Tiktrac and Ebiwrite have recently surged in popularity thanks to generous coverage by excellent blogs (thanks 100shiki and Emily Chang!) Whenever this happens, the barrage of new users discover bugs lurking we weren’t able to catch with our tests. I’ve been working hard to keep on top of these, at pretty much all hours.

Here’s what we’ve fixed this month:

• Parts of Ebiwrite became unusable when people used tags with a period in them. We’ve temporarily prevented tags with ”.” from being created, but there’s a fix on the way that permits them (it requires more testing due to other dependancies). Thanks Futty!
• Under certain conditions Tiktrac imports created tasks with no user set, which caused problems viewing the associated time sheet. This is now fixed.
• Tiktrac imports also became unusable when importing CSV files with blank headers. Tiktrac now renames t…

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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 …

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We’re proud to announce that Ebiwrite, a web application dedicated to translators, has been launched today!

Background and design

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Yuka Mizuno and I’m Helicoid’s copywriter (I also help run the business-side of things). After working on several long translations last year, I wished for a web application created purely for translators.

One of the biggest annoyances I have with translation is constantly looking backwards and forwards between my source text and translation. On a computer this means flicking between windows or tabs, quickly ending up either fed up or with RSI. So I insisted my future husband (Alex, the designer and programmer of Helicoid’s applications) built translators a program that would resolve these issues.

The most basic problem, flipping between source text and translation, could easily be solved by splitting a text editor up into two panels. Alex created a prototype (using “Helip…

Continue reading → | ebiwrite, announcements

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…

Continue reading → | tiktrac, ebiwrite, helipad, tips

Over the last three months I’ve been working with a translator to produce a unique new product. The translator in question found that she wanted to keep her documents online, so she can easily access them and edit them anywhere. She also wanted to be able to see the original source text alongside her translation. Flipping back and forth between documents, printing things out, and general mucking about made her yearn for an application built just for translators.

We’ve taken the concept from an idea, to paper prototypes and now a working prototype. Amazingly, this prototype has only taken 3 weeks to design and code (all developed by me), and it’s now ready for our translator to play with.

Technically, the project is interesting: we’ve used a JavaScript model of the document within the browser, combined with Ajax to provide all the features you’d expect in an editor: keyboard shortcuts for quickly saving documents and auto-save….

Continue reading → | ebiwrite, announcements