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.

Tumblr can be extended heavily by editing the templates and by adding services through JavaScript. I just wrote this ShareThis JavaScript that will automatically add ShareThis buttons to your Tumblr posts. This will:

• Add Digg/Delicious/etc buttons in a menu so people can easily Digg your articles
• Add the correct link and title to pages on your Tumblr index page, as well as on the article pages themselves

Here’s the code:

To use it follow these steps:

• Sign up to ShareThis
• Create JavaScript for “Other Blog” (ShareThis JS)
• Login to Tumblr, and go to Customize, Theme
• Get my JavaScript: tumblr_sharethis.js
• Replace the first script line with your ShareThis JavaScript (ShareThis JS)
• Paste your edited tumblr_sharethis.js into the header of your Tumblr Template
• Change the template where it says {Block:regular} to include <div class=“ShareThis”></div> after {Body}

I’ve been quite explicit with these instructions but it’s actually very easy to do. Just remember that you need to edit my JavaScript with your ShareThis code, because ShareThis uses your publisher ID for its API.

You can see this JavaScript in use on QuiteUseful.

Our server hosting company are performing maintenance next week. They’re moving our servers, which means they’ll definitely be offline for a few minutes. Here’s the information they sent us:

Date of Work: 17th – 18th February 2009
Maintenance Window: 19:00 through 04:00
Outage per Host: Up to two hours, likely 30 minutes

We apologise for any inconvenience this might cause, and we will backup your data externally to ensure it’s safe. This is the first outage we’ve had from Bytemark Hosting for 3 years, the last (30 second) outage we had was where we prepared for this downtime.

The Helipad iPhone app is out now: App Store link

It’s available for £2.99 — and of course the web app is still free to use with no advertising. Helipad iPhone syncs your notes to your iPhone so you can access them offline. Create, delete and edit notes straight from the iPhone.

After speaking to our first customer, he had this to say:

“Damn, this is slick!”

So check it out!

Helipad Mac is now available to everyone. It’s a Mac OS Helipad client that syncs all your notes to your computer. This means you can write notes offline then sync them up the next time you’re online. Note that this is a time limited trial and will be upgraded in April.

Note if you’re on the private beta

We’ve changed the data structures slightly. Before downloading and running the new Helipad Mac client, sync your notes and then delete the old data file: Library/Application Support/HelipadTest2/HelipadTest2.xml. You can delete it with either Finder or the terminal.

This will all be made transparent before the final release, along with automated upgrades.

We’ve got server maintenance planned on Sunday 8th February: add it to your Deadline account! It’s likely that all our web applications will be down for a few minutes while this happens.

We post about service outages here: status.helicoid.net. We also post on Twitter about service interruptions: twitter.com/helicoid.

If you want to write software that works with Helipad, there’s now an awesome Helipad gem written by Lonnon Foster. I’ve checked over the code, and it’s clean and well-written.

You could build a lot of cool stuff with this. How about a Shoes Helipad app? Or maybe something with RubyCocoa? Let us know what you build and we’ll give you mad props (and possibly riches).

Here’s some example code from Lonnon’s library:

In Rapid Fluid support I talked about adapting web applications for Fluid. Since Bubbles for Windows has a similar API I decided to write a wrapper around Fluid and Bubbles so you can support both SSBs in your web applications.

This wrapper is called ssbx, and is used like this:

if (SSBX.isAvailable()) {
  SSBX.log('hello');
  SSBX.notify({ message: 'This is a message', title: 'Title' });
  SSBX.notifyOnce({ message: 'This is a message', title: 'Title', unique_id: 5});
  SSBX.setDockBadge(5);
  SSBX.log(SSBX.availableDriver);
}

You can also only run when there’s a compatible SSB available like this:

SSBX.run(function() {
  SSBX.log('hello');
}

It’s still evolving, so add it to your watch list on GitHub if you’d like to stay up to date.

Deadline has been updated with some interface tweaks:

• A balloon will pop up as you hover over dates to show more text
• The background image is now fixed
• There’s now an option in Appearance/Settings that will let you turn off the hover fading effect

The date details balloon looks like this:

It shows you the day name and time until the event. If you’ve specified a time for your event it’ll display the time as well.

We recently added SMS support to Deadline. Finding a bulk SMS provider that we liked was actually more work than supporting the technical requirements in our software.

There used to be several free web and email to SMS gateways. Certain mobile operators in the US make still make this possible (also Orange in France have a developer programme that provides free SMS for France). However: generally SMS is expensive.

Most bulk SMS providers allow you to buy credits. The cost of sending a message to a phone on in each country (and for each operator) varies. For example, Clickatell charge you 1 credit for the whole of the US, but operators in the UK vary between 1 and 2 credits.

We tested both free and commercial bulk SMS services, with the following criteria:

• Transparent international support
• Clean API
• Affordable pricing

Technically supporting SMS is incredibly easy. Our code basically does the following:

• Tracks the number of messages sent per-user each day to prevent abuse
• Records message send status to catch phone numbers the bulk SMS provider has issues with
• Abstracts the bulk SMS provider’s API in case we need to switch

Pitfalls to watch out for

There’s actually a few pitfalls to be aware of when sending messages:

• Be sure to check your provider’s API documentation for acceptable telephone number formats (most expect integers with full international dialing code and no + at the start)
• Even though some providers allow you to set an alphanumeric from address, some mobile operators have equipment that can’t cope with UTF-8 or spaces
• Check that the bulk SMS provider you’re looking at can provide message receipts so you can track users who are having problems receiving messages

Services

We found Wadja and Clickatell to be the best services in our roundup.

wadja.com has an easy to use API and allows you to send a fixed number of free messages per day. Your registered name is sent as the “from” name for the SMS, and they add adverts to support their service. They support international messaging and also allow you to pay for messages to remove ads.

Clickatell is purely focused on SMS. As such their documentation makes the pitfalls of sending SMS very clear. Their XML APIs are a little bit overcomplicated for what they do, but their HTTP API does almost everything and is as easy as sending a HTTP GET.

Conclusion

We got Deadline working with both Wadja and Clickatell — the live site is currently using Clickatell. We ended up purchasing SMS credits because of the restrictions of Wadja’s free service.

It’s frustrating when larger businesses can absorb the cost of SMS and make them free, but this is impossible for a small business like ours. That means our supporting business model was one of the most important considerations when adding SMS to our app.