Maelstrom on Intel Macs!

Ok, this post isn't particularly about our products....but it *is* about running a small software shop. See, sometimes you have a bug you just can't figure out or a feature you just can't seem to get started on.

At those times, it's important to divert your focus onto doing something else, and let your subconcious chew on the problem a bit.

I use that as my rationalization when I fire up Maelstrom, the old Mac OS 9 game from Ambrosia Software. A couple of years ago they released it under GPL, and someone ported it over to OS X.

And now, thanks to the kung-fu masters over at Apple, I'm happy to report that the port runs great under Rosetta emulation on the new Intel macs! No need to lose one of my favorite time wasters creativity enhancers just because of a little thing like a processor switch!

So, go download it and start blasting some asteroids (you might spare the poor aliens who occasionally come along in the game, you know, in honor of your Martian friends and all).

Syncing folders on the same machine

A couple of people have asked if they can use SlingShot to Publish and Subscribe two folders on the same machine. The short answer is, "Yes!"

While it's true that the user interface on SlingShot is optimized for Publishing a folder and then Subscribing from another machine, there's no reason that you can't use it to keep two folders synchronized on the same machine.

Just Publish the folder as you would normally. Then, click the 'Subscribe' button and select the folder you just Published. Choose another local folder (maybe it's on your external firewire disk that you use for backups) for the Subscription, and then set how often to make the sync happen.

I'm going to be updating our home page and product FAQ over the next couple of days to make this feature more obvious...thanks again to the folks who wrote in to ask about it!

Today is a good day

You may have heard that Apple, in their (sometimes) infinite goodness, has offered to let developers trade in their "Developer Transition Kit" machines for brand new 17" Intel-based iMacs.


Guess what the FedEx man brought to my door this morning?


Is it fast? Whoa, nelly, it's fast.


I'm loading the Apple Developer Tools onto it now to see how it performs at my normal daily tasks (you know, taking my source code and telling me all the ways I wrote it wrong).

Running a Small Software Biz

I've had a couple of friends ask if running your own company is as "glamorous" as they've heard. It certainly can be fun, especially when you hear from customers that your software is "Awesome!" and "Saved my bacon when my hard drive died". I don't know how Edison felt when he first saw them putting up streetlights successfully in his town (and not that I'm Edison or anything), but I have a small inkling of how gratifying it can be to see people use something you crafted.

It can be a little annoying to deal with accounting, legal issues, and basically all the little things that go into running a business. But all in all, yeah, it's pretty amazing to work on a little team that builds awesome products that people seem to genuinely like. I wouldn't trade this job for anything else in the whole world.

SlingShot version 1.03

We've posted SlingShot 1.03 for download on our site this evening. It corrects several bugs that were reported by our customers, including situations in which filenames containing spaces would be processed incorrectly, and a bug with the handling of subscribers contributing updates.

If you have SlingShot running on your machine, it will check some time over the next 24hrs to see if there's a new version, and will prompt you at that time to download 1.03. Alternately, you can download it manually from our web site.

SlingShot and your Mac Firewall

A number of the support questions we're getting have to do with how SlingShot interacts with the Mac OS X firewall.

In order for Subscribers to connect over the network to the Publisher, they have to be able to get through the firewall. This means if you've got your firewall enabled (there's some kind of 'shields up' joke in there somewhere), you'll need to configure it on the Publisher to allow connections to SlingShot.

We've got detailed instructions (only 3 steps!) on our Support Page (under 'Networking Questions' click on 'What about Mac OS X's firewall?').

(If you're the kind of Mac user who eats firewall rules for breakfast, open TCP port 51114 for inbound connections on the Publisher machine and you should be all set).

What happened to the NetDrive?

Several people have written in to ask about a product called the "Martian NetDrive" that was on the market about 2.5 years ago. So we thought we'd post about it so everyone could have the scoop.

The NetDrive was a wireless hard drive — basically a small (and silent) fileserver that you could put on your wireless network at home and then access from your PC or Mac. The box itself ran Linux, and a bunch of people used their NetDrives as the basis for some pretty cool hacking projects.

While we can't go into all the specifics, if you're interested in such a device, we highly recommend the Buffalo TeraStation, which is a small home server. There is also the Kuro Box for more do-it-yourself types (you need to add a hard drive of your own and install Linux on that one). The Mirra is another nice home fileserver device, now offerred by Seagate.

As for us, we're sticking to software for now, which is at least lighter (no more backaches from lifting boxes for the FedEx guy).

Wow, such an awesome reception

When you launch a product, you're never quite sure what the market will say. You can do as much testing and talking to people about the product ahead of time as you want, but ultimately it's up to real folks -- customers -- to take a look and tell you what they think.

When we launched yesterday we had no idea what might happen, so, all we can say is, thanks for the warm reception for SlingShot! (Imagine a couple of Martians running around a small office being extremely giddy today :)

The Martians Have Landed!

Yes, it's true, the Martians have landed, and we come in peace. If you saw that horrible slanderous movie "Mars Attacks", you might have some preconceived notions about us....but we're not menacing, grunting, or green.

On the other hand, we are awesome programmers, and if you use our platform of choice (the Mac) we hope you'll check us out. On our blog here we'll keep you up to date on what it's like to build excellent software, start a little software business, and maybe even a hint or two about some upcoming products and features.