fruux blog

BusyCal ships new release with fruux integration.

2013-05-15T16:04:23Z

BusyMac just released version 2.0.5 of their BusyCal calendaring application.

This new version now has native fruux support, which makes it even easier to setup syncing. All you need is a username and password, and you're off!

BusyCal is one of the most feature-complete and sophisticated apps you can find for calendaring. If you feel that iCal isn't quite the power-tool you need, BusyCal is pretty much the way to go for Mac users.

Todo's are built into the calendar app, it's notification system is vastly superior to iCal's (now it has integrated into Notification Center), and calendar organization rocks too.

Features such as calendar sharing and publishing, as well as subcription syncing are all available, which puts BusyCal on the top of the list in supported syncing features.

You can purchase BusyCal in the Mac App Store, or read more on their website.

Welcome on board, SabreDAV!

2013-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

We're excited to anounce the aquisition of SabreDAV!

SabreDAV is a sophisticated and modular open source WebDAV technology. As the leading provider of independent personal synchronization solutions we've put tremendous efforts over the last years into the further development of the project and especially its CardDAV, CalDAV and WebDAV-Sync components, which we all leverage heavily at fruux.

We couldn't be happier to have appointed Evert Pot as our Chief Technology Officer at fruux and also to finally officially welcome this awesome piece of technology in the family.

Why is SabreDAV important?

SabreDAV is battle-tested and helps millions of people around the globe to keep their devices in sync without getting trapped in a specific eco-system or suffering from vendor lock-in. SabreDAV is a critical component in dozens of large scale projects and enterprise implementations. First and foremost fruux as the driving force behind SabreDAV, but also projects such as Atmail, Baïkal, ownCloud, PHProjekt and Tine 2.0 - just to name a few.

CardDAV and CalDAV are the only modern and open standards for contact, calendar and task synchronization. With these standards users know that their data is always portable and available, regardless of the devices or applications they'll use in the future. The standards are already widely supported and adoption is increasing at lightspeed. Just recently BlackBerry started supporting these technologies on the BlackBerry 10 platform and PlayBook OS. Microsoft also just announced that CardDAV and CalDAV support is coming to Windows Phone.

We're commited to open technologies!

At fruux, we remain committed to the vision of open technologies and the promises they hold for the future. We are very excited to accelerate and strengthen fruux' position within the open source community. Today we're also launching a directory of all the open source projects we're working on, which we hope to extend as we go.

Want to see SabreDAV in action?

Great! Nothing easier than that, just sign up for fruux and check it out. Syncing your data between different devices and applications is just the basic functionality. With CardDAV and CalDAV you're able to do so much more, like:

Again, welcome to fruux!

Syncing calendar subscriptions

2013-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

Due to popular demand: since a few days it's possible to sync your calendar subscriptions with fruux.

This feature is only implemented by iCal on your Mac and on iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, but as more clients start supporting this, we hope this will expand further.

When you subscribe, you will be given the option to store the subscription in fruux. That's all you need to do to get this going. If you also own an iPad or iPhone, the subscription will automatically show up there as well.

If you'd like to subscribe to your country's public holidays, Mozilla has a great list of holiday calendars and iCalShare has an even more massive list of subscribable calendars, including local events listings and lots of sport schedules.

And of course, using the public calendar feature in fruux, you can also create your own for others to subscribe to :).

Speaking of which, we've updated this feature as well. We now try to guess the correct timezone for your calendar, and rather than having all your calendars show up as UTC, it should be the correct timezone.

Evernote & Deutsche Telekom DTHack Hackathon

2013-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

Two weekends ago, more than 80 developers and designers gathered in Berlin for the Developer Garden DTHack Hackathon organized by Deutsche Telekom and Evernote.

Just a quick shut-out to Armin, a developer here at fruux, who took a shiny new iPad back home by winning the DTHack Partnership Prize together with his Hackathon team for building an application over the weekend that best utilized both the Evernote API and the Developer Garden Tropo API. The application EasyChef, which Armin helped building over the weekend, allows you to find recipes based on ingredients you already have in your fridge and on your shopping list (written as notes in Evernote). Users first call the EasyChef hotline to chose their preferred cuisine and mention any dietary restrictions. The app then uses the Telekom Tropo API to collect call data, mashing it with users’ notes to finally generate recipe suggestions.

The grand price would have been a trip to California, but luckily -thanks to the German Silicon Valley Accelerator- we're already there anyway.

Belated congratulations on your new iPad, Armin! :)

Don't let your data get trapped in a silo!

2013-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

You might have heard that Google is killing Google Reader. For those of you relying on it for personal usage or as developers building software on top of it, that is devastating news.

Unfortunately it is much worse than that.

What else is Google killing?

Google has been quite busy discontinuing products and technologies in the last couple of months. It all started in late 2012, when they announced that they'll shutdown their ActiveSync and SyncML APIs.

ActiveSync and SyncML are both technologies for the synchronization of personal data, such as contacts and calendars.

Why does that matter?

Both ActiveSync (a propitiary technology, developed by Microsoft) and SyncML (a bit outdated cross-platform synchronization technology) are tools that allowed you to access and modify your data with your devices and applications. So if you wanted to have your contacts and calendars on your phone and your computer, these technologies were your friend.

Ok, got it. Can it get any worse than that?

Unfortunately: Yes, quite a bit!

Just a few days ago, Google also pulled the plug on their CalDAV API.

CalDAV, what?

CalDAV is a modern technology and official IETF standard solving the pain of cross-platform synchronization of calendars and todo-list. CalConnect, a consortium consisting of vendors, developers and researchers plays a crucial role in the further development and the interoperability among different vendors. Or easier: Their goal is that a device or application advertising CalDAV support actually works with everything else that is CalDAV compliant.

But Google is shutting down CalDAV, right?

Exactly. They are gradually phasing it out. Developers were able to apply for a stamp of approval (which Google may revoke at any time) to continue using it, but new developers will only be able to interact with calendar data via the propriatory Google Calendar API.

Your calendar ends up trapped in a data silo.

This not only limits your freedom to do whatever you want with your data, it also limits your productivity.

Especially open source developers will have a hard time to integrate with propriatory Google-only APIs, so you will have less choice of awesome tools to help you with your tasks. Device and application vendors will have to waste additional resources on implementing specifically with Google, instead of working on great features you'd actually benefit from. And lastly, whenever Google as the gatekeeper of the propriatory Google Calendar API changes its mind, your device or your application might no longer be able to access your stuff.

Google is stepping away from open standards.

Instead of openess the new strategy seems to be: Completely lock users into the system. This is not only happening for calendaring, they are also crippling XMPP/Jabber (a great open standard that allows you to chat with people that use different providers). The functionality that allows this distributed communication called "federation" has also been limited quite a bit recently.

Google certainly has the right to shut stuff down, but discontinuing open standards in favor of Google-only APIs seems to be a very bad approach - it's certainly not in the best interest of its users.

How is fruux different?

We're committed to open standards and your freedom Open standards are at the core of what we believe and do. We want our users to have the greatest possible freedom. With open standards such as CardDAV and CalDAV we're making sure that interoperability is not only a marketing claim. Developers are able to integrate with our CardDAV and CalDAV APIs, so their applications will not only work with fruux, but instead with every service that supports these open standards.

Why CardDAV and CalDAV?

You may wonder, why CardDAV and CalDAV are the way to go. The answer is fairly easy: These protocols are the only modern and sophisticated standards out there that allow you to sync your contacts, calendars and tasks between different platforms and an ever growing list of devices and applications. CardDAV and CalDAV adoption is increasing at a fast pace. Just recently BlackBerry started supporting these technologies on the BlackBerry 10 platform and PlayBook OS. Microsoft also just announced that CardDAV and CalDAV support is coming to Windows Phone.

Boldy go way beyond syncing!

Syncing your data between different devices and applications is just the basic functionality. With CardDAV and CalDAV you're able to do so much more, like:

If you haven't tried fruux yet and are looking for a great and free alternative for the soon to be discontinued Google CalDAV sync, give it a spin!

California, here we come

2013-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

We've been awarded with an invitation for the German Silicon Valley Accelerator (GSVA) and just accepted. Starting on April 1st, we'll be in California to participate in the program.

The GSVA program enables commercial and technological exchange between german tech startups with companies in the United States. Every quarter, participating startup founders have the opportunity to come to Silicon Valley and accelerate their startup’s development. They are exposed to the dynamic and competitive international environment and dive into the spirit that makes Silicon Valley the world’s premier center for innovation and startup success.

We're looking forward to our time in California and the opportunity to personally meet up with both existing and new partners (just ping me on Twitter or send me a quick email) to talk about exciting projects.

Improving CardDAV and CalDAV with BlackBerry

2013-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

A while back we broke the news that BlackBerry is embracing the open standards CardDAV and CalDAV for their sync functionality in BlackBerry 10.

Working directly with BlackBerry

Meanwhile we've build up a communication channel between fruux and BlackBerry to actively work with them to make sure that their devices work awesome with fruux and improve the CardDAV and CalDAV interoperability in general.

Today we're happy to announce that we've received a BlackBerry PlayBook and a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device. We'll now start working on thoroughly testing them and work directly with BlackBerry on solutions for any problems we might run into.

Activating Hyperdrive!

2013-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

Just a couple of days after the release of fruux team, we're excited to announce that we just deployed a new technology called WebDAV-Sync (aka RFC 6578). With this new technology we are able to reduce the amount of data we're sending your devices during each sync quite a bit.

Sounds good, but what does it all mean?

Your device will sync quicker and
use less bandwidth per sync (which is great when you are on the road).

And lastly, because your device will be less busy syncing, your battery will last longer.

fruux for teams

2013-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

We've been in beta for a few weeks now but today we're really excited to officially announce our team product, which is available straight away!

What does it all mean?

When we launched our Basic and Pro accounts last year, one common complaint that we had was that it's hard to deploy fruux in business settings. Individual members of a team all had to get a pro account setup seperately and there was no easy way to discover and setup team calendars.

So today, we've solved this with our new team product.

Team administration

Using the Team administrator, you can easily add new members to your team. Every member gets all of our pro features automatically and you can also choose whther a member has administration rights or not.

Team calendars and address books

Using fruux team, you can easily create calendars and address books for your entire company. Team members can find these in the fruux interface.

For example, here's our calendar we use to communicate when we're out of the office:

Team members can click 'Add to my calendars' to make sure the calendar shows up in their calendar lists everywhere.

Delegation

If you have other people managing your scheduling, or you simply want to allow other people to look into everything you're up to, you can delegate all you calendars to your team members.

Scheduling

For clients that support it, you can now easily check whether your teammates have enough time for meetings.

The information is anonymous, so your teammates cannot find out what you're doing – just that you're busy.

Thanks!

The team product is an accumulation of everything we wanted to do for the year 2012, and we're quite proud of what it's become. We're not done though; we'll of course continue to expand our product!

We hope you like it. If you want to see what it's all about, you can sign up for a free trial at http://fruux.com/. Just log in, and click 'Add a team' in the web interface.

If you have any questions or concerns, then why not drop us a line!

Starting today you can share your address books with fruux

2012-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

Second release in just two days! If I didn't know better, I'd almost think it's christmas. We've gotten a lot of feedback from you guys, specifically about the lack of address book sharing. So in this release, this is what we've added!

Address book sharing pretty much works the exact same as calendar sharing, just head over to your address Books, pick one and type the email address of the person you'd like to share with.

If you're a basic user, address book shares are counted towards your free shares, so if you'd like more shares, either invite some more people to earn additional slots, or upgrade to Pro. Don't forget, we have a 50% discount for Pro accounts until December 31st!

We've also added setup instructions for BusyCal, the Bynari Plugin for Outlook and improved our Thunderbird instructions.

Lastly, we've added a workaround to our system to allow OS X to use more than one fruux address book. The trick we used, is that when OS X connects we merge all your address books in the background into one. This feature is a work in progress, but if you'd like to use it already, simply setup a new OS X device with a custom password. The workaround will not be triggered otherwise. In the future we hope to make this even easier, but we wanted to give you access to the feature as early as possible.

Hope you like the changes! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to drop us a line.

The fruux holiday promo (with a massive discount!)

2012-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

Both Christmas and New Year are closing in on us. We've had a pretty crazy 2012, and we've been working hard over this past year to make our product even better. We would like to thank you for all your support and valuable feedback so far.

Of course, we love rewarding loyalty, so therefore we've prepared an exciting offer that we think you're all going to like. Starting today and up till the end of 2012, we're giving you a half year of fruux Pro for free! So, instead of our regular price (EUR 40 yearly), you'll get one full year for just EUR 20 (about USD 25). Surely that's far better than some of the presents Santa is going to bring you! Let's see what you'll get:

Easily share your stuff with others

With fruux, we've tried to make sharing your content with others really easy. You can invite whoever you want to your calendars, such as your family, friends and co-workers and they'll be able to see it on whatever device they are using – in real-time too. You can also choose what they can do with your calendar – either read-only or read-write access. We're also working on address book sharing, so pretty soon you'll be able to do the same thing with your contacts as well. And with Pro, you can share with others until the cows come home – there's absolutely no limit at all.

Get all of your devices in sync

We as a team have tried to build a system that's reliable and easy to setup and use – with a mighty fine interface thrown in for good measure. fruux is based on open standards, CardDAV and CalDAV, so unlike other services your data won't be locked down on a proprietary platform and can also be used with an ever-growing number of devices and applications. With our Pro version, you can keep up to 10 devices in sync with each other (unlike the Basic version, which only supports three).

Never lose a thing

We know how annoying it is to lose your contacts, appointments and to do items, so that's why we're backing up this information close to our heart. Whenever you make a change to anything, our system automatically archives a secure backup copy – just in case. And we also plan to add a "go back in time" feature as well, so if you want to find out the telephone number for an old contact from work, then fruux all allow you to do this. With Pro, your data will not only be super safe under strict lock and key, but you'll also have a way of accessing data that you thought was long gone.

Sounds good?

We hope you like our special offer! If so (and you want to upgrade) then just log in and upgrade to pro. Hurry, though, because there are only a few days left until this fine year (and fine offer) are over. As a small business it would mean the world to us (and means you don't have to buy us a Christmas present, either).

Keep on free-riding?

If you don't feel like upgrading now, but still don't want to miss out on sharing with others, then we have a tell-a-friend system that allows you to earn additional free shares. Unfortunately, this is not as awesome as our special offer but it still allows you to go way beyond a normal free account. If you spread the love about us to your friends and family we'll say thanks. So for every person who signs up, we'll give you a free share just like that. No questions asked. Just log in and start earing free shares

Happy holidays!

We hope you had a great year and would like to wish you a happy holiday and all the best for 2013! We certainly have a lot of new stuff in the pipeline for the next year, and who knows - maybe there will be even another big release this year. Cough fruux team cough.

Cheers!

Your fruux team

Better syncing coming to a BlackBerry OS 10 device near you via CardDAV and CalDAV

2012-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

Thanks to a tip off, fruux has been told that the new upcoming version of BlackBerry's OS, version 10, will feature CardDAV and CalDAV support, making the BlackBerry the second smartphone platform, after Apple iOS, on the market to natively support fruux.

The rumour comes from a developer alpha preview of BlackBerry OS 10, where we can clearly see support for the CardDAV and CalDAV protocols underneath Microsoft ActiveSync, Google Mail and IMAP. Unfortunately, we have not yet managed to get our paws on a test device, however we are trying our hardest of course!

As well as this, Google is also shutting down its Exchange ActiveSync service (across all platforms, not just the BlackBerry).

Of course, we're really excited about this rumour, as it means that we can add the BlackBerry to the long list of devices that are supported by fruux! So, if you're the proud owner of a BlackBerry, pretty soon you'll be able to keep all your contacts and calendars in sync without installing any proprietary software or annoying programs. With fruux, any changes will be automatically pushed to all your devices, so you can be sure that when you enter an appointment on the go on your BlackBerry, it'll be ready and waiting for you on your computer when you get home.

In addition to the basic sync functionality, you'll also be able to use our sharing features to, for example, share a calendar with your family or a colleague. If RIM, the makers of BlackBerry OS, also add a CalDAV compliant tasks application to the final version of BlackBerry OS 10 (we unfortunately don't know that yet), you'll even be able to collaborate using fully synced and shared to-do lists with other people. Now that's pretty cool.

The move is especially nice as it shows that BlackBerry is starting to embrace open standards (CardDAV and CalDAV) rather than tying their customers down to proprietary software. Of course, it's important to remember that for fruux these open standards lie at the core of what we do, so the fact that more and more devices are supporting them is absolutely fantastic news.

BlackBerry OS 10 is rumoured to launch on January 10 of next year (we haven't yet heard which devices will be supported by it) and we'll keep you posted on any news or updates here. And if you have access to a BlackBerry 10 test device, then please do get in touch with us – we would love to be able to test fruux with it to make sure that everything's working great for the release!

Unravelling Wolfram|Alpha Pro

2012-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

Here at fruux, we're officially in love with Wolfram|Alpha. Why? It knows the answer to even the most obscure questions and saves you an awful lot of time hunting around for the answer on forums, Wikipedia articles or endless Google searches. We featured it in our iOS productivity article, stating:

Wolfram|Alpha is pretty much the only utility your phone will need. It can provide answers on almost any category, from really simple ones like "How many ounces are there in a pound?" (there's 16, by the way) to the flashpoint of octane (15.56°C).

But there's even more to this great service, and that's through the Pro account, which costs $49.95 annually ($29.95 for students) or, if you prefer to pay monthly instead, $4.99 ($2.99 for students). With this, you get a whole sleuth of features, which I'm going to look at in a bit more detail below, that can make your Wolfram|Alpha experience a whole lot more enjoyable (and powerful, if that can be imagined). Let's see what's in store.

Inputting images

With Pro, you've got the opportunity to enter images into Wolfram|Alpha and perform a range of tasks on them. These tasks include things such as:

Image analysis (for example, characteristics, source information, segmentation analysis, transformations and so on)
Filters
Feature detection
Colour processing (such as increasing and decreasing the image's contrast, transforming into sepia colour and so on)
Image effects (for example an oil painting or charcoal effect)

Pro users get 20 image uploads a month and you can choose between a range of sample images provided by Wolfram|Alpha or you can upload your own either by browsing for it on your hard drive or by dragging and dropping it into the box. To bring up the image upload feature, simply fire up Wolfram|Alpha and click on the little camera symbol underneath the main text box.

To see how this feature works, let's upload a sample image and see what it spits out. For this, I've chosen the wonderful picture of Westminster Abbey in London in all its glory – all I needed to do was select it and hit Enter for an automatic image analysis.

Wolfram|Alpha will then present you with a range of results related with the image you've just entered (for the full list for my Westminster Abbey picture, click here). You can also perform adjustments and transformations on your images without having to enter in separate commands.

Inputting data

If you work with a lot of data then Wolfram|Alpha Pro can help you manipulate it a lot easier with just some simple commands. Take the Intel Corporation's share price from September to November 2011. You can upload this data in either numeric or tabular format or you can upload it as a file instead (either in tabular data or spreadsheet format).

Hitting Enter performs an automatic analysis of the data you've just inputted and plots the data in both a timeseries graph and a histogram and also presents you with some more advanced statistics on it, such as (in the case of stocks), a distribution of the returns, the accumulated return, the value at risk, the inflation-adjusted stock price and the compound interest gained (full results here).

Wolfram|Alpha Pro can interpret virtually any kind of data and it doesn't have to be purely numerical, either. Type in a list of cities, for example, and you'll be presented with a map of the world with the cities plotted onto it, along with the distance (useful if you're planning a trip, for example!) and the cumulative distance in between them as well.

File uploading

Along with the ability to input data directly into the Wolfram|Alpha computational engine you can also upload files as well for analysis. Over 60 types of files are supported, including text, image, vector graphics, 3D geometry, audio and scientific formats such as chemicals, mathematics and medicine. Depending on the rule that is uploaded, Wolfram|Alpha will perform a different kind of analysis on it – so, in the case of a WAV file, for instance (or any other sound file) you are presented with a waveform and spectrogram of the file.

For a full list of supported files that you can upload into Wolfram|Alpha Pro (there are simply too many to list here!), then head over here. There's also some good examples highlighting what you can do with the file as well.

Step-by-step solutions

This is probably my favourite feature of Wolfram|Alpha Pro – step-by-step solutions to almost any mathematical problem. As an Economics student, I spend quite a lot of time working out endless equations and a step-by-step solution is extremely useful in finding out how you get an answer, rather than simply being presented with the solution.

Let's look at a example. Say we want to differentiate the equation:

The mathematically-orientated reader will know that this equation requires the chain rule (and Wolfram|Alpha knows that as well!) which, depending on your working, requires several steps. In Wolfram|Alpha, you need to type the following

differentiate y=ln((2x+1)/(√4x+3))

which should (hopefully) bring out the solution

However, if you're unsure how this answer came about, then you can click on the step-by-step solution button then click on Show all Steps, which presents you with the following:

The sum has been broken down into bitesize steps with a clear explanation for each one and with Pro, there's no limit on the number of step-by-step breakdowns you can view either. If you're using Wolfram|Alpha for a lot of mathematical computation, then the Pro version also gives you access to additional computing power, meaning that more advanced sums can be calculated.

Extended keyboard

Just like on the iOS version of Wolfram|Alpha, the Pro version also gives you an extended soft keyboard so you can input special characters (such as mathematical operators, Greek letters and so on) – all you need to do is click on the little keyboard icon underneath the input box.

And there's more…

Wolfram|Alpha Pro includes CDF (Computable Document Format) interactivity which brings you a new dimension to your calculations with interactive controls, parameter manipulation, 3D graphics, enhanced visualisations and more. For this, you'll need to install the CDF Player plugin (which is free) from here – it is supported by most major browsers, including Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Opera.

You'll also get a completely ad-free experience with Pro, along with the ability to download Wolfram|Alpha data directly, as well as advanced customisation of output and, as I mentioned earlier, the extended computation time for longer computations.

We love it!

We thought it was hard to beat the bog-standard version of Wolfram|Alpha however the developers seem to have done just that with the Pro version – and it's fantastic. Hopefully this piece has helped unravel the mysteries surrounding it and for quite a small price per month, you can get some really useful and cracking features for this great little utility.

Trying before you buy is also great, so that's why you can get a 14-day free trial of Wolfram|Alpha Pro before committing to buying. I'd highly recommend it as once you've tried it, it's so easy to get addicted to the sheer power and usefulness of this great utility.

10 great free alternatives to popular applications

2012-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Let's face it, no-one really likes shelling out for big-brand software like Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite and so on yet sometimes we are forced to owing to the advantages that these software suites offer over alternatives. And let's face it, it can really add to the cost of a computer: once you've bought the thing in the first place you've then got to probably spend another $500 or so simply on software.

Thankfully, there are alternatives and in this article, I'm going to show you 10 free alternatives to popular applications that do (pretty much) the same as their commercial counterpart.

1. Office suite

Commercial software: Microsoft Office, iWork
Free alternative: LibreOffice

Unfortunately, your computer really isn't a computer without Microsoft Office and it has become a necessity in almost all fields of life. Yet depending on the version you choose, Office can set you back anywhere from $90 to $370 which, for some people, can be quite an expensive burden to bear. However, there is a great free office suite called LibreOffice, which is descended from OpenOffice. Although it won't provide you with the exact same feature set as Office, it does come in pretty close for mimicking functionality.

LibreOffice includes a word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), graphics editor (Draw), presentation program (Impress), database management program (Base) and math formula writer (Math) and is designed to be compatible with other office suites such as Microsoft Office, however when importing files and folders some formatting features can get lost on occasion. The suite also benefits from active support (it's open-source, after all) and you'd be surprised what you can do with it. Best of all, it's free and works across all platforms.

Platforms: Windows, OS X and Linux
Download link: LibreOffice

2. Email client

Commercial software: Microsoft Outlook, Postbox
Free alternative: Mozilla Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird is really the uncontested free e-mail client, mostly due to its wide range of features and open-source properties and there's plenty worth shouting about. Thunderbird supports pretty much every single type of mail protocol (including Microsoft Exchange through an extension) and comes with plenty of stuff to play around with, such as tabbed e-mail, a one-click address book (so you can add new contacts easily) and loads of different extensions and add-ons (which are all free).

There are also other benefits of using Thunderbird, such as built-in chat support (in the latest version – 17), a news reader and a calendar application through the Lightning extension (which is also compatible with fruux and allows you to easily sync your calendars, by the way!). Thunderbird is cross-platform and can be installed on virtually any computer, no matter how old.

Platforms: Windows, OS X and Linux
Download link: Mozilla Thunderbird

3. GTD (Get Things Done)

Commercial software: ThinkingRock, OmniFocus, Things
Free alternative: Wunderlist

We featured Wunderlist in our OS X productivity roundup and it's making another appearance here, simply because of its usefulness as a free task manager. With Wunderlist, you can create and share lists of tasks with other people really easily.

However, the real beauty about this app is its design and simplicity – adding and managing tasks is a real breeze and you don't have to spend time learning how to use it, making it a real winner. Wunderlist is available in a standalone client for both Windows, OS X and Linux (as well as most smartphones) and there's a web version as well for adding notes and tasks when you're not at your computer. If you are into open standards, you might also be interested in another great way to keep track of your tasks and share your task lists with other people which we've covered a while ago.

Platforms: Windows, OS X and Linux
Download link: Wunderlist

4. Personal finance

Commercial software: Microsoft Money, Quicken, Moneydance
Free alternative: GNUCash

Why pay money for software to manage your money when you can get it for free? That's my opinion anyway – and the best way to manage your money for free is through GNUCash, an open-source personal finance manager. Although it won't win any awards for looks, GNUCash has plenty of built-in features worth shouting about, such as a checkbook style register with support for split transactions, marking transactions as cleared or reconciled and a summary bar that displays all of your account's information.

You can also set up scheduled transactions (and the app will remind you when one is due) and GNUCash can also report on your finances in either bar, pie or scatter chart form. There's also support for small businesses in there as well, with features such as profit and loss statements, portfolio management and online stock and share prices. Best of all, it's 100% open-source and available across all platforms.

Platforms: Windows, OS X and Linux
Download link: GNUCash

5. Photo editing

Commercial software: Adobe Photoshop, Pixelmator
Free alternative: GIMP

Linux users will already be familiar with GIMP, that wonderful little image tool that comes bundled in with pretty much every single distribution. It is mainly aimed towards photo editing, however you can also use GIMP to touch up images, draw in freeform, resize and crop images and convert image formats, alongside others. With a separate plug-in, you can also create animated images in both GIF and MPEG format.

GIMP is often cited as a free alternative to Photoshop, and it's pretty clear to see why. There is so much flexibility that can be achieved with the program, and although it takes a bit of getting used to at the start, it's well worth it in the end. GIMP is primarily an open-source program and there are native builds for Windows, OS X and Linux. There are also several spinoffs which aim to extend its functionality or provide a more native experience on certain operating systems, however I would personally recommend going for the bog-standard version.

Platforms: Windows, OS X and Linux
Download link: GIMP

6. Audio editing

Commercial software: Adobe Audition, Logic Pro, Cubase
Free alternative: Audacity

Audacity really is one of my favourite free programs on my Mac, and can be used for a huge range of uses, from simple audio editing to multitrack mixing and noise removal. I find myself using it quite a lot to digitally edit my music (splitting songs, removing hiss etc) and for a free, open-source program, it's got a fancy range of features. Audacity supports many different audio formats, including WAV, AIFF, MP3 (via a separate encoder), Ogg Vorbis and AAC and displays your track in a convenient waveform, allowing for precise editing.

Using Audacity you can apply many different effects to your songs and it also supports multitrack editing, even in a simple interface and I find it much easier to use than some of the commercial options out there on the market, such as Adobe Audition. Even if you don't want to use it to tinker with your music, it's worth its weight in gold when it comes to converting music formats and helps steer you away from the commercial (and sometimes expensive) audio converters out there on the market.

Platforms: Windows, OS X and Linux
Download link: Audacity

7. Note-taking

Commercial software: Microsoft OneNote, Circus Ponies Notebook
Free alternative: KeepNote

I tried to steer away from Evernote as although strictly speaking it's a note-taking application (and a very good one at that), it doesn't (in my opinion) replicate the functionality of a standalone note taking application on your computer. KeepNote, however, does. It's a nice, simple note taking client that supports rich text formatting, images, file attachments, spellchecking and sports a nice, hierarchical organisation interface for notes.

KeepNote also saves at regular intervals, so if it crashes then you haven't lost all your work and can also archive all your notes in a ZIP file. There is also added functionality through a range of extensions and the app is completely open-source (developers can grab the code from here) and available across all platforms.

Platforms: Windows, OS X and Linux
Download link: KeepNote

8. Virtualisation software

Commercial software: VMWare Workstation/Fusion, Parallels Desktop
Free alternative: VirtualBox

If you want to try out a new operating system (say, Linux) without running the risk of screwing up your computer, then your best bet is to run it virtually. VirtualBox is a free virtualisation software from Oracle which supports most Windows versions (no word on Windows 8 support, yet), a wide range of Linux distributions, Solaris/OpenSolaris, OS/2 and OpenBSD.

Although it won't give you as fluid an experience as commercial virtualisation software options will, it will still allow you to seamlessly run an operating system virtually. Make sure you've got a pretty powerful computer before installing, though, as running an entire operating system virtually can hog system resources massively…

Platforms: Windows, OS X, Linux and Solaris
Download link: VirtualBox

9. Concept mapping

Commercial software: Microsoft Visio, OmniGraffle
Free alternative: Dia

Dia is a great, free open-source concept mapping and drawing program with a wide variety of uses. You can use it to brainstorm and mind map, as well as create diagrams for business or personal use (such as flowcharts). Through their shape repository, you can also download a range of additional symbols for special uses (such as electronics symbols or chemistry).

Dia has been tested successfully on most Windows versions (no word on whether it works under Windows 8 as of yet) and OS X Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion (you'll have to have X11 installed in one way or another – xQuartz is usually a good bet). There are also versions for Ubuntu and openSUSE (the source files are also available as well)

Platforms: Windows, OS X and Linux
Download link: Dia

10. Desktop publishing

Commercial software: Adobe InDesign, Microsoft Publisher, QuarkXPress
Free alternative: Scribus

Scribus is a professional (and more importantly, free) desktop publishing software that is designed for layout and typesetting. You can also use it to create animated and interactive PDF presentations and forms as well, and the possibilities with it are endless – users have created a wide range of newspapers, brochures, newsletters, posters and books with the software. Scribus supports most major image formats (including Adobe Photoshop's .psd format) and vector drawings, which can either be imported directly into the app or opened for editing.

Unfortunately, there's no support for opening files created in other desktop publishing software, such as QuarkXPress and Microsoft Publisher however text can be imported into Scribus from a variety of formats, including OpenOffice, Microsoft Office and HTML. There's also no support for Pantone colour matching (due to possible legal repercussions) however there are workarounds. For a free program, Scribus does pack a pretty mighty punch and if you are looking to start out in desktop publishing (or simply fancy a change from a commercial piece of software), then it is a pretty safe bet.

Platforms: Windows, OS X and Linux
Download link: Scribus

Great software doesn't have to cost the earth…

The aim of this article was really to show you that great software doesn't have to cost the earth: there are plenty of other great (and less-known) alternatives to expensive pieces of commercial software out there. It's also worth noting that most of the free software contained in this little roundup is also open-source, which we here at fruux love and you should too!

With open-source, there is a much more active developer community, as anyone can download the code and have a play around with it. Because of this, open-source software often benefits from more frequent software updates, which ultimately benefits you as the consumer most as you get the most up-to-date stuff quickly!

And of course, if you're looking for an alternative synchronisation software, then why not try fruux out? Our system is based on open standards such as CardDAV and CalDAV and we can keep all your contacts, calendars and tasks in sync across all your devices, no matter which one you are using. Our Basic account is completely free and allows you to sync up to 3 devices with each other. You can also share calendars easily with anyone – straight from your Dashboard. To sign up for a free account, head over here.

If you like this article then why not share it among your friends? And if you've got any questions about it, then just drop me an e-mail – my address is below :)

How to use Alfred more productively with the Powerpack

2012-11-26T00:00:00+00:00

Alfred really is one of my favourite programs. Since I installed it back in July, I've used it around 2,700 times – that equates to a daily usage of 22 times per day. We looked at this great little app back in our OS X productivity roundup, however Alfred is so much more than a simple way to launch applications. If you grab the Powerpack extension, which is completely integrated with OS X, you'll get an even greater range of features from this useful little app. What's in there? Let's take a look.

A mini player for iTunes

Minimise iTunes and you get a postage stamp sized player where you can pause, rewind and fast forward a song and not much else (oh, you can change the volume as well). But Alfred gives you a much better mini player (iTunes has to be running first but it'll launch it for you if it's not) which allows you to search for songs, albums, artists and playlists, as well as play random albums and genres.

You can also rate songs from the mini player and to launch it, all you need to do is assign a global hotkey (mine is Left Cmd + Right Cmd at the same time) – make sure it isn't the same one you use for Alfred itself! I find myself using the mini player quite a lot as its accessible straight from my keyboard and allows me to change songs quickly without having to search through my iTunes library (it's also a lot quicker as well). I also find myself discovering old (and sometimes embarrassing) classics through the Random feature!

Global hotkeys for your favourite apps, sites and files

Global hotkeys make launching your favourite apps, sites and files even easier, and with Alfred you can assign almost any action to a global hotkey so it can be used from whatever app you are using. So you could launch Mail with, say, Cmd + M or Word with Cmd + W – so long as the hotkey doesn't interfere with the application you are running (a useful way to check out all the keyboard shortcuts in a program is by using CheatSheet).

Alfred provides you with loads of different presets for hotkeys, such as open paths or URLs, run AppleScript and system commands (such as shutdown, standby, log out and so on) and it even integrates with iTunes as well (if you like rating songs then you could set Cmd + 5, for example, to rank a song as 5 stars). If you use these effectively then it really can help save some time – just make sure you write them all down first so you don't get confused!

An advanced file system search

I'll put it out there now: I'm not a fan of Spotlight. With my computer it's slow, clunky and seems to be constantly indexing something, so when I do want to use it I have to wait a while before all the files and folders on my computer are indexed properly. With Alfred's Powerpack, you can search for files or folders on your computer quickly and do a lot more than you can with Spotlight.

If you hit the right arrow key then you are presented with a list of actions for that particular file, such as move, delete, email to and copy. You can also create custom actions as well.

I really like this touch (especially emailing files straight to contacts, which has saved me so much time recently) and if you learn the default shortcuts (which are usually Cmd + 1-9 for most actions) then you can really save some time in the long run.

Extensions, baby

Extensions are great – we love them here at fruux – and with the Powerpack you get access to the hundreds of extensions created by the Alfred community specifically for the app. There's absolutely loads of them (you can browse through the list here) and they are all organised via different categories: music, web, productivity, actions, control your Mac and so on.

Most of the extensions are run via scripts in Alfred and if you get the right ones (they are all free, by the way) then it can really speed things up when you're using your Mac.

But wait, there's more!

Yes, it's true! With the Powerpack you get a load of other goodies, such as full Address Book searching (plus the handy ability to create an email to a particular contact straight from Alfred) as well as some more themes to spice your Alfred experience up a bit, searching through e-mail (which is supported in Mail.app, Sparrow, Mailplane, Postbox 2 and 3 and some versions of Outlook) and searching through your 1Click passwords in 1Password (which we recently featured when I looked at how to be more productive on OS X). All of these handy little features really do come in useful and once you've bought the Powerpack, you'll really wonder how you did without it!

Convinced yet?

I hope that I've shown in this article that although Alfred is a fantastic app, there are so many more useful features you can add through the Powerpack. It's available for the mere price of £15 (around €18.50) and what's more – there's absolutely no subscription fee to pay either. Just part with your dosh once and it's yours for life. There really are some excellent features in the Powerpack which will save you a lot of time in the long run and I personally think that is a real worthwhile purchase, which you will use almost every single time you use your computer.

Making EC2 ssh and scp connections easy

2012-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

At fruux most of our infrastructure runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS). We often fire up new EC2 instances and we constantly have to ssh into them or copy files around via scp.

Whenever a new instance is started, it gets a random hostname like ec9-99-99-99-99.compute-1.amazonaws.com. These hostnames are hard to remember and don't give any clues about the function of that server, so we use use the EC2 tagging feature to assign meaningful names to our servers, e.g. appserver-testing-1.

So instead of using the automatically assigned hostname it would be awesome if we could just use the tag we assigned ourselves like a hostname. We've been using the tool ec2-ssh by Instagram for this task. It already helped a lot to make things easier, but we missed some stuff like support for scp to copy files or full support for all ssh command line parameters.

So today we want to post about ec2dns which we developed here at the office as a "friday project" (whenever possible, we try to make fridays available to work on interesting projects that are not necessarily directly related to fruux). It is heavily inspired by ec2-ssh and powered by the aws-sdk-for-php. ec2dns is a set of command line tools that makes it easy to display public hostnames of EC2 instances and ssh into them via their tag name.

Our ec2dns tool has full support for ssh, scp and some other stuff that you'll find in the readme.

Some examples on how to use it:

Get a list of your ec2 instances

$ ec2host
i-12345678: appserver-1    ec9-99-99-99-99.compute-1.amazonaws.com
i-87654321: appserver-2    ec1-11-11-11-11.compute-1.amazonaws.com

Get the hostname of an ec2 instance by its name tag

$ ec2host appserver-1
ec9-99-99-99-99.compute-1.amazonaws.com

ssh into an instance via its name tag

$ ec2ssh appserver-2

copy a file from an ec2 instance onto your machine

$ ec2scp ubuntu@appserver-1:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf .

ec2ssh and ec2scp work exactly like ssh and scp, with the only exception that they'll allow you to use your ec2 tags instead of full hostnames. It helps us quite a bit in our daily work here to quickly and easily use ssh and scp with our ec2 instances.

We are committed to open source

We use many open source tools, so naturally we also like the idea of giving back. ec2dns is available on GitHub together with instructions on how to install it with Composer (another great tool we're using a lot and you definitely should check out if you are into php development).

We hope that this tool will be as useful for you as it is for us, and perhaps you'll even help us to improve it. Also make sure to check out our other open source projects.

Why you shouldn't be scared of Linux

2012-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

For some unknown reason, Linux, in some people, instills absolute morbid fear and most people won't even touch it with a barge pole, yet alone even consider installing it on their home computer. Why is this? Maybe because it's got the reputation of being a technical operating system with limited functionality. Oh, how wrong these claims are.

Linux is actually a very adaptable, flexible and powerful operating system – and it doesn't cost you a penny either. Sure, it's not really that popular – in August 2012 (the latest month for which I could find reliable statistics), Linux on the desktop only took a pitiful 5.0% of the total operating system share, but its technology powers much more, for example servers and Unix (which Linux is based on), has also found its way into other products such as OS X and iOS (which are based on BSD which is, in turn, based on Unix).

I think that the fear about Linux is uncalled for and in this piece, I'm going to show you that Linux really isn't that scary at all, and that it can find a home on everyone's computer.

Is Linux actually an operating system?

Yes and no. The Linux aspect refers more to the kernel, or the heart of the operating system, which can freely be used and modified by anyone. Linux usually comes in different forms, known as "distributions", which take the original Linux kernel and modify it to fit their own needs (the Linux kernel is open-source, which we like here at fruux). Desktop-orientated Linux distributions (which we're going to look at in this piece) often include a desktop environment and features vary between all of them.

So, how do you go about choosing a distribution? There are literally hundreds out there (at the last count there were over 600 distributions), all of which are specialised to different needs. And, because Linux is open-source, developers are free to modify the code to suit their own needs. However, many of these are incredibly specialised and, for the beginner Linux user, then there are several which are worth looking at. Let's go through them individually.

1. Ubuntu

Ubuntu is currently the most popular distribution for desktop and laptop computers, and it is a great choice for the starter Linux user as it offers so many features built right in and it's also got the advantage of being incredibly easy to use. It's also relatively easy to install (you can install it on a Windows-based computer using a dedicated installer) and partitioning (more of this below) is also a piece of cake.

Ubuntu also receives regular updates (a new version is released on average every 6 months) and benefits from a highly active developer community, so most bugs are fixed fairly quickly. You've also got a built-in application store (similar to the App Store) with a wide range of applications featured, so once you've got Ubuntu up and running you've got a great choice of applications to choose from – all in one place too. There's also plenty of applications pre-installed to start you off, with some popular ones like Firefox and Thunderbird.

2. Linux Mint

Linux Mint is another popular distribution for beginners and some favour it over Ubuntu, mostly because of the additional features and the pre-installed software that provides a better "out-of-the-box" experience (Mint Linux comes installed with LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Xchat, Pidgin, Transmission and GIMP). A distinct advantage of Mint is the implementation of the Wine emulator, which means that it can run a wide range of Microsoft Windows software (including Microsoft Office).

Linux Mint also includes multiple desktop environments (more on this later), whereas with Ubuntu different desktop environments come in different operating system versions (for example, if you want to use KDE, a popular desktop environment that is similar to the Windows look-and-feel, you'll have to install Kubuntu, which is separate to Ubuntu), so you have multiple desktops with different looks and feels all in one neat package (Linux Mint comes with MATE and Cinnamon installed already, both of which are based on GNOME).

3. Fedora

Fedora is a popular distribution which is a spin-off from Red Hat Linux (which was geared more towards business users) and which, like most other Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, benefits from an active release cycle (a new major release comes out every 6 months or so). This distribution comes with a wide range of software installed as default however I feel that Fedora is more geared towards people who have a bit more knowledge of Linux, as it's not as user-friendly as some distributions (although it's still fairly easy to use).

One of Fedora's most important features is security, and although Linux is a pretty secure operating system, people who want piece of mind whilst using their computer may favour Fedora over other distributions. It was also the distribution of choice of Linus Torvalds, who wrote the Linux kernel back in the early 1990's.

4. Mageia

Mageia rose from the ashes of Mandriva when development stopped last year, however has since risen to become a popular distribution choice for home users. There's a lot to like about it too. Not only do they deliver a secure, stable and sustainable operating system, but the Mageia team also have a goal to set up a stable way direct collaborative projects – meaning a much better experience for the individual user.

They have also signed up the help of many careful individuals and several companies worldwide who coproduce the infrastructure, the Mageia distribution itself and all the documentation. The distribution has seen two major releases in the past and by the looks of it benefits from a yearly update cycle (just like Mandriva did).

5. Debian

Debian is one of the granddaddies of all the Linux distributions, simply because it has been around for quite a long time – the first version was released back in 1993, a full 19 years ago. Since then it has seen quite a few changes and if you're looking for a good stable and secure distribution, then Debian is a good one to pick (many other Linux distributions are based on it as well). The downside to this is that like Fedora it does require some pre-knowledge of Linux and isn't as user-friendly as some other distributions featured in this piece.

Debian has won many different awards for being one of the best Linux distributions around however has attracted some criticism due to the length of time between stable releases. The latest is Debian 6, codenamed squeeze, was released back in February of last year (other distributions would already have brought out a new version by now), and that was following a two year gap after the previous stable release, codenamed lenny (yep, they name their releases after characters in Toy Story – the first one was called, unsurprisingly, buzz).

Installing Linux is easy (kind of)

I'll hazard a guess at the fact that most people are probably scared of Linux because of the installation process. Sure, it's a bit more difficult than installing, say, Windows, but Linux has become a lot more orientated towards the home market, and the developers have cottoned onto this and provided much simpler installation processes.

You can run Linux in a number of different ways. The first, which is probably the simplest, is by using a Live CD. Most Linux distributions now let you download a disk image (which you then have to burn to a disk) then stick it in your CD/DVD drive and reboot your computer. You can then try out Ubuntu without having to install anything and if you don't like it, you can simply take the CD out and throw it away. If the distribution you want to install comes with a live CD (most of them do, nowadays), then I'd highly recommend doing this before committing to anything, as you may find that Linux is, simply, not for you.

The second is by using a virtualisation software, such as Parallels Desktop on Mac or VMware Workstation on Windows. Although not officially supported, some users have reported success in running Linux under Boot Camp, however I personally wouldn't recommend it – mostly due to the fact that it's really a shot in the dark.

Virtualisation software allows you to run Linux without fear of damaging your computer and, if you don't like it, you can simply get rid of it by deleting the disk image you've just created. It's also much easier to share files between the two operating systems, as the disks available in your native operating system are often accessible from the virtual operating system. A major disadvantage to this is that you'll have to have a pretty powerful computer to run two operating systems at once – virtualisation software is a major resource hogger and can slow down to your computer to almost unbearable speeds if you haven't got the processor power and RAM to support it. Have a look at the recommended system specifications on your virtualisation software's support page before committing to anything.

The second option is getting Linux to run alongside your existing operating system (usually Windows), and this involves a process called partitioning. You can create two partitions (or sections) on your hard drive, one running Windows and one running Linux. When you boot up the computer, you'll get the option to boot into either Windows or Linux. This has its advantages and disadvantages. You'll probably find that Linux runs quicker, as your computer's resources are only being dedicated to run one operating system, not two, however if you want to revert back to your previous operating system, then it's quite hard to remove the Linux partition permanently. You also won't have access to any of your drives in Windows, prompting you to use a third-party cloud based service (such as Dropbox, which does have a Linux client available for Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian).

Partitioning is really easy and most Linux setup wizards will walk you through the process step-by-step. I would highly recommend using the partitioning utility that is provided in your Linux installer – third-party partitioning software may either damage your computer or the partitions created won't be supported by your Linux distribution.

Ubuntu also handily includes a Windows installer, which makes installing it a lot easier. This works absolutely fine and all you need to do is download the installer, select the installation drive and the desktop environment and the installer will do the rest. What's more is that you can still access all your Windows drives as well, and getting rid of it is simply a matter of going into Programs and Features in the Windows Control Panel and uninstalling it straight from there. You can find full installation instructions for installing Ubuntu alongside Windows by heading over here.

Getting used to Linux

I guess the best way of getting used to Linux is for me to give you a quick guided tour around the operating system. For reference, I am going to use Ubuntu 12.10 (simply because it's the most popular distribution and an excellent one for beginners), which is running virtually under VMware Fusion 5 for Mac (however this factor won't affect the tutorial in any way). Other Linux distributions will be similar in features and functionality, however the look of the operating system will be slightly different.

If you've used OS X before, then Ubuntu shouldn't be too different. Instead of the Dock, you've got your applications running down the left-hand side and to launch one, just click on it. You can rearrange icons by just clicking on them and dragging them around and to remove an icon from the Launcher, simply right click on it and click on Remove from Launcher.

Ubuntu also features an easy way to launch your apps, similar to the Launchpad in OS X. All you have to do is click on the Ubuntu icon in the top-right hand corner and it will launch your Dashboard. You can search through your applications directly using the Search feature, and clicking on the icons on the bottom of your Dash will help you look through your applications, documents, music, pictures and videos a lot easier.

Ubuntu comes pre-loaded with some fairly decent software to get you going, such as Mozilla Firefox and LibreOffice however one of the appealing factors about this particular distribution is the ease of downloading software. Installing software on Linux is a little different to Windows and OS X due to something called package managers. Each Linux distribution has a slightly different way of installing software – Ubuntu, for example, uses the dpkg package system (which is also used by Debian and Linux Mint, for example), however Fedora uses the RPM package manager. Without getting too technical here, each one offers a slightly different way of installing and updating software.

Ubuntu, however, offers one of the nicest way of finding new software, via the so-called Software Center. Think of it as the App Store for Linux. Here, you can browse through new software arranged by category (most are free, but some you'll have to pay for) and install them at a click of a button. This approach, I find, is much more user-friendly than, say, trying to find individual applications scattered around the internet, and also helps you discover new software a lot easier. Of course, not everything is in there (just like the App Store), however you'll find a fairly decent offering and one that will keep you going for a while, at least!

Let's get started, then!

So, what are you waiting for? Linux really is a useful operating system and I hope that this (not so little) guide has helped put to rest the rumours surrounding it. Of course, I'm not expecting it to replace your standard operating system (unless you're already using it, of course!) but it can be really good to have as a backup and since it's not as susceptible to viruses like, say, Windows, it's a great operating system for browsing the web as well.

And if you didn't already know, fruux supports Linux either via Evolution (which often comes pre-installed with many distributions) or via Thunderbird (with the additional Lightning extension installed, which also runs under Linux). You can also run fruux on Linux through any other CardDAV or CalDAV compatible client as well.

Of course, I'm open to any questions, comments or suggestions regarding this (or any other) articles. Just e-mail me: james [at] fruux [dot] com.

On our outage yesterday

2012-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

Yesterday (November 5th) we had our first major outage. Both our CalDAV and CardDAV servers were unresponsive from 5pm GMT until around 11pm last night.

Firstly, we'd like to offer our sincerest apologies. No data loss has occurred, and for most of you, your calendars and address books have been accessible the entire time. However, a few people have seen that their address books and calendars were temporarily empty, so we do hope that this has not caused any problems.

What happened?

Our release process is almost entirely automated. This means that with the minimum amount of effort, we can safely put new versions of our software on our servers.

A little too easy.

Yesterday one of our engineers accidentally triggered the release of a new version. While the application itself was tried and tested, we unfortunately got stuck in a rut where our databases started an upgrade that was incredibly slow.

Normally we test any database changes beforehand as well, but this time we didn't get the opportunity. Just after the release was triggered, we quickly realized that the database migration was going to take some time.

While at no point during the update cycle were you at risk of data loss, stopping and reversing this process could have taken significantly longer, so we made the decision to double-down and simply let the release run its course.

What are we going to do about it?

This really was a mistake in our release process, so this is also where we need to fix things.

Some of the things that are now done automatically will be changed to a manual process. Furthermore, we will add some checks and safeguards to our system that allows the system itself to identify whether a release is expected or not.

If not, the new release will be stopped immediately with a big exclamation mark.

Need more info?

We hope that with this statement, you as the user are fully informed on why the outage occured and the steps we've taken to prevent any further disruptions occuring. If you would still like further information, then please feel free to send us a message to our support desk, where we'll be more than glad to assist.

How to be more productive on iOS

2012-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

And so we move onto our final article in this productivity series: how to be more productive on iOS. We've looked at Android, Windows and OS X however we've missed one key platform, and that's the iPhone and iPad.

Just like I mentioned in the Mac piece, there's been a sharp rise in the number of productivity apps available for iOS devices, and app developers have been transformed from previously unheard-of companies into well-known and respected businesses. Take Evernote for example, which launched in June 2008 and reached 11 million users in July 2011. It's also making money: statistics released by the company indicate that each iPad user brings in $2.18 (around €1.70) in revenue, with the average iPhone user not far behind at $1.79 (around €1.37). In comparison, the average Android Evernote user brings in a mere $1.06 in revenue (around 81 cents).

Like my other articles, I unfortunately cannot cover absolutely every single app and productivity tip on iOS. However, I've tried my best to limit it down to the top 5 areas. Here they are.

Synchronisation is absolutely vital

You guessed it: the key to staying productive is to have your iPhone or iPad in sync with your computer and vice-versa. It may sound trivial, but you can save so much time via this method: you don't have to e-mail things back and forth and if you do any work on your iPhone or iPad, you know that the changes are there when you get back home.

And both the developers and Apple have cottoned onto this as well. iOS 6 came with a beefed-up iCloud sync offering, including iCloud sync across the iWork range, something which I absolutely love, especially for university. I can type away in a lecture on my iPad in Pages then edit it on my Mac when I get back home – no more e-mailing documents back and forth between my computer and iPad.

Developers have been trying to integrate iCloud and synchronisation services (such as Dropbox) into their applications and so far, it has been really successful. Some of my favourite and most used apps on iOS are those that synchronise with cloud-based services, so no matter where I work, everything will always be in sync. These apps include Byword (for writing Markdown – this synchronises with iCloud and Dropbox and is priced at €2.39), Drafts (for making general notes; priced at €1.59) and Day One (for writing journal thoughts – priced at €3.99).

Know the tricks in iOS 6

OK, so iOS 6 got quite a bit of bad press recently, mostly due to Apple's own Maps app. I've tested it and concluded that it's really not bad – yes, some places are missing but I do quite like the turn-by-turn navigation, as long as your city/town/village is on there in the first place. But iOS 6 also included a couple of handy tools to help you be a bit more productive.

The first is the Do Not Disturb mode, which switches off all notifications when your phone is locked, including any calls. Not only can you switch it on manually via the Settings menu but you can also set your iPhone up to automatically silence all calls and notifications between certain times (I do this between the hours of 11 PM and 7 AM, when I am usually asleep).

It helps you block out your phone if you need to concentrate on something important and, more importantly, if you need to get a good night's sleep! Something I would like to see in a future release of iOS is the possibility to add more than one custom time, because seeing as I am at university, I would like to be able to switch off notifications between 9 AM and 12 PM for morning lectures, then at night whilst I'm sleeping!

The second is the enhanced functionality of Siri, which is now available on the iPhone 4S, the iPhone 5 and the new iPad. When Siri first came along with the 4S back in October 2011, although it was a massive improvement on Apple's default Voice Control, it was still fairly limited in what it could do. With iOS 6, you can now tweet, launch applications, check the sports scores and read your notifications all from Siri, which is a tremendous improvement. If you've got Siri on your phone, then don't be afraid to check it out, as it really is a useful piece of kit.

The final one is Reminders, which was introduced along with iOS 5. With iOS 6, you can now prioritise and rearrange tasks and there's support for location-based reminders, something which I find incredibly useful at university. If I have to take a book back to the library or hand some work into a particular office, I set a location-based reminder telling me to do so. My iPhone pings when I'm near that area (you'll have to have Location Services switched on) ensuring I don't forget! Good news: fruux natively supports task-list synchronization and sharing.

WolframAlpha knows everything. Period.

Forget splashing out on unit converters and fancy dictionary applications. WolframAlpha is pretty much the only utility your phone will need. It can provide answers on almost any category, from really simple ones like "How many ounces are there in a pound?" (there's 16, by the way) to the flashpoint of octane (15.56°C). There are few questions that WolframAlpha can't actually answer and to give you some ideas on the kind of questions you can ask, there are a load of sample questions organised into different categories to get you started.

WolframAlpha also extends your default iPad keyboard, thereby making it easier to type specialist characters such as mathematical symbols and Greek letters. It also integrates with Siri, so if you want an answer to something quickly (like how many US dollars is 100 euros?) then just fire up Siri and ask away.

Save time with Launch Center Pro

Android users are spoilt for choice when it comes to application launchers however iPhone users really have got the short straw in this respect, mostly due to Apple's restrictive development guidelines. Since iOS 6 you can launch applications now using Siri, as we looked at above, and now there's a slightly better way to launch applications from one app, and that's Launch Center Pro.

OK, it's an app that creates shortcuts to common iPhone actions however these shortcuts can save you a lot of time in the long run. It scans the applications on your phone then provides you with a list of all the supported actions (you can view a list of all supported applications in Launch Center Pro here. So, for Skype, you can choose between the following actions:

Launch Skype
Call a particular phone number
Call a contact
Skype chat with a contact
Leave voicemail for a contact
View user info

All these shortcuts can be added to one grid square of the Launch Center Pro interface. You can also use it to send messages, dial numbers and tweet (although since the Twitter integration with Notification Center came along in iOS 6, this has been rendered pretty useless), and one of the most handy functions about it is that it turns your iPhone into a flashlight, which you can turn on and off straight from the main screen.

Unfortunately Launch Center Pro is only available for the iPhone however I feel that it works better on a smaller screen (usually, I use my iPhone a lot more than my iPad). It'll also set you back a few euros, however we all know that time is money and if you set up the right shortcuts, you'll save a huge amount of time in the long run!

Use "read it later" services

One thing that has sprung up in popularity over the past couple of years is the advent of "read it later" services for iOS. I do a majority of my Internet browsing on either my iPhone or iPad, and pages can be a bit awkward to view on the iPhone if they aren't mobile-optimised. Read it later services allow you to save that particular page to their service, where they will strip out all the crap on the page and leave you with the most important part – the text.

Best of all, once the page is saved to your account, it can be viewed from wherever you have Internet access and across all your devices. Instapaper, for example (which is one of the most popular ones), can save webpages directly to your Kindle for reading later and also features a shared bookmark feature, so if you start reading an article on one device it'll mark the position you left it off at across all your devices.

The three most popular "read it later" services are Instapaper, Pocket and Readability, although there are many others. If you don't fancy going for an external service, then remember you can also save articles for offline reading directly from Safari on iOS using the Reading List, which now syncs conveniently across all your devices (as long as you've got iOS 6 installed!).

That's it!

So, with this article that concludes our series on how to be productive across all your devices. I hope that they have been useful to you and if you've got any questions, comments or suggestions for new applications, then please e-mail me: james [at] fruux [dot] com.

Remember, fruux supports all iOS devices natively and setting up your device to work with our services to keep your contacts, calendars and reminders all in sync is really easy. If you haven't done so, just log in to your fruux account, click on Set up Syncing and follow the instructions from there.

How to be more productive on OS X

2012-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

So now we come to it – the king of productivity platforms, OS X. I really don't know why so many different productivity programs have sprung up for Mac however it does give us the liberty of choice. To see what I mean, just head over to the Mac App Store, click on the productivity section and just take a quick look at the range of apps there – it's immense.

Obviously I can't cover every single app and productivity tip in great detail (that would take an awful long time and would become incredibly boring after a short while!) but I've tried to limit this broad range down to the top 5. Here they are.

Use GTD (Get Things Done) apps

We already touched on this briefly with our Android article and I already said that I couldn't live without them. There's a huge range for Mac however I'm going to focus on three of my favourite.

Firstly, Things, which is made and developed right here in our home country of Germany. Although it's a little pricey (it retails normally at €39.99) it's got loads of great features and isn't too difficult to use either. With Things you can organise your tasks into key areas: tasks that need doing today, tasks you want to schedule and be reminded of in the future and tasks that you want to focus on in more detail.

If you've got projects on the go, then Things will let you create them within the app, so you can keep track of each individual step in your project without going astray. It also comes with a free cloud synchronisation service built in, so if you've got an iOS device (it is also available for the iPhone and iPad, but unfortunately it isn't a universal app, meaning you'll have to pay twice if you want it on both platforms) you can sync it seamlessly.

You can grab Things from the App Store by clicking here. A free trial is also available from their website as well.

Secondly, there's OmniFocus, which is the daddy of all GTD applications. It's also the most expensive, retailing at €62.99 but if you're serious about personal productivity, then this really is the one for you. You can use it to keep track of your goals and tasks, no matter where it's in your work or home life.

You can capture quick to-dos which sit in your Inbox until assigned to a project or context. OmniFocus will also help you categorise actions by work node and for each task you can assign it start and due dates and time estimates as well as set task recurrence schedules, so you don't have to keep manually adding tasks. There's also a free synchronisation service built in as well, so if you use OmniFocus on either your iPhone or iPad (again, it's not a universal app) then you can keep everything in sync.

If OmniFocus sounds more like your cup of tea, then head over to the App Store to grab it. You can also download a 14-day trial version from their website before committing to buying.

And finally there's Wunderlist. This has the beauty of being really simple and easy to use – you can create lists and share them with others for loads of different things, from shopping lists to projects and to-do lists. The interface is neat and simple and best of all: it's completely free (and you don't even have to be at your Mac either – Wunderlist is available on loads of different platforms and there's also a web version of well).

Okay, there is one more thing, but I didn't want to put it into the list of my top 3 to not come across biased here. Apple has a beautiful Reminders application both on iOS and the Mac, which is fully supported by fruux). So instead of installing a separate application and moving your data into a propriatory system, you could just get things done like a boss with what you already have. fruux even natively supports sharing to-do lists and you'll benefit from full integration with Siri on your iOS devices as well as location based reminders. Want to know more?

Never underestimate app and file launchers

Just like my GTD applications, I don't know where I would be without app and file launchers. Before we start looking at these, I must confess that I'm not at all a fan of Spotlight, which was introduced all the way back with OS X Tiger in April 2005. It does get the job done, but it seems to combine the two things I look for the most: applications and files. I want them separate. Thankfully, there are two tools that are available, and both are a lifesaver.

To find applications quickly, there's Alfred. It provides an instant search for your applications, contacts and bookmarks and it can also search Google, Wikipedia and Amazon instantly. All you have to do is assign it a hotkey (mine is Command + Space) and Alfred pops up – no questions asked.

Alfred has tonnes of customisation options and one of the features I really like about it is that it is constantly indexing your applications, contacts and bookmarks (as long as it's running in the background), so if you install a new application, chances are it'll pop up almost straight away in Alfred. If you buy the Powerpack, which is available for £15 (around €18.50), you get the ability to search e-mail, your songs in iTunes and clipboard.

I'm a great fan of Alfred (as you can probably see in the screenshot above – I've used it on average around 23 times daily) and the best part about it is that it's completely free for basic use (as mentioned above, if you want to expand its functionality you can purchase the Powerpack). Alfred can be downloaded from the developer's website.

To find files almost instantly, there's Found. Why this app is completely free is totally beyond me as, like Alfred, I find myself using it multiple times a day to find something on my Mac. Found indexes all the files on your Mac and to bring it up, all you need to do is assign it a hot key (the default one is double-tap the left Control button) and it'll pop up. Start typing a filename and Found will display all files that contain that filename, across your whole Mac (including any connected hard drives and network locations).

If you really want to expand the functionality of Found, you can link it up to your Dropbox, Microsoft SkyDrive, Evernote, Google Drive, Google Docs and Gmail accounts as well. When you first install Found it'll take a while to index all your files, however this only needs to be done once and doesn't take long (depending on the size of your Mac). You can then launch it from any part of OS X to find precisely what you are looking for. Found can be grabbed from the Mac App Store and is completely free (it also receives regular updates as well, another bonus!).

Keep all your notes in one place

Yep, it's that old chestnut again – keeping your notes in one place really is a fantastic idea (and keeps your desk and clipboard free of loads of post-it notes). Since Mountain Lion, OS X has had a Notes application but it is, in my opinion anyway, crap and the font really leaves something to be desired for (why Apple has only given us the choice between 3 fonts is an absolute mystery to me…). Luckily, there's a couple of other decent options out there. Evernote aside (which I've already plugged in our Android and Windows posts), there's Springpad and Simplenote, both of which are free.

Springpad lets you create notebooks for any subject and the neat thing about it is that when you add something to your notebook, it'll pool the Internet and grab more information about your entry. So, if you enter something about a restaurant, Springpad will find you a map of where it is and reviews on it. Add a movie and it'll give you the showtimes for cinemas in your area. You can also share notebooks easily with anyone on Springpad and users can comment on each other's contributions, making it particularly useful for team collaboration, whether in the office or elsewhere. At the moment, there's no native OS X app for Springpad but there's a fantastic web version (which is completely free) – you can also download apps for your iOS or Android device as well (both are free).

Simplenote is another favourite of mine to store notes. It works off the same principle as Evernote and Springpad with instant searching and you can also add tags to your notes to make finding them easier. Any lists or notes that you've created in Simplenote can be shared with others and one of my favourite features about it is the multiple backups (similar to Versions in OS X) – if you want to go back in time in your notes simply drag the slider back. Simplenote is web-based however integrates well with several third-party OS X clients, such as Notational Velocity, Nottingham and JustNotes (the full list can be found here) and judging by their website, there is a native OS X client in development as well. Simplenote is completely free (however ad-supported).

Cutting corners is good!

We know that cutting corners in life is normally a bad thing, but when it comes to productivity, it's now a good thing! Saving a few minutes each time you want to do something is great and we've already looked at a couple of ways above with Alfred and Found. My two favourite ways of cutting corners on OS X are TextExpander and 1Password.

Sometimes, typing the same thing over and over again can get pretty tedious, especially in the world of business. If I got a euro every time I typed the phrase, "If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact me", I'd be a (fairly) rich man by now. TextExpander lets you save custom abbreviations for commonly used phrases, so for my phrase above I could simply type ;ify, for example, and TextExpander would fill it in for me, no matter what application I was using.

The possibilities with this great app are endless and for those who are really obsessed about productivity, the app keeps stats on how many keystrokes you have saved. And it doesn't just stop with text, either. TextExpander can also be expanded (get it?) to include images as well, so say you want to use your company logo in your e-mail signature (as far as I know, Mail in OS X doesn't support pictures in signatures - please correct me if I'm wrong), you can set this up in TextExpander. Unfortunately, this great little utility isn't free (it'll set you back $34.99, or about €27) but for such a useful tool, you really don't mind paying for it. If you fancy trying it before you buy, then you can grab a free 30-day trial from their website.

And, for keeping all your passwords in one place, there's 1Password. I have so many different passwords for my accounts on the web that remembering them all can be an absolute nightmare, especially when some sites are fussy about the kind of password (some requires letters and numbers, some require special characters and some require a combination of upper and lowercase letters – you know the drill!). 1Password allows you to securely store login details for almost any internet site, including online banking and if you do a lot of online shopping, you can also store your favourite card details as well so you don't have to reach for your wallet every time you want to make a purchase.

All you have to do is select the site from your 1Password library and the app will automatically fill in your username details and password. It's much more convenient than trying to remember your username and password for each internet site and it's also a lot more secure – your data is encrypted securely so no-one can hack into it and you also can use 1Password to generate secure passwords from 1 to 50 characters (which can then be saved against websites), keeping your data even more secure. Like TextExpander, 1Password unfortunately isn't free (it'll set you back $49.99, or around €39) but for such a great utility and for that peace of mind, I certainly wouldn't mind paying for it.

Know Mountain Lion from the inside

Mountain Lion represented, in my opinion, a radical shift of OS X towards iOS and was Apple's attempt at trying to bring the two operating systems closer together. Most of the new features in Mountain Lion were features already seen in iOS, such as the Notification Center (which I hardly use), deeper iCloud integration and iMessage on the Mac. However, there are a couple of features that I felt were slightly overlooked yet really help enhance your productivity, and all just from the operating system. Here's what they are.

Use VIP in Mail

I get a fair few e-mails each day however I'd hazard a guess that 85% of all the mail I receive isn't that important – it's mostly the standard mix of newsletters, promotional mailings and the like. However, there is some mail (the remaining 15%) that is important and that I want to be notified on. Both iOS 6 and Mountain Lion brought in the VIP function in Mail, which allows you to set certain contacts as "VIPs". Any incoming mail from them (as long as their e-mail address is stored in your Contacts) will be marked with a star and diverted to a special inbox. It's fairly easy to assign a contact VIP status in Mail – when you receive an e-mail from somebody, simply click on the e-mail address of the sender and then click Add to VIPs.

You can also choose to receive notifications only from people in your VIP list – to this head over to Mail's Preferences (or just hit Command + , from within Mail), click on the General pane and select VIPs from the drop down box New message notifications.

This way, you'll only receive alerts via the Notification Center from people in your VIP list, which really does help if you receive a large volume of mails per day.

Reminders

Mountain Lion came with an OS X version of Reminders (which, thanks to iCloud, syncs with the Reminders app on your iPhone or iPad) and although I use apps such as Things and OmniFocus to keep track of tasks for work and university, the Reminders app is especially useful for keeping track of things around the house (such as remembering to take your dinner out of the oven, something which I have almost forgotten on occasions!). There's nothing awkward about Reminders – simply enter your reminder and at what time you want to be reminded and it'll alert you.

And remember, with Reminders and fruux you can share reminder lists easily via e-mail. To do this, check out our complete guide (you'll need the OS X 10.8.2 update to do so, though).

Dictation

OK, you may feel like a bit of an idiot talking to your Mac, but the Dictation feature in Mountain Lion is surprisingly accurate and works system-wide, not just with certain applications. It's usually enabled by default (to access it, hit the Function (Fn) button twice or select the Start Dictation option from the Edit menu of your app) and to customise it, head over to the Dictation and Speech section of your System Preferences panel.

It may take a while to get used to (and have some inaccuracies), but if you're writing long passages of text then it can save you a huge amount of time (and typing!). Dictation also adapts to your voice and learns from what you say, so over time it becomes a lot more accurate.

Until next time!

Congratulations, you've made it till the end! I hope that this guide helps you sift through all those productivity apps out there for OS X and makes you work better with your Mac! Of course, fruux supports all versions of OS X for calendar syncing, and versions 10.6 (Snow Leopard), 10.7 (Lion) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion) for contact synchronisation. To sign up and get syncing, head over to our website.

For our last piece, we're going to be looking at how you can be more productive on your iOS device!

And remember, if you've got any questions, thoughts or comments about this piece (or if I've missed something out) then drop me an e-mail: james [at] fruux [dot] com.

How to be more productive on Windows

2012-10-24T00:00:00+00:00

A couple of days ago, we took a good look at how to be more productive on your Android device, with some tips and recommended applications to help save you time and generally become a better worker.

Now, we turn to Windows, which is often neglected in the world of productivity (in my opinion, anyway). There isn't a huge range of productivity software out there for Windows (at least when compared to the Mac) and although I am primarily a Mac user, I still do retain a Windows computer to run software that my MacBook won't run (mostly specialist software).

Having said that, I've still managed to pick out my top 5 tips for being more productive on a Windows computer. I am using Windows 7 as my primary operating system of reference, however some of these tips will apply to previous versions of Windows (such as XP and Vista). Note that if you're already running Windows 8, some tips (such as keyboard shortcuts) may not work properly!

Know the useful tricks in Windows

Although you may not realise it, there are hundreds of little tricks buried away within Windows. I could spend a whole article just covering all the keyboard shortcuts there are, but I'm sure both you (and I) will get bored very quickly. Instead, I've picked out 4 of the less well-known (and my personal favourites) that I use often:

Ctrl + Shift + N: this shortcut creates a new folder instantly – no more hunting around on the taskbar for the button!
Ctrl + Shift + Left Click: run a program as an Administrator, without having to right-click and find the relevant option.
Win Key + Space: if you hit these two keys at the same time, you'll get an "Aero" peek of the desktop without having to go down into the bottom right hand corner to click on "Show Desktop".
Win Key + T: this shortcut lets you flip through apps that are pinned to your taskbar.

Another great feature about Windows 7 (and, to my joy, also works in Windows 8) is the easy way to compare two apps side-by-side. Simply grab an app by the title bar and drag it into the top-left hand side of your screen. The app automatically resizes to fill half of your screen (the left-hand side to be precise). Do the same with another program on the top-right hand side of your screen and hey presto! You've got an easy way of comparing two programs side-by-side. This really is one of my favourite features about Windows and I cannot for the life of me understand why Apple hasn't followed suit as well (presumably because Microsoft have it patented).

Another really useful tip is if you grab a program's title bar and give it a shake (so waggle your mouse back and forth a couple of times), it'll minimise all other apps apart from the active one. Again Apple: why haven't you implemented this yet?

Cloud-based services are your friend

OK, so we've already covered this in the Android post but I think it's worth mentioning here as well as it's so relevant. Cloud-based services really are a fantastic way to keep everything in sync - and the old favourites, such as Evernote and Dropbox, never cease to amaze. There's no more e-mailing documents and files back and forth say, if you have work to finish off at home, and with generous storage allowances (the free version of Evernote will see you through 30,000 notes and 400 web pages a month whilst Dropbox provides you with 2 GB of storage, with more if you entice people to sign up for it!), you'd be a fool not to use these!

Get those productivity apps!

One advantage about Windows, being the world's most popular operating system, is that there is a huge range of applications out there for it in a tonne of different categories. Sifting through them all would take absolutely ages, but there are a couple that are highly worth recommending to increase your productivity.

Alternative browsers

We'll start with alternative browsers. Almost every Windows user will realise that Internet Explorer is, pretty much, a stinking pile of horse crap that's riddled with bugs and security loopholes. I personally avoid Internet Explorer like the plague and go for one of the many alternative browsers on the market. There's nothing worse to decrease your productivity than a virus-filled computer (whilst we're on this point - make sure you've got a decent one installed. Surfing the internet without a firewall and virus scanner is a quick invitation for your computer to slow down and, sometimes, stop working all together).

Thankfully, there are several great options out there. My personal favourite is Chrome (and it seems like everyone else's too: in June 2012 Chrome overtook IE as the world's most popular browser). What I really like about it is that it keeps everything in sync - sign in with your Google Account and your bookmarks, passwords and settings are synchronised with all your devices (Chrome is available on most other devices, such as Mac, Android and iOS). Even if you only have one device, Chrome is one of the fastest browsers out there and that integrated search and address bar, along with the browser's overall simplicity makes it a winner for me.

If you're not a fan of Chrome then there are plenty of other alternative browsers out there, such as Firefox, Opera and SeaMonkey - the latter also features a built-in e-mail and newsgroup client.

Keeping you focused

Next, FocusBooster. As a full-time student, I know the advantages of taking regular breaks from your computer screen. It helps you keep 100% focused and you'll find that in the long-run, your work will benefit from it! FocusBooster is a free app that runs discreetly in the background and runs off the Pomodoro Technique, which breaks down periods of work into bitesize 25-minute intervals (which are called "pomodoros"), with a 5-minute break in between. After 4 pomodoros you take a longer break (which is often between 15 and 20 minutes) and this helps you reset your mind, before starting again.

FocusBooster runs either via Adobe AIR or natively and is available from their website. Although the last update was way back in 2010, it does seem that the developer is still active so don't worry - it won't be going away anytime soon.

Multiple desktops

I use multiple desktops a lot on both my Mac and Windows computers, as it saves having horrible cluttered desktops with about 20 applications running in the background. The best way to do this on Windows is a program called Dexpot, made by a small German software company not too far away from Münster, fruux's hometown! DexPot supports Windows 8 and allows you to create virtual desktops which help you overcome desktop clutter and organize applications into various areas (for example, you can have one desktop for personal stuff and one for work-related stuff).

Dexpot is really simple to use for beginners and highly customisable for experts and one of the nice touches is the ability to simply switch virtual desktops with either a keystroke or a click of the mouse. What's more, it's free for private use and the app receives regular updates from the developers. Go ahead and download it here.

A better word processor

Forget shelling out on Word. Unless you can get it at a discount (or it comes free with your PC) I really don't think it's worth the money, especially when there are plenty of alternative word processors out there on the market that do just as good a job, such as OpenOffice and LibreOffice (which are extremely similar to one another). But even they aren't as great as the one I'm thinking about, and that is LyX.

Haven't heard of it? Didn't think so. It's not really that common but it really is, in my opinion, the best word processor out there for Windows (and even better, it's free). LyX works off the principle of WYSIWYM (which stands for what you see is what you mean; unlike others which work off the principle of "what you see is what you get") and allows you simply type away without worrying about formatting as this is done when you render the document.

All your documents are rendered using TeX and it is one of the lesser known ways of creating documents as it has mostly extremely specialized uses. The typesetting system was designed and written (mostly) by Donald Knuth during the late 1970′s and is a popular choice for typing documents for two main reasons. The first is that documents are standardized across all computers and the results do not change with time. Despite the fact TeX is an old system, the documents still look (relatively) up-to-date, albeit a little lacking in color and design.

TeX is extremely popular in the academic world given the way it renders maths and mathematical formulas. However it doesn't just stop there. With LyX, all you have to worry about is the content of your document. The moment you click on the render button, it is transformed into a neat, professional-looking document. Although the interface may seem quite complicated at first, it is a breeze to learn and LyX supports plenty of features that you'd expect in your standard word processor, such as picture formatting, tables, headers and footers and referencing.

To get LyX to work, though, you'll need to download a TeX typesetting system for your computer before you install it. My personal favourite is MiKTeX, which is written specifically for Windows and is completely free as well! You can also grab LyX by heading over to their website - it's completely free and open-source, too.

Windows 8 ain't all that bad...

When it was first announced, Windows 8 got an enormous "Oh my God!" from quite a few Windows users due to its radical new interface but Microsoft really seem to have stepped up the mark in this new version of Windows, as it seems to be filled up with loads of little features that make productivity on Windows a whole lot better.

Firstly, the Metro apps. I'm quite a fan of these full-screen apps (Apple introduced them in Lion and they seem to be quite popular) as they allow you to focus solely on that app without getting distracted. From the new tiled Start menu you've got quick and easy access to things like your photos, the latest happenings around the world, the stock exchange and Bing Maps.

Although the apps are designed more with a touchscreen in mind rather than a simple desktop computer or laptop, they do make browsing through the news or stock market happenings a lot easier. A particular favourite of mine is the fullscreen weather app (again, why haven't Apple done this?!) which, like all the others, is easily accessible from the Start menu.

There are also lots of other little shortcuts and tips embedded into the operating system, although they take some getting used to. You'll notice that the Start button, present in Windows ever since 1995, has disappeared - hitting the Windows key now brings up that full-screen Start menu. You can bring up a very condensed version of the Start menu (with easy access to things such as Programs and Features, Task Manager and the Control Panel) by hitting Win + X, but I find it much easier to hover over the top right-hand corner of the screen, clicking on Search and finding things that way.

It's a bit like Apple's Spotlight and, until Alfred comes along for Windows (pretty please), it's one of the fastest ways of searching your computer for applications or files as everything is indexed, so your computer doesn't have to hunt through everything on your hard disk drive to find exactly what you're looking for. If, after all this you're still hankering after the good old days, then you can grab Start8 from customizing legends Stardock, which brings back the Start Menu.

There are also plenty of fancy keyboard shortcuts in Windows 8, some of which will come in very handy for some users. Here's a quick rundown of some of the most useful:

Win + C: displays the "Charms" menu, i.e. the Settings, Devices, Share and Search options on the right hand side.
Win + D: displays the desktop.
Win + E: launches Windows Explorer.
Win + I: displays the pop-out Settings menu.
Win + L: locks your computer instantly.
Win + Q: opens the App Search bar.
Win + R: displays the "Run" dialog.
Win + Prt Sc: takes a screenshot and saves it a folder Screenshots in your My Pictures folder (as supposed to just copying it to the Clipboard).

If you fancy a different approach to keyboard shortcuts, then why not check out Keyrocket? Whilst you're working away, the app will suggest useful shortcuts in a small notification window based on your mouse clicks and movements. Currently it only supports Windows XP, Vista and 7 (no word on Windows 8 support, yet) and Office 2003-2013, however the program is free for basic use and saves you the trouble of trying to remember a load of different keyboard shortcuts!

Until next time!

That's it for our roundup of productivity tips for Windows! I hope it has helped you realise that Windows can be a productivity platform and that there are some great apps out there that can really help. Remember, fruux supports Windows to keep your contacts and calendars in sync, as long as you've got a CardDAV or CalDAV-compatible client (Mozilla Thunderbird is a popular and free option for example). Currently we only support calendar subscriptions through Outlook, as Microsoft didn't jump on the open standards track toward CardDAV and CalDAV yet, however we are currently looking at ways around this! We'll keep you posted on this.

In the next article, we're going to be looking at how to be more productive on the Mac. Until then, if you have any comments, thoughts or questions about this article then please e-mail me directly: james [at] fruux [dot] com or tweet us @fruux.

How to be more productive on your Android

2012-10-17T00:00:00+00:00

No matter what device you're using, there's always one word that crops up: productivity. During the past couple of years we've seen a massive explosion in the range of productivity apps available for smartphones, tablets and computers alike. We live in a world where time is money and any efforts to try and save time are always going to be well appreciated, whether its in the office or within the four walls of your humble abode.

So, over the next couple of weeks I'm going to be looking at ways of keeping you productive on your Android or iOS device or Windows or Mac computer. As every device is different (and the range of apps and tools vary from one to another), we're going to cover them in separate articles, however some tools and tips can be applied across all platforms.

Let's firstly take a look at Android and the range of tools it offers as a platform.

Customization is your friend

One factor that puts Android smartphones over their arch rival, the iPhone is the sheer range of customization possibilities available for it. Apple are great fans of locking down their devices and the only possible way to tinker with them is if you jailbreak them (which simultaneously voids its warranty, although you can restore them to the factory software). This comes from the Steve Jobs philosophy – the first Macintosh back in 1984 was originally designed without any expansion slots – as he hated the idea of people meddling with his perfect design.

Android almost actively encourages customization (the operating system is open-source, after all) and there are plenty of custom ROMs out there which offer features far beyond the "stock" software (or the software you get with your phone as default). I personally was a fan of CyanogenMod when I had a Droid, though its really up to you.

My top tip for customization is: get a new keyboard. By this, I don't mean head down to your local gadget supermarket and grab a physical one but get a software one instead. I personally hated the default keyboard on Android as it was clunky to use and its text prediction aspect was like shooting into pitch black. My personal favourite is SwiftKey, which analyses your typing patterns and the way you write to give you smarter and more accurate text prediction.

It also anticipates the next word you are going to write given what you have previously written (the app can analyse your e-mail, Twitter and Facebook accounts to gain a more accurate idea of your writing style) and has so far saved users 89 billion keystrokes (the counter is available on their website if you want to check it!). There's a free version available but if you really want to sink your teeth into this great app (and support the developers at the same time), then go grab the paid version, which costs a mere £2.99 (around €3.70). It's a steal, and it's really worth it.

Utilize those useful tools

There are a few hidden gems in the Google Play store which can really help you become more productive – it's really just a matter of knowing what they are. There are three which I would highly recommend.

The first is Friday and this is an app that I really do miss on my iPhone. It's really your own personal journal and it collates virtually every single shred of information about you – where you've been, the people who you've been talking and messaging, your music collection, your pictures and your Facebook and Twitter activity (don't worry, it all stays on your phone) and displays all of this in a bitesize, easy-to-read format. So if you want to know how much time you've spent on the phone in the last few days, or who you've been talking to the most (hint hint, call your parents more!) then Friday will tell you the answer. Best of all, it's completely free, and you can grab it straight from the Google Play store by clicking here.

The second (and third) tools are Robin and Iris. They go together as they are virtual assistants for Android, much like Siri and (in some cases) they perform better than Apple's offering. Robin advertises itself as (according to comments made by CNET), "Siri has breadth, but Robin has depth!". They've also got one of the best promo videos in the business (especially if you're a James Bond fan, which I personally am!) – check it out here on YouTube.

It's really a voice assistant for local information but it can handle almost any kind of request, including directions, local amenities and reminders. Robin can also learn from what you say (despite the fact the app is still in beta status) and adapts the answer to your needs. So if you live in, say, San Francisco and you ask her, "What's the weather going to be like for today?" then Robin will display the current conditions for San Francisco. Voice control really does seem to be the way forward for most smartphones (this is probably why Apple is choosing to focus on it more – the last iOS update brought plenty of improvements to Siri) and Robin is a great offering for Android smartphones (it's free as well – grab it from the Google Play store here).

And, to complement Robin, there's Iris. It started out life as a "screw you, Siri!" app but has manifested itself into something that's so much more than that. Not only can you ask it to set up calendar appointments and remind you to wake up in the morning but it can also play a song for you and even find videos for you on YouTube – far more than Siri's offering (hint hint, Apple). You'll have to have a couple of packages installed on your Droid before installing it (namely Voice Search and TTS library) however these can both be grabbed from Google Play. Like Robin, Iris is also free (and can be had by clicking here).

Don't use the default browser!

I've been the proud owner of two separate Android smartphones (the HTC Desire HD and Samsung Galaxy S II) and I can say hand-on-heart that the default browser offering sucks more than a powerful vacuum cleaner. It's slow, looks cheap and crappy and doesn't offer anything more than a glorified screen for viewing websites.

It took a while, but Google finally released Chrome for their own platform (Lord knows why it took so long) and offers so much more than Android's default offering. Pages load in an instant and Chrome's built-in hardware-accelerated page rendering makes browsing through long pages an absolute breeze. You can also search and navigate from one box (why haven't Apple introduced this in the iOS Safari yet?) and there's no limit to the number of tabs you can have open.

Plus, if you sign in with your Google account on both your desktop PC and your Droid, then you can keep all your bookmarks, open tabs, passwords and more in sync. No more e-mailing links to yourself if you want to view a webpage on the move – send it straight over to your device with a single click. Now that's productivity for you. However, if you don't have an Ice Cream Sandwich (or later) device then unfortunately you can't run Chrome at all (if you have, then grab it from Google Play by clicking here).

There are also a couple of other alternative browsers for Android, such as Dolphin, Firefox and Opera, however they unfortunately don't offer the same range of features as Chrome does!

Never underestimate the power of task managers

What would I do in a world without task managers? Honestly, I couldn't even picture it. I used to write everything down in a diary but now that's become too cumbersome and I use task managers to keep track of every single task I need to accomplish. There are quite a few out there for Android (they are often known as GTD applications, or "get things done", to distinguish them with proper task managers, which display a list of applications your Droid is currently running) but I find one of the simplest to use (and most powerful) is Any.DO, which is completely free.

It sports an interface that's easily one of the best-looking of any Android device (even the iPhone version uses the same interface) and the great thing about it is that it's so marvellously simple to use. Add a task to the list, give it a due date then mark it off by simply swiping across your screen when it's all finished. It syncs across all your devices and you can also add tasks just by speaking – no typing is needed. Both the NY Times and TechCrunch branded it "one of the best Android apps of 2011" and it's really easy to see why. If you're only going to choose one way of keeping productive from this little roundup, then please make it this one – it really does pay off! The one thing that would make AnyDO even better is integration with fruux.

Sync services FTW!

Sync services really do need no explanation, and there's a whole host of them available for Android devices. You really can work far more productively by keeping everything in sync across all your devices, whether it's your contacts or events, files or documents – there is a service out there for you.

For files, the obvious three contenders are Dropbox, Google Drive and Box.net, which are all based on cloud storage. Upload a file on your computer and you'll be able to access it on your Android and vice-versa. All three of them provide you with a handsome amount of storage when you sign up (Dropbox currently gives you 2 GB of free storage, whilst Box.net and Google Drive give you 5 GB upon signing up) and many third-party programs also integrate with these services seamlessly.

There's plenty of others as well, such as Mozy (mobile backup), SugarSync (file synchronization and sharing) and SkyDrive (file and document sharing) to name but a few and all offer pretty much the same set of features. My personal favourite (along with many others) is Dropbox as it offers the easiest way of transferring files between your computer and Droid and also given the huge range of third-party support. You also get free storage space when you encourage other people to sign up, another bonus!

That's a wrap, folks!

I really hope that this guide has helped you sift through the mountain of productivity apps out there on the Google Play store and realise that there are plenty of ways to keep productive on your Droid. Remember, of course, that fruux can also keep your contacts and calendars in sync across all your Android devices, as long as you've got the additional utilities CardDAV-Sync and CalDAV-Sync installed (both are free). This is because Android doesn't provide native support for CalDAV and CardDAV (yet), the two standards upon which fruux is based.

In the next article, we're going to be looking at how to be more productive on a Windows PC. Until then, if you have any comments, thoughts or questions about this article then please e-mail me directly: james [at] fruux [dot] com or tweet us @fruux.

Why you will fall in love with Markdown

2012-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

We here at fruux are all in love with Markdown, and it's really easy to see why. It's such a simple way of writing and formatting text without having to mess around with annoying keyboard shortcuts and text layout. Markdown lets you concentrate on the writing in hand, not how it looks on the page, and it's really easy to use. In this guide, I'm going to be showing you just how to use it and some great applications that can make your Markdown writing experience a whole lot easier.

Who's behind it?

Two guys called John Gruber and Aaron Swartz. Never heard of them? Well, John is the brainchild behind Daring Fireball, which provides mainly Apple news in a bitesize, easy-to-read format. Aaron co-ordinated the RSS specification, which makes grabbing news feeds from the internet and viewing them a lot easier. You'll notice that some of the Markdown commands are taken straight from the days of plain text e-mail when you had to highlight something.

Why's it so great?

As I mentioned above, Markdown lets you simply concentrating on the writing in hand, and you don't have to waste time with keyboard shortcuts and clicking around if you want to format your text. It's also a lot simpler than HTML. Let's say, for example, you want to make some text bold. In HTML, you would have to type the following:

<strong> This text in bold </strong>

Sure, it's manageable, but try typing <strong> </strong> several times in a row and you start to get sick of it. In Markdown, the same command to make text bold is:

** This text in bold **

How much simpler is that? No silly tags and no searching around for the < and > keys on your keyboard. Just a straight set of simple keyboard shortcuts helps you format text however you want to. Let's have a look at the commands in a bit more detail.

Markdown Commands

Markdown takes a bit of getting used to but once you've learnt the basics you're all set. Here's how.

Headings

Forget those <h1> tags in HTML – headings in Markdown are a lot simpler. Simply use the # tag – the number of hashs corresponds to the level of the heading. So:

A <h1> heading in HTML would correspond to # Heading 1.
A <h2> heading in HTML would correspond to ## Heading 2.
A <h3> heading in HTML would correspond to ### Heading 3.

I'm sure you get the picture. Markdown, like HTML, supports six levels of headings, though by the time you get down to ###### Heading 6, it's no longer a heading any more…

Here is the complete set of headings in Markdown:

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

Heading 5

Heading 6

Lists

Lists are really nice and simple. You don't have to worry about the <ol> (for an ordered list, so 1, 2, 3 and so on) or <ul> tags (for an unordered list with bullet points), Markdown supports both and in a much simpler way.

To write an unordered list, simply start each list item with an asterisk * and a space afterwards. Therefore

* List item 1
* List item 2

will turn out as

List item 1
List item 2

Ordered lists can be done by simply placing the number and a space. So

1. List item 1
2. List item 2

will be rendered as

List item 1
List item 2

Like the unordered list, you also get the indent as well to make your list neater and easier to see.

Emphasis

We've already touched briefly on how to make text bold above, however there are a couple of ways to emphasise your text.

To put your text into italics you can type either of the following:

_This text in italics_
*This text in italics*

Both will produce the same result. For bold, you can either write:

__This text in bold__
**This text in bold**

You can therefore use both methods – each one will produce exactly the same result.

Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks are a real pain in HTML, so much so that I either avoid them completely or use a code editor to put the links in. But in Markdown, they are a lot simpler. To create one, simply use the following example:

[link text here](link address here)

Put your link text between the [ and ] square brackets, and the actual address between the ( and ) brackets. Markdown will render this as link text here (though don't try clicking on the link – it won't take you anywhere!)

Block quotes

Markdown also supports block quotes, and to make one simply type the following:

> "This is your block quote here"

This renders as:

"This is your block quote here"

Your block quote will automatically be wrapped into the same block quote, so you can write as much as you want without having to worry about formatting.

Working with code

Code is a special case as if you are using Markdown to create a tutorial for something, then it is essential that you highlight the code. Also, if you are writing a tutorial on, oh I don't know, Markdown, then you want your code to remain in its raw format without being rendered along with the rest of the page.

To work with code, simply add it between two backticks (`). If you are writing multiple lines of code, then the backtick method doesn't work, as all your code will be on one line. Do not fear, there is a solution! Simply indent each line of code with four (4) spaces:

BaseObject = {
super   = nil,
name    = "Object",
new     =

Your code will be formatted in monospace font so that it is a lot easier to see.

Sounds great!

We know it does. Markdown is now slowly becoming a much more popular way of writing on the Internet, and has already found a home at GitHub and Reddit. Of course, it won't replace HTML in some aspects, but if you're going to be designing a simple website then it can really streamline your workflow.

So, if you've never used Markdown before, you're probably wondering how to get started! Well, there are a number of apps available out there that support writing in Markdown – for all platforms. Here are my top 10 picks:

1. Mou

Mou is currently my favourite Markdown editor out there, and the beauty about it is its sheer simplicity. There's no complicated settings to mess around with: just fire it up and start typing. Another neat thing about it is that it highlights key elements of your syntax, such as any words in bold, italics or lists and also displays your rendered Markdown on the right-hand side in live view, so you can preview and spot any formatting areas immediately. You can also copy Markdown in HTML format (say, if you wanted to paste it into your favourite blog platform)

Price: Free (for the beta version only. Anyone who donates to the developer during the beta phase will receive a free copy of version 1.0 when it is released)
Platform: OS X only
Link: Mou

2. Byword

Byword is a fantastic cross-platform minimal Markdown and rich-text editor for iPhone, iOS and Mac. You can keep all your documents in sync across all your devices using either iCloud or Dropbox and on the iPad and iPhone versions, you get an extended keyboard that helps you access common Markdown functions (such as the * symbol) quickly. There are also presets for links, images, headings and lists.

Byword can export to HTML, PDF and rich-text and allows you to preview Markdown directly from the app. I love Byword when I'm on the move (linked up to Dropbox) so I know that any changes I make when I'm not at my computer are automatically updated when I get back home.

Price: €2.39 (iOS); €3.99 (OS X)
Platform: Mac and iOS
Link: Byword

3. BBEdit

BBEdit is really more of a code editor (it's one of the easiest ways to code in HTML on your Mac) but also supports Markdown as well. Its interface may be a little complicated for some and its sheer range of options may well overwhelm some users but once you get to grips with it, you'll really learn just what a powerful piece of kit this is. BBEdit handles text really well and can spot any errors early on, which helps you avoid having to sift through your work later on trying to spot the errors.

These features don't come cheap, though, and I'd recommend that you download a trial version (direct download link) before committing to buy. I personally don't use BBEdit purely for writing Markdown (I use it more for HTML), but if you are a keen programmer then it's a worthwhile investment – and it's good knowing that it supports Markdown, too.

Price: $49.99 (around €39)
Platform: OS X only
Link: BBEdit

4. Epistle

It seems like iPhone and iPad owners have a huge choice when it comes to Markdown apps, whereas Android users are left a tad in the dark. Not any more. Epistle is a simple text editor for all Android devices that supports the Markdown syntax. You can sync your notes with Dropbox, import texts from other applications, view and edit your notes in full-screen mode and (if the setting is enabled in the Preferences pane of Epistle), view a live preview of your Markdown directly in the app. Best of all, it's completely free as well.

Price: Free
Platform: Android only
Link: Epistle

5. MarkdownPad

MarkdownPad is a Windows-based Markdown editor that takes several leaves out of Mou's book (or maybe it was the other way round. I'm not sure). You've got a live preview on the right-hand side and MarkdownPad also supports common Windows shortcuts, such as Control + B to make your text bold, Control + I to put your text in italics and so on.

Almost everything is customisable within MarkdownPad (including the colour scheme, font size, colour and so on) and you can also change the look of your HTML documents by using your own CSS stylesheet, directly within the app. The icing on the cake as well is that MarkdownPad is completely free. I have tested it on my Windows laptop and it runs beautifully – it really does make writing Markdown in Windows a joy.

Price: Free
Platform: Windows only (supports XP, Vista and 7 – I've also tested it under Windows 8 and it runs absolutely fine)
Link: MarkdownPad

6. Dillinger.io

For web-based Markdown editors, you'd be hard-pushed to find a better one than Dillinger.io. Like Mou and MarkdownPad, it's got a live preview on the right-hand side and you can copy straight from the live preview (in rich-text) into your text editor – there's no additional software to install. But it doesn't just stop there, Dillinger.io can also import from and export to both Dropbox and GitHub (once you've linked the two up with each other), so your Markdown documents aren't confined to the internet. You can also export your work directly as either a HTML or Markdown file and Dillinger.io also saves your work automatically at regular intervals, so if your browser decides to throw a hissy fit, you won't lose all your work!

Price: Free
Platform: Cross-platform (works in almost all browsers)
Link: Dillinger.io

7. iA Writer

iA Writer is another minimial writing app for Apple devices and was crowned by Apple as one of the Mac Apps of the Year for 2011. It supports writing in Markdown and allows you to simply focus on the writing in hand, with no other distractions. There is also a Focus mode, which fades the existing text into the background and allows you to concentrate on the current sentance you're writing. There's iCloud support across all versions, so all your documents keep in sync and the default font is clean and simple – just what you want. I regularly switch between Byword and iA Writer when I'm on the move and I find the Focus mode an especially nice touch, especially on smaller screens.

Price: €0.79 (iOS); €3.99 (Mac)
Platform: Mac and iOS
Link: iA Writer

8. Writing Kit

Writing Kit advertises itself as an advanced Markdown editor and it certainly packs a few decent features. Not only can you link to Dropbox to sync your files across all your devices, but you can also use your favourite TextExpander snippets and research reference materials using over 1300 different site-specific search engines directly from the app. There's also a built-in Cheatsheet for Markdown syntax and your documents are saved every 10 keystrokes so if something goes wrong, you haven't lost everything! Writing Kit is available for iOS devices and is a universal app, so once you've downloaded it on one device, you can install it on the other for free.

Price: €3.99 (iOS)
Platform: iOS only
Link: Writing Kit

9. WriteMonkey

Windows users have also got their own minimal writing app, WriteMonkey which also supports formatting in Markdown. Its stripped-down interface allows you to focus on one thing: the writing in hand. You can customise the interface (colours, fonts and so on) and you can also create your own CSS style sheets. Another nice little feature is the ability to set a timer, so WriteMonkey will remind you after, say, an hour of writing that it's time to take a break!

Price: Free (donations welcomed)
Platform: Windows
Link: WriteMonkey

10. Sublime Text

Sublime Text is the final Markdown editor on my list today and, like BBEdit, it is mainly useful as an advanced code editor that supports a wide range of syntaxes, however it can also be used to write in Markdown. There's plenty of fancy features built-in, such as the Goto Anything, which allows you to open files with only a few keystrokes as well as instantly jump to symbols, lines or words. You can also save common commands in your Command Palette and there's also a Distraction Free mode (similar to in iA Writer), whereby you can blank out all UI aspects apart from the code you are working on. Sublime Text is cross-platform (it works on Windows, Mac and Linux) and best of all, one licence covers all your computers.

Price: $59 (around €45)
Platform: Windows, Mac and Linux
Link: Sublime Text

Wrapping it up…

I hope that this guide has helped you demystify Markdown and helped you pick out a suitable tool to write it with. You'll soon discover that it is really easy to use and it is a really powerful yet simple tool to write with. Of course, it won't fully replace HTML in some aspects, but if you're blogging (this post was written in Markdown and gets transformed by Jekyll, by the way!), coding using GitHub or simply wanting to fancy something new, then I'd highly recommend giving it a go. It's free, simple to learn and very easy to use.

fruux 101

2012-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

All of us here at fruux would like to think that our product is super-easy to use and that there would be absolutely no questions asked about our great service, but unfortunately that's not quite the case. Many people may wonder about our service – what it does, on which devices can I use it and, most importantly, how can I use it to my advantage?

Of course, we don't tell you exactly what you can do with fruux after you've signed up for it as that is up to you. But what we do hope is that this little guide will help you understand our product a bit more and what it can help you, the user, achieve.

In a nutshell…

So, what does our product do? In a single sentence: we keep your contacts, calendars and tasks in sync across all the devices you set up with fruux. That was pretty easy, wasn't it? We support all devices that we can given current technological limitations and you may find that with some devices (Android, for example), you may have to download a bit of extra software to get fruux up and running - until these devices also get there and natively support CardDAV and CalDAV. But that's all really easy and we'll show you nice and clearly how to do that.

How does fruux work? Well, we wouldn't want to give all our secrets away, but basically it's some clever coding with the help of several web-based services, the first and foremost being Amazon Web Services. We won't bore you with the details, but changes on any device are pushed across all your devices. Automatically too.

So, basically you're like iCloud?

Sort of. We do pretty much the same thing as iCloud in keeping your contacts, calendars and tasks in sync across all your devices but with fruux, we offer more. You can share your calendars publically to anyone via the web and we're also working on a team concept, whereby you can share all of your fruux data across certain teams.

Also, unlike iCloud, which is limited exclusively to Apple's own devices, we support pretty much every single device. So, no matter how old your mobile phone is or whatever operating system you're using, chances are that fruux will work on it, problem-free of course :)

How can I use fruux then?

We've tried with this article to think of some relatively common real-life situations where you can use fruux. It's great to give you a description of our product (and we could spend a long time telling you about all of its fancy features) but I am the sort of guy that wants an answer to the question: so, how will it benefit me? Let's look at that now.

Of course, you'll only get the most out of fruux if you use more than one device. If you just use your phone for keeping track of your appointments and a place to store all your contacts, then the only thing we can do for you right now is automatic backup in the cloud. Sorry :(

I would, however, hazard a guess at the fact that most of us have a computer at home or in the office and a mobile phone and of course, we want our appointments from our calendar on our phone whilst we're on the move and we want access to our contacts straight from our desktop without having to reach for your phone.

You've got devices that won't sync easily with one another

Despite the obsession with technology in today's modern world, sometimes it can be really difficult to keep all your devices in sync at once. Of course, you've got some proprietary solutions (such as iCloud), but if you're going to sync cross-platform (or want a safe exit strategy, if you ever plan to get your data out) then this can be a bit more hit and miss.

Your dear author, unfortunately speaks from some pretty tedious experience here. Take Macs and Android smartphones, for instance. I can tell you now that trying to get the two to sync problem-free is a very long and very tedious experience and at the end of it you'll want to throw your computer out of the window, smash your Droid against the wall, or both.

We all knew that Steve Jobs famously wanted to declare "thermonuclear war" on Android and this is certainly true when it comes to trying to get an Android smartphone to sync with a Mac. Most sync software that comes with smartphones either doesn't support Mac or provides a "slimmed down" version, and when I mean slimmed down, I'm talking bordering on starvation.

Most of the time, they have extremely limited features and sometimes don't even work at all. Of course, you could try setting up Google Calendar and Contacts sync with your Mac, but I've run into the problem of duplicated appointments and patchy lists of contacts, sometimes with vital information missing (e.g. phone numbers or e-mail addresses).

fruux supports all Android smartphones (as long as you've got the third-party software CardDAV-Sync and CalDAV-Sync installed, as Android currently doesn't provide native support for either CardDAV or CalDAV, the open standards that power fruux) and most OS X versions (including Lion and Mountain Lion). Just head over to your Dashboard and click on Set up Syncing to add a new device.

You want to share your calendars publicly

This is one feature that all of us here at fruux are especially proud of. Take a look here and you'll see what we mean. Often, you just want to view a calendar quickly without having to subscribe to it and import all the events into your default calendaring app (iCal, say). fruux lets you view all the events on a calendar in our simple and easy-to-use web interface.

Let's look at an example here. You are in charge of planning a conference and you've created a calendar with all the events in for that particular day. Of course, you'll want to share this with everyone attending. How? Well you could do it the old-fashioned way and fire up Excel or Word and create a simple timetable, which you then e-mail around to everyone.

This approach is great but say an event changes its allocated time or location, then you as the organiser have to go back into that document you just created, change the time or location and e-mail everyone back. You can now start to see how long-winded this approach is becoming!

Our approach is, however, much simpler. All you have to do is create a calendar in fruux and it'll pop up in your Dashboard when you next log in. Then click on the calendar, give it a quick description and then click on Publish Calendar. You'll then be given a link which you can share with everyone and any changes to your calendar will automatically be pushed across to the web interface, so you know that everyone who has got your link is always up to date with the latest.

You want contacts and calendars in sync without having to resort to Microsoft Exchange

Let's face it, Microsoft Exchange is no fun. It's pretty expensive to run and maintain in the first place and requires a sound technical knowledge – you really need to know exactly what you're doing whilst you're using it. Well, fruux can simplify this.

Let's take an example of a school here. Each school has different "houses" and each housemaster wants their pupils to be able to access the term's events and get the teachers contact information from the school's computers. Well, with our Pro account, you've got an unlimited amount of calendar sharing plus you can sync your calendars and contacts across 10 devices, so you can set up your account to sync across all your house's computers. And all for just € 4 a month, or € 40 if you subscribe for a whole year.

Now that's a whole lot cheaper than trying to run and maintain a Microsoft Exchange server. And there's even better news. We are beavering away hard on our Team plans, which not only include all the features of our Pro account but also allow management of individual address books and calendars, so if you want to hide certain address books from your pupils (say, the private addresses of teachers) then our Team product will let you do this. You can also hide calendars (for example, the teachers' schedules) and control exactly what content is visible to your pupils.

Sounds neat!

We know it does! And of course, we hope that this little guide will help you in understanding our service a bit more. fruux is safe and secure and you don't have to worry about handing over your personal data to us, it'll be kept under strict lock and key using some of the highest security standards. And of course, we would never give your personal data to anyone else without your expressed permission.

And unlike some other companies, we aim to provide the best possible service for our customers. How? Well, we aim to give professional and prompt support for any questions you may have and we also listen to our users. If you think fruux is missing something crucial or you want a feature that should be included in the next release, then tell us! Just click here and suggest something – every single suggestion is considered in detail.

We're also on Twitter and Facebook where we'll also be happy to answer any questions you may have about fruux. Just give us a shout. And, if you'd like to sign up then click here – it's free for our Basic account!

I'm also on hand to answer any questions you may have as well. My e-mail address is james [at] fruux [dot] com.

Thanks and have fun with fruux!

Win a year's free fruux pro membership!

2012-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

To celebrate our new release (and to thank you for your loyalty), we're giving each and every fruux account holder the chance to win a year's free Pro membership (any existing Pro users will get their account extended by another year), starting right from the day we announce the winner.

So, what are you giving away?

In total, we're giving away 5 free Pro accounts and, if you're just using the Basic account, then there are plenty of reasons to enter this contest! Not only do you get all of the basic features of fruux (calendar and contacts synchronisation across all your devices) but you also get unlimited calendar sharing and support for up to 10 devices (as opposed to the standard 3). You'll also still carry on getting the great support and product updates that we provide.

Sounds great! How do I enter?

Entering the contest is a piece of cake.

Start following us on Twitter and tweet the following statement (don't forget the URL!):

Keep your addressbooks and calendars in sync with @fruux. Win a free year's Pro membership here: http://blog.fruux.com/2012/09/27/win-a-years-free-fruux-pro-membership/

Of course, please feel free to share this contest with your friends either via Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, snail mail, phone and so on. We've got 5 to give away and anyone could possibly be a winner!

If anything's unclear, then please feel free to ask us either on Twitter or via e-mail (competition [at] fruux [dot] com).

Contest Terms

We know that no-one likes reading really long lists of rules, so we've tried to keep these nice and simple:

Our contest is open to anyone, whether you're a fruux user or not. However, to receive the prize, you'll have to be signed up to our service (which you can do by clicking here).
The contest begins on 27th September 2012 (27.09.2012) at 17:00 UTC and ends on 7th October 2012 (07.10.2012) at 18:00 UTC. Any entries received before the start date and/or after the finish date won't be accepted. We'll inform you either via Twitter (direct message) or via e-mail after the contest closes if you've won. You'll then be asked to provide your fruux e-mail address and your account will be upgraded to a Pro account (with a full feature set) for one (1) calendar year, starting on the date we receive your e-mail address. After this time has elapsed, your account will automatically be downgraded to a Basic account unless you decide otherwise.
Entry to the contest is via the method mentioned above. No other entry methods will be accepted.
The prize is non-transferable and not redeemable for cash. By entering into this competition, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of service.

GOOD LUCK!

Getting things done in style. Sync and share your todo lists with fruux.

2012-09-24T00:00:00+00:00

One of the lesser-known features of the latest OS X update, 10.8.2, which was released on Wednesday via Apple's Software Update is the ability to share your reminder list with anyone via e-mail. fruux already works with Reminders in both OS X and iOS but now, just like your calendars, you can share your reminders list with anyone, so long as you know their e-mail address.

This is great for a number of different situations. Let's take an example here: two freelancers, Johnny and Martin, are both working on the same project for a client yet they are both based in different areas. Both of them want to collaborate on an important project for a client, which is due for completion shortly, however there are still a number of tasks that need doing before the project can be submitted.

Of course, they could both do it via e-mail and/or telephone calls, but this seems all a bit 2004, and now there's a better way to do it, using the Reminders app in OS X and fruux.

Johnny creates a list of reminders in the Reminders app of OS X, which he then sends to Martin by hovering over the list, clicking on the share icon next to it and entering Martin's e-mail address.

Martin then receives an e-mail notifying him that Johnny has shared a reminder list with him. He is also notified within fruux by way of a simple notification and via a notification in OS X.

All he then has to do is click on Accept and the list will automatically be synchronised into his Reminders app. Just like our shared calendars feature, any changes will automatically be pushed across all the devices that are setup with fruux, so both Johnny and Martin can mark tasks off even when they're not in the office or at their computer.

You don't have to limit it to a business sense, either. You could even create, say, a group shopping list to avoid people buying the same item or missing one out, or if you are trying to organise something within your family. So long as you've got a list of tasks for a group of people, we can help you out.

And with us, it's all tightly integrated into the applications you already use and love, so there's no need to mess around with any third party apps and because the todo list synchronization is fully based on the open standard CalDAV, your data won't be locked into a proprietary format so you'll know that you'll always have access to it.

If everyone you're inviting is already using fruux, then you can all start sharing reminders in a couple of mouse clicks. Go ahead: create a list and share it with the world, who knows what you'll achieve with it?

We've transformed our texts into a monster. Our blog is now powered by Jekyll

2012-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

Our blog was due for an update for some time now. We finally got around to make it happen.

Martin came up with an all-new super clean design and instead of using a blogging platform it is now powered by Jekyll - a lightweight and simple site generator from Tom Preston-Werner, co-founder of GitHub.

Our blog posts are now static Markdown files.
Every blog post is in version control (we use git).
Our new flow to publish a post is now: Typing content into a new Markdown file, committing and pushing it.

We're using some custom plugins (e.g. for special handling of images and blockquotes), so unfortunately we can't use GitHub Pages at the moment to host the blog (because we didn't want to put the generated static files into the git repository and have use for features like scheduled posts and different environments for production & development/preview/copy-reading), so right now this blog is running on Heroku.

Are you using Jekyll, too and have any stellar hints for us to make it better? Let me (@DominikTo) know!

Introducing our improved public calendars and new affiliate system!

2012-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

We've been working really hard at fruux over the past couple of weeks and today, we're pleased to release a new version of our service, which should all be ready and waiting for you when you log in!

Firstly, we're pleased to announce our new public calendar interface, so when you receive a link to a shared calendar, you can open it up in your browser and view all the events on it, without having to open up and import all the events into your calendar program!

Of course, this is great if you're on the move and just want to check out a schedule quickly, or if you want to view a calendar without having to import it manually – great for big events or conferences. If you do want to import it then just click on the Subscribe button, where it will automatically be imported into your default calendar program.

The second great feature about this release is our new affiliate system. We here at fruux appreciate the value of sharing, so we've been racking our brains to try and find a great way of rewarding our fellow account holders for spreading the love about our service. So, starting today, every account holder who invites another person to fruux will get a free calendar share (and there's absolutely no limit, either) for their account.

All you have to do is enter your friend's e-mail address – we'll then send them a unique link to sign up to fruux. Once they've done so, you'll get a free calendar share on us! You can invite as many friends as you want, unlike other affiliate programs we don't penalise you for sharing too much!

We've also changed and optimised over 3,000 lines of code in this release so fruux should run smoother, faster and with less CPU load. And for those of you asking about our upcoming Team product, development for it is well under way. There's a lot to do and we can't give you a precise release date but trust us, it's coming!

And if you've got any questions about this release (or anything else in general) then don't be shy – get in touch with us! We're reachable via Twitter, Facebook and good old email. Also, don't be afraid to suggest any new features for upcoming releases – we really appreciate customer feedback and improvements and each and every suggestion is considered in great detail.

Introducing our newest fruux team member. Say hi to James!

2012-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

Hello world! My name is James and as of a couple of weeks ago, I am the newest team member here at fruux. I will mostly be responsible for the communications and PR side of the company but I’m sure there will be a few odd jobs that the others will be able to find for me. :-)

In my other life I am a final year Economics with German student at the University of Birmingham in the UK. I enjoy DSLR photography, travelling, technology, listening to good music (as long as it’s nothing rap-related) and I’m a real sucker for American sitcoms (Mad Men is the one that is currently on the go....).

For anything fruux related then please feel free to e-mail me at james (at) fruux (dot) com with any queries, requests or comments. I am not based in the fruux offices in Münster but remain in daily contact with the guys over there so if I can’t answer your question, I’ll usually be able to get in touch with someone who can fairly quickly! I am also on Twitter (@james_cull) at so feel free to follow me on there, I don’t bite. :-)

I’m really looking forward to working with the rest of the guys on the fruux team and I’m sure that 2012 will be our best year yet!

Introducing public calendars

2012-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

A mere three weeks after our last major release, we are proud to announce the release of our next major version of fruux, v1.1. Apart from the usual bug fixes and under-the-hood optimizations, we’ve included some great new features that will suit all of our account holders, no matter whether they have Basic or Pro accounts!

With fruux v1.1, you don’t have to define specially who you want to share your calendars with, as we’ve given you the ability to share calendars via a public link. Simply click on Calendars underneath Settings in the left-hand toolbar, click on the calendar you wish to share, then click on Publish calendar. You will then be provided with a link to your calendar in ICS format, which you can then share with anyone you want. ICS is supported by most calendar software, including Microsoft Outlook, Calendar on OS X and Evolution on Linux systems, and can be imported or merged into existing calendars with a couple of clicks.

This feature is great of course if you want to share calendars with family or friends who don’t use fruux or don't want to setup an account. You could also use it in the office environment as well – simply send the link to your co-workers for them to import into their calendar software. And remember: it really is a true calendar subscription, so any updates you make will be available automatically out to everyone who has subscribed to your calendar. At the moment, this feature is only available to Pro users however we know just how cool this feature is, so we’re giving all our Basic account holders two calendar shares, on the house of course :-). We’re also working on a way for Basic account holders to “earn” more shares – keep your eyes peeled for this in upcoming releases.

And for the more observant of you, we’ve also completely redesigned the Calendars and Address Book interface to make it easier to use. We hope you all like it!

Now go ahead and test it!

All of us here at fruux would like to thank all of our users for their loyal support and for making fruux what it is today! We have, of course, got plenty of new features in the pipeline so stay tuned to find out what’s in store!

vCard and iCalendar parsing

2012-08-08T00:00:00+00:00

At fruux we are committed to open source. We have a lot to thank for it, so we'd also like to give back.

So today we want to post about the vCard and iCalendar parsing tool we develop here at the office.

It's called sabre/vobject, and you can find it at in our directory of all the open source projects we're working on. We hope that this tool makes it easier for you to integrate with our services, and perhaps you'll even help us improve it.

Calendar sharing with fruux pro

2012-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

During the last four weeks we've worked hard on our v1.0 of fruux, which we've finally released yesterday.

We are super excited about calendar sharing!

This new feature allows you to invite your family, friends or co-workers into an existing calendar and set individual permissions (read-only or read/write) for each person you are sharing a calendar with.

Our webapp makes it simple to invite people, manage the permissions for everybody and accept (or decline) invitations from others. We're also natively supporting calendar sharing in iCal on the Mac: If you are using it, you can do all of this without even starting your browser.

Calendar sharing is a pro feature, but soon we'll also give free users a limited number of shares to make the feature as broadly available as possible.

Importing - now it's even easier to get your data into fruux.

Now it as simple as pie to get your data into fruux. Instead of relying on the import features of your contact/calendar applications it's now possible to do it directly in our webapp. Our address book importer even supports groups for the Mac address book.

Introducing fruux pro

Last but not least we're launching fruux pro today. We admire simplicity in technology and so do we in pricing. We're building a smart product for smart people, and we feel that prices like EUR 4.99 or EUR 49.99 are just retarded! fruux pro exists in two different models: 4 EUR per month, or 40 EUR per year (you'll effectively save two months compared to the monthly payment) and thats it.

So if you want to start using calendar sharing right now or the 3 device limit of our free accounts is too low for you, go pro! We'll also add even more awesome stuff to our pro accounts in the future!

Bugfixes, UI Tweaks and improved iOS 6.0 / 10.8 Mountain Lion support

2012-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

We've released a few updates to fruux today. It's mostly a bugfix release. Besides the usual small fixes and performance optimizations the main changes in this release are:

Improved edit calendar dialog. Besides subtle UI improvements now including a color picker.
Finer grained controls for newly created calendars.
Improved setup instructions for Mac OS 10.5.
Added support for CSP for Safari 6.0.
Improved support for iOS 6.0 and Mountain Lion.
Fixed "last modified" dates for address books and calendars.
Fixed "me-card" problem with OS X Addresbook.
Fixes for Outlook and Exchange generated events.

Besides the "under-the-hood" changes in this release we're making good progress towards our address book and calendar import as well as calendar sharing and Team features. We hope to include a first peak in our next release.

Now: Go ahead and login at http://fruux.com to check it out.

World IPv6 Launch

2012-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

Today is World IPv6 Launch! The goal of this worldwide event is to push more ISPs, equipment manufacturers and web services to permanently adopt IPv6. fruux fully supports IPv6 since several months now, but since today is -the day- we wanted to let you know. ;-)

Address Book and Calendar management

2012-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

We've just released a new version of fruux. It's the next stepstone on our way to build the best service in the world for managing your contacts, calendars and tasks. Starting today it's possible to create, edit and delete address books, calendars and task list directly in the fruux web application.

This makes it for example much easier to manage your calendars or create new ones, regardless which device/application you use (and how sophisticated it's management features are). In addition this new feature will allow us to deliver even more convenience features in future releases (like data import directly in our web app). We hope you'll like it.

Besides the usual bugfixes and performance optimizations the main changes in this release are:

Added Address Book and Calendar management.
Improved Edit devices dialog.
Improved Activity Feed (now shows a little lock-icon for devices with extra security).
Redesigned Invitation mails.
Even more instructions for different apps and devices in the setup wizard

Now: Go ahead and login at http://fruux.com to check it out.

Build something you love and get funded with a tweet

2012-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

Hi, this is Dominik - I am the CEO and a Co-Founder of fruux and want to tell you a little story.

We've been very quiet on this blog for much too long and finally want to fix that. We've promised ourselves to get into the habit of posting tidbits about fruux, the technical challenges we face and other stuff that's hopefully interesting for you.

Those of you who've been following fruux since its early days in 2007 might know that we started as a student project. Back then we synced only contacts between Apple computers. fruux has evolved over time and with us our user base. In the beginning fruux was created to solve a simple problem: We were looking for a way to keep our own personal data in sync, never had we imagined to create an actual product. That just happened because of you! Somehow we got coverage in several magazines & websites and all of a sudden we were receivung emails from people that wanted to use fruux. We didn't even have a signup routine back then and had to manually set up accounts for every single user.

This is how we operated for a couple of years until in 2010 fruux eventually grew into a real product. We started an actual business and incorporated in late 2010.

In 2011 we made the decision to start completely from scratch. We developed an entirely revamped fruux throughout the year and silently released it around new years eve 2011/2012. Since then fruux is based on open standards (CardDAV and CalDAV) and no longer on proprietary technology. That’s a big win for you, because it helps us supporting tons of devices and applications and also frees your data from vendor lock-ins.

Besides our complete revamp another story happened in 2011

It looks like a walk in the park in retrospect, but rest assured: It wasn't. Especially because at this time I was still in the middle of the preparation phase of my second legal state exam (just recently passed, beers on me!). (Full disclosure: I worked as a developer before I started studying law in 2005 and probably/hopfully! still qualify more as a developer who studied law than a lawyer who does software development). ;-)

Back then the High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) tweeted "Where are the german Quoras? Pls send us your exec sum". Without thinking too much about it we fired a direct message back and argued that it's boring to "buy into the hype" instead of "making waves yourself". What followed was a short DM exchange where HTGF explained us that they were not looking for german Quoras to invest in and that the tweet was meant as a way to find a similar tool for internal usage. So we replied: "Okay then. Oh and by the way… how can we get in touch with you guys?". We got an email address from one of their investment managers, quickly sent a brief overview of fruux. Just a few days after this initial tweet I was on my way to the headquarters of HTGF to tell them more about fruux. It turned out that HTGF was quite interested. A little later we were in actual due diligence with them, provided tons of information about the company, the team and our ideas for the future. Just a few months after that phase we had our final pitch in front of HTGF's investment committee and got the "go ahead". I was still almost fully booked by with my law stuff back then and it turns out that in the very week before my big exams I meet with Prof. Dr. Tobias Kollmann from netStart Venture to pitch fruux and the idea of becoming a co-investor in it. We had a good chat and found a common base on a possible deal right away. Just a few days later we also got their offer and accepted. During the following two weeks I wrote my exams and in parallel started to implement the deal with the involved law firms and our investors.

In early 2012 finally everything was signed and our six-figure seed-round sealed.

Complete re-launch and first official press release

Our main goal is (and always was): Providing a very elegant and reliable sync service that’s supported on a huge amount of different devices, doesn't lock you in with a specific vendor and is easy to setup and use without being a rocket surgeon. So after dumping our legacy technology and starting from scratch (like we did in 2011) we did the same with our website. On March 20th (probably at 05:00 in the morning) we finally flipped the switch and released our new completely redesigned website and our new web application. The whole team and especially my co-founders Evert (our CTO) and Martin (our UX/UI designer) worked days and nights to make that happen. Thanks all!

Our web app now shows you an activity feeds of devices/apps that have recently synced with your account and provides easy to follow setup instructions for a huge array of devices and applications. This new web app is just the beginning. We've made sure that it is a great framework for additional features and we hope that you'll have lots of suggestions. On March 21th we finally made our funding public in our first official press release.

Pheeew - that was a fun ride so far, but we have literally just begun. For the future we've planned tons of new features and especially want to make fruux really great for teams.

We hope you like our revamp and the stuff we're building in the future.

If you read all the way until here and don't have a fruux account yet: Go ahead and get started at http://fruux.com.

Super-charged device management

2012-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

We just released a new version of fruux. In this release we've revamped the way you set up your devices. We're now offering better management features and improved security.

When setting up a new device or application, you're now given the option to create a username and password specific for this device. This greatly improves security, because it also allows you to delete it if you lose it or it gets stolen (fingers crossed that wont happen to you, though!). Another benefit of using custom usernames and passwords is: If you need to change your main fruux password, you wont also have to change the configuration of your devices.

Besides the usual bugfixes and performance optimizations the main changes in this release are:

Completely revamped device management.
Additional front end polish and tweaks.

Now: Go ahead and login at http://fruux.com to check it out.

Nokia N9 calendar syncing

2012-04-13T00:00:00+00:00

We've just pushed another new minor release to our live systems. It's mostly a tiny bugfix release, but besides fixes it also includes:

Calendar syncing support for the Nokia N9.

Go ahead and login at http://fruux.com if you want to setup your Nokia N9.

Improved iOS syncing and activity feed

2012-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

Today we've pushed a new release to our live systems. This time it's only a small one, but it paves the way for the next wave of bigger changes. Besides lots of bugfixes and little improvements the main changes in this release are:

Much faster syncing on iOS devices (and others using time-range or component filters). We're now correctly detecting OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) machines in our activity feed. Many content & design tweaks and spelling fixes (thanks for your bug reports!).

Installing wget on OS X

2011-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

We're excited that our website http://fruux.com is much more popular than it used to be before the relaunch. However these additional visitors also result in a lot more traffic and load on the respective frontend servers. We already had that in mind, when we started working on the new website and built it in a way that allows us to use a content management system but still publish the site as a pure static website.

We're using wget in this setup to create the actual "compiled" site that gets published on our production systems. Unfortunately wget is not included in OS X by default, but luckily it's easy to download and built it from source.

If you also need wget on your machine, just copy the following few lines and paste them in Terminal.app. They'll always download and install the latest version of wget on your machine.

# download latest wget version
curl -o ~/Downloads/wget-latest.tar.gz http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/wget/wget-latest.tar.gz

# create temp directory for extraction
mkdir ~/Downloads/wget-latest

# extract into temp directory
tar xzf ~/Downloads/wget-latest.tar.gz --strip-components=1 -C ~/Downloads/wget-latest

# build and install wget
cd ~/Downloads/wget-latest/ && ./configure
make -C ~/Downloads/wget-latest/
sudo make install -C ~/Downloads/wget-latest/

# cleanup
rm ~/Downloads/wget-latest.tar.gz
rm -rf ~/Downloads/wget-latest

If you are interested in details about our static website setup, let us know and we'll follow-up with another blog post with more details if our workload allows it.

Update

Alternatively use Homebrew - a straightforward replacement for MacPorts: http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/. Thanks, Evert. If you want to remove the manually installed version of wget before switching to Homebrew, just repeat the steps below and replace the line sudo make install -C ~/Downloads/wget-latest/ with sudo make uninstall -C ~/Downloads/wget-latest/

launched iOS calendar syncing and relaunched fruux.com

2011-08-12T00:00:00+00:00

Those of you following our Facebook page already know it, but for the sake of completeness we're cross posting it here.

We've launched support for iOS calendar syncing on July 29th. It's available to our pro users and quite easy to setup. Check our Facebook post for details. It's still an early preview, but we're working on fixing all bugs that pop up and once you're and we're happy with it, we'll shift our focus to contacts syncing.

Today we've also relaunched http://fruux.com. After uncountable night shifts, we proudly present a completely new look, a significantly improved support center and a consistent design throughout all sub-sites.

Oh, and we're hiring!

fruux iOS calendar syncing demo

2011-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

Wednesday night we took the time to record a short video to show you a little demo of our upcoming fruux iOS calendar syncing feature. It was already a bit late and we had just an iPhone... so sorry for the bad video quality. :-)

If you want to get realtime updates about our day-to-day work you should definitely follow our fruux Facebook page.

occasional uptime issues

2011-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

We're currently suffering from occasional uptime issues which are caused by a MySQL bug (#55284, #55543) triggered in certain and causing short downtimes for our service. Luckily we've now implemented an automatic recovery process which is launched in these situations to bring the service back online quickly whenever this problem occurs.

As far as we know this bug was fixed in MySQL 5.1.56 (which was released on March 7th) and MySQL 5.5.10 (which is not yet released).

We're in close contact with the product manager and his team at Amazon RDS and have high hopes for a quick roll-out of the fixed MySQL versions which will permanently resolve our current occasional uptime issues.

We'll add a free month of usage to your fruux pro accounts as a little compensation for the current problems once the issue is resolved.

iOS calendar syncing on the horizon

2011-02-23T00:00:00+00:00

Since some of you don't check our posts via Facebook and/or Twitter we'll just cross-post our latest Facebook post here:

We're nearing our iOS calendar syncing beta test with huge steps. We'll at first pick a couple of early supporters and then sequentially roll out to more users while monitoring how our systems handle the additional load. Once we are satisfied with these tests, we'll make iOS calendar syncing available to all pro users and then work full force on the iOS contact syncing implementation.

We're also working on a ton of other amazing stuff we can't talk about right now. ;) Oh and b.t.w. we are currently looking for actual office space. Once we've found a nice place you are happily invited for a chat and a coffee if you are near by.

what happened so far and our goals for 2011

2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Happy New Year everybody! We've been working on a lot of stuff during the last months and have some pretty amazing news to share with you.

Our launch of fruux pro took us a lot longer than expected, a lot of administrative tasks popped up along the way and we still have tons of quirks to work out, but on the other hand we have also made a lot of progress and wanted to give you a short update on it.

Amazon Web Services, one of our infrastructure parters, recently published a case study about fruux, giving you an overview about the technical aspects of fruux while also delivering a brief introduction into the history of our project.

But now, without further the important stuff for 2011: We've worked amazingly hard during the last months to make support for iOS devices happen as quickly as possible and even we weren't able to launch a first alpha version as a new year surprise as we had initially planned, we're sure that you'll like it once it's finally rolled out.

We've been joined by a new developer who's been working solely on our iOS implementation since then.

Hi, my name is Evert and I'm the latest member of the fruux team. I spend most of my time engineering web application backends, and dedicated a great deal of my time working on CalDAV and CardDAV implementations, which is also what I'll be integrating into fruux. These technologies are extensions to WebDAV and are actually supported by more and more devices & applications and provide for seamless data synchronization.

What this means is, that we'll be able to deliver on the promise of one of the most requested fruux features: iOS synchronization. We'll start with CalDAV support which allows you to sync calendars with your iOS devices and then continue our work with the CardDAV support which will allow you to sync your Address books.

We'll be keeping you posted on our progress.

--Evert

Great news, right? We hope to give you an update on our progress really soon. Other goals for 2011 include a fruux web application (which is planned to be based on the upcoming CalDAV and CardDAV stack) and an API to allow developers building great services and applications around fruux.

fruux progress - billing, team, iDevices support

2010-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

We've received some feedback suggesting that there was no progress at fruux since our Oct 3rd blog post. Thats of course not the case, we've constantly updated the previously mentioned blog post since Oct 3rd, but obviously some RSS clients don't show updated posts again and thats why we'll stop updating this old post and instead write new posts every now and then.

Here is a short summary (if you are interested in details, please check the updates below the Oct 3rd blog post) of the tide of events since Oct 3rd:

we've ponyed up the upfront costs and heavily scaled up our infrastructure. Thats the reason why fruux runs super stable since Oct 6th, with the exception of a service disruption at Amazon WebServices. Luckily the respective team at Amazon helped us a (on a sunday!) to solve the problem quickly.
in the following days we did a lot of research on credit card processing, payment gateways, billing providers and merchant account. We've talked to dozens of old-economy wannabe overlords from banks and companies providing credit card payment gateways until we had to realize that credit card processing is an expensive mess and started implementing our own billing system based on PayPal's API.
after an all-nighter on Oct 22th we've finished the implementation of the billing system at about 4am and rolled it out for new signups (1 week free trial / 19 EUR per year). While monitoring signups until about 7am we've also fixed high priority bugs in our billing system and since then it runs pretty smooth. We'll continue to monitor how the system performs for the next couple of days and check if everything works as expected when the first accounts transition from the trial to the paid interval.

That was a short wrap-up of the tide of events between Oct 3rd and Oct 22th.

We're of course not asleep since then. The single most requested feature is iDevices support and please be assured: we here you! :-) We're fruux users ourselves and we want it as badly as you do. We've started internal testing long ago, but due to the lack of resources (time/man power/etc, check the Oct 3rd blog post for details) we didn't exactly meet our self-set goals (progress- and implementation-speed wise). But we are hopefully about to solve this issue. We're in active talks with a developer and potential new team member who'd work solely on iDevices support at fruux, but currently it's to early to share details - we'll hopefully have something to announce soon (we have to solve the involved administrative and business aspects first, before we're able to start actual coding).

We've received suggestions from several users about some kind of early-bird-pricing for existing users and we'll probably have a limited tier of lifetime accounts, but didn't decide on the exact details yet (we're working on it). We're pretty happy with the normal pricing which will be (and already is for new users) 19 EUR per year as mentioned above in the wrap-up. We'll have only two plans: fruux free and fruux pro. fruux free is currently not available for new sign-ups, but we'll relaunch it soon. We'll focus on providing extraordinary reliability and delivering enhancements for our paying user and then start working on the fruux free relaunch (fruux free sounds awkward, maybe we'll rename it to fruux basic or light).

Keep the feedback coming! You are the single most important (and a very active) part of this whole process!

the first orange-settlement ever!

2010-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

mymuesli (custom-mixed cereals via internet) recently launched a new product called Oh!Saft (orange subscription via internet) and we joked via Twitter, that their new Oh!Saft logo and our fruux logo look quite similar. Even though the mymuesli team suggested that we aren't harshly competitive (well, maybe we'll also deliver fresh oranges to fruux pro users... you never know!) we of course had to wheedle a test kit out of them. They couldn't reject this proposal and we both wrote history: the first orange-settlement ever! Today our test kit arrived including a nice juice squeezer and even we didn't read the manual we were able to enjoy a few glasses of fresh orange juice in no time!

Thank you, Stephan @ohsaft! :-)

fruux pro rollout started

2010-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

We've started rolling out pro accounts to our existing users a few days ago and so far we are pretty pleased with the performance of our billing system. There are still a few minor kinks we are working on right now, but all in all it was a solid rollout.

Interestingly fruux also starts getting popular in certain new places. We've for instance received a direct comment (okay it was a reply to an email from us, but anyway) from a top-level person at a certain company telling us that he already knew fruux and will check it out (Hi!). :-) Additionally we've even got a few sign-ups from people working at this other company with the fruit in the logo (probably caused by our third party promotion - if you are developing software, you should certainly try that, too. We read about it in the Mac Indie Marketing blog).

Now that the rollout of fruux pro started, we'll also start enforcing the free-account limits for existing users in the near future. Honestly we have no final decision yet, but our idea is to limit free accounts to just one "data class" (contacts OR calendars OR bookmarks) and just two Macs. Future support for iOS devices will also be limited to fruux pro accounts. But our current top priority is adding iOS support to pro accounts and not enforcing the limits of free accounts.

Time to think about the long way we've come with fruux and how to go on...

2010-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

We had severe downtime during the last days and currently our service is also not available, while we are trying to bring the systems back online by implementing certain optimizations. As an immediate action we had to disable new sign-ups a few days ago. We‘d love to grow our user base further, but with our current infrastructure we can‘t even provide our current users with the reliability they deserve. Unfortunately it‘s no technical problem - we could easily add a few more servers to our cloud to handle this capacity problems, however there is no budget for additional servers, but more on that later.

Right now our systems are busy executing these tasks and we're trying to relax while monitoring the whole process which will hopefully allow us to bring the systems -at least in a limited fashion- back online really soon (as in one or two days not weeks). It's one of those typical Sundays, except it is not, because this Sunday will either be our game changer and the beginning of something great or the day where we saw the end of the road in retrospective (If these lines sound familiar, you probably read the excellent blog post by Todd Agullnick, Co-Founder of Xmarks Inc., with a very similar story to ours).

Time to think about how far we‘ve come with fruux.

We started as an entirely bootstrapped student project. Initially we never thought about fruux as a product. We just started developing fruux because we desperately needed such a piece of software ourselves. During this time fruux eventually spread amongst family, friends, fellow students and ultimately people we didn't even knew in person. We started getting tired setting up accounts manually so we finally implemented a self-signup into the application and since then our user base keeps growing at crazy rates which makes it hard for us to constantly scale our infrastructure to keep up with this growth. First and foremost it's hard for us because it's a non-technical issue. We've really learned squeezing every single bit of computing power out of our cloud and whenever we hit conferences and talk with people from the industry they are completely blown away when we tell them how little computing power we actually have, but the time has come where we have to scale up big time to keep up with the load and provide a reliable service. Unfortunately nothing in life is for free...

As many of you know, we are only able to work on fruux in our free-time since we graduated. Our full time jobs help us funding the infrastructure for fruux, but also prevent us from investing serious time into the further development, which is kind of a chicken-egg problem.

The first step towards a solution for this issue is to ensure that we have the resources to scale our infrastructure (i.e. deploy more servers) up to a level where we are able to provide a very reliable service. We calculated that this infrastructure will cost us about 700 EUR (approx. 950 USD) per month, but we are unable to fund this personally and we won‘t be able to fund it through donations or ads, so the only option we have is to generate revenue by actually start charging for our service.

Our idea is to provide paying users prioritized syncing as the first "pro" feature. This way our paying users will always enjoy a reliable fruux. Once we actually start selling subscriptions for "fruux pro" it will also become much easier for us to plan the future development of fruux, implement great major new features, jump ship from our current jobs to full time fruux work and ultimately even hire additional engineers in order to bring the project up to speed. Based on your feedback, we discovered that about 25 EUR (approx. 34 USD) per year should be a fair deal (like paying for one "fruux caffè latte" per month) for our service and this way we would need roughly 400 subscribers to cover the infrastructure costs including related taxes (this pricing is based on your feedback and on a cost per user approach to ensure scalability). If we are able to achieve this number of subscribers, we'll be able to provide you with the most reliable fruux ever and also have an excellent argument when acquiring investors which will allow us to transform fruux into our full time jobs (=devote much more time to the project then we are currently able to do), hire additional engineers and provide you with the kick-ass features you have been waiting for for quite a while now (hint: iDevices support, a webapplication, a developer API, you name it...).

We thought about starting this by setting up a binding sign-up form for "fruux pro" and once 400 of you signed-up we'll setup the new infrastructure and start charging your accounts. If we are unable to convince at least 400 of you, that a reliable fruux is worth paying for, we'll probably have to sit here and wait until the load continues pushing the cloud over capacity and ultimately move on and pull the plug as a last resort, because in it‘s current state the project is neither a pleasure for you (due to the capacity issues) nor for us (because the solution is technically very easy, but not fundable).

We'd love to hear your feedback!

Update 2010-10-03

We're trying to achieve a "hybrid solution". In order to bring the service back online as quickly (and as reliable) as possible we'll pony up the upfront costs to scale up (at least a bit) right now and then start working on the implementation of the billing infrastructure. Then we'll hopefully be able to convince enough of you to become subscribers so that we are able to stay online (=build a sustainable business) with the additional computing power (and scale up even more). If you feel like supporting us in the meantime, you are happily invited!

Update 2010-10-04

We're super stoked about your overall positive feedback and the dozens of emails you sent us so far!

The following questions came up multiple times:

Q: Is your pricing final? A: No. We just calculated what would work to cover costs and also allow us to scale, while estimating a percentage of users we might be able to convince to become actual customers.

Q: Where is the sign-up link? A: Our first priority is bringing the systems back online (work in progress). Starting tomorrow we'll dive into the ugly paperwork for PCI compliant credit card acceptance and also start implementing the billing system.

Update 2010-10-05

We're making good progress with the tech part of our challenge. If nothing unexpected happens, we should be back online in a few hours.

Update 2010-10-06

We're up and running again (@fruux_status).

Update 2010-10-10

Unfortunately there is a service disruption at Amazon Web Services (our datacenter) causing downtime for fruux. We're working closely with the respective engineering team at Amazon Web Services to resolve this situation. Check @fruux_status for updates.

Update 2010-10-11 #1

Thanks to the nice guys at Amazon Web Services (who are obviously working like us on Sundays) we are now able to access and migrate our data, so we should be back online really soon. Also we scaled up even more for reliability reasons. Due to the increased costs this however sets us even more under pressure to start generating revenues asap because we don't have the budget to keep the service running at this scale. Check @fruux_status for updates.

Update 2010-10-11 #2

Initially we were set for a quite Sunday in order to prepare for the paperwork stuff and billing implementation during the coming week, but obviously Murphy's Law struck once again... Nevertheless we'll work hard during the week to overcome all remaining obstacles on our way to sustainability. We'll keep you posted on the implementation of the billing system, the planned pricing (we're reading all your comments) and the progress of the negotiations with our bank for the credit card merchant account etc.

Update 2010-10-11 #3

We are up and running again. Thanks a ton to the nice guys at Amazon Web Services for helping us fixing these issues - even yesterday (Sunday) evening! Now back to the billing implementation and getting the necessary contracts for credit card acceptance signed.

Update 2010-10-15 #1

After a week of negotiations and talks with credit card companies, banks, payment gateway operators, and outsourced billing providers we've come to the conclusion that credit card acceptance is a total mess and utterly expensive. We strongly believe that we shouldn't burn (to much) money just to make money, because then we'd have to charge a higher price for the additional processing costs and involved work. Thats why we've decided to implement with PayPal for the start. We hope to complete this implementation (we're about 50% done now) over the weekend and launch paid accounts for new subscribers starting next week. We'll stop offering a free version of fruux for new users for a while and instead concentrate solely on the paid version and additional features, but we'll relaunch fruux free soon, once we've delivered some major new features to our subscribers. Once we are confident with the payment process, we'll implement it for existing users and allow them to migrate their accounts.

Update 2010-10-15 #2

We aren't entirely sure about the final pricing yet, but we decided on the product structure. The good news is, that we won't offer fruux free, fruux starter, fruux home basic, fruux home premium, fruux business, fruux enterprise and fruux ultimate. Instead we'll just have fruux pro and (soon) fruux free. Pricing will be around 20 € including VAT/sales tax.

Update 2010-10-17

The bad news is that we didn't manage to complete the implementation of the billing system over the weekend, but the good news is that we've made good progress and shouldn't be a whole lot behind our initial schedule. We'll probably need a few more days, but the implementation will be better (completely automatic account activation, deactivation and renewal based on data from the payment processor), too.

Update 2010-10-22

We've finally implemented the billing system during the night. At the time being it only applies to new users signing up with fruux. We'll evaluate the technical aspects for the next couple of days and also keep an eye on the signup metrics. Our current pricing model for this test is one week free trial and then 19 € per year. About one hour until sunrise, time for a short nap... :-)

oh - we have a blog?

2010-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

Unfortunately it turned out that we completely suck at blogging. Probably one of the reasons is that every minute used for blogging is missing somewhere else. So for now we officially quit blogging, until we feel it makes sense to start again (probably once we have the necessary manpower to deliver stellar software AND blog posts). Of course we'll still send out occasional updates via:

our Facebook Page
and our @fruux account on Twitter

Additionally there is also our @fruux_status Twitter account, where we announce maintenances, downtimes and other quality of service relevant stuff.

Selective syncing sneak preview

2009-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

One feature that is constantly requested is (what we call) "selective syncing". This feature will allow you to selectivly sync your data classes. You might want to keep your contacts and calendars in sync between your Mac at work and your Mac at home, but eventually you'd like to have individual bookmarks on both machines. Currently (v0.9.4) it's not possible to select the data classes that get synced - it's "all or nothing". Selective syncing is actively in development and will (hopefully soon) give you a much more individual syncing setup. Additionally it allows us to implement new "niche features" (like preferences and keychain syncing) on top of selective syncing.

(Preference syncing is not necessarily included in our next release, the screenshot is from our internal development version)

fruux menubar icon

2009-02-12T00:00:00+00:00

Looking for a fruux activity indicator in your menubar?

open "Terminal.app" (it's in /Applications/Utilities)
type: open "/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/Sync.menu"
hit "Enter"

Or even easier (Thanks, Brandon):

open iSync.app (it's in /Applications)
open iSyncs' Preferences (COMMAND+, or via Menubar)
enable "Show status in menubar"

The menubar icon

rotates when any sync client on your system (including fruux) is syncing
allows you to click "Synchronize Now" (syncs all sync clients on your system, including fruux)

Remove the menubar icon again?

Just press and hold the Apple/Command key on your keyboard and drag the icon out of the menubar

Great Everyday Apps

2009-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

Every now and then people ask us about the tools and apps we use at fruux. Here is a short list of our everyday apps. Additionally we asked some of the developers for special deals (only as long as stocks last) - check them out.

"Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more."

Website / Blog / GNU-GPL

"Design beautiful, innovative and fast-loading web sites… with a beautiful, innovative and fast app. CSSEdit's intuitive approach to style sheets and powerful previewing features will make you deliver awesome standards-based sites in no time!"

Website / Blog

"Cocoa Packet Analyzer is a native Mac OS X implementation of a network protocol analyzer and packet sniffer. It is able to do basic network capturing, filter packets, analyze and display pcap files. CPA uses libPCAP for reading packet trace files and for capturing network traffic (filter expressions from tcpdump may be used)."

Website / Blog / Donationware

"Cyberduck is an open source FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Mosso Cloud Files and Amazon S3 browser for the Mac."

Website / Blog

"ExpanDrive gives you perfectly transparent access to open, edit, and save files with your favorite programs, even when those files are on a server half a world away. Transparent means that you won’t even notice you’re operating on remote file server—it will act like it’s an USB drive you plugged directly into your own computer."

Website / Blog / Shareware (39,95 USD)

"Similar to NEXTSTEP's Merge utility, FileMerge graphically compares and merges two different versions of a file, and is often used to track changes to source code."

Website / Apple License

"fruux is a lightweight and convenient system preference pane, that syncs your Address Book, Calendars, Tasks and Bookmarks between different Macs. fruux supports sync conflict resolution which will help you when you changed a record on more than one machine"

Website / Blog / Freemium

"HTTP Client is a Mac OS X Leopard developer tool for debugging HTTP services by graphically creating & inspecting complex HTTP messages."

Website / Blog / BSD-License

"MindNode Pro is an elegant and simple-to-use mindmapping application for the Macintosh. It was created with the user in mind and features a very simple and intuitive user interface that lets the user focus on expressing and developing ideas. Nearly no time is required to learn the interface."

Website / Blog / Shareware (14,95 USD)

fruux and the "Desktop AppStore"

2008-12-16T00:00:00+00:00

Months ago we submitted fruux to Apples' Software Download Page, but yesterday we got the notice (on request) that they won't publish fruux:

Hi, fruux's feature-set is too similar to Apple's MobileMe (http://www.me.com). Regards, Apple Downloads http://www.apple.com/downloads/

That kind of raises the question if it makes sense to put more work into our iPhone client. They even rejected our desktop app, so probably they will also reject our iPhone client. So allocating resources (time, money, sleepless nights, ...) to our iPhone client is kind of a gamble if they reject it. Apple really has to fix this random rejection policy - especially because there are several sync applications both on the Apple Downloads Page and in the AppStore.

Update 2008-12-17

We just recieved another Email from Cupertino (we asked, why they rejected our listing, but listed several other sync applications):

Hi, Those applications are restricted to syncing calendars (including Google calendars, which MobileMe does not do). fruux's feature set has more parity with MobileMe in that it also syncs addresses and bookmarks. Regards, Apple Downloads http://www.apple.com/downloads/

It looks like this is "not entirely appropiate".

It's wrong that those apps only sync iCal, some of them also sync contacts

Some random thoughts:

fruux is all about social syncing (that kind of differenciates fruux from MobileMe!?!)
Will Apple also ban Microsoft Messenger for similarities with iChat?
Or Firefox for similarities with Safari?
Should we continue working on our iPhone client?

Additionally we'd like to add some thoughts to an excellent write-up (AppStore, crappy ringtone apps, serious development, ...) by Craig Hockenberry:

Developing a product (including software) means investing (time, money, resources)
Apples "rejection policy" is "not entirely" clear, sometimes they even reject apps for using private apis, which in fact don't use private apis
Developing a product which is undistributable (because it's rejected from the AppStore) is like investing your (time/money/resources) at a roulette desk in a casino and betting on the wrong number.
There must be many great apps that are not even developed, because the developers can't afford this rejection lottery!?

Update 2008-12-18

We just recieved another email from Cupertino, which sounds like good news.

Hi, Once distinguishing features (such as Social Syncing) are implemented and out of beta in fruux, we can certainly take another look. Regards, Apple Downloads http://www.apple.com/downloads/

The iPhone development gamble problem (see above) stays the same, but at least it is not entirely hopeless. We'll still change our roadmap and focus on Mac development first before we continue working on our iPhone client.

fruux + Box.net (or) Dropbox = ♥ ?

2008-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

Bookmarks, Contacts, Tasks, Calendars and Events in sync with fruux, but still looking for a solution for your files? Box.net and Dropbox might be worth a look. If you are looking for an iDisk replacement, you might see their services as a welcome addition to fruux.

Box.net recently announced their iPhone application.
Dropbox: Store, Sync and Share your files online, launched some weeks ago

(fruux is not affiliated with Box.net or Dropbox)

Apple Wishlist

2008-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

Rechargeable wireless Mighty Mouse with a Scroll Ball that does not suck!!!
Mail.app with builtin GPG and S/MIME support (also on iPhone)
Ability to forward text messages on iPhone
Different signatures for each mail account on iPhone
Installer and/or Cydia in AppStore :-)

Your wishes?

Update

Looks like someone had the same idea: TechCrunch: Please Fix The iPhone: A To-Do List for Steve Jobs.

press roundup and some bugs

2008-10-14T00:00:00+00:00

During the last days our project got a lot of attention around the globe. We got reams of emails including lots of feature requests, bug reports and dozens of motivating comments (we used some of them as user comments on our main site). Here is just a short excerpt of sites featuring fruux:

http://www.tuaw.com/
http://lifehacker.com/
http://www.heise.de/
http://thenextweb.org/
http://www.macworld.fr/
http://www.melablog.it/
http://www.deepapple.com/ ... and a ton of other sites and blogs

We even found a podcast, mentioning fruux (@ 21:20), besides that many people tweeted about fruux and we even heard unrelated people talking about fruux in the streets! Of course we especially liked the content that was produced by our own users, like:

is abandoing Plaxo for Fruux. Plaxo is so yesterday!
@massive_dz twitter.com/massive_dz/statuses/…

Thank you! We are still working hard on our next bugfix release and hope to implement many of your feature requests very soon. If you like our work and want to support the project, please file your bugs (if we don't know about them, we can't fix them)! Are there any fruux screencasts out there?

whats next?

2008-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

You might have noticed our roadmap, so you know that we have high aims with fruux - but we need your help to make it happen. Especially we'd like to know which features you want to see in our next version! Please add your comments below! Feature requests like "Please add Safari bookmark syncing" might be implemented earlier, than "Please add a Windows client and FileSyncin

We recently added a french localization to our software, which was donated by our user linathael over at HardMac.com/MacBidouille.com, then screwed up with our french inability and luckily corrected with the help of several comments from other french fruux users (Thank you, Emmanuel, Pierre, Virginie, Jean)!

If you'd like to see fruux localized in your language and want to donate your free time, please let us know. We'll provide you with the localizable strings.

What the fruux?

2008-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

Today we released fruux v0.7.1, besides several iCal syncing related bugfixes this version includes a french localization, which was generously donated from linathael over at HardMac.com/MacBidouille.com (Thank you, linathael!). We are also working hard on our main site. It's still work in progress, but you'll find our changelog and also our roadmap there. Please always remember, that fruux is still in beta.

Backup your data

Addressbook: File -> Export -> Addressbook Archive
iCal: File -> Backup iCal...

If you are affected by any bugs, please let us know! We are pretty responsive and will do our best to get any bugs you might experience resolved as fast as possible.

Can't wait for the new version? Here are the update instructions

Start "System Preferences"
Start "fruux"
Click "Synchronize Now"
If you don't already have v0.7.1 installed, the "New version availiable" message will appear
After a few seconds you'll be asked if you want to replace the current version. Click "Replace"
Wait a few seconds, until the new version is installed
Click "Synchronize Now"
If the System asks you for permission to use the fruux Keychain item, click "Allow"

fruux v0.7 rollout

2008-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

We are happy that our fruux v0.7 rollout went quite smoothly. However we're still not entirely satisfied, because some of you are affected by bugs. There are currently three known issues with iCal syncing:

if you heavily use recurring events, your sync might break (we're working on this one)
Obviously some of our users from russia are affected by an encoding bug (we're working on this one)
Some users have problems with duplication and repeating sync conflicts (so far all of them used other sync systems in addition to fruux, we're working on this one, too)

Only very few users are struck by those bugs, but still we are extremely sorry for any inconvenience caused! Please keep in mind that fruux is still in beta. We're working really hard fixing those bugs as fast as possible. If you are affected by bugs or need help, please get in touch with us!

If you email directly to our support emailaddress, please include the file ~/Library/Application Support/Fruux/Sync.log). Some of our users already work with our addressbook syncing in productive enviroments.

If you need addressbook syncing e.g. in your office and there is no way you could wait for our bugfix release, please contact us. We might be able to offer you a customized version of fruux, which just syncs your addressbook. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any problems concerning fruux!

Thank you for your support.

Is XMPP popular? Who knows? We do!

2008-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

Did we mention, that we don't really like those proprietary IM protocols? We wanted to know how popular our favorite protocol XMPP (a.k.a. Jabber) actually is, so we gathered some ANONYMOUS statistics from our systems. While XMPP in it's early days was a "geek-only protocol", it actually looks like it's on a triumphal course (our current userbase probably consists of a lot of geeks, but since most of us still have several "normal people" in our addressbooks, those stats are actually representative).

XMPP is close on AIMs heels. 27% of our users IM contacts are XMPP contacts. Thats great! Our educated guess is: In one or two years XMPP will be in the pole position!

What the fruux?

2008-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

We got a couple of mails from people asking us, what exactly fruux is about. I guess our marketing sucks. :-)

What is fruux about?

syncing data (currently addressbooks) between multiple ~~macs~~ devices

What about the future?

sync even more data (calendars, bookmarks, preferences)
iPhone syncing
adding social-syncing
more details in our roadmap

Any demo video?

Thanks to Joshua from MacGasm there is a nice screencast covering fruux. It's availiable at blip.tv. (The video shows an older version of fruux. If you watched the video and wonder what went wrong at about 1:20 - Address Book.app and the Apple SyncServices only update a record, if it is not currently opened. Joshua worked around by closing Address Book.app and syncing again. Just clicking on another contact and then back on the "demo contact" would have worked, too. The sync actually went fine, Address Book.app just didn't update itself with the new data, because the changed contact was currently opened. In "real live" you probably won't even recognize this behaviour of Address Book.app and Apples SyncServices, because you won't sit on both machines, have the same contact opened and wait for the change to appear) :-)

FAQ

Is my data safe?
- fruux uses industry standard SSL encryption (like your bank does for your homebanking) and we will never ever give a third party access to your data!
Should I backup my addressbook before I start using fruux?
- You should even backup your addressbook when your are not using fruux! fruux is betasoftware. We store a quadrillion (not exactly) contacts and so far nothing went wrong, but there might always be some edge case (for example if you use any other third party sync app) where bad things could happen. So please backup your addressbook (Launch Address Book.app -> File -> Export -> Save Address Book Archive).

Wanna try fruux?

Get started for free

fruux v0.6 & public beta

2008-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

Although we are a bit late, we are pleased to announce fruux 0.6. This version still contains no iCal syncing (sorry for that), but we changed a ton of internal stuff, that allows us to include new features in the next version, give you even better performance and reliability as well. public beta This version allows new users to join our beta test. Just download it and register a fruux account yourself (you need a valid emailadress, otherwise you wont be able to activate it).

Changelog

(FEATURE) self registration feature (allows new users to create a fruux account)
(FEATURE) fruux autoupdater (allows us to deliver new features to you)
(FIXES) A ton of bugfixes and performance optimizations

If you are are current fruux betatester, this is (hopefully) the last time you have to update your fruux client manually. Please download the new client version and follow our update instructions. Please contact us if you need help, experience bugs, have a suggestion or simply want to tell us how much you love fruux ;-) If you are interested in speeding up development, feel free to support us and please suggest your top priority feature!

some screenshots in between

2008-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

Just in case there is an updated version of your new favorite application, here are the necessary steps.

We are a bit late, with our promised client update. Hopefully the following screenshots help bridging the gap until the actual release (it's imminent! No, not that Duke Nukem Forever kind of imminen

This is our new main screen:

The following image shows the new account sheet. The next version wont require any email-begging in order to join our beta. Just download the fruux client, create your account, click the email verification link and you are ready to go sync.

fruux - free beer and new features

2008-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

Well - not exactly free beer. We just wanted to catch your interest. And obviously it worked. ;-) Here is a brief summary of the topics we are currently working on. basic features:

signup and modify your account via client application
deploying additional sync servers (we thought about using google app engine, but currently gae is no final product and has no ssl support. anyway we have a working beta of the fruux server running on gae. if google starts production mode and adds ssl support: we are already prepared)
addressbook group syncing
webapplication (manage your contacts on the go)
social features (described here)

maybe basic, maybe pro features:

ical syncing
preferences syncing
safari bookmark syncing

pro features:

external sync plugins
- google contacts plugin (sync your contacts with your gmail / google apps contacts)
- google calendar plugin (sync your ical calendars with your google calendar

Although all of the above is work in progress, you wont see everything right in the next release! We'd rather like to hear what features you would like to see in the next version of fruux! What features are most important to you? Are there any additional features you'd like to see in the next version of fruux? We are looking forward for your comments, your posting on our fruux @ facebook page and/or your emails.

Update

Maybe we should postpone our google contacts plugin? Apple added iPhone <-> Addressbook.app <-> google contact syncing with 10.5.3 (via: Google Mac Blog).

fruux @ wwdc

2008-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

We finally decided about our WWDC attendance (and got our flight booking confirmation). Also attending WWDC '08? Feel free to get in touch (comments, emails, fruux @ facebook, ...). Some hints, if you're attending WWDC for the first time:

Download and install the BART Widget (b.t.w. ADA 2007 winner)
Want to use public transit-busses? You need coinage! There is no change!
You'll probably need a travel transformer if you're not from the US
Have a look at the WWDC Hints over at MacGuys.Com
Andy had a nice idea: print out the icon of your project on a little 2 inch square and stick it into your WWDC badge
More hints? -> let us know!
Looking forward to meeting several nice people (unfortunately not all of them) again!

just in case: update instructions

2008-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

Just in case there is an updated version of your new favorite application, here are the necessary steps.

Step 1

Doubleclick the new fruux Preference Pane

Step 2

Click "Replace"

Step 3

Click "Synchronize Now" in the fruux Preference Pane
Click "Allow" in order to grant the updated fruux application to the account information you previously stored in your keychain (This step is very important! Since fruux is not "codesigned" yet, you have to manually grant the keychain access after an update).

first bugfix release (v0.5)

2008-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

With the help of your nice feedback, we worked on a bugfix release during the last days.

Changelog

(FIX) No more iSync error messages at the console, when syncing cell phones
(FIX) No more birthday conflicts, when using the reset function
(FEATURE) Added german localization

fruux is in public beta - start testing it here.

beta time!

2008-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

Several lion-hearted people out there started testing fruux during the last week. Taking the system stats into account it even looks like there are some everyday/productive users besides the team. It's a great pleasure that some of you already adopted fruux into your everyday life! Now we'd like YOU to join us testing fruux! Applying is quite simple, just get in touch with us and tell us a bit about you and your motivation to test fruux. We'll happily provide you with the fruux application and a demo account.

Update

fruux is in public beta - start testing it here.

fruux icon evolution

2008-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

While we are readying the system for a broader betatest our pixelpusher Martin spent some time on the icon of our client application. The journey started of course with our logo. Adding some gloss and depth... adding some details and glow... adding more depth and a typical system preferences icon shadow... well yes - it's not ready yet, but sufficent for our upcoming beta.

The following screenshots show the current look and feel of our application.

Our icon still needs some optimization for different resolutions and sizes.

fruux solves your sync conflicts

2008-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

fruux is meant to simplify your digital life. When syncing different devices and services you might run into troubles called sync conflicts. Just think about the following scenario:

you modified one of your contacts phonenumbers on the go via the (not yet demoed) fruux webapplication
then you modified the very same contacts phonenumber on your laptop (lets assume you had no internet access while doing this)

The outcome of this example is a sync conflict. The fruuxServer and your local system now contain different phonenumbers for the same contact. As the system has no idea which phonenumber is the correct one, it just asks you.

Reviewing the sync conflict gives you a nice dialogue (left side shows your local addressbook, right side shows the data from the fruuxServer). Now it's really easy to choose the correct contact, by just clicking on the correct card.

After choosing the correct card you just restart the sync via the "Sync Now" button and immediately both your local system and the fruuxServer are in sync again.

buzzwords - twitter - private beta

2008-01-14T00:00:00+00:00

For buzzword-compliance-reasons we are micro-blogging now, too. In other words: you are welcome to follow us at Twitter. It may or may not make sense to follow us if you want the first invites for our upcoming private beta (no timeframe yet). Of course blogging about fruux and commenting also boosts your chances to get invited to our private beta when it starts.

first gui client demo

2008-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

It's been a while since our last post, but it was worth the wait. This video shows the first demo of our sync client including a graphical user interface. The video covers the following steps:

empty database on the fruuxServer
the content of the local addressbook
installing and running the client
fruuxServer database in sync with local addressbook
changing a name in the local addressbook
syncing again
fruuxServer database in sync again

Just some comments:

yes the gui isn't very pretty yet and we have to add our logo
the screencast shows just first- and lastname in the database of the fruuxServer, but of course all other entities have been synced as well. the system is able to handle all the custom entities!
there is no public betatesting yet, but hopefully soon

Looking forward for your comments.

first (commandline)client demo

2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

This screencast shows a very early version of our sync client. So far there's no graphical user interface. We just wanted to share this video with you as a little non-vaporware proof. What actually happens in the video is the following:

the client uploads the local addressbook to the server
the local addressbook is deleted
the client runs again and fetches all the previously uploaded records from the server

Even in this early version we already support every entity of the addressbook, including the custom entities. Just in case you wonder, why the client fetches all the records from the server during the second run instead of deleting them on the server as well (this is what would happen in a real sync): we cheated a bit. the second time the sync-client is invoked, it gets a special parameter that forces the client to rebuild the addressbook with the data stored on the server.

sync with your contacts

2007-11-18T00:00:00+00:00

First of all my appologies for so many days without any sign of life from the backstage! We are still extremely busy behind the scenes, but as we don't want you to lose sight of our work, here is the next post (b.t.w. thank you for all your feedback in this early stage!). In my last post I presented one of the main concepts of fruux - synchronizing data with the fruuxDatabase and other computers. Thats the foundation of the whole system. Staying in sync with all your different devices is of course very important and thus nice to have, but not really beneficial if you are syncing outdated data all the time. your friends, family and business contacts move from one town to another, get new emailaddresses, new phone numbers etc. this is why we are adding functionality to fruux, which will allow you to connect your virtual (business)card with the addressbook of your contact (and the other way round). nontechnically speaking that means: you and your contact will always have up-to-date emailadresses, phonenumbers, adresses etc. of each other - automatically. your addressbook will maintain itself in the future. of course you'll have comprehensive privacy settings for each connecting to another user (like just sharing your business contact details or just sharing your private contact details, etc.).

synchronize multiple devices

2007-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

The image shows one of the basic concepts of fruux. it's about an easy user-centric tool that helps preventing headaches. if you ever had to use more than one system (like your personal laptop and your computer at work), you certainly need a tool like fruux! in the future you basically just don't care where you entered your data (like contacts in your addressbook, events in your calendar application, bookmarks in your browser, ...). you just enter it on one computer and the system will do all the magic and sync the data between all your computers. Even on the go it's possible to read and edit your data (using any computer equipped with internet access and a webbrowser) via a webapplication. actually we can't wait to use it ourselves! what about you?

every good story starts with a good idea

2007-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

I continue to think that the address book is one of the great untapped Web 2.0 opportunities, [...] and certainly more than an outside-in, invitation-driven "social networking application" represents my real social network.
Tim O'Reilly I Love My iPhone, But...

Great idea and something we are working on - stay tuned for updates!