Category: Press

Suggestion Box brings inspiration to Apple Watch

Suggestion Box is a unique app for improvisers and storytellers. Now on Apple Watch.

We are pleased to announce the release of version 2.0 of “Suggestion Box“, our app for improvisers, and storytellers. Screens from the app You can also use the app when playing charades and similar games, or to help with fresh ideas when you want to tell your child a story at bedtime, or work with them to create their own story. Just tap any of the colourful buttons to see a suggestion from that category.

boxwatchThe revised app now includes support for iOS 8 and the larger display sizes on iPhone 6 and 6 plus, as well as iPad.

It is also our first to include support for Apple Watch,  allowing you to get suggestions from the entire list featured in the main app,  directly on your wrist.

Try it out, and let us know what you think.
Suggestion Box IconSuggestion Box works with iPhone 6+, 6, 5S, 5c, 5, 4s, iPad, iPod touch and Apple Watch, and is available now on the App Store.

FAQ 1.4 makes email easier.

banner“FAQ Email Composer“, our brilliant app that helps you rapidly create custom emails, hits the App Store with a new update today with a few tweaks, including easy duplicating of entire topics (and a fix for a small issue in the Markdown-compatible version)

You should give FAQ a try, it’s not just us saying that it’s great- there may only be a few reviews so far on the store, but ALL of them are 5-stars. As any new release bumps them off the front page of the App Store, and you can’t see reviews from other territories, here are a selection for you…

Just TOTALLY AWESOME I searched for months and bought other apps before finding this jewel! If you need signature blocks and “boiler plate” email responses… This is the app you are looking for! This app is the best!!!  –UH60Av8or, US ★★★★★

Great App I use this for our non-profit and have different topic areas for things you send out a lot…meeting and event reminders, sales items and event details. Group this with MailShot and its two clicks to send the same message to my entire organization. -KC008, US ★★★★★ 

A VERY useful app Any time you find yourself sending “boiler plate” responses in your business, you will find this app to be a big time saver. In addition, I am impressed by the author’s quick response to customer support issues. (And by the way, those issues were with my learning to use the app -not the app itself.) This app is well worth the price.–Larry Costner, US ★★★★★

Read on for lots more reviews  Continue reading “FAQ 1.4 makes email easier.”

Soluble joins the “Made In Creative UK” campaign

made-in-creative-ukThe UK has a fantastic history of innovation in computing, with many world-changing achievements stretching from many of the very earliest hardware and languages through to today’s projects like Raspberry Pi that aim to recapture something of the excitement and adventure of those early days.

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.

New edition of FAQ released, with Markdown support

MarkdownWe are happy to announce the release of “FAQ Markdown Email Composer“.

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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.

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MailShot 2.0- Exchange, Android and More!

MailShot and MailShot Pro 2.0 are now available on the App Store. These are the latest in a long line of free updates to be released for our unique group email app since its launch last year, adding useful features each time.

Among other things, this update allows control over where your MailShot contacts are saved and introduces a new additional email format for compatibility with other platforms.

Select which address book to save to.

MailShot now saves its special group contacts to your default address book.

TIP: The default address book for your device is set on the “Mail, Contacts Calendars” page of the Settings app.

If you need more control over where your contacts are saved, you can select which address book types to use.

You can find more information on our support pages.

Exchange, Android and Google.

You can now store MailShot contacts in address books that are synchronised with an Exchange server. This simplifies a few things that tripped new users up, and allows you to synchronise MailShot group contacts to Android, Google etc.

You can use these group contacts to send email from Android devices, or from Google’s web mail. These extended features are provided as a convenience for our users, and your results may vary. Please do let us know if you encounter any problems or restrictions on use or group size when using this feature, so we can advise others.

TIP See these links for tips on using Mac Mail,  iCloud.com and the GMail iOS app for other workarounds to send email to MailShot groups.

‘Standard’ email address format.

MailShot uses a special address format for compatibility with iOS Mail.

You can now also create an additional, “standard” email address for the group contact.  This is enabled on the MailShot page of the Settings app.

This additional format will allow you to use MailShot groups in more places (but probably not Outlook, despite the name). Please let us know what does or doesn’t work for you.

NOTE: Take care to choose the correct address when you have two of them available. iOS is always listed first.

iCloud-based upgrading.

We now store the upgrade status for the free version of MailShot in iCloud.

If you install it to more than one device, a single in-app purchase upgrades them all (on iOS 5.0 and above.)

NOTE: Each group should still be managed from one device, and the contacts shared to your other devices.

Edit manually-entered contacts.

Just tap the contact in the list to edit its name or email address.

200-contact warning.

As more people create iCloud accounts, ‘me.com‘ addresses are becoming more popular. We have added an additional warning pop-up when a group exceeds 200 contacts, as this is the limit per email from me.com.

TIP: Any warnings that don’t apply to your email provider can be disabled on the MailShot page of the Settings app.

Confirmation before sort

We now ask for confirmation before a sort, as a number of users reported tapping the “sort” button when they didn’t intend to.

Retina Display

Icon and title page graphics have been updated for the new iPad retina display.

Minimum iOS version 

The minimum iOS version has been raised from 3.0 to 4.0. We estimate that fewer than 1% of our existing users are still using iOS 3.0-3.2.

If you encounter any problems please let us know, as we are always very happy to help. Our Support page and User Guide are also always available for you whenever you need them.

If you find MailShot useful, a new or refreshed review on the App Store is always very much appreciated (this is really important to us after an update, as old reviews get pushed to other pages.) The “rate” button on the title page of MailShot is provided to make this easier for you.

Great New eBook “Talking to Siri” Features MailShot Pro

This new eBook from regular TUAW.com columnists Erica Sadun and Steven Sande, is a fantastic hands-on guide to tell you everything you could need to know about using Siri, a lot of which you won’t have discovered yet. It is concise and very reasonably priced, at $5.75. Recommended.

They were also kind enough to feature our MailShot Pro app as a great solution to sending group email with Siri.

ShotList!- Plan Your Movie & Video Shoots Like A Pro

We are very excited to announce that our groundbreaking new app for movie and video production, ShotList, will be released later this month.

ShotList helps filmmakers of all levels to plan and track their shoots scene by scene, by bringing the “Production Stripboard” system used by movie industry pros for many years to iPhone and iPad for the very first time.

Enter as much or as little information as you need from the script for each scene, add photos of storyboards or locations from your photo library, and then move each “strip” around to fine-tune your shooting order. Being so mobile, and always with you, Shotlist enables you to instantly change plans whenever something unexpected crops up on the shoot. It also has a major rôle to play in tracking the completion status of each scene, or shot, on the day.

We plan to update and upgrade ShotList regularly, just as we have with our unique group email app “MailShot“, so we would love to hear your requests and suggestions for which features you’d like to see in the next version. Maybe a “day of days” report? a list of cast required for each day’s shooting? a report on which scenes were completed on a given day? Let us know.

ShotList will be available on the App Store later this month. Check out the app page for more details, and screenshots of what this essential app can do.