Wateree Blog

Mann of the Week

2010-04-21T17:00:00Z

Syncman was one of Merlin Mann’s picks on MacBreak Weekly yesterday. For those (undoubtedly few) who don’t who Merlin is, let’s just say his “internet-famous” Inbox Zero concept revolutionized the way that I deal with email. It’s a constant struggle, but zero is always the goal.

I actually noticed when Merlin bought a license a few weeks ago. I wanted to thank him, or maybe blog or tweet about it, but I thought nah… that’s so cheesy. Well, to hell with that.

You’re famous. You like my software. That’s awesome!

Software developers are simple creatures. We’re old school craftsmen in an era of bits and bytes, and nothing gives us more pleasure than for our ‘work’ to be the object of consideration and praise.

This boost to my motivation comes with very good timing. I’m finally back into the development of the next major version of Syncman. If folks are still happy with the current version that hasn’t seen a significant update in more than a year, then I can’t wait to show them how much better it can be.

Winter Cleaning

2010-02-22T12:00:00Z

Wow, it’s been a while. But that doesn’t mean that nothing has been happening! Ok… not that much has been happening, but I have finally rolled out some changes that will hopefully help me to move a little faster in the future.

The website and blog have been given a much needed makeover. A bit more stylish, and a lot easier for me to update and maintain. I’ve dropped Wordpress in favor of a simple homebrew static site generator. No more Wordpress updates to fret over! The new blog doesn’t support comments, but I like to think of this as a feature. Not that there were bad comments before, I just don’t think the blog is an appropriate place for discussion.

I’ve also locked down the Google Group and removed any links to it. The group has been a thorn in my side for a while now, and I’m glad to see it go. Copious spam led to the necessity of moderation, which wasted my time and sometimes caused long delays before questions were answered. I now realize that Syncman is not a product that benefits from a community. It’s more “set and forget” software, with almost all questions better answered from a well tended FAQ and a direct link to personal email support. Hence the updated support page.

One last change was the adoption of FastSpring for processing payments. This is another change with the purpose of allowing me to spend more of my Wateree Time on developing Syncman instead of on maintenance and administration. Let’s see how it all goes… but I’m optimistic and excited!

ps: If this update to the blog has by chance caused turmoil in your feed reader I apologize. It should only be a one-time thing.

Syncman Promo at MacUpdate

2009-02-27T10:12:00Z

Hi all,

Quick note to let everyone know that Syncman is the MacUpdate Promo for the day. Today and today only get Syncman for more than 50% off ($5.95)!

So if you’ve been trying out Syncman, but the financial crisis has so far prohibited you from dropping the full €9.95, well… today is the day for you.

ps. A few comments there already about how this functionality is already available with Address Book. That was to be expected, but for first time visitors here’s what I wrote about it back when that feature was first released.

UPDATE:

Many thanks to all those that took part in the MacUpdate Promo yesterday. Special thanks to all those that gave great reviews in the comments. Feedback like that is what motivates development.

I’ve decided to let the promo continue (at a slightly lower discount of 30% off) for an undetermined amount of time, so if you missed the promo yesterday you’ll still have a few days to get Syncman at a great discount.

pps. There was a problem yesterday with license files for users with special characters in their names. The license should still work as expected, but might be terribly mangled. If you’d like a fixed license, just let me know.

Aaargh

2009-02-12T00:24:00Z

Also known as the “beating your head against the wall” sound. Turns out I left a doozy of a bug in the 1.2 release. When adding contacts to your Gmail account, Syncman would not add these contacts to the My Contacts group. This could cause strange problems, especially if you opted not to synchronize Suggested Contacts.

I’ve just released Syncman 1.2.1 (Syncman > Check for Updates) which will properly add any new contacts in Address Book to the My Contacts group in Gmail.

After updating, if Syncman still wants to delete a bunch of contacts from Address Book, the easiest solution is to empty the cache Syncman > Preferences > Advanced > Empty Cache and sync again. The downside to the ‘easy’ solution is that it leaves a bunch of duplicate contacts in your Suggested Contacts. The alternative solution, which doesn’t do this, is to manually move those contacts into My Contacts in Gmail.

I sincerely apologize for this lapse in quality control. If you’ve been bitten by this bug and need any assistance in getting your contact lists back in order, please don’t hesitate to contact us. And many thanks to Ross on the Syncman group for noticing and helping to track down this bug.

Thanks for the suggestion, but...

2009-02-10T21:36:00Z

Well, it sure is dusty in here! But I’m very pleased to rectify that by announcing that Syncman 1.2 has been released. Not a whole lot of new features here, but at least one that’s bound to make lots of people really happy.

Due to some recent changes with Gmail, Syncman finally has the ability to let you choose whether or not you want to synchronize Google’s “Suggested Contacts”. Having an Address Book littered with these suggested contacts has been a major point of annoyance for a lot of our users, and we are thrilled that this situation is finally fixed. Configuration is a simple checkbox in the Account panel:

A note for existing users… Syncman will default to continue syncing your suggested contacts. If you decide to disable syncing of suggested contacts, be prepared for Syncman to propose removing lots of contacts from your Address Book. Therefore, it’s a good idea to, before syncing with Syncman 1.2, go through your suggested contacts in Gmail, moving any you want to keep in your Address Book to “My Contacts”. If you’re confused or need help in any way, don’t hesitate to ask… I know how important your contacts are to you.

I hope that you’ll all be as happy with this new feature as I am. Update to Syncman 1.2 by clicking Syncman > Check for Updates… in the menubar. Oh, and a belated happy 2009 from Wateree Software!

Syncing on Schedule

2008-06-20T12:19:00Z

Hi everyone! I’ve just released Syncman 1.1 which adds the ‘long awaited’ feature of scheduled synchronization. This comes with ability to run Syncman in the menubar, complete with mini-Syncman to let you know when there are pending changes waiting for your confirmation. Or if you want to live on the edge, feel free to set Syncman up to synchronize automatically without any confirmation. Here’s a screenshot to whet your appetite…

As always, you can update by clicking ‘Check for Updates…’ from the application menu. And I’d love to talk with you about any feedback you might have in the Syncman Discussion Group. Hope everyone enjoys this new feature, and stay tuned… there’s more on the way!

Syncman Discussion Group

2008-06-05T15:28:00Z

Since I’ve released Syncman I’ve received some great feedback and suggestions for the future… as well as a few bug reports to solve.

Having people use and actually take the time to comment on your software is an incredibly gratifying feeling. However, sometimes I think of myself as a skipping record when replying to questions and comments. This, in combination with increasing requests for something of this nature, has led me to create the Syncman Discussion Group. You can also get to the Discussion Group from the newly created Support Page.

This is the place where users can ask questions, give feedback, suggest features, and maybe even help their fellow user. Not only should this enable users to get support quick-like, but it should also help me get a better feel for what the community as a whole regards as important issues and features.

Thanks for all your feedback, past and future!

New Competition

2008-05-29T12:10:00Z

Certain parts of the internets have been abuzz with news that OS X 10.5.3 adds Gmail sync to Address Book. Yes, it’s true… there’s a new gorilla in the room. However, I believe there are some very convincing reasons to use Syncman instead of this new competition:

For whatever reason, Apple requires that you have (and sync) an iPhone or iPod Touch to take advantage of the built-in Gmail syncing. Syncman of course makes no such requirements.
Syncman respects the effort you’ve put into maintaining your Address Book, and therefore gets your confirmation before making any changes that could potentially cause you a whole bunch of headache. I’ve read a few reports of disgruntled users unhappy with Apple’s offering.
Wateree Software is a small and agile company that can adjust quickly to our customers needs and desires. We already have a nice list of upcoming features for 1.1 based on user feedback.

So there you have it. Of course, I welcome any further suggestions on what will set us apart from the alternatives. Just drop me an email or leave a comment here. Competition will only make us better!

Hot off the press... Syncman 1.0.2

2008-05-16T14:24:00Z

I’ve just released version 1.0.2 of Syncman, which takes care of some more annoying but non-critical issues.

Fixed a bug that could cause Syncman to always want to update certain contacts on Gmail.
Automatically handle situations that could lead to errors like “Phone Number must not be empty”.
Syncman now tries harder to respect a contacts name structure (first, last, etc) in Address Book.

And here are the notes for version 1.0.1, just in case you missed it:

This is a highly recommended bugfix release. A few annoying issues were found after the launch of 1.0 and a few more popped up later (more on that below).

Fixed a bug that would cause completely unrelated contacts to be merged during the initial sync.

Give Company contacts a name on Gmail so they display properly in the list view.

Display more descriptive messages for certain errors.

Google recently changed some things (unannounced) which could cause Syncman to think that it needed to replace all of your Address Book contacts. This seems to have only affected Google Apps accounts, or possibly those who were recently updated to the new Gmail interface.

Regardless, this release should fix the problem, but of course if it doesn’t then please let me know.

Current issues with Google Apps

2008-05-14T13:23:00Z

I’ve gotten a few reports (and have verified myself) of a recent problem that’s coming up during synchronization. As far as I know, this only affects Google Apps accounts (not normal Gmail accounts), but of course would like to hear back if that’s not the case.

So it goes like this. You’ve synchronized before and everything is peachy. But all of a sudden Syncman wants to delete all of your Address Book contacts and add a whole new set. Syncman might look something like this…

From what I can tell, this seems to be the result of Google changing the ID format for Google Apps contacts. I’m working on a seamless fix and will try to get it out as soon as possible. If you absolutely can’t wait, a workaround is to empty the ‘Mapping Cache’ in Syncman’s preferences. This will cause Syncman to ‘recalculate’ the mappings between your Address Book and Gmail. This can work perfectly, but there’s also a chance that some duplicates are created.

I apologize for this inconvenience, and will update this post as things progress.

Update: I’ve just released version 1.0.1 which fixes this issue. You can update by clicking ‘Check for updates…’ from the ‘Syncman’ menu.