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Macworld Expo Wrap-up
Last week was a whirlwind week for Terrence and Dan. Our first time exhibiting at Macworld, the four days went by in a blur. We spoke to several hundred people, gave out nifty postcard flyers for Sandvox, gave countless demonstrations, and (only occasionally) got a chance to check out the rest of the show floor.
Whenever we met current Sandvox users, we'd ask if we could take their picture—along with their website— for our "rogues gallery." Here are some of our proud Sandvox-using visitors:
John Budacovich, a Mac consultant, posed with his website, Solutions-Mac LLC.
Videographer Charles Dill of Neptune Beach Media.
Mac Developer Scott Gruby with his website for ReceiptWallet. Nice to see other Mac indie companies using Sandvox for their websites!
Fabrice Herrain of BusinesSense, showing his customized variation of our "Rounded Blue" design.
Mike Matthews with his Pac10 Compliance Corner website.
David Morgenstern of "The Apple Core" with one of his several Sandvox-created websites, Congregation Beth Israel-Judea.
Loren Naiman with his website (created using one of the BlueBall Design add-ons), LA-ADDA: Association of Deputy District Attorneys.
Mario Panighetti with his personal site, hosted at mac.com.
Mac Developer Raphael Sebbe of Creaceed shows off his website with a customized design.
Report from Macworld Expo
Macworld Expo is halfway over as of this writing. The halls have been swarming with the Mac elite, and Karelia Software is happy to be a part of it!
Our booth is adjacent to the big Apple pavilion where the curious crowd around floating Macbook Airs and tables with strapped-down iPhones. We’re in a wonderful location—a “village” of indie Mac developers.
Most of the time we spend here is in demonstrating Sandvox to prospective users, but our favorite thing to do is to meet current Sandvox users! So if you are at Macworld this week, be sure to come by and say “hi” at booth S-1338 — we might even take your picture with your website for our “rogue’s gallery” of Sandvox users.
Also, if you see this guy wandering around the halls, be sure to take his picture; maybe he’ll take yours!
Sandvox 1.2.6 is released
In time for us to show off at Macworld Expo next week, we've just made Sandvox 1.2.6 available for download.
This is primarily a Leopard-compatibility and Google tools update. If you were having problems with the keychain not finding your password during publishing, this should fix it. We've also updated our Google features to track the latest standards. If you use Google Analytics or Google Sitemaps, you'll want to grab 1.2.6 to stay up to date.
One important note about this version is that it now requires Mac OS 10.4.11 or higher. We needed to make some changes to the way Sandvox launches in order to make it compatible with the new Leopard firewall. Fortunately, the updates in 10.4.11 make this possible. As added benefit, 10.4.11 and Leopard share the Safari 3 WebKit which means that Sandvox no longer needs to bundle its own custom WebKit. The Sandvox download is now 15% smaller!
Almost all of our users have upgraded to Leopard or updated to Tiger 10.4.11, so we hope this change comes as a welcome surprise. If you're not running a compatible version of Mac OS X and can't or don't want to update, please continue to use 1.2.5.
See you at Macworld!
Come Visit Karelia at Macworld Expo, Booth S-1338
We will be at Macworld Expo next week, at booth S-1338, along with other Apple Design Award winners, just behind the big Apple pavilion in South Hall.
We love meeting Sandvox users, so we do hope you'll come by and say hello to Terrence, Dan, and Netan. You can take a sneaky peek at a few features of our upcoming version. And if you want to show off your Sandvox-created website, we'll be ready to take your picture!
(If you haven't gotten a ticket yet, get it here; this link gets you an exhibit hall ticket for $10 or 15% off selected conference programs.)
Lemur Saving Season
Happy New Year! The end of the year, whether it's because it's a time to reflect on the state of the world, or just tax purposes, is a traditional time for making donations to charitable causes. Here is a story about one that we thought we would pass along.
Mike Lee, programmer at Delicious Monster, recently issued a challenge to the Mac developer community to donate to the Madagascar Fauna Group, an organization working to conserve Madagascar's lemurs and other spectacular wildlife. He started up Club Thievey, an appeal to donate with an interesting twist: Mike will send you a plush lemur just like his if you make a donation of $100 or $10/month. (Naturally, we signed up — when the "world's toughest programmer" issues a challenge, we are quick to respond!)
This challenge may have been targeted to Mac developers, but Mike states that Mac usage and programming experience are not actual requirements. So we thought we mention this to the readers of this weblog. Make your donation by Midnight tonight for a coveted spot in the Founding Troop. We're not sure what that means exactly, but it sounds like a good idea!