Today 1.1.1: International Edition

We just released a maintenance update for Today, our daily event and task manager for Mac OS X Leopard. Today 1.1.1 fixes several little issues that user have reported with Spaces, hot key interaction and other small usability issues. We also decided to extend the Today trial period from 7 days to 10 days so you can get a few more days to see if Today is right for you.

Because we don't like new releases without something new, we're happy to announce that Today is now localized in French and German. Our thanks go to Ronald Leroux and Leif Singer for their French and German translations respectively.

We hope you enjoy the new release.

Create your own SSB for Porchlight

I wrote about our love of Fluid a few weeks ago, but it occurred that I should do some updates to Porchlight to make it work better in an SSB.

Now if you create a new SSB in Fluid and point it at your Porchlight account's URL, it will automatically pull in a 512x512 high resolution Porchlight icon to use as the application icon. Very nice!

Use Today to keep up with your conference schedule

In a few weeks, the most hardcore of the Apple faithful, the developers, will be descending upon San Francisco for this year's Worldwide Developers Conference. Apple recently released the full schedule of sessions that will be taking place during the session. Using a mix of Today and Adrian Kosmaczewski's WWDC iCal creator you can have a quick way to see what sessions you plan to be at each day.

Here's how.

1. Download the iPhone, Mac and IT calendars from Adrian's site and open them in iCal.
2. Edit them as necessary to only show the events you want to head to.
3. When WWDC week arrives, you can quickly pop open Today to see your schedule as you head from session to session. Couldn't be easier!

If you're going to be at WWDC, be sure to come up and say hello. I'll be the guy wearing the Second Gear t-shirt.

A Fresh Coat Of Paint On The Porchlight

While we're actively looking to find Porchlight, our hosted bug tracker, a new home, it doesn't mean we're going to set it out to pasture just to wilt away. With that in mind, I decided to spend my Saturday afternoon putting a fresh coat of paint on the homepage.

The last time we updated the look was in 2006, so it was looking a bit long in the tooth. Just for comparison here is the old and new version side-by-side.

Who knows. Maybe this look will trickle its way into the main Porchlight application? Let me know what you think!

Use Today? Tell Others On iusethis!

We're big fans of the Mac software site iusethis. iusethis takes the software update listing site idea to the next level by allowing users to mark each application they use in a Digg-like update.

Presently Today's iusethis number is pretty small, and certainly not indicative of the number of users that are actively using the application. If you're using Today, please consider going over to iusethis and adding our application to your profile.

I'd love to get the number of users above 75 by the end of the week. Let's do it!

We're Selling Porchlight!

We've decided to sell Porchlight, our hosted bug tracking solution we developed in 2006.

Porchlight is in the black and requires little maintenance, but as our company's direction shifts away from Web applications, it makes little sense to keep it in the stable to be neglected. Because of this, we want to let someone else grow it. We don’t want to be one of those developers that just closes up shop, so we'd like to sell it to a company or other small development who is interested in the Web application space.

I firmly believe that whoever purchased Porchlight could easily increase revenue tenfold by adding two features: attachments and basic collaboration features like messaging.

If you're interested, get in touch and we'll discuss.

Using Today In The Law Office

Today users around the world are starting to share how they are using the application to make their daily lives easier. Michael R. Grossman, a lawyer in Evanston, IL, is using Today as a way of managing his law practice. He writesL

For now I'll rely upon Today, a Mac desktop application that displays appointments and tasks on one convenient window, linked with iCal. And since I use iCal and other Mac applications within my practice management workflow, Today will become a regular and useful tool within my daily grind.

If you're using Today in a fun or unique way, let us know.

Macworld Gives Today 3.5/5 Stars

One of the best ways to help solidify a new application is to get a review published in one of the major Mac magazines. In the US, Macworld is on top of the heap. Because of this, you couldn't imagine the joy I experienced when I refreshed my RSS reader and saw that Macworld had published a review of Today 1.1 for their MacGems section.

Dan Frakes writing for Macworld:

On the Mac on which I use iCal, I find Today to be very useful for quickly viewing my commitments for the day... Since I don’t like to keep iCal open when I’m not actively using it, I’ve long wished Apple would offer an easy way to create new events and tasks without having to open iCal each time.

The article is only online presently, but I'm sure it will appear in a future edition of the magazine. If you haven't tried Today, hopefully Dan's review will entice you to give it a shot.

If you would like to review Today in your magazine, blog or podcast, be sure to contact us

Today 1.1 Screencast

As part of the release of Today 1.1, we decided to put together a short screencast that highlights the feature set of Today. If you've been hesitant to download Today because you're too busy, this 4 minute screencast should give you a complete overview of what our application is about.

Today 1.1: The Calendar Filtering Edition

I have a feeling a lot of new software is going to be coming out today. Why is that? The Apple Design Awards deadline is today!

Second Gear is no different. We have been working hard on an update to address some of the biggest customer requests we've received since we released version 1.0 last month. With that in mind, may I present Today 1.1!

Rumor has it people wanted to be able to filter out what calendars show up in Today. Who knew? As of Today 1.1, you can now show as many, or as few calendars as you so desire in Today thanks to our new calendar filtering support. Inside Today's preferences window you can select what calendars you want to appear in Today's event and task sections.

Today 1.1 also introduces some other small changes that people have been clamoring for. All-day events now show up as All Day rather than 12:00AM - 12:00PM. You can also set the location of where your events are going to take place. If you want to see everything that has changed, be sure to checkout the changelog.

Download Today 1.1 and give it a shot. We hope you enjoy the update.

Our Toolbox: Fluid

Periodically, I am going to use Downshift to highlight some of the third-party hardware and software used at Second Gear HQ. The Mac is chock full of excellent independent and small Mac developers. It's one of the most redeeming qualities of being a Mac user in my opinion.

During the development of Today, I became a big fan of site-specific browsers (SSBs) and this is completely thanks to Todd Ditchendorf's Fluid. Fluid allows you to create an dedicated Web browser for any Web site you happen to visit. We host our Subversion repositories at Beanstalk and use Porchlight to keep track of our bugs and milestones so having an SSB for each of these in my Dock is great. Being able to command-tab or invoke my bug repository via Quicksilver is awesome.

Fluid is a free download and requires Mac OS X Leopard. If you use Web applications like Gmail or Backpack extensively, it's definitely worth checking out.

Second Gear on Twitter

Twitter is definitely a favorite of the Mac community and Second Gear is no different. We did create the most popular Twitter client for the iPhone after all.

I've personally been using Twitter for almost two years to chirp about what I'm up to or thinking about, so it seemed obvious to create an official Second Gear account to discuss company-related stuff. Periodically I'll update the account with product updates, contests and maybe some coupon codes.

We also have a separate Twitter account for PocketTweets that we have been using to keep users up-to-date on updates to our favorite iPhone client. And just for fun, if you're interested in following me personally, you can too.

• Second Gear
• PocketTweets
• Justin