App Store – Soluble Apps

ShotList goes large on the App Store

ShotList 7.0 update

Today we are releasing version 7.0 of “ShotList“, our video planning app that recreates a full production strip board on your mobile device to help organise your shoot, and to track progress on the day.

This new update includes support for iOS8 and 8.1, and makes full use of the larger screens on iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and a few usability tweaks and enhancements.

We have also created a new App Store preview video for ShotList.

And a longer video, that walks through many of ShotList’s features. This video is also available from the Support button on the title page of the app, and we expect that even experienced users will probably find something in here that they didn’t know about.

We hope you enjoy the new update, If you have any problems or questions about the app, please contact us using the “Support” button on the title page of the app.

ShotList works with any iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 7.0 or above. It is available now on the App Store.

Mailshot 3.5- Bigger and better!

We have just released updates for our popular MailShot Pro and MailShot group email apps on the App Store.

The updates include:

NEW Optimisations for iOS 8, including 64 bit support.
NEW Support for the larger screens on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus.
NEW List or Print a group (see below)
NEW Case-insensitive comparison of email addresses- (i.e. “support@email.com” is now regarded as the same as “Support@email.com”)
NEW Prevent users creating blank groups, with no members
NEW Help message about the checklist feature, if a user adds more than 5 addresses by hand at once.
NEW Help message if user uses an email address as a group name.
FIX A rare bug if you exit the rename screen for a group without changing anything.

Occasionally we get asked for a way to send or print a list of people in a group, so we have added this (as an experimental feature.) Enabling a switch marked “Email Sharing Button” on the MailShot page in Settings, adds a share button to the menu bar of the group members page. Tapping that button creates an email containing the names and addresses of your group. You can then easily send, print, or copy and paste it.

The release was delayed a few weeks while we struggled to identify an issue introduced by iOS 8 that we now know only affects users using certain non-english characters in contact names, on devices set to non-english languages. We worked around the problem, but we see that Apple have also now fixed their bug with iOS 8.1.

We hope you enjoy the update. As always, you can find help on the Support page and in the User Guide. I that doesn’t solve your problem, please drop us a line from the Support button on the title page of the app if you have any problems and we will be happy to help.

MailShot Pro works with iPhone 6+, 6, 5S, 5c, 5, 4s, iPod touch, iPad and iPad mini, and is available now on the App Store.

MailShot works with iPhone 6+, 6, 5S, 5c, 5, 4s, iPod touch, iPad and iPad mini, and is available now on the App Store as a free download that can create up to 3 groups with up to 5 contacts per group. An in-app purchase removes those restrictions. No recurring subscription is necessary.

MailShot 3.0 Brings A Fresh New Look.

We are delighted to announce the release of MailShot Pro 3 and MailShot 3, which brings a fresh new lick of paint and some exciting features that our users have asked for to the world-beating Group Email app, now used by over 230,000 people.

As usual, this will be a free update for our existing users.

We now have a new cleaner, flatter look, designed to fit with iOS7 (although you don’t require iOS7 to run it.)

A fantastic new feature is the ability to rapidly add a list of contacts, by pasting a string of addresses and contacts into the app.

You can read more about how to use this feature here in the User Guide, and you can also find a number of helpful hints and tips on how to extract email addresses as strings from received email, spreadsheets etc. here on our Support Page.

You can now easily duplicate a group. Tap “Edit” on the page where your groups are listed, then use the icons that appear on the right to drag a group onto the red bar at the bottom of the list to duplicate it.

And there are a couple of other changes that it may be useful for our existing users to know about…

Context sensitive buttons. To simplify things for new users, buttons for selecting and deselecting multiple contacts, and entering edit mode, are now only shown when relevant. Note that the automatic “sort” function IS still available, just tap the the “Edit” button on the contacts page to access it.

Manually-added contacts are no longer highlighted in red. This had obviously been confusing people, as we received a number of support questions about it. Now a contact will only appear in red if it was originally added from your address book, but is no longer found there.

A new search bar on the contact checklist lets you search on first name or email address, and only shows matching contacts. (we will add a search on company name in the next update, after requests)

The size of each group is displayed more simply on the groups page. It now shows just the size of the group, and will only show two numbers (such as “14 of 16”) when some members of a group are deselected.

There were also a number of other improvements:

• More tutorial information links within the app.
• Improved diagnostic information in the support request email.
• New share options to tell your Twitter and Facebook friends about the app.
• Updated to ARC and Modern Objective C standards.

We hope you enjoy the new features. Please let me know of any issues you spot, and we’ll do our best to help. If you wish to get in touch, please use the “Support” button on the title page of MailShot. Our Support Page and User Guide are also there, as always, to help.

MailShot Pro works with iPhone 5s thru 3GS, iPod touch and iPad mini, and is available now on the App Store.

MailShot works with iPhone 5s thru 3GS, iPod touch and iPads and is available as a free download that creates up to 3 groups with up to 5 contacts per group. An in-app purchase removes all restrictions.

Our new app- “TextShot- Group Text Done Right”

Over the past two years we have received a lot of requests from our many MailShot users asking us for a companion app to handle text and iMessages. So we are delighted to announce the arrival of TextShot on the App Store this week.

TextShot will feel very familiar to users of our popular MailShot app. Adding contacts to a group is handled in the app in all the same ways, with a very familiar interface.

Unlike MailShot, TextShot sends its messages from within the app, so we also took the opportunity to let you create and send your own preset text messages. Select a group, choose your text, then tap the TextShot logo to create a new message. It saves a lot of typing on that cramped mobile keyboard (and you can easily do it one-handed)

We expect the app to appeal mainly to iPhone users for sending SMS, but you can send iMessages to other iOS users from all iOS devices. TextShot doesn’t handle email.

TextShot is available on the App Store in two versions-

TextShot Lite is free to try, but restricts you to two groups of up to four contacts, and two different text presets. It is upgradable with an in-app purchase.

TextShot Pro removes all of those restrictions.

A Support page and User Guide are also available, and will be built up over the following days. As always, if you need any assistance please get in touch through the Support button on the front page of the app.

MailShot now has over 150,000 users

Our popular Mailshot app now has over 150000 users. Thanks to everyone who has spread the word. Get in touch with us if you need any help

It was great to hear from Apple today that over 150,000 people are now enjoying the unique benefits of our MailShot apps.

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.

FAQ Email Composer 1.1- New Update (And A New Title)

We have just released an update for “FAQ“, our unique app that creates complete custom emails or text documents from your predefined text, in just a few clicks.

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.

ShotList 4.0: New Version, New Features

Version 4.0 of Shotlist is now released on the App Store.

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. Continue reading “ShotList 4.0: New Version, New Features”

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.

ShotList 2.0 Now Available- All About The New Features

Version 2.0 has just been released on the App Store, and is the first of what we hope to be a string of updates to ShotList.

Over time we plan to build this app up into an indispensable tool for filmmakers of all abilities. We do this by listening to our users and adding the features that are most often requested via our support email address or App Store or Blog reviews. Almost all of the features added in this update are a direct result of a request from one or more users, and address over half of the items raised in our App Store reviews.

This update adds a number of major features and fixes. We will incorporate them into the User Guide for new users very soon.

NEW: Select and move multiple strips on the Stripboard.

This lets you move groups of strips around on the stripboard much more easily. You can select strips from all over the stripboard, and they are all grouped together when they move, so this is a good way of, say, gathering all the shots for a specific location together, or moving all the shots for a shooting day to a new place in the schedule if the order changes.

Tap “Schedule” on the Stripboard page to enter the mode which allows you to create delete or move a strip, the navbar now turns dark red in this mode. Then…

To select several strips at once tap the middle of a strip, they light up as they are selected. Tap a strip again to deselect it. The navbar shows how many strips you have selected.

Deselect all the strips or tap “Done” if you wish to leave this mode.

To move selected strips tap “=” on a selected strip. You can now drag it to the position you want to move the strips to. They will form a new group there.

NOTE: Only the top strip is seen to move around (as showing multiple selected strips would obscure the location they were to be dropped in.)

NEW: Duplicate strips, singly and in groups.

A few users asked to be able to duplicate strips instead of just creating new, blank ones. This lets them do that for individual scenes, and also to copy a full run of scenes if they have a sequence repeated by different actors, or in different locations.

To duplicate strips, select the single strip or group that you want to duplicate (as shown above) then tap “+” on a selected strip. This creates duplicates of the selected strips. The duplicated strips remain selected so you can move them to a new location easily. The scene numbers have the letter “D” added, to show that they are duplicates.

NOTE: You can copy Day Markers right along with those scene strips if you want, they behave consistently.

NEW: Storyboard thumbnails on the details screen. (iPad)

You can now view all six of your storyboard frames for a scene as thumbnails right on the iPad Details screen. Tap an image to toggle it as complete when it has been shot.

NEW: Camera icon shows status and quick access to Storyboards

(All)

On all versions a new camera icon added to the Details screen provides quick access to the Storyboard screen for that scene. It works like the camera icons on the Stripboard screen, showing whether all the shots are complete.

NEW: Show cast as names rather than numbers.

By default, character names instead of numbers are now displayed on the Stripboard and Details screens. If you would like to change this, switches in the Settings app provide separate control of which is displayed on each of those screens.

Renaming and reordering the cast is planned for a future update.

NEW: Added options to for location type and time of day settings for each scene.

In addition to INT and EXT, you can now also choose” I/E” (INT/EXT) and “GRN” (for a greenscreen stage). I/E will use the same strip colours as EXT, and GRN uses a bright green for all times of day.

You can now choose “MRN” and “EVE” for times of day for each scene, in addition to DWN,DAY,DSK and NGT. There is also a new option of “D4N” for “Day For Night” shooting.

NEW: Page Count shown on day strip as “days and eighths”.

A minor tweak, but when showing the total number of pages planned for each day’s shoot we now show the number of pages and eighths, (e.g. “3 4/8ths”) on the day strips, instead of large numbers of eighths (such as “28/8ths)”.

NEW: Pick images, and make selections from popovers (iPad.)

Increases compatibility with iPad. We will be looking at making more use of iPad-specific features in future updates.

FIX: iPad Photo Library crash.

There was a problem when adding images from the Photo Library, only on iPad. This is now fixed.

FIX: Enter Dropbox with no project selected.

You can now enter the Dropbox section, even with no projects on your device.

FIX: Load more image formats from Photo Library.

Some image sizes in certain formats wouldn’t load from the Photo Library correctly, they now will.

FIX: Replace the tide table link in new Sample Projects with a real one.

Very minor tweak, but the sample project created for new users contains an example of an internet link. This now goes to a real site rather than a dummy, as otherwise users may think the feature doesn’t work.

***

We hope you enjoy the new features. If you would like to see something added or changed, please let us know. We can’t promise we will be able to do it in the next update, but it helps us to prioritise our work, and to get a clear image of how you are all using ShotList, and to tailor it to your needs. The next update is planned for around 4-5 weeks time.

If you are finding ShotList useful (and especially if you see a criticism in an earlier review that has now been addressed) we would love you to review and rate ShotList on the App Store. The more people are using it, the more we can continue to support and expand it into the fantastic tool I am sure we would all like it to become.

Please send requests, or comments to shotlist@solubleapps.com.

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.

Welcome to our first 10,000 MailShot Users.

We have just heard from Apple that over 10,000 people are now using MailShot after its first few months on the App Store. We hope you are all finding the unique way you can send mail to groups from within your applications useful, especially with the new features we just added in our most recent update. You will find that it is an app you can continue to benefit from, month after month.

We always love to hear from you. Please get in touch to tell us how you are using MailShot, to request features you’d like to see, or to ask for advice or help with a problem.

We have just produced a comprehensive User Guide, so take a look if you haven’t seen it yet, you are bound to learn something. You can also still find advice and many answers to the most common user questions on our support page.

It’s great to see how MailShot continues to grow, and we plan to continue to support it with updates in the future (we have updated five times already!). Much of our success so far has come from people spreading the word through social networks and forums and contributing reviews to the App Store. Many thanks go out to all those that have done this, it’s always appreciated. If you haven’t, please review us if you get the chance, as all the great reviews we have received so far are harder to find when we put out an update.

Thanks again. We hope it won’t be too long before we are welcoming the next 10,000 users.