The UK has also played a significant role in the development of games to enjoy on these computers and consoles, far outreaching our small size as a nation, and this is something I am personally very happy to have been a small part of over the past three decades.

We are proud to join the campaign to highlight the UK’s past and current achievements in this field by featuring the “Made in Creative UK” logo here. For more about the campaign, please visit the official website.

Welcome to all those who have joined us recently. We hope you are finding MailShot useful, and I’d like to personally thank the many of you who have taken the time to post your fantastic reviews on the App Store. We really appreciate it, and it helps us support the app.

As always if you have any problems at all you can find guidance, and help for most common issues, on our Support page or User Guide.

If you need assistance, we are always very happy to help. Please drop us a line using the “Support” button on the title page of MailShot, explaining any problem you are experiencing (this will also send us some diagnostic information that may help us assist you faster). We can resolve most issues fairly quickly.

This special version of our FAQ app is optimised to support the increasingly-popular Markdown text markup notation, allowing formatted text,  lists, code samples and embedded weblinks in your emails.

FAQ is a unique app that stores all the bits of text you use most often in your emails- opening phrases, answers to the questions you get asked most often, and closing phrases, along with any images and diagrams you may need. This allows you to create the perfect email in reply to a common question in just a few seconds- ideal for customer support, or handling questions from students or group members.

The new version interprets all Markdown formatting in your text, and includes the ability to easily preview your marked-up text.

FAQ will continue to be available in both versions- FAQ and the Markdown edition, so you can choose the one which suits you best.

You can download the book from Amazon or direct from the publishers, who have also been kind enough to send us a 35% discount code to share with you. (Visit peachpit.com/hhh and enter “HHH” at the checkout). It is also available as a printed version.

The book also covers our unique FAQ app (which creates custom emails from reusable pieces) saying of it…

“FAQ was designed to be as productive as the people who use it, and for that reason it remains one of my favorite iOS utilities”

I hope everything is going well for you all, and thanks for all your fantastic comments on the App Store, they really make a difference.

If you have any problems, please see our Support page or User Guide or get in touch using the “Support” button on the title page of the app. We are always very happy to help.

The new update adds iPhone 5 and iOS6 support, and the ability to duplicate entire topics, text and images. We have also retitled the app to “FAQ – Email Composer”- to give a clearer impression of what it does.

FAQ is great for customer support (and sees daily use here, answering user questions about our popular “MailShot” and “Shotlist” apps.) It is also fantastic for anything you may need to repeat often in email: such as instructions on how to reach your premises, boilerplate legal disclaimers, location details for grounds your team visits frequently, requests for donations, etc. It can really reduce the amount you need to use your device’s keyboard.

If you find it useful, as always, please spread the word. A review on the App Store is always much appreciated, especially after an update.

Version 4.0 of  Shotlist 

This major new update adds a number of great features to Shotlist:

• Print stripboard and details pages, via Airprint.
• Shot details and notes for each shot in a scene.
• Email .pdf updates of stripboard and details pages.
• Import and export projects in a popular spreadsheet format.
• Rearrange shot ordering with drag and drop.
• iOS6 and iPhone 5 support

It also fixes a problem in the previous version when updating a project to Dropbox, and has various other optimisations to speed up data entry and navigation.

The Support page and User Guide are both being updated to reflect the new features.

If you encounter any problems please let us know by tapping the “Support” button in Shotlist, or using our support email address (shotlist at solubleapps.com) and I’ll look at it right away for you.

A lot has gone into this update and I hope you find it useful. If you do, a review on the App Store is always very much appreciated. Thanks.

Read on for more details of all the new features.

General tips

A long press on a storyboard image, anywhere in the app, toggles the red “X” for shooting status. A short press lets you see the details.

Swipe up and down to go to the next or previous scene in the shooting order (On the Scene Details and Gallery screens). Swipe left to right to go to the next or previous shot for that scene (on the Shot details screen).

iPhone 5 and iOS6 support

This update supports iPhone 5, showing more text on most screens, and adding storyboard thumbnails to the Details screen that would not have fitted on the smaller iPhone 4 screen. The app is recompiled to make best use of the new processor in iPhone 5.

Shot Details Page

The shot details page lets you set type, angle, image etc. for each shot.

You need only set up details you are interested in. (e.g. you could choose to assume that shots are eye level and static unless you specified otherwise, or you may always use the same camera). 

You may choose to use your own shorthand in the notes area rather than the spinners to set data, its up to you.

To access this page, tap a storyboard thumbnail in the Gallery page (accessed from the camera icon), or tap a thumbnail on the Scene Details page on iPad or iPhone 5.

• Shot The shot name in the title bar is usually based on its position. if you don’t want the letter to change when reordering shots, force a specific letter here. 
• Type of shot can be set from “Extreme Long Shot” through to “Extreme Close Up”, then on to “2 Shot”, “3 Shot” and “Group Shot”.
• Angle runs from “Extreme Low Angle” up to “Bird’s Eye”, with a few special cases such as “POV” and “Voyeur” thrown in.
• Movement specifies different types and directions of camera movement, such as “Tracking”, “Panning” “Dolly up” etc.
• Cam specifies which camera to use for this shot (or could be used to store a code for different lenses, if you wish)
• Notes lets you enter notes for each shot. You can edit (or view longer notes) by tapping the notes area.
• Image area Tap the + symbol to add a storyboard image from the camera or from the camera roll. Tap an image again to delete it. 

On iPhone, you can rotate the device to landscape to see the image full-screen.

If you have not added a storyboard image, then a stand-in based on the shot type will be used (this is not intended to literally represent your shot, it is just as a memory aid, to help one scene be distinguished from another)

Toggle shot status with a long press. to step between shots of the current scene, swipe left or right with one finger.

Changing Shot order on the Gallery Screen 

This page gives a useful overview of the shots for a scene, with a data summary if you wish, and allows you to rearrange the shot order, or set shot status.

• To edit the shot data or image, tap a thumbnail
• To change the shooting order, use two fingers to drag shots around.
• To toggle data overlay, tap the “Show Data/Hide Data”button at top right  (You can disable display of notes on the ShotList page of the “Settings” app.)

Toggle shot status with a long press. To step between scenes without returning to the stripboard, swipe up and down with one finger.

Print With AirPrint

To print a stripboard or a project, select the project on the Project page, and tap the print button (a square with an arrow coming from it) on the bottom menu bar.

• “Days per page” controls whether the stripboard is broken up into days
• “Detail Pages” controls whether detail pages are printed as well as the stripboard
• “Storyboards” controls whether storyboards are included on the detail pages.

Then select Printer Settings to bring up the standard dialog, and tap “Print” to send it to your printer.

TIP The print button is hidden if your device is not capable of printing. If you don’t have an Airprint-compatible printer, you can connect a printer via the USB port on an AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule, or there are a number of options to allow you to use a printer connected via a PC or Mac.

To print the details page for a single scene:

Select it from the stripboard, then tap the print button at the top right of the details page.

Send the schedule as a .pdf

This allows someone to view or print their own copy of the schedule remotely

Select the project on the Project page and tap the email button (an envelope) on the bottom menu bar

Three options appear:

• One Line schedule: a text email, suitable for viewing on the widest range of email-capable phones.
• Send Schedule as .PDF: a graphic page, similar to how the project appears in the app. (It can also be printed on receipt.)
• No Schedule: Send a simple email to the team you set up for your project

Select “Schedule as .PDF” and to see the email dialogue where you can add contacts to the team for this project, select who gets this particular email, and choose what content you want in your PDF.

• “Days per page” controls whether the stripboard is broken up into days
• “Detail Pages” controls whether detail pages are printed as well as the stripboard
• “Storyboards” controls whether storyboards are included on the detail pages.

Tap “Compose” to create the email.

Import to and export data from a spreadsheet

This will export a project to your Dropbox account in the xls format used by Excel, Numbers and other popular spreadsheet programs.

You can then enter details and notes orinsert additional scenes in a spreadsheet program on your computer, and reimport it into ShotList.

To import or export select the Dropbox logo at the bottom left of the project page, then choose the desired option.

It is quite important to stick to a structure that ShotList can read, so please don’t add or delete columns (although you can copy and paste additional rows to create scenes, and the same with day markers). To create a template to work from, create a new project and export it.

NOTE: The data for storyboard images and shot images which is  is not really suitable for editing, it is included here just to retain the link to this data if you move scenes around, or renumber them.

ShotList maintains a character list at the bottom of the spreadsheet to map the characters to numbers consistently. You need a column with the numbers, starting from 1, next to a column with the names. It is important that this data section ends with the “EndOfCastList“ marker

You can select whether to output characters to XLS as names or numbers, using a switch provided on the ShotList page of the Settings app.

Other changes

You can now reorder (and therefore renumber) the list of characters in ShotList. Tap “Manage” at top right, then select and drag the reorder icon (three grey lines) to move the characters around, or tap the red “-” to delete a character.

Can now use spinners to set page number and scene length directly on the details page on iPad, speeding up navigation.

The Support button adds direct links to the ShotList User Guide and for emailing us in addition to the existing link to the Support page.

We have updated to the latest version of the Dropbox API. We also fixed an issue with Dropbox in the last update, where files were not being overwritten correctly.

We have just released a new update to our popular MailShot Pro and MailShot group emailing apps to add iOS6 and iPhone 5 support, as well as a few other tweaks.

I hope you find the additions useful, please get in touch via the support button in MailShot if you need any help, or want to report a problem, and we’ll do our best to assist as always.

Support for iOS6 Privacy settings. If denied access to contacts, this explains that the user should allow MailShot access to contacts from the Privacy page of the Settings app.

Extended screen support. To show and select more contacts at once on iPhone 5.

Link email addresses across a series of address cards. This situation is much more common since iOS6 integrated Facebook contacts with your address books.

Improve handling of imported MailShot groups by removing extra quote marks, and retrieving the first contact name if we can. (TIP: This feature allows you to join MailShot groups together, or select a subset of a group to form a new group.)

Additional options on the Support button,  giving shortcuts to the User Guide and for emailing us, as well as to our MailShot Support page. Emailing us from the support button also includes configuration details for MailShot. This is the preferred way to ask for help, as that information allows us to solve your problems with fewer questions.

Prefer iCloud to store contacts when a choice is available, as users have had varying results with Exchange. This will only affect new users.

Reduced sound volume for sound effects (you can still turn them off with a slider in Settings>MailShot)

Thanks for your interest and support in MailShot and helping to spread the word. If you find MailShot useful, a refreshed review on the App Store is always appreciated, especially just after an update.

With Apple’s announcement of iOS 6 and the iPhone 5, I thought I’d take a quick look at how we expect this to affect our users and our apps (particularly our popular MailShot group email app) and highlight the changes.

Read on for details 

Privacy Settings

iOS6 now requests permission before any apps can access personal information, such as your contacts or photos. This will affect both MailShot and ShotList.

If you refuse permission, your app will be unable to access contact information. The current version of MailShot may also put up a message to contact support for help if it cannot proceed.

You can enable access from the Settings app, under Privacy> Contacts> Mailshot.

Larger Screen Sizes

The taller screen on the iPhone 5 and new iPod touch allow you to see more information at once.

We will be updating our most popular apps (“ShotList“, “MailShot” and “FAQ“) soon to make the best possible use of the extra space. We already have screen-extended versions of each in test here.

Adding Contacts

iOS6 integrates contacts from Facebook, which can become linked to your regular contacts. The present version of MailShot may be unable to “see” contact data on the linked cards, there are two workarounds for this:

Either a) Turn off Facebook contacts (if you aren’t too fussed about them,) from Facebook> Contacts in the Settings app.

Or b) Add contacts from the checklist instead, by tapping “Import” then selecting “Contact Checklist”

This issue is resolved by our next free update, currently in test at Apple

iOS 6 Mail and MailShot

Group email is not built into iOS 6, so you still need Mailshot‘s help to add group email to your favourite apps.

MailShot works right inside Mail, so any changes Apple makes there also benefit our users. The main ones are:

Per-account email signatures

If you use more than one email account, iOS 6 will let you set up different email signatures for each account. You can do this on the “Mail, Contacts Calendars” page of the Settings app.

Mailshot contacts can be used from any account on your device. To choose which account to send an email from, tap the “Cc/Bcc, From” line at the top of the email, then tap “From”.

Attaching photos and other media to email

You will no longer have to go to the Photos app to send images to someone. You can now add photos and videos directly from Mail.

Just tap the screen where you want to insert the image or video, and select it from your camera roll or Photostream.

Its been lovely to hear from those of you who are finding it indispensable, and  thanks for all your support in the App Store- your reviews and ratings are always very much appreciated.

If you have any problems you can probably find the answer on our MailShot support page or User Guide and if you need any further help please do let us know on “support at solubleapps.com” and we’ll always be happy to do our best to assist.