Helipad iPhone version 1.6 has been submitted to the App Store. This version includes the following new features and fixes:

• Add a new document to a folder
• Share editor now appears properly from within folders
• You can now delete folders: either just delete the folder or all the associated documents
• Rename folders when viewing the documents in a folder
• The full document list no longer includes documents that have been placed within a folder

Continue reading → | helipad, iphone

Helipad Mac has a new update out, which includes a tag cloud, drag and drop for folders, and a line height adjustment option in the Appearance preferences.

Full List of Changes

• Drag and drop documents into different folders
• Option in Appearance Preferences for drag and drop: set it to copy or move a document between folders
• Folders window shows currently selected document name
• Appearance preferences now has line height
• Added tag cloud (go to the View menu, then select Show Tag Cloud)

Continue reading → | helipad, mac

Helipad Mac now has folders and full screen support.

To edit folders, select a document then press the Folders button. Add a folder, double-click it to rename, them click the checkbox to add the document to the folder.

Folders can be renamed and deleted.

Full screen view is available in the Window menu or by pressing cmd-shift-F. Press cmd-shift-F to exit full screen.

Continue reading → | helipad, mac

Helipad Mac has been updated. This version makes the following changes:

• Added automatic app updates
• Documents can now be sorted by the last edited date (go to Preferences, Appearance to change the sort setting)
• Fixed a bug where pressing Undo moved the scrollbar

Download

Continue reading → | mac, helipad

I’ve been working on improving the Deadline Jabber bot. We had some architectural problems with it that needed fixing, but it’s been solid for a few weeks now so I though it was time for an update.

Editing Deadlines

Jabber now supports deadline editing:

• set due id my due date—set the due date for a deadline
• set description id my description—set the description

For example:

set due 39147 next week
set due 39147 19:30
set description 39147 defeat Zod

Time Zones

You can now set and view your time zone. This is really handy if you go on holiday and only have access to the Jabber interface. It works like this:

• time—view your time and zone
• set zone city—set the time zone to the “city”

At the moment there’s no way to view or search the cities we support—it uses the same list as appears on the settings page on the web site.

For example:

set zone London
set zone Paris

Continue reading → | deadline, jabber

Ebiwrite has now joined Deadline and Helipad on Helicoid ID, our single sign-on service.

About Helicoid ID

Helicoid ID allows you to maintain the same login details across all our apps. Changing your email address, name and password will be reflected across each application that supports it.

About Ebiwrite

Ebiwrite is a translator’s toolkit. It features user-created dictionaries and a friendly dual-pane editor.

Continue reading → | ebiwrite, helicoidid

There’s a new Tiktrac Dashboard widget out. Download it here: tiktrac.com/widgets

I’ve also put the code in my GitHub account: alexyoung/tiktrac-widget—if you’re a developer check it out in Dashcode.

Continue reading → | tiktrac, widgets

Deadline now has keyboard shortcuts! I designed them a little bit like Gmail and Google Reader, so they should be familiar to most of you.

They need to be turned on to work:

1. Click Settings underneath the Deadline logo
2. Click the Appearance tab
3. Click the checkbox and press Apply

Here’s the page you should see with the option:

There’s a new panel in Help with all the shortcuts:

1. j/k move up and down the deadline list
2. y marks as done
3. Return selects the date field
4. Tab moves to the description field
5. Esc cancels editing

Continue reading → | deadline | 2 comments

Helicoid ID is our new account management mini app. Here are the basics:

• Sign in with your Helipad/Deadline account details—this is your Helicoid ID
• It shows you the Helicoid services that you currently use, and other available services
• It allows you to change your personal details across supported applications
• News and updates about apps will be displayed here
• It currently only supports Helipad and Deadline
• It will ease the transition of other services into our shared authentication system (Ebiwrite is next)
• It will host centralised billing for future paid versions of Helipad, Deadline (as well as Tiktrac and Ebiwrite)
• We’ll migrate the forum eventually as well

Here’s what it looks like:

Continue reading → | announcements, helicoid_id

Helipad Mac has been updated. This update makes it work better in Snow Leopard, and makes it sync when you press cmd-s. It’s a free download by the way!

Tiktrac’s Dashboard Widget has also been upgraded. This version fixes a few bugs:

• When creating tasks, the checkbox state will be saved correctly
• It now stops you from attempting to add multiple tasks in one go (this might be added in a future update though)
• I’m still working on odd timer glitches

Continue reading → | helipad, tiktrac

Helipad is our free notepad web app, which we’ve been running since 2006. It’s still going strong, and people keep discovering it every day. If you enjoy using Helipad, here are a few ways you can support it to ensure continued development:

• Buy the iPhone Helipad app: a new version has been submitted to the App Store with iPhone OS 3.0 support which fixes a syncing glitch
• Try Deadline which works with your Helipad login and has an iPhone app (submitted to the store this week)
• Share Helipad with your friends and colleagues
• Hang out with us and tell us what features you’d like to see in the future
• Follow us on Twitter or join our Facebook page
• Blog about Helipad! We have press resources with nice icons
• Bui…

Continue reading → | helipad

The ways Deadline can be accessed has grown to ridiculous proportions. Here’s a summary of the apps, tools and hacks that work with it.

Mac Desktop

Deadline will work with your Mac’s desktop. For more details, read the initial blog announcement. Download Deadline for Mac here.

Mobile

Visit /mob to access Deadline’s cut-down mobile version: deadlineapp.com/mob

SMS

We’ve had strong feedback from the people on the closed SMS beta, so we’ll roll this out with payment plans soon. Contact us if you want to try it for free until that happens.

Email

Did you know you can email reminders to Deadline? Click Help, Email Input to get your customised email address. It’s handy to add this to your computer and phone address books so you …

Continue reading → | deadline, tips

We had a glitch with our servers last night that meant people couldn’t sign-in to Deadline or Helipad. It was caused by an outage at our ISP. We have dedicated servers with them which remained accessible, but the ISP’s DNS was down so Helipad and Deadline couldn’t resolve the address of our authentication server.

Although the outage might be regrettable, they’ve been up consistently for 3 years (other than times when we’ve had to perform upgrades). Here’s their report on the issue: Network outage 1740-2100, Sunday 10th May

Continue reading → | deadline, helipad

DeadlineGrowl is now available for Mac OS Leopard. It works with Deadline and shows growl notifications when a deadline is due.

Get it here: DeadlineGrowl.zip

Usage

1. Download and unzip DeadlineGrowl
2. Double click DeadlineGrowl to run it
3. Enter your email address and password
4. DeadlineGrowl will now download your deadlines every 20 minutes and show a growl notification when one is due

Requirements

• Mac OS Leopard
• An account on Deadline

Planned features

• Start on login
• System-wide hotkey for Add Deadline so you can quickly add one whenever you need to
• Better date input

Continue reading → | deadline, mac

Deadline now has a notification API (and it works with GitHub). Notifications are similar to reminders, except they’re sent out in real time. Since adding notifications is so simple, you could hook up all kinds of software to Deadline to get alerts. Plus, you’ll already have configured Deadline with your preferred means of receiving reminders: email, SMS, Jabber, etc, which means you’ll get real time notifications the same way.

Notification API

Accessing the API is simple: a URL is requested with a notification description, and it will be sent out straight away by your preferred reminder methods.

Here’s how it works:

1. Go to Settings, Feeds/iCal
2. Copy the Notification URL. This URL contains your secret code (which is like a password) and your user ID
3. Use the URL to send a notification

Example:

curl “http://deadlineapp.com/notifications/1/93jd81/create.xml/Alert,
> %20web%20server%201%20is%20down”

Continue reading → | deadline, github

The Helipad Mac beta has been extended. Download it here: Helipad Mac.

This will run until August. We’re working on adding Sparkle for automatic updates so upgrading will be easier soon.

Continue reading → | helipad, mac, beta

Tiktrac’s times are now internally stored in seconds. This means the timer is much more intuitive. We also took this opportunity to make the timer look more like a clock:

The task entry form now displays the end date when you set the task as completed, which saves a few seconds when inputting lots of tasks.

We’ve also made the currently selected sheet clearer in the right-hand navigation.

There’s also a new manage screen which allows you to add or configure clients and sheets—administrators will see a Manage tab at the top of each page. I decided to add this page because we want to remove the right-hand sheet navigation to replace it with something that uses less space in the future.

The seconds upgrade was actually a difficult thing to do, but it’s resulted in cleaner code internally. That frees us up to implement new features soon (upgraded dashboard, navigation and invoicing).

Continue reading → | tiktrac, upgrades

Deadline now works with relative time:

• Visit estate agent in 3 hours
• Deploy Deadline upgrade in 2 days
• Plan wedding next month

This update includes bug fixes, especially relating to Deadline’s recognition of ranges of time for repeating dates.

I’ve also been working on making Deadline’s email interface more user-friendly. It’s not quite ready yet, but it’s almost there.

Remember you can find us on Twitter as well as this blog: twitter.com/helicoid

Continue reading → | deadline | 3 comments

We rolled out a few minor changes to Helipad this week:

• Tags on the dashboard page can be hidden
• The space usage indicator has been removed
• Helipad can now be reached at helipadapp.com

We decided to drop the space limitation because we’re now selling Helipad iPhone.

Other news

Remember we also publish technical articles on insider.helicoid.net:

• Read about the awesome Helipad ruby gem
• Add ShareThis buttons to your Tumblr account
• Get Exception logging in Loom

We’ve also started Quite Useful, a blog about useful tech-related tip…

Continue reading → | helipad

Our new Tiktrac widget is out: get it on the Tiktrac widget page. This is an entirely new version that adds:

• Timers to every task
• Description editing (click a description to edit it)
• Delete tasks
• Error messages

This version was created by Thomas Loudon with support from Alex at Helicoid.

Continue reading → | tiktrac, widgets