Polarian
Mar 19th
As you may have already heard, Decimus Software has acquired Polarian.
This sale has worked out wonderfully. Benjamin and his team at Decimus are a really amazing group of people to work with. I am grateful for all of the inquiries that I received and apologize to anyone that I couldn’t get back to personally.
Selling was difficult for us for a lot of reasons, starting Polarian from nothing and bringing it to where it was has been an amazingly fun process. I have learned so much, about software development and business in general.
One of the best things about this deal though, is the fact that Decimus already has a solid reputation in the mac community. Knowing that the group buying Polarian had experience not only programming great mac software, but also running a successful customer-focused business made the decision much easier.
In case you didn’t read the press release, Decimus is having an introductory “50/50″ promotion to celebrate the acquisition. Through the 23rd of March, you can use the coupon code FIFTYFIFTY to purchase Screen Mimic for $50. Even cooler, is that owners of competing products can use the coupon code FIFTYFIFTYUPG to get a competitive upgrade discount of 50%.
More >Feb 5th
Good news to anyone still interested, our potential buyer has had to back out, so I’m once again considering offers. leefalin@polarian.com
UpdateI’d like to thank everyone who showed an interest in Polarian. At this time we have found a buyer and are no longer considering other offers. Thanks again to all those who inquired.
The ReasonWhen I started Polarian back in 2005, it was with the hope that one day Polarian would be the sole source of income for our family. As 2006 rolled around, Polarian was not yet fulfilling that dream and we made the decision to return to graduate school and pursue my other lifelong dream of being a professor and teaching at the university level.
Throughout 2006 my research still hadn’t really picked up speed and so I had quite a bit of free time. I continued to devote some of that time to further development of Screen Mimic. In 2007 this development came to fruition as Screen Mimic 2.0 was released. From there Polarian’s revenue grew exponentially and went from being a hobby income to something that could in fact fully sustain our family. We started making plans for Screen Mimic 3.0 as well as a new More >
Jan 17th
This is the third part of an ongoing series on setting up your own online store.
- Part 1: Client-Side Storefront
- Part 2: Server-Side Validation and Routing
- Part 3: Server-Side Payment Processing
- Part 4: Adding PayPal Support
Once again, I’m using a PHP/JavaScript system because that’s what I’m familiar with. If your webhost supports Ruby on Rails, then you’ll save a lot of time by downloading the Potion Store from the folks over at Potion Factory.
And once again a discalaimer:
Disclaimer: I am not an accountant or lawyer, before doing anything involving other people’s money you should check with a lawyer and an accountant.
I’d like to thank everyone that gave me feedback from the previous article, please continue to do so.
Site MapAt the end of this series, I will have described a store that looks more or less like this:
-
store.php
This is the page someone comes to when they have chosen to pay with their own credit card.
As I mentioned last time, the store.php page now contains everything that we moved out of our original storefront that we need to process the credit card transaction.
Most of this is just plain HTML forms stuff which we went over in part 1, so I won’t go over it again More >
Oct 22nd
Screen Mimic 2.2 has been released!
This version brings a couple of bug fixes, and most importantly, Leopard compatibility. (Or at least as close to Leopard compatibility as can be claimed prior to the 26th).
Daniel Jalkut make a great point that any update related to making your software compatible to Leopard should be free, and as you should be able to tell from the version number, this update is free for all 2.x users.
With Leopard compatibility out of the way I wanted to also provide a brief glimpse into the future of Screen Mimic. This is also your chance to chime in and be an advocate for your favorite missing feature.
Here is a brief glimpse of what is on the future slate for 2.3 (which will also be a free upgrade) which I plan to have out by Nov 30th.
2.3 Roadmap- Resize recording on export – This is something that a lot of people have been asking for, the ability to record at any resolution and then scale it down based on what you want to use the video for.
One of the key features for a lot of our users is that Screen Mimic is simple to use. You don’t really need to More >
Aug 14th
1:20 PM – Email from a customer that goes straight to FogBugz bug tracking system:
Hello I just purchased your software, but I’m having trouble getting feature X to do what I want.
1:21 PM – From FogBugz automated responder:
Thank you for your message. We have received it and will get back to you as soon as possible.
We use FogBugz to keep track of our incoming support requests. You can check the status of your message at the following URL:
https://polarian.fogbugz.com/default.asp?…..
You may want to save your case’s tracking ticket: …..
Please reply to this message if there’s anything else we can do for you in the meantime.
2:20 PM – From customer:
Oh, never mind, I figured it out. Thanks.
FogBugz hosted account: $21 / month
Managed bug tracking that saves me from dropping what I’m doing every time a support request comes in: Priceless
Thank you FogBugz.
Aug 9th
This is the second part of an ongoing series on setting up your own online store. My initial plan was that this was going to be a two part series. Part 1 would be the client-side stuff, and part 2 would be the server-side stuff. Well as I sat down to write part 2, it kept getting longer and longer, so I decided to split it up. The new format as planned is:
- Part 1: Client-Side Storefront
- Part 2: Server-Side Validation and Routing
- Part 3: Server-Side Payment Processing
- Part 4: Adding PayPal Support
Once again, I’m using a PHP/JavaScript system because that’s what I’m familiar with. If your webhost supports Ruby on Rails, then you’ll save a lot of time by downloading the Potion Store from the folks over at Potion Factory.
And once again a discalaimer:
Disclaimer: I am not an accountant or lawyer, before doing anything involving other people’s money you should check with a lawyer and an accountant.
I’d like to thank everyone that gave me feedback from the previous article, please continue to do so.
Site MapAt the end of this series, I will have described a store that looks more or less like this:
Now I’m going to go through each of the server side More >
Jul 20th
Screen Mimic 2.1.0 has been released!
One of the new features that I am really excited about is the ability to pause and resume recording.
While you are recording, you press the pause hot key (Command-Shift-U by default, configurable in preferences), the selection window then changes from red to green to indicate that the recording is paused. You can then do whatever you want and press the pause hot key again to resume. You don’t realize how useful this is until you start using it.
When the final movie is created, the different segments are blended together using whichever transition type that you specify in the save dialogue. Right now you can choose from cross-dissolve, page curl, flash, and none.
Another big change is that all of the Flash Video files now have the proper duration, height, and width metadata inserted so that flash video players (like Jeroen Wijering‘s excellent player) can set the progress bar properly, as well as handle proportional scaling correctly.
Finally, this release comes as we simultaneously rolled out our new website (featuring flash videos highlighting all of our new features), and our new online store. Now, instead of users going to a 3rd party site for payment processing, we handle More >
Apr 16th
The second in a three part series of taking a 1.0 application to 2.0. This segment of the Road to 2.0 series discusses a seemingly harmless yet often troublesome creature. They are parasitic in nature, though often perform some symbiotic function that benefit the host. Once attached they can never be removed, and will require constant attention. These strange beasts are called feature creeps.
Please note that this post should not be considered to be a rant against those helpful people that provide good feedback and feature requests. It is instead a discussion concerning the dangers that app developers face when allowing feature creeps into their applications. Beware the Feature Creeps.
1.0 – Your Vision RealizedWhen you first start writing your application, you most likely have a good idea of what the final product will be like. This is your vision.
When I started writing Screen Mimic, I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted software that would allow me to make a recording of what was happening on my desktop, and I wanted that recording saved in Flash format. So that’s exactly what Screen Mimic 1.0 did. In December of 2005 my vision was fulfilled. 1.0 was complete. More >
Feb 8th
Screen Mimic 2.0.5 has been released.
Fixed a memory leak in the encoding process. Opening saved files is now MUCH faster. Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause a crash when encoding long movies.
You can get the updated version here.
Feb 3rd
Screen Mimic 2.0.4 has been released.
This updates fixes a bug that caused the app to crash during encoding if you hadn’t captured audio during the initial recording.
You can get the updated version here.