« | July 2006

Maybe it's the especially warm and beautiful weather or maybe it's the wine talking, but I have to dedicate some love to our customers — and customers-to-be of course. You're a great bunch, this I can tell in the short span we've “known” each other.

Like the next publisher, sales are absolutely always welcome, but the correspondence and comments we've received have been a joy to read and respond to. We made an early pledge to try and return all support inquiries within 48 hours, but most of you know that's been closer to under an hour lately. I can't say that will always be the case, but it's truly been great answering all the questions.

As I've mentioned before, we're not just here putting out software, we're full-service. Customer support is absolutely free, always. So don't be shy if you have a question you'd like answered. Even if we've heard it a hundred times before, we're more than glad to read your mail. Though we do keep a FAQ as well. ;)

This web site, our forum and of course communication directly from Twisted Melon staff are where you will get the most timely and accurate information about our software. There will be a lot of information posted out on the net and for whatever reason it may not always be correct. Checking with us will always get you the full scoop.

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I can still hear them now, "Dont run by the pool!" or "Be careful, you'll fall!" But I didn't listen. Did you? Childhood was all about doing things your own way. Or at least trying to until someone noticed enough to give you a smack-down. But those early years were fundamental in learning risk assessment, knowing how far you could push something before it breaks (or hurts).

As an adult I still do things my own way, but there are still enough cautious-Marys around telling you you're wrong. With the experience gained from childhood abandon you'd think life would be pretty smooth right? Yeah, right.

You set yourself up with a fairly aggressive schedule and pull long hours to get everything just right. You cross your "t's," dot your "i's" and give everything a good bit of spit and polish. Wow, that looks great! So now you gather up your widget, carefully under arm and run like the wind to deliver it.

Oh oh... You missed that crack in the sidewalk. Now you're flying through the air, widget somewhere above you and a second later you're lying on your face with pieces of broken widget pie all around you. "We told you so..." You can hear it echoing in your head.

So what's the moral of the story? Go fast, but don't rush. Push the limits, but don't snap. Build great software, but don't put incorrectly built or corrupt packages up for download.

The Mira download is fixed folks, sorry for the inconvenience last night.

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I should really be in bed, and probably would be if I hadn't remembered that I needed to make a post here about the new Mira release. It went live last night, shortly after 8pm, and includes updates to the issues mentioned earlier (more active profiles in trial mode, stuck CMD key and new uninstalltion).

Check the News Page for details on the release.

We could really use some help to get the word out. We've had some good links from a number of sites, but there's a huge number of people out there that still don't know about mira. We think it's the best upgrade you can add to a Mac with a remote and we want to make sure it continues to be, so keep your feedback coming and help spread the news.

One way you can let everyone know you use Mira is to add it to your profile over at iUseThis.com — it's a great new site for tracking the applications you use and sharing that information with others. It's also a great way to find out about new software from others with similar tastes.

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Bringing the changes I've previously mentioned in the blog and on the forum, mira version 1.1.5 will be making its debut shortly.

How shortly? Maybe later today in fact. Now let me get back to testing.

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How we all loved using the phrase "Are you new?" or "He's new" to co-workers and especially interns who'd already been on the job for half the year. But now it's seems like I've made one of those innocent oversights by forgetting to update/upgrade the defaults included with Mira 1.1

Specifically, we only pre-added Front Row to the Launch Menu (you can add more applications of your own of course). And we left the initial trial limits at three active application profiles. Still enough to do some testing, but what's the real issue you ask? Front Row isn't in the first three items in the profile list. That means it's not enabled by default. Oops!

So if anyone has noticed that Front Row exits as soon as they press any remote button, it's because you're in fact using the Global Profile. Front Row, like any application profile, needs to be enabled to use its own settings. For now, just turn on the check-box next to the Front Row profile in the Mira Buttons Tab. We will release a small update that will change the default active profiles, add more entries into the starter Launch Menu list as well as increase the number of active items you can use during the trial/evaluation period.

Hopefully we haven't scared you away from Mira with this really newbie oversight. Please give the update a spin when it's available.

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Or at least a black drop shadow (unless they aren't in style anymore). No matter how hard you try, some little issue will always slip through the cracks. That's true in life, let alone software development.

If you look to the right at our sidebar, there's a news item about Uninstalling mira. Some people didn't know how to do it and some others unfortunately couldn't get it to work. So the first issue is easy, you can ask us and we'll send you a nice reply, or you can click the Help button right in Mira for the answer or now you can also read the new FAQ entry.

The second part isn't as easy (for us). You don't want to know how many times Mira has been installed and uninstalled on the machines here in the office. It's even had its turn on currently unsupported machines just to make sure everything would run smoothly.

But the solution to the second problem (for now) is also to ask us and we can guide you through it, or check out the new FAQ entry for manually uninstalling. The short answer of course is to just delete the "mira.prefpane" from "/Library/PreferencePanes" and then restart the computer. In the FAQ we also detail every file Mira uses just so you know your system is 100% clean and the way it was before installing.

We're working to try and find out why the uninstall doesn't work for some people. So please, if you have uninstall issues, or any issues with the program for that matter, contact us. As I've said before, we're accountable to you, our customers. And that includes everyone still in the pre-sales phase — we'll convince you that buying from Twisted Melon is always money well spent.

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I've been busy. More than a little busy in fact. There was of course the update for mira, which I've already said seems to be "light" from a customer perspective but includes a lot of changes internally and then of course some of the other projects we're working on. Unfortunately I can't say anything about them (they're cool) nor when they'll be released (as soon as we can) - I can even say what platform they're for (the Mac of course). ;)

What's "busy" you ask? Getting up and starting to work just after 9am and stopping sometime after 2am. Every day. These long hours have left my mind a bit single-tracked for the past two weeks and far too analytically-oriented to get to any blog posts.

It's good to see Google finally updated its cached copies of the site and that links as well as other pages mentioning Mira have also started getting picked up. But most impressive was the response we received on digg.com. For that I'd like to send out a big...

Thank You!

Now just get ready to do it again when we update to the next version.

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I just (yesterday) returned from my first “vacation” in a long time. In quotes because I was away for only 5 days, two of which were part of the weekend, and one of which was a national holiday (Happy belated Canada Day - and Independence Day to those in the US). My PowerBook came along for the trip, but to everyone's surprise (mine included), I only cracked it open a couple of times to take down some notes and unload some photos.

Getting away from work for a few days was nice, though neither the body nor the mind got much rest. We did some lake-side lounging, a bit of reading, a lot of grilling and eating (and even more drinking), but also a lot of thinking. And what did I think about? Work of course.

A few days were spent at a friend's cottage, on a lake not too far from Kingston Ontario, and for two nights and three days we stayed in the small town of Gananoque at the excellent Sleepy Hollow B&B. Gananoque is also in Ontario, on the shores of the Saint Lawrence Seaway, at the egde of the “Thousand Islands” area. This short trip brought the first opportunity this season to get out on the water kayaking. Cottage lakes and rivers provide some scenic paddling, but spending an entire day in the Thousand Islands was definitely the highlight. When else (or where else?) can you cross back and forth over the Canadian-US border a couple of dozen times in one afternoon without looking at a blank horizon? My most important lesson from this trip: never again race (across and in front of) a ferry boat while paddling a kayak. No accidents and no injuries, just a bit too much energy/sweat expended (on the paddling, panic and swearing).

A clear mind doesn't stay that way for long, which for me is a good thing. The time away gave me the opportunity to figure out some of the things I have planning for a while now and even improve on some of those plans. Now that I'm back in the office it's time to get everything back in motion. A quick update/release of Mira will kick things off and should be up within two weeks, with two additional updates being scheduled for the weeks following. The first update is rather minor from a usability perspective, but I promise that the work being done will be well worth it and very evident in the following two updates.