October 2010
1 post
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Use MarkdownMail 2 To Post To Tumblr Or Posterous →
We just released MarkdownMail 2 this morning. In addition to making it a universal app and drafts support, we added the ability to email raw formatted Markdown posts within the app. Many Posterous and Tumblr users emailed us requesting this feature because both platforms allow emailing of Markdown formatted posts.
We’ve created a little walkthrough guide on the Second Gear site to get...
September 2010
1 post
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August 2010
3 posts
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Setting up Notational Velocity to sync with... →
Here’s an interesting use I didn’t think of. You can setup Elements to work with the popular notes app Notational Velocity. Really neat idea. I’m going to give it a whirl myself and see how it works out.
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Elements Now Available For iPhone, iPad and iPod...
Elements, our new iOS application, is now available on the App Store.
What is it? Elements is a plain text editor that uses the Dropbox cloud storage service to store your data. By storing your files on Dropbox, it makes it incredibly easy to have access to everything you store in Elements on your iPhone, iPad and even your Mac or Windows desktop.
Elements 1.0 has these great features:
...
Student Discounts For Today Now Available
Having just graduated from Purdue University in 2006 (Boiler up!), we remember how hard it was to scrounge up the cash to buy our favorite apps. Because of that, we want to help you out by offering a student discount on Today to any students currently enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program of study.
Today makes a great companion for college students. Each day you can see what classes...
July 2010
1 post
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Second Gear On Github
Open source is one of the great things about software development. Even if you are building commercial software like the products at Second Gear, it’s great to be able to share a piece of code you’ve developed with other developers to hopefully save them a bit of pain down the road. More often than not, that reciprocates back to you as a piece of code someone else has shared publicly...
April 2010
1 post
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January 2010
5 posts
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Second Gear's Latest Builds
Are you interested in being on the cutting edge of each release of Today and Check Off? Check out the new latest builds page, which will house the most recent in-house versions of both applications for you to test and try out.
Right now there is a fresh version of Check Off 4.1b1 that has some crash fixes and accessibility improvements in it.
Before you get your click on, a few words of...
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Indie+Relief Aftermath
A few days ago I mentioned that Second Gear was organizing a Mac & iPhone software charity drive called Indie+Relief.
In total, the Mac & iPhone community raised over $143,000 for Haitian relief charities. Thanks to everyone who bought either Today or Check Off on the 20th and to everyone else who came out in droves to buy software from all the other participating companies.
If...
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Indie+Relief
If you’ve been following the @secondgear Twitter account, or my personal one, you’ve probably seen reference to Indie+Relief, the charity event we’ve been organizing over the past few days with the help of our pal Garrett Murray.
Indie+Relief is a gathering over nearly 140 Mac & iPhone developers who have pledged to donate their sales for today, January 20 2010, to...
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Find Us On Facebook And Save On Today or Check...
Now that Today 2.0 is officially released, we are starting to get a few smaller projects that were put on the backburner out there. One of those is our new Facebook fan page. Everyone on earth (my grandmother included) is on Facebook, so we wanted to make it easier to interact with our customers.
We’ll be using the Facebook page to post product announcements, tips & tricks and...
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Today 2.0 Released!
Things have been relatively quiet around Second Gear HQ, but that is only because we have been hard at work on building the next great version of Today. After what seems like forever, Today 2.0 is now available!
Today 2.0 was our opportunity to wipe the slate clean and start from a blank canvas. We reimagined the user interface to be lighter, brighter and infinitely more usable. We also...
December 2009
1 post
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Looking Back On 2009
2009 was an interesting year at Second Gear HQ. We had several product releases and a few product acquisitions. Let’s look at some of the highlights.
Today was improved: Today saw several incremental updates that added support for printing, iCal-esque date sorting and more smaller tweaks.
Check Off 4 was released: We also shipped Check Off’s first major update in several years,...
October 2009
1 post
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BitBQ Acquires FitnessTrack & Emergency...
It’s with great excitement that I announce that BitBQ has acquired FitnessTrack and Emergency Information and will taking both applications to the next level. Curious about the what’s and why’s? Read on.
What’s Happening
BitBQ has acquired Second Gear’s stable of iPhone applications: FitnessTrack and Emergency Information.
Why are you selling the iPhone...
August 2009
1 post
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Check Off 4 Now Available
We are pleased to announce the release of something that has long been in the works: a major update to Check Off. Check Off is a quick to-do list that sits in your Mac’s menu bar. Simply click the check mark and your personal to-do list will drop down.
This release focuses on modernizing the the application going forward. Much like Apple is doing with Snow Leopard, we wanted to...
July 2009
1 post
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Use BusyCal with Today
The folks at BusyMac just released a public beta of BusyCal, their new iCal replacement that adds support for live weather forecasts, graphics, recurring todos and more. What’s great about BusyCal is that it is fully compatible with iCal still, and any event or task you create in the application will automatically sync back to iCal, and subsequently to Today.
If you’ve been...
June 2009
1 post
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Emergency Information 1.0 Now Available
FitnessTrack 1.1 is unfortunately still in review with Apple, but I am pleased to announce that a weekend project from a few weeks ago is now available in AppStore for just 99 cents: Emergency Information.
An In Case of Emergency (ICE) card is something everyone should be (but usually isn’t) carrying on them. It contains your emergency contact information, allergies and medications...
May 2009
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FitnessTrack 1.0 Now Available On AppStore!
I’m pleased to announce that my first iPhone application, FitnessTrack is now available on the AppStore.
FitnessTrack is designed to help you keep track of your progress at the gym. Whether you lift weights, run or just want to shed a few pounds, FitnessTrack is designed to replace your notebook or clipboard workout sheets.
The application was an idea I’ve wanted to pursue for...
April 2009
1 post
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Happy 1st Birthday Today!
It is hard to believe that it has already been a year since we announced the release of our flagship product, Today. Since that initial release, we have done 14 minor and point releases that have added the features you’ve requested.
I opened up Today 1.0 this morning just to reminisce and I can say I’m quite proud of how the little guy is growing up. There is some great stuff...
March 2009
1 post
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Get the forecast in Today with WeatherCal
Today is a great way to see what’s on your daily schedule of events and tasks, but with WeatherCal, a new utility from Bare Bones, it can also be an instant way to see what the forecast is.
WeatherCal creates a new calendar in iCal that has the daily forecast as an all day event in iCal and subsequently Today.
This is such an ingenious use of iCal that I can’t believe no one...
January 2009
1 post
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Mac Developer Network members can save 20% on...
As a software developer myself, I built Today to help me easily keep track of ship dates, outside meetings and my daily life. With that in mind, I’m happy to announce that all members of the Mac Developer Network can now receive 20% off of Today just for being a member. See the members area on the site for instructions on how to claim this discount.
If you are a Mac OS X or iPhone...
December 2008
1 post
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2008 Year In Review
As 2008 is drawing to a close, it is customary to reflect on the year that was. For Second Gear, I think 2008 will be marked as a year of transitions. There were many highs and a few lows, and overall I’d say that 2008 was a success. Some of the highlights included:
The transition from consulting to sales: At the beginning of 2008, we stopped accepting new clients to instead focus on...
November 2008
2 posts
1 tag
Porchlight Service Shutting Down
After much deliberation, we’ve decided to shut down Porchlight as of January 9, 2009. There are a variety of reasons for doing this, but it boils down to resources and focus. Running a Web service is a full-time gig and Porchlight never has really found an audience like we hoped. The shifting economy has caused us to make some hard decisions and shutting down this service is one of...
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Join the Second Gear Mailing List
It’s been a long time coming, but we have finally setup a mailing list to keep our customers and fans up to date on the latest happenings with our products. The list will be low volume and will focus on announcing new product releases, offering a few tips & tricks and offering a few discounts every now and then.
Just so you know, we will never sell your email address to any third...
September 2008
1 post
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Our Toolbox: TextExpander
One of the indispensable tools we use at Second Gear HQ is a utility application called TextExpander from our friends at SmileOnMyMac. TextExpander works by listening to your typing and expanding abbreviations you type in into longer-form snippets of text.
This really helps out for dealing with common support issues. For instance, I have a snippet with a link to a direct download of the latest...
August 2008
1 post
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Say Hello to the New Second Gear
Ever since we released Today a few months ago, I have wanted to take the time and give the Second Gear Web site a fresh coat of paint. The old site, while still good looking to me, had a focus on building custom software solutions for clients. We have not been accepting new clients in the past seven months, so it didn’t make much sense to highlight this former aspect of our...
July 2008
3 posts
1 tag
Our Toolbox: Coda
We spent some time this afternoon cleaning up some things on the Second Gear Web site, and I thought I could take some time to share how I keep the site up and running.
Many companies use content-management systems like Wordpress and ExpressionEngine to keep track of their content, but I’ve found that for the main Second Gear site managing everything using just PHP and Panic’s...
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Today Loves MobileMe
I’m sure many of you were also waiting in line today to grab your iPhone 3G. I picked one up this morning and am very pleased with the speed improvements of 3G network and (for the most part) the applications that are available on the AppStore.
The thing I am most excited about, however, is MobileMe. Apple’s .Mac replacement makes it incredibly easy to automatically push email,...
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Use Today with Google Calendar
Today was recently reviewed on Mac software site MacApper. As part of the review, we did a giveaway where the entry requirements was to suggest features you’d like to see in Today. By far the biggest request was the ability to use the application with Google Calendar.
This is actually already possible! Spanning Sync is an excellent utility that can automatically sync your Google...
June 2008
3 posts
1 tag
Use Today With OmniFocus
Today uses the same task storage engine as iCal, Apple Mail and any other application that takes advantage of a new framework in Mac OS X Leopard called CalendarStore. This makes it easy to integrate Today’s task functionality with your favorite GTD applications such as OmniFocus or Things.
I’ll show you how I’m using OmniFocus along with Today to have an outside view of my...
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WWDC Wrapup
Now that WWDC has wrapped up, we’re back at Second Gear HQ recovering from a long week of sessions on the iPhone, Leopard and the upcoming Snow Leopard. WWDC is a great way to get up to speed on new technologies, get help from Apple engineers on those lingering bugs and issue you run into and to just meet with fellow developers. I’m sure it is no surprise that there aren’t...
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Healthy WWDC
A lot of people have posted their tips on how to get the most out of WWDC over the week. The Knapsack offer great advice on how to get the most out of the conference itself. Joe Goh, on the other hand, offers some advice on how to survive the amenities and social aspects of WWDC. The Mac Developer Roundtable also recently did an episode which offered other tips for new WWDC attendees.
...
May 2008
7 posts
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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...
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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...
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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 writes:
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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...