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ShareTool 2

I do all of my work from home, which is great of course... I see my kids more than most working dads, plus the commute is great! But one issue I’ve run into is that my kids hog all of the bandwidth when I’m working. Last week, when my new office was completed, I decided to rectify the situation and get a dedicated Internet line just for work. So the kids’ iMac runs off the Verizon DSL line, while my laptop and iDevices all connect to the new high-speed line from Wisprenn.

Everything has been great since I made this switch except for one small thing: I can’t access other machines on my network like I used to. I can’t share iTunes libraries, or remote into the iMac to help my four year old when he gets stuck on something.

Enter ShareTool 2.

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When I started noticing the split network idea was going south, I called up my buddy, Justin, for tech support. After a couple of hours discussing convoluted network and VPN options – and realizing I’d have to do some new network runs to make all of that work – I decided I don’t need remote access, shared iTunes libraries, shared folders, and remote printing all that bad.

Then I ran across ShareTool 2 from Yazsoft. The concept is really simple... almost too simple. Apparently Yazsoft doesn’t subscribe to the “if it’s too good to be true” philosophy. Simply run ShareTool on the any of the machines you want to connect and you’re done!

I made a few tweaks to fit my needs, but the defaults are all pretty universal. ShareTool can startup when you log in to your Mac and connect to any, or all, of the other shared machines automatically. If you prefer, you can also enable ShareTool to start as a “background daemon” (which is tech-speak for allowing the app to run even when you’re not logged in). Very handy.

ShareTool 2 is cheap too. A two seat license (the minimum you’ll need) is only $25, and each additional machine costs only $10. Yazsoft is also giving away a free license to Attachments Menu and Unblunder when you purchase ShareTool... so it’s an amazing deal.

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Inline Confirmation

My friend Jeret and I recently started a new company called Pixel Ark, and our first product, ChurchBulletin, started beta testing on October 1.

I’ll probably detail some more of the product here, but my favorite piece of the entire project (which consumed virtually every waking hour in September) is probably the inline archive/delete confirmation.

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This is a much cleaner confirmation dialog than the standard javascript alert box. Having the final delete button be offset from the initial click prevents accidental deletion from double-clicking.

Positioning the confirmation box in such a way that the popup fits perfectly between the arrow and the selection count took a little work, but really pulled it all together.

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Naturally Fresh

This app was a project for a great dressing, sauce, and dip company out of Georgia, Naturally Fresh. The free app has a recipe finder – highlighting all the things you can do with their products besides just put it on salads – which allows you to browse all of the recipes, or search by the type of meal you need to prepare. The app also shows off all of their different dressings, as well as offers a store locator.

This was my favorite screen to work on... the product fridge.

The free app launched today, and is available on the iTunes App Store.

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WhatKey Launches

Two weeks ago I teased the icon, and now today is the official launch day of WhatKey. Internally, we’ve been calling it CapSee’s Brother because it uses the same bezel notification that CapSee uses, but for a different purpose. WhatKey is designed to help you know what key Apple is telling you to hit with its keyboard shortcuts.

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I use Macs exclusively, and I still do not know which key to hit when an app says to hit the ⌥ key. We created WhatKey to help with this. Simply hold down one of the modifiers keys for a couple of seconds (control, option, command) and a bezel will display showing you which symbol matches that key.

WhatKey runs in the background and only appears when you hold a key for a while, so it’s not intrusive or annoying.

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Apple Portables

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Jot Icon

This is an icon for our latest product called Jot. We had the product about 90% complete and still had no name or icon when I woke up at 3 am with an idea for both. I’ve shared a couple final icon designs here before, but this time I thought I’d share the design process a bit more.

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When I had my early morning epiphany, I thought about my old typewriter which sits on the shelf in the hallway outside my bedroom (similar to the photo here). I thought to myself, this is perfect... we’ll use the look of the old typewriter and the name, “Jot”. I’ll have a sheet of paper come out of the typewriter with the word “Jot” typed on it. I wanted to design it right then, but I wasn’t sure Craig would go for my idea, so instead I lost a few hours sleep.

As soon as Craig woke up and approved the idea, I sketched it on a sheet of paper. Funny side note, my scanner was acting up so I had to use my digital camera to take a photo of the sketch instead!



From there I started making the pieces of the icon as shapes. These are the numerous shapes and layers on top of the sketch.



One thing that was difficult for me on this design, is that I am an exact pixel kind of guy. Typically I setup 1,000 grids. The grids line up to the rulers, and everything line up to the grids. On this particular piece, I decided to try to build it without any grids at all. It was a fun challenge to change my usual habits.

After the shapes were put into place, I had to make each piece look real. I can’t explain exactly how I did that, but here’s the finished product.

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Does the iPad Cost Too Much?

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