Mariner in LA

You can find Corey and Dawn presenting our writing software out at the LA Times Festival of Books this weekend. Make sure you say hi if you are attending!

Mike

Considering purchasing StoryMill? Your timing can't be any better.

A few months ago, the super-nice guys over at MacUpdate contacted us and said they were putting together an uber-bundle of today's hottest Mac titles and asked if we would like to be involved with StoryMill. Long story short, fast forward to today and voila, StoryMill is in the latest MacUpdate bundle. The deal is for $65, you get 10 apps! A saving of a couple hundred dollars. If you have been considering starting that novel you have always wanted to write, I think this is a pretty good sign to move forward! :-)

Mike

iPhonemania

As excitement builds for the official rollout of of the App Store in June, I thought I would try to clear the air on what our intentions are for entering this market.

Yes, we are currently developing an app(s) for the iPhone.

No, we can't announce it/them yet.

Once we are to a point it is/they are representable, I suspect you'll see another post like this with a hell of a lot more info than this one. :-)

Mike

Announcing our new product!

While it will be several days before we officially announce our news, effective last week, we came to terms with our friends over at Advenio and will soon begin republishing MacGourmet. We will be rebranding the Deluxe version of the product and expect to roll it out as a Mariner app in the Spring/Summer timeframe. I can't go into a lot of detail quite yet but this will be a great addition to our product line. If you have never checked out MacGourmet before, feel free to download a demo over at the Advenio site and discover just how impressive this product is.

Stay tuned!

Mike

Mariner at the LA Times Festival of Books

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!

Just a quick note for folks living in the Los Angeles area. Mariner will be exhibiting some of our writing and creativity apps at the LA TImes Festival of Books http://www.latimes.com/extras/festivalofbooks/index.html next month (April 26-27) on the UCLA campus. I guess this would be considered our first _outdoor_ tradeshow! We will be showing off our software http://www.marinersoftware.com/sitepage.php?page=20 with our partner, The Writer's Store, at Booth 562. This will be our first time attending but, apparently, it attracts nearly 150,000 people! If you are in the neighborhood, stop on by.

Mike

Listen to the Mariner podcast!

Our in-house celebrity, Corey Johnson, hit the airwaves yesterday over on mymac.com. Listen to Corey talk about all the Mariner product line and future goals (and maybe even with a little iPhone development tease thrown in) :-).

The show is now live at: http://www.mymac.com/showarticle.php?id=3203

best,
Mike


PS: Consider purchasing StoryMill? Check out a 24 hour promo over on MacZot today - http://www.maczot.com

MacJournal 5.0.2 is out

Wednesday we released MacJournal 5.0.2 which cleared up a few nagging bugs from the initial release. It's always a challenge, from a developer's perspective, when you have to "work around" issues (read: bugs) in the operating system so as the product being developed functions properly.

Did you get all that? :-)

Anyway, MacJournal 5 is being very well received and we appreciate all the kudos. Interestingly, and this will tell you how savvy our customers are, we are getting a ton of positive feedback on functionality that is so obscure that it didn't even make the manual or Read Me. That's impressive.

We also came full circle on the app icon. Going back 4 or 5 years ago, MacJournal had a simple, blue icon which seemed to resonate with many. I always thought it was a little too basic, but then again, what do I know? :-) Anyway, MacJournal 3 and 4, as some of you may remember, had a classic, brown app icon of a leather-bound journal.

Swing and a miss on that one, I guess.

Although I liked it, I'd say more than half of our customers didn't. Not to the degree of projectile vomiting or anything, but, "it just isn't the blue one" was a line I heard more times than I could count.

Enter MacJournal 5 and the return of the blue app icon.

I've heard 90% positive responses on the new, blue icon which tells me we made the right move. And I even like it too. The imagery clearly defines that this is a modern, leading edge app and isn't just a modified text editor. And that's what I was shooting for.

What do you think of the new, blue icon?

Mike