announcements basecamp bugtagger code Commissions ebiwrite fun helipad loom mobile multitap rails thoughts tiktrac tips
announcements basecamp bugtagger code Commissions ebiwrite fun helipad loom mobile multitap rails thoughts tiktrac tips
Helipad’s API has been updated to improve the way it handles tags. The changes are backwards compatible so old code should still work. Read more in the Helipad API guide
Incidentally, we recently received a few questions about Helipad in our support chat room.
There’s currently no change tracking. Ebiwrite, a similar product produced by us, includes this and we may port it to Helipad in the future.
If we do decide to implement change tracking in the future we’d add this, at the moment you’re probably better served by using the API.
We’re in our support chat room UK office hours (check the time in GMT). We sometimes hang out there after hours as well, so if you wait around you might find us. I’m there (the dev…
Helipad supports plugins and themes through add-ons. To view available add-ons, click the link at the top right of Helipad.
Installing an add-on adds a document to your account that contains the code for the add-on. This allows you to edit it, which is useful for customising themes.
Add-ons can be updated to a newer version if the author updates it by clicking on Settings and then Plugins. You can also remove add-ons here.
If you’d like to write an add-on, we’ve written some documentation on the process: Helipad add-on documentation.
Add-ons are simply an XML container that wraps JavaScript and CSS, so if you’ve got some basic web development experience you should be able to write an add-on.
Helipad is now faster, prettier and easier to use!
The old “edit” and “share” tabs have been replaced with the last few documents you edited. These buttons are at the bottom of the page.
The homepage has tweaked graphics to make it appear cleaner, and you can toggle the shared status of a document or view its shared URL.
This page is also much faster than it used to be.
Sharing a document is now faster: it opens a window rather than reloading the page. This also makes viewing the share link quicker.
You can now preview as you edit, by clicking the preview button at the bottom of the page. You don’t need to save to preview, it loads instantly (rather than leaving the edit page.)
What’s next? We’re currently working on a few minor Internet Explorer glitches, and still ploughing away at the Helipad Mac GUI client.
Kev (our sysadmin and morale officer) uses Helipad mobile in a unique way: he sets a tag’s page as his mobile browser’s homepage. This means he can quickly access documents suitable for his phone.
In his case he uses documents tagged with “gtd” so he can easily keep track of todo lists. I thought it might be useful to have an ”@mobile” tag for documents you generally want to see on the move.
We’re still working on the Helipad upgrade and Mac version, they’re almost ready! (Mac version needs serious testing to get synchronisation safe, upgrade needs more IE testing in Windows.)
Helipad has been receiving some serious development effort recently, with the following new features going through final testing:
These updates should go live within the next week.
Despite Helipad being a free application, I get a lot of pressure to work on it because all my friends use it! It currently has around 5,000 users, with several hundred using it every day. Not bad for something I developed by myself in a month!
I’m also still working on the Mac OS Helipad client that we announced last year. Because it’s a departure from Helicoid’s core focus (web applications), it’s taking longer to develop. I’m currently stuck trying to…
Note: This tip actually applies to all of our web applications, seeing as we carefully craft mobile interfaces for each of them.
Did you know your Tiktrac account has a mobile phone version? Just add /mob to your account’s URL. Even though it provides a limited view on your account, it allows you to post tasks wherever you are with a mobile phone.
This is great for anyone who leaves the office regularly, like tradesmen. We have a plumber friend who uses his phone to log time when he’s out on a job , which means his time sheets are more accurate: no more end of week panics trying to remember what he worked on.
Similarly, Helipad allows you to read your documents when you’re away from the computer. Just login with your phone at http://pad.helicoid.net/mob. This saved me a lot of time when I was setting up Helicoid, because I …
This tip applies to all of our applications. When you see a letter underlined in a link or form button, this means there is an available keyboard shortcut. This type of keyboard shortcut is called an “access key”.
Different browsers handle these keyboard shortcuts in different ways. In Safari (Mac OS), I press ctrl-letter. In Internet Explorer, I’d press alt-letter. Check your preferred browser’s manual to see how it handles access keys.
This screenshot is from Tiktrac:
To open up “Add a new task”, I’d press ctrl-a. The task save form also has an access key, so I can press ctrl-s to save.
Helipad has access keys on common operations, like new document and save document. You can even get straight into the handy search bar by pressing ctrl/alt-f:
If you use your applications regularly it’s worth…
You might have noticed Helipad was inaccessible today (around 7AM-1PM GMT.) Please accept our sincerest apologies for any problems caused by the outage. Helipad was actually alive and well, but the DNS server was down (the server that translates pad.helicoid.net to a real address.)
The downtime was completely my fault: I should have changed our DNS provider a long time ago, but work on Tiktrac and Ebiwrite took priority. We’ll move to our DNS services to a better provider soon, so you should continue to enjoy a high level of service for Helipad.
Helipad actually has a few updates in the works. We’ve experimented with Helipad and OpenID, and it’s working well.
Despite being so simple, Helipad is our most popular product. We all use it, and our friends do too! As always, please get in touch if you have any feature requests or stories about how you use it.
Helipad’s just been updated with some new sort features and a load of bug fixes for IE 7 and Opera 9.
You can now choose how to sort your documents by clicking a table column title. You can also use a drop-down menu, illustrated here:
Sorting was a commonly requested feature, so thanks to everyone who got in touch in with their ideas and suggestions through our contact form.
Here’s the full list of recent changes:
I’ve just finished updating Helipad with some recent changes. I’ve also released the to-do list plugin, which I’m still working on but is now in a somewhat usable state. It’s also a great example of what you can do with plugins.
Many of these changes came about through our bug reporting system, Bugtagger. So thanks for the bug reports!
To enable to plugin:
Now you’ll have a great dynamic to-do l…
Helipad now allows you to export your documents. You can export one big XML file, containing the text along with the tags and other information, or a zip file containing exported documents as text files.
Here’s an image that illustrates the process:
To use this feature, select ‘your account’ and look for ‘Export your documents’ at the bottom of the page.
You could use this to export your notes and work on them offline in your favourite text editor!
If you read our mobile weblog, you might have noticed me talking about the W3C’s Mobile Web Best Practices. I was thinking about Helipad while I was writing this, and since so many of you seem to love using Helipad’s mobile interface, I’ve updated it.
I’ve added a search as soon as you login, so you can quickly get to what you want. If the search matches one pad or title, it’ll bring that document up. If it finds more, you’ll see them in a list.
We’ve also spent some time improving usability and ironing out minor problems and inconsistencies. Incidentally, we go through all server logs regularly, so any bugs that aren’t reported still get picked up. This has enabled me to figure out some rare bugs a few of you were running into.
And here’s an anecdote for you: some clever fellows have figured out that you can actually create accounts on Bugtagger, even though we hav…
If you’ve read my previous posts on Helipad you’ll know it was created by me, to solve a particular need I had: the fusion between my personal notepad and the web.
It seems as if this was a relatively controversial thing to do: literally thousands of people are talking about Helipad. They’re comparing it to other services, pointing out the differences, wondering what people will do with the add-on system and other interesting discussions.
The upshot is, we’ve had almost 2000 signups in a week, which means Helipad is more popular than any other Helicoid application. And, many of the people who have signed up have provided feedback through our bug reporting system or by getting in touch with our contact form. Feedback is very important to us, so to all you who have emailed suggestions, ideas, bug reports and questions: thanks! We appreciate all your help. We endeavour to answer all your queries personally, even if it means …
Do you ever wish you could quickly write a note, to-do list, or organise a bunch of ideas on your computer… but access them anywhere? Do you find uploading documents to web sites annoying, and just want to write?
If so, you’ll love Helipad. This is our latest project, designed to be the perfect web-based companion to your tattered and beloved notepad.
Helipad is an online notepad. It has several features that make it unique:
Helipad lets you customise it to the extreme. It really is your own. You can radically change the interface, or add your own features.
I hate to be a tease, so I promise this is the last teaser screenshot of our new product:
The product is Helipad, and it was inspired by my love of these little things:
A hardy notepad can go everywhere with you, can you can customise it beyond belief. People come up with their own annotation and organisation systems, with complete freedom to change their mind at any time.
I’ve tried using a few web-based personal organisers systems over the last few years, but I always end up ditching my laptop and using the humble notepad. However, I constantly feel as if I need a digital cousin for my paper tools—something that would let me write notes, to-do lists and categorise them with my own tagging schemes.
Helipad lets me do all of this and more: I can view notes on my phone with the mobile version, download notes using the API to work offline—I can even integrate my existing software with it! It even lets me colour tags (obviously I set the “important” tag to red!), and g…
I’m still working hard on that pet project I mentioned a few days ago. Before I can unleash it, there’s a bit of work left to do on documentation and tidying things up. This project embodies a few concepts that we hope to add to other Helicoid products, which you can see illustrated in this screenshot:
That’s running straight off the development version, and gives you a few clues as to what we’re attempting to do. As I said in my last post, I’m actually using this day-to-day, and it’s pretty great! I can’t wait to release it to beta testers, and I’ll give you details on that through this weblog.
Meanwhile… This weekend could be the date Tiktrac finally gets a different type of view on the sheet page: I’ve been working on expanding it beyond monthly views. This is another step towards a production-ready version!
Take a look at this screenshot from a new application I’m building:
This is a pet project of mine, started two weeks ago. It combines some of the technology we implemented in Multitap and Ebiwrite to produce something pretty unique. And no, it’s not another to-do list app!
Like all our projects, it has an API, mobile support and an element of fun. Unlike our other projects, which are aimed at small businesses, this one is aimed squarely at you!
If you want to get in on my little secret, contact us. The software has left my London apartment and landed on our servers—I’ve been using it every day since I initially created it. There’s a few important things missing yet, however!
