stevenwt2 writes this about Labor Mate in his feedback at the App Store, “Used it throughout a night of contractions and it worked flawlessly. No crashes, no problems, and it was easy to keep track of an average. If there was anything to update about the app, I would want the ‘Summary’ screen to be able to average based on a time period or number of contractions (average over last 5 contractions or over last hour, etc.) as an average over the entire night can be a little misleading. However, that is looking to the next version - good luck.”

Good news, stevenwt2. The average is already calculated based on the number of contractions.  In fact, the duration average shown on the summary screen is based on the last 3 contractions and the average frequency is based on the last 6 contractions.

Thanks for the great feedback and congratulations on the arrival of your new little one!!

wayneeglonbrown posted the comment “would be good to be able to delete one put in in error” in the App Store. This is not the first time someone has asked for this feature or asked the question “how to delete.”  Good news is this feature already exists. Labor Mate provides 2 ways to delete a recorded contraction.

One option is to use the swipe delete feature common to many iPhone applications. Simply slide your finger across the item and a Delete button will appear. Touch the Delete button and the contraction is removed.

The other option is to tap the contraction item. This takes you to a second screen. At the bottom of this screen is a Delete Contraction button. Touch this button to delete the individual contraction.

Recently dutchguru mentioned the limited, or “few”, software updates for Killink CSV Editor.  He is right.  There have been far too few updates recently and I have no one to blame but myself.  I started explaining the situation in my reply to dutchguru but decided a blog posting is also in order.

Why hasn’t there been any new updates to Killink CSV Editor in recent months?  And what of these new features I keep hearing about coming in Version 2.0?  The short answer is, I’ve been stuck on one problem, providing support for very large files.  This challenging problem has zapped all the time I have for working on Killink CSV Editor.  Hindsight now tells me I should have moved on but I didn’t and as a result I have been slow to push out new updates.

The longer answer not only includes the fact that I have been hung up on trying to solve this one problem but that I haven’t had as much time to work on Killink CSV Editor as I would like.  The reason for the lack of time includes a number of factors including adjusting to life as a new father.  But the number one factor is the need to make enough income to pay the bills, keep food on the table, keep a roof over the family’s head.  You know the story.  We’re all basically in the same boat.  It’s what responsible adults do.

Where does the time go?  After all I work for myself, right?  Yep, I do.  And as much as I love working solely on my own products each and every day, the sales number just are there…YET.  Product sales improve each year which means I get to spend more time working on my own software products.  But to help make sure bills are paid, food is on the table, etc, I must do custom software projects for other companies from time to time.  This is where a lot of my work time has been going in recent months, and until product sales improve to a point where I no longer need to do custom software work I have to balance my work time between White Peak Software products and custom software for other companies.

The good news is I’m on track to [hopeful] say bye-bye to custom software projects within the next 12 to 18 months.  When this happens I’ll be able to devote more time to my products, existing ones as well as new products I have brewing in my head.

That’s the longer answer.  Great!  So now what?  First starters I’m going to stop work on very large file support.  This one feature is probably needed by less than 5 percent of the current user base while other features such as Unicode support is needed by a much larger percentage of users.  With this one item off my plate I can once again return to adding new features to Killink CSV Editor in a quick, timely manner.  I cannot yet provide a time line for the next update but I can tell you progress will finally be made.

Now that I have decided to drop very large file support my next step will be to complete the re-write of Killink CSV Editor.  The re-write is needed to support Unicode and to make it easier to include new features and push out more frequent updates.  The good news is the re-write is almost complete.  It was near completion last fall when I got side tracked by the very large file support problem.  Once the re-write is done I will push out a new beta update as soon as I can.

I’m happy to announce Labor Mate 1.3 is finally in the iPhone App Store as of last night.  The review time took longer than the time needed to make the code changes, but that was partly my fault.  I introduced a bug that crashed the app.  Luckily the crashing version of the app was rejected by Apple so that release never made it to users’ iPhones and iPod touches.

This latest release adds two new features:

1. Swipe delete - Slide your finger across a contraction item and a delete button will appear. It’s fast, easy way to delete a contraction.
2. Easy-touch button - The entire timer area is now one big button.  Touch anywhere in the timer area to start and stop the timer.

If you are already a Labor Mate users then be sure to down this latest version free of charge. And if you are not then become a user.  Labor Mate only costs $0.99.  I also have a limited number of available version 1.3 promo codes for taking.

I received an email from Apple today saying that the recent submission of Labor Mate 1.3 has been rejected due to a crash. The crash apparently is happening during the launch. Now of course I went through extensive testing with the app prior to submitting it and my debug and release builds never crashed. That was until today.

This morning I installed the iPhone OS 3.0 SDK and tried running Labor Mate in the simulator.  I didn’t recompile it.  It was already installed from previous sessions. So guess what. It crashes on launch. How strange is that?  Coincidence? Me doesn’t think so.

Update: Definitely a coincidence. There is one particular scenarion that I failed to test, and sure enough the app is crashing in that scenarion. Apple’s review process saved me from an embarrassing moment.

Last week I flipped the switch on the White Peak Software website rolling out the new site design. If you are reading this in a RSS feed reader then pop over to whitepeaksoftware.com to check out the new website design. The new design was done by Michael and Jeff over at Ocupop, the same design company that designed the new Labor Mate app icon.  I highly recommend these guys.

The roll out of the new website did not go as smooth as I had hoped, but it did go well.  A lot of work was done behind the scenes so the roll out could potentially have had many more problems then it did.  The site was moved from Microsoft Windows server running IIS to a new Ubuntu (Linux) server running apache2.  This meant I needed to copy over a number of download files, pad files, xml version files, and so on.  It also meant I needed to map old URLs to new URLs so bookmarks, old links, and so on take the  visitor to the correct web page.  This caused at least 1 known hiccup for a customer who had just purchased a license for SMTP Diagnostics and was trying to download the latest version as I was rolling out the new website.

In addition to moving the site to the new server I migrated the website application from ASP.NET/C# to Python with web2py.  This is actually something I’m very excited about.  The original system was messy and adding new features to the application was not only a pain but time consuming as well.  Moving to Python and web2py allows me to reduce the amount of source code needed to run the website.  And going forward I will be able to add new content and features faster. For instance, I can finally incorporate a lost license key retrieval feature (coming soon) and I can build a better order management backend system needed to manage orders.  Good things for both you the customer and me.

The new look also meant a new look for the store front and blog sites.  The store front gave me trouble due to some limitation in the ecommerce provider’s template engine.  I’m not happy with the final results but at least the store front is functional.  And the typical site visitor will probably never notice the minor differences between the main site and the store front.

So as you can see a number of things were included in the roll out beyond just a new look.  The site was moved to a new server running a different operating system.  The code base was moved to a new programming language and platform.  And a new look was applied to the website, store front, and blog. [Note: I still need to update the support forums with the new look, but that's a topic for a different posting.]

Despite the number of things that had to happen, I felt the roll out for the new site went as well as can be expected. As I said I wish it had been a bit smoother but there could have been a lot more problems.  The lesson learned from the experience: Don’t try to do so much in a single roll out.

At long last Labor Mate 1.2 is in the App Store.  Only 6 weeks later then I originally hoped, but better late then never. Why did it take so long? Good question.

The version 1.2 release of Labor Mate took longer then expected because it is basically a re-write from the original. I probably should have labeled it version 2.0 but I decided against it because there are only a handful of new features.  The re-write was needed to give the app greater stability especially in low memory conditions.  The re-write will also make it easier for me to add new features going forward.

So what new features are included? Well, my favorite is the new contraction detail screen that allows users to enter notes about the contraction or delete the contraction from the log.  Adding notes will be handy for when you need to remember something about the particular contraction.  And yes, the notes are included in the email that is sent from Labor Mate.

Some users might notice the new app icon.  Jeff and Michael over at Ocupop did an outstanding job coming up with the new icon, which really captures the primary purpose of Labor Mate.  I highly recommend these guys if you are looking for a design company.

What’s next? I already have ideas for the next release of Labor Mate. The top priority is charting, or a graph representing a set of contractions over time. I have a couple of other ideas too but I’m keeping those to myself at the moment. I want to make sure they are doable before making any promises.

The next release of Labor Mate, the labor contraction stopwatch for the iPhone and iPod touch, is nearly complete. The new release will include a new icon, some changes to the user interface, and some new functionality including being able to delete an individual contraction and adding notes to a contraction. But more importantly are the number of improvements behind the scenes.

A number of memory leaks have been fixed, and areas such as scrolling have been improved. It’s fair to say that this release of Labor Mate is almost a complete re-write of the original. This is a good thing because it will enable me to add new features faster in the future.

To those of you whom I told the next release would be available two weeks ago, sorry for the delay and thanks for your patience.

Work on the new major release for Killink CSV Editor continues.  It is taking me much longer than expected but that seems common in the world of software development.  Having support for very large files, i.e., file size up to 4 GB, in version 2 is important to me and that is the reason for the delay.  The number one reported problem with version 1 is “out of memory” errors which is caused by working with large files.  My goal is to eliminate this error with version 2.

There is still no time framework for the release of version 2.  I want to say the first beta release will be ready soon but I have been saying that for a long time.

For those considering purchasing vesion 1 today but worried about being charged for upgrading to version 2, you do not need to worry.  Version 2 will be a free update for all licensed version 1 users.  This is my way of saying thank you to the customers who have supported Killink CSV Editor during its initial release.

Great news!  As of this morning, December 25, McAfee has resolved the mis-identification issue affecting Killink CSV Editor.  Customers effected by this problem should update McAfee with the latest virus protection update then re-install Killink CSV Editor.

The re-install of Killink CSV Editor is necessary since McAfee forcibly removed the program file killinkcsv.exe.  Optionally, you may be able to restore the program through the McAfee Security Center but I cannot guarantee this will work since individual configurations of McAfee may be different.

You can download the latest version of Killink CSV Editor from here.

Sorry for any inconvenience this problem may have caused.  Hopefully it will not happen again.