Karelia Software

Occasionally at Karelia we look for contractors to fill a few needs that go beyond software development. One of the best ways to reach people, we've found, is through blogs. If you think either of the descriptions, below, sound like you, please drop us a line at contractors_summer08@karelia.com — or pass this information on to somebody you know who might fit the bill.

First/Second Level Technical Support

We're looking for a “power user” who can help Sandvox customers with questions about using the application. Somebody who can really dig deeply into reported issues to understand what is happening, reproduce problems, provide solutions for customers and report encapsulated issues to the engineering team. Interaction is done over a web-based email interface.  Good “people” skills are a must.

Graphic Artist/Designer

We're always on the lookout to expand our web design offerings for Sandvox; we're looking for one or more designers who can produce world-class web designs for Sandvox. Designs that make the discerning  Mac user absolutely drool are what we are looking for!  We're also working on another software product, under wraps, that will need some major artistic touches. Send us links to your online portfolio if you are interested!

Everybody's doing Facebook these days, so we thought we'd create a Sandvox group there.  So if you are a Facebook member, come on by and use it chat about Sandvox!

The other big thing is Twitter, so we made a feed where we will keep the world up to date with what we are doing, in more frequent bite-size chunks than we put here. We will be giving you a peek behind the scenes as we put together our updates to Sandvox and other apps. Our latest “tweet” can be found in the sidebar of our Blog page, but come by and visit us on Twitter to see all our updates.  If you use Twitter yourself — We recommend using a great desktop application called Twitterrific — please follow us!

We've been fiercely working on the new 1.5 version of Sandvox (ready for "alpha" stage soon) but meanwhile, we want to give Sandvox users access to a few important fixes. Download the new 1.2.7 version of Sandvox here.

For Sandvoxers running on an Intel machine and using Leopard, this update will be helpful, because we have finally found a way to work around an annoying graphical bug in Leopard that we reported to Apple last October! For those designs that use graphical text, you can go back to those fancy titles once you update to the new version.

We've also updated the embedded media browser to better cache movie thumbnails. (We'll be updating the freeware iMedia Browser application soon to reflect that change, in a few days.)

We're also welcoming A2 Hosting to our list of recommended publishing hosts.  One of their benefits is their inexpensive hosting plans.  They are offering 10% off all hosting packages with the coupon code tenoffa2. (This offer expires 30 June 2008.)

This update holds a number of other fixes and improvements, so give it a spin!

Get ready to hunt some eggs! Karelia is participating in a fun program starting this week. It's called the Easter mEgg Hunt ("m" for Mac) and it's a way to expose Mac users to a variety of "indie" software.

Starting on Monday, through the end of the month, you can hunt for "eggs" hidden on participating websites (like ours). Clicking on an egg will enable a group of coupon codes, valid at other participating websites. Collect eggs until you find that app you have been looking for (like Sandvox), or until you have collected them all! In the process, you'll become familiar with a number of indie Mac developers and their software products.

Thanks to Pierre of Houdah for organizing this event.

Happy Hunting!

Last week, two third-party designers released new Sandvox design packages.

Sandvox Web Designs announced the availability of "Franchise." This is a wide design, available in a blue and dark gray variation. This design includes a package of 100 banner graphics to help customize your website. This design joins the earlier "Suspicion" and "New Day" designs released a while back.

Blueball Design also released a new design pack, "Blueball Cubicle." This design comes in a standard and wide variation, and includes 20 extra banner images.  This design joins their existing "Blueball Smooth" and "Blueball Pro Tabs" design packages.

We are more than pleased to see other designers getting on the Sandvox bandwagon and building their own new designs.  (CSS designers who want to dig in can check out our detailed documentation page to get started.)

Macworld Expo is halfway over as of this writing.  The halls have been swarming with the Mac elite, and Karelia Software is happy to be a part of it!

Our booth is adjacent to the big Apple pavilion where the curious crowd around floating Macbook Airs and tables with strapped-down iPhones.  We’re in a wonderful location—a “village” of indie Mac developers.

Most of the time we spend here is in demonstrating Sandvox to prospective users, but our favorite thing to do is to meet current Sandvox users!  So if you are at Macworld this week, be sure to come by and say “hi” at booth S-1338 — we might even take your picture with your website for our “rogue’s gallery” of Sandvox users.

Also, if you see this guy wandering around the halls, be sure to take his picture; maybe he’ll take yours!

Tomorrow, December 8, Sandvox will be a featured application — with a 20% discount — on MacSanta.  If you have been putting off purchasing a license to Sandvox, or you'd like to stuff somebody's stocking, tomorrow is the day!  

Since December 8 has already arrived in some parts of the world, we're activating the coupon code early, so starting now, the coupon code MACSANTA07 will give you a 20% discount at our online store.

So far, this "grassroots" promotion by and for independent Mac software vendors has featured deals from the friends of ours at Noodlesoft, Vela Design Group, CocoaTech, Red Sweater Software, Clickable Bliss, Rogue Amoeba, C-Command Software, Potion Factory, and many more. Even if you've missed the featured day with a 20% discount, you can still get a 10% discount by using "MACSANTA07TEN" as your coupon code for any of the companies found on this ever-growing list.

MacSanta is a great way to find out about quality software from independent developers.  Help spread the word about MacSanta by digging it!

We've decided to put out another version of Sandvox, right on the heels of the recent update, to provide even more Leopard compatibility.  This fixes some late-breaking issues that we discovered only recently.  Go download version 1.2.5 now, and then for those celebrating Thanksgiving, enjoy your holiday! 

Sandvox users who are wondering if they should upgrade to Leopard just yet may want to hear about Sandvox and graphical text titles — titles that are rendered as a graphical image by Sandvox.

We've found a bug in the initial release of Leopard, on several kinds of Intel-based Macs, that causes these graphical titles to be either colored oddly or nearly invisible. We have reported the bug to Apple — they already know about it, and will be using the testing harness we provided to help isolate and fix the problem. Soon, we hope!

So, until Apple can fix the bug and release an update to Leopard, this feature is just not going to work for many users. If your website uses this feature and you haven't upgraded yet to Leopard, you may want to wait. If you have already installed Leopard and you need to update your site, we recommend that you temporarily turn off the checkbox "Replace titles with graphical text" from the Site → Media inspector. Your title will be visible, but just not look as cool. We'll announce here when Apple has released a version of Leopard that works properly with this feature, so you can turn this feature back on and re-publish your site.