Happy New Year

We at HashBang Industries hope you and yours had a very Happy Holiday.

As we approach the end of the year it comes the time when we start making those New Year’s resolutions.
Whether your resolution is to become more organized, lose weight, spend more time with family & friends, or get out of debt, iDeskCal can help give your resolutions a better chance at reaching success.

To help you on your way to success we want to offer you 10% off of iDeskCal from now through January 1, 2010.

We hope you have a happy New Year.

Newsprint is officially in Beta!

We are very happy to announce the first Beta of Newsprint, a professional grade feed reader for the iPhone and iPod Touch!

Visit http://newsprintapp.com/ to request access to the beta or to subscribe to be notified when Newsprint is released.

We will release more information as we get closer to release.

BlazerDB’s iDeskCal Mini Video Review

BlazerDB has posted a Mini Video Review of iDeskCal.

You can check it out at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQJMJweyW9w

iDeskCal 2.4.1 has been Released

We are happy to announce the release of iDeskCal 2.4.1!

This is a maintenance release and it is recommended that all users upgrade to version 2.4.1.
It is of course also a free upgrade for all users.

The new version includes the ability to hide iDeskCal window via menu or keyboard shortcut, as well as bug fixes.

To see the full change log of version 2.4.1 please visit:

https://www.hashbangind.com/appcasts/iDeskCal.xml

Celebrate the Holidays with HashBang Industries

KidFlix is now available in the iTunes App Store!

After pending review for more than 8 months, we are happy to announce that KidFlix was officially approved for sale today!

KidFlix is for parents with small children, that allows the parent to upload a childrens video that they have on their computer and then allow their child to watch one of these videos with the ability to disable the normal overlay controls to stop accidental pausing/stopping/fast forwarding/etc, as well as allowing the parent to specify if the video should automatically repeat when it ends.

As a parent of a young child I know how valuable of a tool this program can be when you are at say a restaurant and your child starts getting bored.

You can access KidFlix directly by following the URL:
itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kidflix/id307595676?mt=8

One Finger Discount

MacHeist is giving away six free apps this week!

If all that software makes you hungry for even more, take advantage of the “OneFingerDiscount” coupon code, and get 20% off (that’s 1/5 free!).

SOME of the participants include:

• HashBang Industries
• Red Sweater Software
• Centrix.ca
• Calf Trail Software
• Watchmac

AND MANY MORE!

Check out One Finger Discount for a list of all of the participants and quick note about the type(s) of software each company specializes in.

Try them all, buy what you like! It’s almost a steal!

iDeskCal 2.2.1 has been Released

We are happy to announce the release of iDeskCal 2.2.1!

This is a maintenance release and it is highly recommended that all users upgrade to version 2.2.1.
It is of course also a free upgrade for all users.

This update addresses the slow down issue some users were seeing on Mac OS X 10.5.
As mentioned in a earlier blog post, this was do to the addition of 64-bit support in version 2.2 and a bug in Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5 Calendar code that caused calls to this Apple code to hang and eat up system resources.
We have addressed this issue by telling iDeskCal not to run in 64-bit mode on Mac OS X 10.5, as well as by submitting a bug report to Apple.

This update also addresses some issues with the upcoming change from Daylight Savings Time/Summer Time, that caused some events to show duplicated on the wrong date.

To see the full change log of version 2.2.1 please visit:
https://www.hashbangind.com/appcasts/iDeskCal.xml

iDeskCal 2.2 Slowdown for Some Users – Explained

This is an update to the previous blog post Some users seeing computer slow downs with iDeskCal 2.2

Thanks to some of our users we were able to duplicate this issue, which allowed us to track down the problem.

Unfortunately the issue is not with iDeskCal, but a bug in Apple’s Calendar accessing code in Mac OS 10.5.8.
We have gone as far as to creating a test application to prove this fact, which we will be sharing with Apple.

The problem is that now that Snow Leopard (10.6) has been released we don’t know how fast Apple will be at fixing this issue, if at all.

You can bypass the problem by telling iDeskCal to launch in 32-bit mode, as explained in the previous post.
We will also be releasing an update with some code to specifically tell iDeskCal not to even try and run in 32-bit mode in 10.5, which will make it so you wont have to worry about dealing with the setting yourself.

We highly recommend updating to Snow Leopard (10.6) if you are on an Intel Mac.
You can upgrade to Snow Leopard for $29, and can buy a copy from Apple, your local Apple store, Amazon, and many other places.
Buy Snow Leopard from Apple.com

We highly apologize for the issues and inconvenience that this has caused.

iDeskCal in the October 09 issue of Macworld magazine

We received an email earlier this month from Macworld, letting us know that iDeskCal had received coverage in the October 2009 issue.

When our company copy showed up we were even happier to find that it was mentioned not only once, but twice in the same months magazine!

The first was what we were expecting, a review of iDeskCal.

(click image for full size version)

The second mention was smaller, but still nice…
It was in a section they did this month called “Budget Mac”.
The idea was for three Mac users to build their ultimate setup for $300.
iDeskCal showed up in the “Student’s” setup.

We took the liberty to create a little collage of the main items.
For the full text please pick up a copy of the magazine.

(click image for full size version)