Helicoid's Blog

Deadline Jabber Updates

Alex Young — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:13:01 GMT

I’ve been working on improving the Deadline Jabber bot. We had some architectural problems with it that needed fixing, but it’s been solid for a few weeks now so I though it was time for an update.

Editing Deadlines

Jabber now supports deadline editing:

set due id my due date—set the due date for a deadline
set description id my description—set the description

For example:

set due 39147 next week
set due 39147 19:30
set description 39147 defeat Zod

Time Zones

You can now set and view your time zone. This is really handy if you go on holiday and only have access to the Jabber interface. It works like this:

time—view your time and zone
set zone city—set the time zone to the “city”

At the moment there’s no way to view or search the cities we support—it uses the same list as appears on the settings page on the web site.

For example:

set zone London
set zone Paris

Ebiwrite is now on Helicoid ID

Alex Young — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:27:49 BST

Ebiwrite has now joined Deadline and Helipad on Helicoid ID, our single sign-on service.

About Helicoid ID

Helicoid ID allows you to maintain the same login details across all our apps. Changing your email address, name and password will be reflected across each application that supports it.

About Ebiwrite

Ebiwrite is a translator’s toolkit. It features user-created dictionaries and a friendly dual-pane editor.

Tiktrac Widget Update

Alex Young — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:07:47 BST

There’s a new Tiktrac Dashboard widget out. Download it here: tiktrac.com/widgets

I’ve also put the code in my GitHub account: alexyoung/tiktrac-widget—if you’re a developer check it out in Dashcode.

Deadline Keyboard Shortcuts

Alex Young — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:37:48 BST

Deadline now has keyboard shortcuts! I designed them a little bit like Gmail and Google Reader, so they should be familiar to most of you.

They need to be turned on to work:

Click Settings underneath the Deadline logo
Click the Appearance tab
Click the checkbox and press Apply

Here’s the page you should see with the option:

There’s a new panel in Help with all the shortcuts:

j/k move up and down the deadline list
y marks as done
Return selects the date field
Tab moves to the description field
Esc cancels editing

Helicoid ID

Alex Young — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:06:15 BST

Helicoid ID is our new account management mini app. Here are the basics:

Sign in with your Helipad/Deadline account details—this is your Helicoid ID
It shows you the Helicoid services that you currently use, and other available services
It allows you to change your personal details across supported applications
News and updates about apps will be displayed here
It currently only supports Helipad and Deadline
It will ease the transition of other services into our shared authentication system (Ebiwrite is next)
It will host centralised billing for future paid versions of Helipad, Deadline (as well as Tiktrac and Ebiwrite)
We’ll migrate the forum eventually as well

Here’s what it looks like:

Helipad Mac and Tiktrac Widget Updated

Alex Young — Tue, 1 Sep 2009 13:15:28 BST

Helipad Mac has been updated. This update makes it work better in Snow Leopard, and makes it sync when you press cmd-s. It’s a free download by the way!

Tiktrac’s Dashboard Widget has also been upgraded. This version fixes a few bugs:

When creating tasks, the checkbox state will be saved correctly
It now stops you from attempting to add multiple tasks in one go (this might be added in a future update though)
I’m still working on odd timer glitches

Support Helipad

Alex Young — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:13:09 BST

Helipad is our free notepad web app, which we’ve been running since 2006. It’s still going strong, and people keep discovering it every day. If you enjoy using Helipad, here are a few ways you can support it to ensure continued development:

Buy the iPhone Helipad app: a new version has been submitted to the App Store with iPhone OS 3.0 support which fixes a syncing glitch
Try Deadline which works with your Helipad login and has an iPhone app (submitted to the store this week)
Share Helipad with your friends and colleagues
Hang out with us and tell us what features you’d like to see in the future
Follow us on Twitter or join our Facebook page
Blog about Helipad! We have press resources with nice icons
Build stuff with the API
Try our other products, which are all listed on our company’s web site: helicoid.net

Using Deadline Everywhere

Alex Young — Fri, 15 May 2009 11:58:28 BST

The ways Deadline can be accessed has grown to ridiculous proportions. Here’s a summary of the apps, tools and hacks that work with it.

Mac Desktop

Deadline will work with your Mac’s desktop. For more details, read the initial blog announcement. Download Deadline for Mac here.

Mobile

Visit /mob to access Deadline’s cut-down mobile version: deadlineapp.com/mob

SMS

We’ve had strong feedback from the people on the closed SMS beta, so we’ll roll this out with payment plans soon. Contact us if you want to try it for free until that happens.

Email

Did you know you can email reminders to Deadline? Click Help, Email Input to get your customised email address. It’s handy to add this to your computer and phone address books so you can quickly email Deadline wherever you are.

Jabber/Gtalk

I’ve recently been working on making the Deadline Jabber/Gtalk bots respond faster, and they’re working better than ever now. You can add talk@deadlineapp.com or deadline@helicoid.net (for Google Hosted Gtalk) to your buddy lists to talk to Deadline. It’ll send you reminders and also let you schedule and search them.

Fluid

Deadline is designed to work with Fluid. For more information on using site-specific browsers with Deadline, visit deadlineapp.com/ssb

Mozilla Ubiquity

If you’re a fan of Ubiquity, check out our Deadline Ubiquity scripts. This allows you to schedule and search reminders from within Firefox.

API

Deadline also has an XML API so you can make your own applications with it. I’m currently building an iPhone app that uses it.

Deadline and Helipad Sign-In Glitch

Alex Young — Mon, 11 May 2009 08:50:40 BST

We had a glitch with our servers last night that meant people couldn’t sign-in to Deadline or Helipad. It was caused by an outage at our ISP. We have dedicated servers with them which remained accessible, but the ISP’s DNS was down so Helipad and Deadline couldn’t resolve the address of our authentication server.

Although the outage might be regrettable, they’ve been up consistently for 3 years (other than times when we’ve had to perform upgrades). Here’s their report on the issue: Network outage 1740-2100, Sunday 10th May

Deadline for Mac

Alex Young — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:15:58 BST

DeadlineGrowl is now available for Mac OS Leopard. It works with Deadline and shows growl notifications when a deadline is due.

Get it here: DeadlineGrowl.zip

Usage

Download and unzip DeadlineGrowl
Double click DeadlineGrowl to run it
Enter your email address and password
DeadlineGrowl will now download your deadlines every 20 minutes and show a growl notification when one is due

Requirements

Mac OS Leopard
An account on Deadline

Planned features

Start on login
System-wide hotkey for Add Deadline so you can quickly add one whenever you need to
Better date input