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 Email Composer 2.0 released

FAQ Email composer easily creates customer support emails for iPhone and iPad. Available now on the App Store.

FAQ Banner2
We are proud to announce the release of version 2.0 of “FAQ Email Composer“,  our unique app that helps you to easily create the perfect email.

The update provides a massive graphical refresh, with a much cleaner layout, and full compatibility with iOS 8.3. it also adds support for the larger screens of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus.

FAQ is ideal if you handle customer support, or provide information to a group of students, parents, sports teams. It works by holding all the blocks of text you may want to use to open and close emails and answer questions. Just select a couple of the blocks with checkmarks, and the email is created for you.

The new app is also available in a Markdown-optimised version, “FAQ: Markdown Email Composer”, now updated to feature a shortcut bar above the keyboard, for entering Markdown more quickly.

FAQ is an undiscovered gem, that always gets fantastic reviews from those who have tried it.


FAQ AppstoreFAQ Email Composer works with iPhone 6+, 6, 5S, 5c, 5, 4s and 4, iPod touch, iPad and iPad mini, running iOS 7.0 and above, and is available now on the App Store.


FAQ Markdown Email Composer” works with iPhone 6+, 6, 5S, 5c, 5, 4s and 4, iPod touch, iPad and iPad mini, running iOS 7.0 and above, and is available now on the App Store.

MailShot Pro Sends Group Email Around The World

A new version of MailShot hits the app store today, adding support for French, Spanish and Chinese languages.

We are really excited to introduce MailShot Pro to a wider audience of French and Spanish speakers, and into China, one of the fastest-growing markets in the world. The worldwide reach of the App Store gives a small developer like us a global presence in markets that we simply couldn’t enter on our own.

You can now find localised support for MailShot in French, Spanish, Chinese and of course English.

This release also fixes an issue that a few users have experienced when naming their MailShot groups.

As always, if you find MailShot useful, a review on the App Store is always very much appreciated, as each new release tends to hide the fantastic reviews we have received so far.

MailShot 1.60 Brings Larger Groups For Many Users

As thanks for helping us reach over 50000 users, and to celebrate our first year on the App Store, we have just launched another update to our popular “MailShot Pro” and “MailShot” group email apps, bringing increased group sizes and a number of other exciting new features.

NOTE: We recently renamed the in-app upgrade for the free version of MailShot to “MailShot Upgrade”, because a few users were confusing it with the “MailShot Pro” app, and were downloading (and being charged for) both. The upgrade still includes all the same great features as “MailShot Pro”.

New features in version 1.60 include:

More Groups.
The number of groups you can create in the upgraded and Pro versions has now been doubled, to 100.

TIP: Groups can be sorted into any order using the “Edit” button on the groups page.

More Contacts.
We have changed our address format, which will now allow you to address as many contacts as your ISP permits from the group contacts created in the new upgraded and Pro versions of MailShot. In many cases this is now 100 contacts.

We also added a warning when you exceed 100 contacts, which can be turned off in the Settings app.

NOTE: you can send to groups with as many as 500 contacts through Google Mail by connecting to it using the “Exchange” instead of the “Gmail” protocol, Here are the instructions. (For simplicity we suggest you don’t enable contact sync over Exchange if you don’t need it,  just enable it for email). Be careful of the daily limits on Google Mail.

Use MailShot group contacts from a Mac.

Contacts that you create in MailShot on your iOS device can also now be used from Mail on your Mac, too. Note that you will need to tap “update” on each group in the new version before using this feature.

See here on our support page for more on this.

Removing Someone From A Particular Email

You can now exclude a particular contact, or contacts, from a group before you send it.

Just tap “Cancel”,  save your email to drafts, then reload it again. You can now see all the contacts in the group by tapping on the address line, and can select and then delete them individually from the email.

See our support page here for more details.


Better handling of in-app purchases.

We now provide a clearer indication to users when an in-app purchase is successfully processed.

A “Restore purchases” button on the title page also enables you to restore a previous upgrade to a new device without any fear of being charged twice.

Importing MailShot groups back into MailShot.
Attempting to add a MailShot-created contact will show a list of the contacts it contains, for you to select contacts from.

You can use this feature:

  • To combine groups into larger ones
  • To import and manage a MailShot group someone sent you
  • Or to rebuild groups in MailShot after a backup failure or similar disaster.At a pinch you could use this to manage a group from more than one of your devices, though it is not recommended for that purpose (TIP: if you do try this, use a different name for the new group on your second device to avoid deleting or overwriting the original group)

Note that this feature can’t name the first contact in a group, as that isn’t stored, but it will restore their email address.

*TIP: You can easily share a MailShot group contact to someone else using the “Share Contact” button in the Contacts app- they don’t need to have MailShot installed to use it themselves on an iOS device or mac. (though they’ll need to store the MailShot contact in an address book which isn’t synched with Exchange,  iCloud is fine for this)

Add contacts from a button.
There is a new “+” button provided at the bottom of the page that lists contacts in your groups. This allows you to easily add a single contact to a long list without needing to scroll all the way to the bottom of that list

If you have any questions, problems. or suggestions please check out our support page or drop us a line on support@solubleapps.com. We are always more than happy to help. We also run a mailing list which sends updates like this out to you every few months, simply send the word “Subscribe” to mailshotlist@solubleapps.com, and we will add you. You can unsubscribe at any time.

We hope you find the new features useful, and as always we really appreciate it if you can take the time to review MailShot on the App Store, or update an older review, as all of our fantastic reviews  are moved from  the main page whenever we update, and we depend on your reviews to keep developing MailShot. Here are links to the App Store for “MailShot Pro” and “MailShot” to make it easier for you to review us. As always, many thanks for those that do, it means a lot to us.


MailShot Sails Past 50,000 Users!


It’s great to hear that we have just passed another milestone for “MailShot Pro” and “MailShot”,  with over 50,000 users now enjoying our unique group email solution via the App Store.

We are celebrating with a new free update for both versions within the next few weeks, bringing larger groups for many users, better handling of in-app purchases, and more in-app help and error detection. We’ll let you know more about it when its available.

Thank you all for spreading the word about MailShot to others, its great to see how it has steadily grown more rapidly each month, and much of this has been by word of mouth.

If you need any assistance with MailShot, please see our support page or drop us an email,  we’ll do our best to help you.

App Store Reviews, Part 3 (in 3D!*)

Now that version 1.30 of MailShot has been out for a few weeks I thought it was time for another roundup of user reviews around the world’s App Stores.

In general they are fantastic, thanks to you all for your kind words. As usual we also include the few isolated negative ones we have had, with our responses- in most cases we could probably have solved their problems if they had contacted us on our support page.

If you are already a satisfied user please take the time to add your opinion and rating on the App Store. We need and value your support, especially each time a new version is released as this hides the previous good reviews on another page.

USA Store

FatherWarrior *****
Group emailing FINALLY!
It works perfectly on my iphone4. Upgrade to pro version is totally worth the $3.99, if you have large email groups like I do. iOS should have had this feature from the beginning. Apple will probably buy this app’s code and call it their own like they usually do.

PJ- I wish!

Well, they know where to find me…

Nashville JZ *****
Great
As promised. Simple. Easy to manage. Works like a charm.

Ddlj81 *****
Very useful
Does what it says. Just that the free version can only store 5 max on a group.

Bronzit *****
Excellent ‘Gap’ Filler!
Works very well. Easy to use, in The Mac Way. I expect Apple to make it obsolete, soon, though.

CatkissinAustin *****
Just what I needed
I’m not a tekkie and I don’t speak Mac altho I have a Mac and iPhone. This worked easily and quickly for me.

Dakota Roemer****
Well Done!
This sucker keeps me sane. A very well executed and much needed app. Woot!

Yptcn *****
GREAT !!!
The app that was missing . It does everything it says.Thank you :-)))))))))

pinki101 *****
Now Even Better

This is just about the most important app I’ve purchased. Lots of apps let you email to groups from their apps, but this is what you need to forward easily forward email to your groups from the mail app. It’s simple, it’s smart, and it works. I rated it five stars before the last round of improvements, and now with sort ability and both emails and names showing for edit, it’s that much better. Thank you!

EuRisk0 *****
Perfect iPhone add on
Great job

Schreibs1 *****
A must-have for productivity
This app works seamlessly when following the web support page. I now have email group function on my iPad. Previously, I was relying on my PC for emails to over 10 groups. I maintain my zero stars rating to Apple for not building in this function.

PJ- It was great to see a reviewer who only awarded us a single star in an earlier review because “the functionality should have been provided by Apple” come back and change it. Much appreciated, thanks.

Mkirse *****
Thank YOU!!

I’m thrilled to find this app!! This issue has been driving me crazy – can’t believe that apple didn’t include the ability to forward emails to a group themselves. Now my iPad is finally a functional tool for my business on the go. Thank you!!!

IncredulousAlien ** v1.20
Good effort, but . . .

This app has some potential, so I gave it a two rating. And yes, it does have the currently unique ability to use group lists for forwarding email. Unfortunately, there appears to be no method for “on the fly” deletion of addresses from a group (e.g., in the process of adding a group to the bcc: field when forwarding in Mail). This means that, in cases where the incoming “from” address happens to be included in the group selected for forwarding, the email will be sent back to the incoming “from” address. Not useful, and certainly not polite in an age of humongerous attachments and bulging inboxes. This may not be a flaw for some uses, but it is a fatal one for the way I use email. Bottom line: I wish I had my money back.

PJ- Slightly over-the-top criticism, perhaps, and the functionality IS actually provided for this if you are concerned enough about it to want to deselect people from an email. (Use the checkmarks provided in MailShot to temporarily deselect a person from the group, press UPDATE, send your email to the group, reselect the person and press UPDATE again.)

Bob Kroghs ***** v1.20
Great app.

Once I took the time to read instructions carefully it worked perfectly. Took a half hour to learn.

Craig Symons ** v1.20
Not bad but crashes constantly
After entering addresses and it crashing, I finally ended up entering one address and updating each time for a total of 25 updates. Then going back to find out how to send an email I noticed that nearly ALL of my entries were gone. Very frustrating!!

PJ- Always sorry to hear it when a user has an experience like this. From the description it sounds like an issue we have seen occasionally when adding badly-formatted contacts in the address book (often created in MS Outlook). Some code we added in 1.30 seems to have helped with this, but if this user had contacted support or read the support page I am sure we would have been able to help him.

bakerbear ***** v1.20
Free version gave me great idea of how it worked.
I will feel much better about emailing groups now… No one forgotten, no one included without need. App works smooth and has great help page (I had one contact w some nonstandard entries that were easily fixed). Didn’t take more than 1 minute to be fully working!!

Woogetybop ****
MailShot
Simple free app that is really $3.99 if it going to be functional. After paying the $3.99 it let’s you create 50 groups of 50 contacts that can be used with most other app’s. That’s the key here. Most other mail contact apps make you use their emailer, which I find unacceptable. 4 stars for being a simple program, needs more options like CC BCC in contact groups.

PJ- Actually you CAN place MailShot groups in the BCC and CC lines, just as easily as the TO line.

Also, apparent “simplicity” is actually an aim for mobile apps and one of the hardest things to achieve. We often work hard behind the scenes to hide the complexities from the user. I guess I’ll take it as a compliment, not a criticism :).

Penta Huang *****
Good 
I just download, very good embedded to iPad mail app

UK Store

Andrez_99 **
Poor
Incredibly frustrating that you can only add one contact at a time from the address list to a group. This app needs a tick box next to those address names with emails. You then want to add all of those ticked.

PJ- Actually this feature is already coded and will be added in the next update- (1.40)

DWoodthorpe ****
Great help

This app is just what I have been looking for. I can now email all my golfing group in one go. I would give it 5 stars if I could have had more than 5 members per group. 10 would have been more realistic for the free version.

This facility should have been part of the mail program from the start. Well done.

PJ- I do make my living from writing software, and it takes some considerable time for us to support users and add features to MailShot even now, months after the release. I needed to set the user limit to one which will let people try it out for free and see its advantages, but will also give them a reason to pay a small upgrade fee if they like it and want more. Around 20% of our users upgrade, so I think that means we have the balance about right, as it is a lot higher than figures I have heard for other apps.

Unfortunately I think people can interpret the “free” download icon as meaning completely free, rather than “free to try”. It would be nice if Apple could change that. 

Tim, Scotland *****
Brilliant App
This is a brilliant app and just what the iPad was waiting for. It enables you to create Groups in your Contacts list and access these from within the iPad’s email app. The Groups appear in your Contacts list as a single entry (say ‘Family’), but contain multiple email addresses. So, when you’re in the iPad’s email app, just select ‘Family’ from your Contacts list (remember, it looks just like a single email address in the contacts list) and your email will be sent to multiple recipients. Best of all, when you look at your sent mail, you’ll see all the recipients listed separately. You can edit existing MailShot groups from the app – say adding or deleting members individually.
The basic app is free to let you evaluate it for a few small groups, but an in-app upgrade (very reasonable) releases the full potential (up to 50 groups with up to 50 members per group). An absolute must-have.

David Hillyer *****
Wonderful x 2!

It’s great to see a new version created so quickly in response to user feedback. I stand by my earlier posting on v.1.13 even more:
I love my IPhone, and find I’m doing more and more emailing from it. To not
have a group email-send was a problem. So finding MailShot was great . But
in the v1.13, I had problems upgrading for 5+ names. I contacted Peter,
who then appeared to work night and day to fix the problem – I felt as
though I was at the cutting edge of app development! We got it sorted, and I
am very pleased.
I’ve seen a few negative comments from users – all I can say is that I guess
in the early stages apps may need a bit of tweaking; so my advice would be
to make contact with the designer, rather than moan about things online. And
as for criticising the cost: an app costs peanuts, and they can be very
powerful tools. MailShot certainly is one of my best buys!

Canadian Store

Sd37lafont *****
Mailshots

Amazing the way they organize the address book of contact from all sources.

garyludwig ***** v1.20
Exactly what it should be

I’ve been looking for an app that would let me make email groups on my iPhone I could use in all my other apps. This one is exactly right — just what I wish Apple had built in. Simple, intuitive, and versatile. The graphics make it look cartoonish but don’t be fooled.

PJ- Cartoonish? I was aiming for non-threatening :).

I am also a fan of Rene Magritte, and subconsciously had some of his recurring themes in mind. He had more than 72*72 pixels to work with, though.

Rest Of World

Florian Prelle ***** Germany
Super 

Fantastic app to create mailing lists

David BOULANGER **** France
Great

Great ! but expensive ….

JRK1 **** Australia
MailShot

Brilliant app and great support service, much appreciated.

* And if you are wondering why “in 3D?” its simply because this is a sequel to a previous post, and in eighties cinema the third part of a franchise was often in 3D, unlike now when it seems to be on nearly every new release, whether it needs it or not.

“Ultimate Charades” Released On The App Store Today

Our Suggestion Box app is getting great responses from those who have tried it, and it is finding all sorts of unforeseen uses (such as language teaching in Russia) due to its comprehensive customisation abilities. But it was always destined to be a fairly “niche” product, as it is aimed mainly at improvisers and drama students.

Ultimate Charades takes the customisation abilities of Suggestion Box, and applies them to one of the world’s all-time most popular party games – Charades. That customisation means you can remove any suggestions that aren’t relevant to you and your friends, and can add in the things you DO care about, such as the hit show or favourite celebrities of the moment, or even your friends and family themselves, making it a much more personal experience.

We have also put instructions for all sorts of game variations on the Ultimate Charades page, and answers to the most likely user questions on the support page.

Check it out on the App Store now.