefully highlighting some of our friends in the Mac development community who are also on Facebook. If you want to join, just click the image below.
As a bonus for becoming our fan on Facebook, we are currently offering a $1 off coupon for any of our products just for becoming our Facebook fan. We’ll periodically update the Facebook exclusive offer with deals for our existing customers as well as some of our favorite third-party Mac products.
Thanks for supporting Second Gear.
Things have been relatively quiet around Second Gear HQ, but that is only because we have been hard at work on building the next great version of Today. After what seems like forever, Today 2.0 is now available!
Today 2.0 was our opportunity to wipe the slate clean and start from a blank canvas. We reimagined the user interface to be lighter, brighter and infinitely more usable. We also rewired everything under the hood to absolutely fly on Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Oh, and we finally went 64-bit.
We also took the opportunity to adjust how events and tasks are created in Today. It didn’t make much sense to keep the windows attached to the main Today window as sheets. With 2.0, you can now create as many new event/task windows as you desire. Even better, you can assign global hot keys to the action so that you’re just a keystroke away from adding a new event to your calendar.
We hope you enjoy this new release. I am genuinely proud of how it turned out and couldn’t imagine going back to the old version. Check it out and let us know what you think!
2009 was an interesting year at Second Gear HQ. We had several product releases and a few product acquisitions. Let’s look at some of the highlights.
As for 2010, I think you will be incredibly pleased with what we have coming very soon. We hope you have a great 2010 and thanks for supporting Second Gear.
It’s with great excitement that I announce that BitBQ has acquired FitnessTrack and Emergency Information and will taking both applications to the next level. Curious about the what’s and why’s? Read on.
What’s Happening
BitBQ has acquired Second Gear’s stable of iPhone applications: FitnessTrack and Emergency Information.
Why are you selling the iPhone apps?
There are a few reasons for it, but mainly it is because Second Gear wants to get back to focusing on the Mac platform rather than dividing attention between two different platforms. BitBQ, on the other hand, was looking to get into the iPhone development business and was a fan of both applications. It seemed a natural fit.
Do I have to repurchase either application?
We hope not, but right now that depends on Apple. Both companies are working with Apple to transfer the applications in the iTunes program so that the transition is as seamless as possible for existing users. To keep up-to-date on this, subscribe to BitBQ’s blog and/or Twitter
Who do I contact for support, feature requests or other questions?
Please contact Patrick at BitBQ for anything related to FitnessTrack and Emergency Information going forward. You are in great hands.
So what is Second Gear working on now
Right now we’re hard at work on updates to both Check Off and Today, our two Mac applications. There may or may not also be a third Mac application at our top secret shop. Stay tuned!
We are pleased to announce the release of something that has long been in the works: a major update to Check Off. Check Off is a quick to-do list that sits in your Mac’s menu bar. Simply click the check mark and your personal to-do list will drop down.
This release focuses on modernizing the the application going forward. Much like Apple is doing with Snow Leopard, we wanted to update Check Off so that it is ready for the next decade of software and hardware advancements.
The release sports a new coat of paint with a modernized interface. Check Off now looks and feels like it belongs on Leopard and Snow Leopard with its modernized toolbar, list styles and preferences window.
Check Off 4 also includes a new purge feature which will allow you to remove all of your checked off items with a single click so you can just focus on what’s left to be done on your list. The application is also more friendly to international users with its new support for non-ASCII characters in the list, printing and exporting.
Under the hood, the application saw substantial upgrades and enhancements.
We took the opportunity of 4.0 to rewrite key portions of the architecture to use modern features of the Mac OS X development experience and to add support for 64-bit. Check Off should be leaner, more stable and maybe even a bit snappier as well.
The new core will make it much easier to add functionality to the application going forward. It also gave me the opportunity to fix some lingering usability issues. Check Off now behaves more like a Mac application should and even has standard keyboard shortcuts.
We are very proud of this release and am glad that others can finally get a chance to use it.
Check Off has long been a free product, but with 4.0, the decision was made to start charging a license fee. There are a variety of reasons for this, but it boils down to having to support a company and the developers behind it. We want to continue to build great products for the Mac platform, but short of inheriting quite the trust-fund, making for-pay products is the only way to can do that.
Single user licenses are $12.95, or you can purchase the family pack for $19.95 for use on up to five computers in your household.
Transitioning from free to paid is always an awkward situation and I’m not sure if there is a right way to do it. As part of the transition we have offered free 4.0 licenses to anyone who has made a donation towards Check Off in the past three years. Whether it was a dollar or fifty, we wanted to thank those that took the time and saw fit to support the development of a free product.
Please download it today and let us know what you think. We are very proud of this release and hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed build it.
The folks at BusyMac just released a public beta of BusyCal, their new iCal replacement that adds support for live weather forecasts, graphics, recurring todos and more. What’s great about BusyCal is that it is fully compatible with iCal still, and any event or task you create in the application will automatically sync back to iCal, and subsequently to Today.
If you’ve been looking for a more powerful calendaring solution than what iCal offers today, be sure to check out BusyCal.
FitnessTrack 1.1 is unfortunately still in review with Apple, but I am pleased to announce that a weekend project from a few weeks ago is now available in AppStore for just 99 cents: Emergency Information.
An In Case of Emergency (ICE) card is something everyone should be (but usually isn’t) carrying on them. It contains your emergency contact information, allergies and medications should you ever be involved in an accident.
I had the idea for building an iPhone version on a recent Friday afternoon and wasn’t satisfied with the existing offerings on AppStore. I used it as motivation to spend my entire weekend building what I envisioned an ICE application should look and function like. This is the fruits of that labor.
Be sure to check out Emergency Information for only 99 cents and tell your friends & family about it. Thanks for supporting Second Gear.
I’m pleased to announce that my first iPhone application, FitnessTrack is now available on the AppStore.
FitnessTrack is designed to help you keep track of your progress at the gym. Whether you lift weights, run or just want to shed a few pounds, FitnessTrack is designed to replace your notebook or clipboard workout sheets.
The application was an idea I’ve wanted to pursue for quite a while. It started as a side project for the Mac a few years ago, but was given a new breath of life with the release of the iPhone. It became obvious that it would and should be on the iPhone.
FitnessTrack features the following:
FitnessTrack is available right now for the low introductory price of $3.99 on the AppStore. I have quite a few features planned for the future and I hope you’ll come along for the ride with me.
It is hard to believe that it has already been a year since we announced the release of our flagship product, Today. Since that initial release, we have done 14 minor and point releases that have added the features you’ve requested.
I opened up Today 1.0 this morning just to reminisce and I can say I’m quite proud of how the little guy is growing up. There is some great stuff happening with Today for the next major release. Stay tuned!
Today is a great way to see what’s on your daily schedule of events and tasks, but with WeatherCal, a new utility from Bare Bones, it can also be an instant way to see what the forecast is.
WeatherCal creates a new calendar in iCal that has the daily forecast as an all day event in iCal and subsequently Today.
This is such an ingenious use of iCal that I can’t believe no one thought of it until now. Great job, Bare Bones!