Downshift: The Second Gear Weblog

BitBQ Acquires FitnessTrack & Emergency Information

2009-10-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

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!

All Second Gear Products Are Snow Leopard Compatible

2009-08-26T10:47:00.001-07:00

With Apple's impending release of Mac OS X Snow Leopard this Friday, I've received quite a few emails from users wondering if Second Gear's products are ready for Snow Leopard.

In a word: YES.

Both Check Off 4.0.1 and Today 1.8.1 have been tested and run natively without issue on Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Check Off is a bit ahead of the curve with its native support for 64 bit in Snow Leopard, but we are hard at work on a new release of Today that will add 64 bit support as well as a slew of other features for our users.

As always, if you run into any issues with our products as you migrate to Snow Leopard, please contact support.

Check Off 4 Now Available

2009-08-24T06:32:00.001-07:00

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.

The Transition From Free To Paid

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.

Give It A Try

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.

Use BusyCal with Today

2009-07-27T13:04:00.001-07:00

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.

Track Second Gear progress via @secondgear on Twitter

2009-07-07T10:33:00.001-07:00

Brent Simmons, Internet superstar and developer of NetNewsWire, recently started tweeting his workday. Brent describes it as coding as a performance.

It's a fairly good idea, so I've decided to use the Second Gear Twitter account to document what exactly is being worked on here in the labs. If you follow right now, you'll see I'm hard at work on a new release of FitnessTrack. Rather than updating on every single thing I'm doing in a given day, I'm planning to just do one to two updates per day just so you can follow along.

You can follow along by following @secondgear. Hopefully this proves to be an interesting experiment and gives you a closer glimpse of how things work around Second Gear HQ.

Emergency Information 1.1 Now Available on AppStore

2009-07-07T10:16:00.001-07:00

Emergency Information 1.1 is now available via the AppStore. This new version resolves a few issues that cropped up with the iPhone OS 3.0 release as well as adds support of creating emergency contacts on the iPod touch. While iPod touch users can't call their contacts, they can view the contact information on their device should the need arise.

Emergency Information is just 99 cents. Download it today!

Today 1.8: Better Snow Leopard Compatibility

2009-06-29T05:13:00.001-07:00

I'm happy to announce that Today 1.8 is now available. Version 1.8 is a minor update to address a few Snow Leopard issues I was running into as I'm starting to use the new operating system more. The new release also improves the French localization and should launch a bit faster than before. As always, it's a free update to registered 1.x users. If you aren't yet a Today user, why not give it a spin? A 10-day fully-functioning demo of Today can be downloaded at the Second Gear site.

FitnessTrack 1.1 Now Available

2009-06-01T23:00:00.000-07:00

FitnessTrack 1.1 is now available via the AppStore.

Here's the highlights:

You can now filter the exercise list when browsing or adding exercises to a workout
You can now view exercise information & previous sessions from within any workout
FitnessTrack will now remember your selected view position on close
You can now adjust the date of a workout
Added set of default routines for first launch
You can now email a specific workout or routine to anyone
Improved compatibility with latest iPhone OS 3.0 beta
Miscellaneous performance, stability and UX adjustments

The full changelog is available over here. FitnessTrack is available for the ridiculously low price of $2.99. Check it out!

Emergency Information 1.0 Now Available

2009-05-31T22:51:00.000-07:00

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.

Today: Give us your feedback for version 2.0

2009-05-27T05:16:00.000-07:00

We're starting to plan the release of Today 2.0, and we want your input to help shape the release.

You can help by taking the survey below or just send us an email at today@secondgearsoftware.com and let us know what features you wish Today had. Thanks for your help and for supporting Second Gear.

FitnessTrack 1.1 Submitted to AppStore

2009-05-10T23:41:00.000-07:00

It's been a little less than a week since FitnessTrack made it's debut on the AppStore and we can't thank you enough for the response. We've spent the past week listening to your feedback and planning out the next several releases which we are excited to get into your hands.

The first one is FitnessTrack 1.1, which is a mix of features and tweaks we've been working on behind the scenes while 1.0 was in review and stuff you have requested and reported. One of those features is search. When you are adding exercises to a workout, you can now filter the list to find what you are looking for quickly. There are several other small tweaks & enhancements in there as well that we'll highlight in the changelog once the update goes live on the store.

Look for it in AppStore in the next week or so, depending on how quick Apple is at approving it.

FitnessTrack 1.0 Now Available On AppStore!

2009-05-04T21:45:00.000-07:00

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:

Workouts: I tried the other fitness applications on the iPhone and none of them worked the way I thought when it came to actually being in the gym and keeping track of what you are doing. FitnessTrack is my spin on how I think this should happen. Add your exercises, set the number of sets and adjust your weights: all in a beautiful and intuitive interface.
Exercises: FitnessTrack includes over 65 professionally designed exercises. I've partnered with Custom Fit Personal Training here in Evansville to design the exercises and give detailed, easy to follow instructions on how to perform them. You can also create your own exercises should you need to supplement the list.
Routines: Have a workout you repeat often? Save it as a routine that you can use to populate a new workout. Routines store the exercise and number of sets for each respective exercise.
Fitness Profiles: Fitness Profiles is designed for those that are trying to reach a certain weight or inches goal. I tend to put myself in 6-8 week cycles where I have a certain goal of trying to put on a certain amount of muscle in the timeframe, losing a certain percentage of body fat, etc. I designed Fitness Profiles to allow me to keep track of that information via the iPhone.
Gorgeous UI: One of the things I'm most proud of in the application is the look & feel of the app. Thanks to the work of the awesome William Wilkinson, FitnessTrack looks like it belongs on the iPhone. I've tried to ride the line between a completely custom UI and the iPhone standard (striped table views = yuk), and I think it looks tremendous.

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.

Happy 1st Birthday Today!

2009-04-21T22:22:00.000-07:00

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 1.7: Printing, Task Sorting and Classic Date Formatting

2009-03-24T01:36:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to announce that Today 1.7 is now available. Version 1.7 of Today adds following:

You can now print your daily list of events & tasks
Rewrote the task sorting algorithms to be more reliable when sorting by due date or priority
Improved verbage and sizing issues in both French & German localizations
Reverted to iCal-style date selection in place of natural dates

The full change list is listed in the release notes

I want to touch on the last bullet point I listed. With Today 1.6, the big feature was the support for entering dates using natural language instead of the traditional date picker. I thought this was a great way to enter dates and was quicker for me than using the date picker in iCal. I think some people also agreed with this, but the majority of users found this incredibly confusing.

How do I know this? The support queue for Today 1.6 went up over 300% with people not understanding why they couldn't create events. In many cases the problem was built around the idea that people didn't understand what that blank text field had to do with a start/end/due date.

Given the high level of confusion this feature caused my non-geek users, I decided to pull the feature and revert back to the standard iCal-style date picker. The lesson to take away from this for other developers is don't over engineer for the sake of geek cred. The iCal-style date pickers worked great and I'm sure Apple did plenty of testing to determine they were the best way to work with.

If you were a fan of the natural date selection, I'm sorry to take it out of this release, but given the choice of keeping Today easy to use and accessible to as many classes of users as possible, I think this change is for the best. I may try a hybrid of the natural date entry and date picking down the road. I have some ideas, but I'll make sure to do a wider beta test before putting it out in the wild.

Thanks for supporting Second Gear and Today.

Get the forecast in Today with WeatherCal

2009-03-18T13:13:00.000-07:00

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!

Today 1.6: Natural Day Entry and Spaces Fixes

2009-01-20T04:36:00.000-08:00

We've published a new release of Today that adds one of the most requested features by our users. Today 1.6 adds support for natural date entry when creating new events and tasks within today. Rather than having to manually adjust the date, month, year and time using the Mac OS X date picker like in iCal, users can now enter dates as they would say it. Set a task to be due January 28, 2009, 1/28/09 or even approximate values such as tomorrow or Friday. Today will automatically decipher what you enter and convert it to a proper date.

What's New In Today 1.6

Added natural language parsing for new events and tasks.
Today should be a better Spaces citizen when running in menu-bar mode. Due to a bug in Apple's Spaces implementation, be sure to restart Today if you adjust it's Spaces settings.
Updated compiler to be LLVM-GCC 4.2
Other smaller bug fixes and performance tweaks.

We hope you enjoy the new release and look forward to getting feedback from you on it.

Today is 40% off thanks to MUPromo.com (1 Day Only)

2009-01-05T14:01:00.000-08:00

To celebrate today's Phil-note, we are pleased to have a one day sale in partnership with our friends at MUPromo.com. Until 11:59 EST today you can purchase Today for the low-low price of $8.95, a 40% savings.

If one of your new years resolutions was to be more productive and organized, Today is a fantastic application to help you achieve your goals.

To get the discount, head over the MUPromo page

Mac Developer Network members can save 20% on Today!

2009-01-04T21:54:00.000-08:00

As a software developer myself, I built Today to help me easily keep track of ship dates, outside meetings and my daily life. With that in mind, I'm happy to announce that all members of the Mac Developer Network can now receive 20% off of Today just for being a member. See the members area on the site for instructions on how to claim this discount.

If you are a Mac OS X or iPhone developer, you should do yourself a favor and join the MDN to gain access to the plethora of knowledge it holds. Who knows. Maybe you will hear me on a future podcast!

2008 Year In Review

2008-12-30T23:11:00.000-08:00

As 2008 is drawing to a close, it is customary to reflect on the year that was. For Second Gear, I think 2008 will be marked as a year of transitions. There were many highs and a few lows, and overall I'd say that 2008 was a success. Some of the highlights included:

The transition from consulting to sales: At the beginning of 2008, we stopped accepting new clients to instead focus on the development of new products for the Mac, including...
The release of Today: Today was built to scratch an itch I had for a small, easy to access way to see my daily schedule. It's launch in April of 2008 was a massive success and was received with high praise. During the rest of 2008, we released Today 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.5 with a few smaller releases in between.
Bringing Check Off into the fold: Before Second Gear, I had an application called Check Off that I released under my own personal name. It made little sense to keep two separate presences in the Mac development community, so Check Off was folded into the Second Gear brand. I'm working on a major update to the application that I'm hoping to release in 2009.
F#ckingNDA: The dark horse of 2008 was the iPhone NDA. If you're wondering why there are currently no applications in AppStore from us, it's mostly because of the NDA that prevented iPhone developers from discussing the development of iPhone applications with one another. The IconFactory's Craig Hockenberry coined the phrase F#CKING NDA to describe the frustrations developers felt. The meme picked up, and on a whim we setup a Web site at f#ckingnda.com which garnered quite a bit of press. The NDA is gone and so is the Web site, but I like to think that it had a little bit to do with helping get the NDA lifted. If not, it at least gave other developers a place to find other frustrated iPhone Devs.

It wouldn't be a reflective post without a few predictions and thoughts for what is coming in 2009. You can be sure that there will be more releases of Today. Presently, we're working to address accessibility issues and add an AppleScript dictionary for all those scripting fiends out there. There will also be an updated Check Off released sometime that we hope will knock your socks off. As for the iPhone? We're working on something right now...stay tuned!

Porchlight Service Shutting Down

2008-11-30T06:07:00.000-08:00

After much deliberation, we've decided to shut down Porchlight as of January 9, 2009. There are a variety of reasons for doing this, but it boils down to resources and focus. Running a Web service is a full-time gig and Porchlight never has really found an audience like we hoped. The shifting economy has caused us to make some hard decisions and shutting down this service is one of them.

The other major point is that Second Gear's focus as a company has shifted in the two and a half years since we launched the service. We're a Mac and iPhone development company, so maintaining a Web service just doesn't fit in the cards these days.

We tried unsuccessfully to find a suitor to take over Porchlight, so this seems to be the end of the road.

If you are a Porchlight user, we don't want you to lose your data, so please to export your contents out before January 9, 2009. To do this:

Login to your Porchlight account
Go to Account Settings
Click on "Export all projects and bugs in XML"

The XML output should contain all of your project data so you can take it with you to another service or archive it for your own internal use.

Thanks for supporting Porchlight over the years. If you have any questions, please get in touch.

Today 1.5: Alarms, Growl, Notifications, Oh My!

2008-11-17T02:15:00.000-08:00

After a bit of a delay, we're pleased to announce that Today 1.5 is now available. Today 1.5 is our biggest update since 1.0 was released back in the spring. We've added three of the biggest features that users have requested. The first is support for creating and adding alarms to new events and tasks you create in Today.

The new alarms panel lets you define any variety of predefined alarms. We include a few commonly used types (5 minutes before, 30 minutes before for example). We've also added support for showing past-due notifications on any task that has lapsed its due date.

The final feature is for the power-users out there who are as big of fans of the Growl notification framework as me. When you perform a few actions in Today, there will now be notifications posted to Growl to give you an extra visual cue that the operation completed successfully.

Today 1.5 is a free update to all Today users, so please do try it out and let us know what you think.

Join the Second Gear Mailing List

2008-11-08T08:58:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time coming, but we have finally setup a mailing list to keep our customers and fans up to date on the latest happenings with our products. The list will be low volume and will focus on announcing new product releases, offering a few tips & tricks and offering a few discounts every now and then.

Just so you know, we will never sell your email address to any third party and it will only be used by Second Gear to send you newsletter messages. We hate spam and will never contribute to the problem.

You can find the signup form in the sidebar of this weblog and the Today and Check Off

Today 1.3.2 Released

2008-10-28T03:11:00.000-07:00

Today 1.3.1 (and an unfortunate 1.3.2) have been released. The major change is a fix that will resolve an issue with the time change over the weekend not causing the date browser to be off by a day for the next week or so.

Grab the update via Sparkle or at the Today Web site

Give us some feedback

2008-10-22T10:11:00.000-07:00

If you've gotten support from us for Today or Check Off in the past few months, you've probably realized that we are using a service called GetSatisfaction.com to host it all. The service is great for small businesses because it allows passionate users help other users out in addition to me offering support each day.

Besides support, it's also a great way to suggest new features for existing Second Gear applications or to just suggest we create a new application. With that in mind, we've added a new feature to the Second Gear site. if you look on the left corner of any content page, you'll notice a tab that reads "Feedback." Popping that open allows you to make a suggestion for our products that will be sent directly to us and also posted on Satisfaction for other users to vote up or down.

I use these suggestions to shape the future direction of Check Off and Today, so be sure to make your suggestions.

Today is 20% off through October

2008-10-06T22:37:00.000-07:00

We are hard at work in the Second Gear labs building Today 1.5, a major update to our flagship application. It's taking a bit longer than we imagined, so we decided to do something special for our customers this month.

We're offering Today for 20% off through the month of October. You can now pick up a license for Today for the all-time low price of $12. If you've been itching to purchase Today, there has never been a better time. Even better, if you're already a Today user and know someone who would also benefit from the app, you can pass on these great savings.

Today is a powerful, easy to use event and task management application for Mac OS X Leopard. Built on top of the same data engine as Apple's iCal and Mail programs, Today lets you quickly see what events and tasks are on today’s agenda with the click of a button.

Purchase your license.