S*E released!

Nikolai

As of today, Sunday April 24 2005, two months before the initial target date, Star*Explorer is officially in the release mode and is available for purchase!

All existing sponsors have a very special deal (I told you, I'm good for it:-)

All existing non-registered users may continue to enjoy original extended trial period until July 12 2005. All new users will have industry-standard 30 day trial.

Here are some product highlights:

• Upload unlimited number of photos
• Automatically convert your images to Smugmug-compatible formats
• Take it everywhere with you - it "weighs" less than a one 3mp picture
• Find you albums, sales and stats fast
• Drag-and-drop and/or send your files and folders from your Windows Explorer
• Notify yourself, your friends and your family of the new uploads
  with the built-in email client
• Use it from as many machines as you want
• Create and re-use your own custom gallery settings
• Stay organized with the extensive but easy-to-use options
• Friendly and responsive customer service (not that you'd need it much:-)

S*E has been in the extensive beta-testing since early January 2004. With 14,000+ hits and counting there were only a few support issues, most of them were resolved within a few hours upon notification.

I would like to thank Smugmug team, my existing sponsors, customers and users and, of course, my fellow 3d-party developers and all dgrinners for their support. I would not be able to make S*E on my own!

S*E thanks you!! :lust

DavidTO

Nikolai,

I'll never use your software, as long as you lack Mac support, but I want to congratulate you. You obviously have put your heart and soul into this endeavor, and I can tell you've done a great job, from the comments. Congratulations!

Now get started on the Mac version, will ya?



(please don't respond to the Mac comment I WAS just kidding!, great job!)

Nikolai

David,

DavidTO wrote:

Nikolai,

I'll never use your software, as long as you lack Mac support, but I want to congratulate you. You obviously have put your heart and soul into this endeavor, and I can tell you've done a great job, from the comments. Congratulations!

Thanks, man, I do appreciate your kind words!

DavidTO wrote:

Now get started on the Mac version, will ya?

As soon as a finish my "phase two":-)

DavidTO wrote:

(please don't respond to the Mac comment I WAS just kidding!, great job!)

This thought didn't even cross my mind, "timeo Danaos et dona ferentes" is not in my vocabulary:-)

Thank you again.. Funny we didn't met yet, but I'm sure I'll see you in Yosemite!

Cheers!

rainforest1155

Congratulations Nik!
Sorry for not being very responsive about your recent developements lately. I did not have much to upload and I am still a little busy.

Stats feature of the new version sounds great, but I had some problems while with getting it to run.

- First of all it would be nice if you could add this to the context menu, because naturally I use the right mouse button to access album relevant stuff.
- Secondly I always get this message box:

I even reimported my license file (thanks again, Nik! Seems like I can put it to use now. ), but the message didn't go away.
- Thirdly I can enter every amount of go-back-months and still get only the current one. I can even enter negative and more than 12 months even though this data isn't stored within SM.

I'll keep you posted on additional wishes.

Thanks for the update,
Sebastian

Nikolai

Sebastian,

rainforest1155 wrote:

Congratulations Nik!
Sorry for not being very responsive about your recent developements lately. I did not have much to upload and I am still a little busy.

Thanks, man!

rainforest1155 wrote:

Stats feature of the new version sounds great, but I had some problems while with getting it to run.

oops, sounds like a trouble..:-)

rainforest1155 wrote:

- First of all it would be nice if you could add this to the context menu, because naturally I use the right mouse button to access album relevant stuff.

I was thinking of this.. It's not a problem at all, but I was contemplating the fact that this is a fairly once-per-month deal and as such I didn't want to clutter the context menu more than it already is..
I'll give it another thought though..

rainforest1155 wrote:

- Secondly I always get this message box:

I even reimported my license file (thanks again, Nik! Seems like I can put it to use now. ), but the message didn't go away.

Darn.. :uhoh Sorry.. Will fix tonite as soon as I get home..

rainforest1155 wrote:

- Thirdly I can enter every amount of go-back-months and still get only the current one. I can even enter negative and more than 12 months even though this data isn't stored within SM.

The data *is* stored for the "unblocked" version, otherwise it's always current month only and it ignores your input. Once the issue above is fixed you'll get this one working too..

rainforest1155 wrote:

I'll keep you posted on additional wishes.
Thanks for the update,
Sebastian

Please do!

Cheers!

rainforest1155

Nikolai wrote:

I was thinking of this.. It's not a problem at all, but I was contemplating the fact that this is a fairly once-per-month deal and as such I didn't want to clutter the context menu more than it already is..
I'll give it another thought though..

Maybe you're right. Especially when the batch download of all albums or at least per category is working there'll be no need to put it in the context menu.
Is the batch download already in and if yes how do I access it?

Nikolai wrote:

The data *is* stored for the "unblocked" version, otherwise it's always current month only and it ignores your input. Once the issue above is fixed you'll get this one working too..

I don't doubt that, but what I meant was that I am allowed to enter any number into the months-field. For example "-200" months or "300" months (results in Apr 1980).
There is no restriction and SM only stores data for 12 months. So the field should be limited from 0 to 12. The rest isn't working anyways.

Sebastian

Nikolai

Batch, etc..

rainforest1155 wrote:

Maybe you're right. Especially when the batch download of all albums or at least per category is working there'll be no need to put it in the context menu.
Is the batch download already in and if yes how do I access it?

It is there. It's context sensitive. The only problem now is that this license-protection is wrong (I apologize again) and as such you can't do more than one gallery. Otherwise I would always do ALL for the previous month (which should not change anymore:-)

rainforest1155 wrote:

I don't doubt that, but what I meant was that I am allowed to enter any number into the months-field. For example "-200" months or "300" months (results in Apr 1980).

You mean strictly UI-wise you don't like negative numbers? :-)
This particular component treats MinValue=0 as no limit, and I need 0..
I'll look into it.. At least negatives are treated as 0, so there is no harm done..

rainforest1155 wrote:

There is no restriction and SM only stores data for 12 months. So the field should be limited from 0 to 12. The rest isn't working anyways.
Sebastian

SM may change their mind (like they did with 8Mb limit).. Again, under normal circumstances you'd do the initial sweep for whatever time, and then you'll be normally doing last month only.
I didn't want to superimpose my own limits..
But you're right, some of those seem ridiculous. I'll see what I can do..

Cheers!

luke_church

Hi Nikolai,

Just wanting to say well done for taking the big jump and on the app. Hope it all continues to work out for you [And all the other developers who are working with Smugmug's API].

Congrats. Way to go.

All the best,

Luke

PS. What do you think you're doing releasing projects before their published ship dates??? That's no way to behave... You're putting the rest of the developer community into disrepute. I would like you to take down the download until it's at least a month late and delete some 10% of the published features, com'on we don't want to give users the impression that they actually have the right to expect us to keep our promises...

Nikolai

Thank you Luke!

luke_church wrote:

Hi Nikolai,

Just wanting to say well done for taking the big jump and on the app. Hope it all continues to work out for you [And all the other developers who are working with Smugmug's API].

Congrats. Way to go.

All the best,

Luke

Thank you very much, Luke! I am always glad to hear your feedback!

luke_church wrote:

PS. What do you think you're doing releasing projects before their published ship dates??? That's no way to behave... You're putting the rest of the developer community into disrepute. I would like you to take down the download until it's at least a month late and delete some 10% of the published features, com'on we don't want to give users the impression that they actually have the right to expect us to keep our promises...

:-)
Well, "be on time and on budget" - that's the motto of us Delphi guys:-)
I do hope .NET will be as good for me as Delphi is/was..

Cheers!

Nikolai

It was a license!!
Sebastian, the S*E version is OK, I guess I sent you wrong license previously.
I sent you a new one.
Sorry about the issue.
Cheers!

Andy

congrats, nik

Nikolai

Thanks, Andy!

andy wrote:

congrats, nik

You may wanna try it on your laptop sometimes!:):
Cheers!

rainforest1155

Nikolai wrote:

Sebastian, the S*E version is OK, I guess I sent you wrong license previously.
I sent you a new one.
Sorry about the issue.
Cheers!

Nik, thanks the new license works great. Now I just need a good database program to handle all the data.
Does somebody know a good alternative to M$ Acce$$? I have OpenOffice, but I don't know if it's able to handle mdb files.
I would prefer freeware/opensource tools.

Thanks,
Sebastian

Nikolai

Glad to hear this..:-)

rainforest1155 wrote:

Nik, thanks the new license works great. Now I just need a good database program to handle all the data.
Does somebody know a good alternative to M$ Acce$$? I have OpenOffice, but I don't know if it's able to handle mdb files.
I would prefer freeware/opensource tools.

Thanks,
Sebastian

All you need as any DB tool which can handle ADO/JET. However MS Office makes it all a bit easier/prettier..

rainforest1155

Nikolai wrote:

All you need as any DB tool which can handle ADO/JET. However MS Office makes it all a bit easier/prettier..

Thanks, I got the newest beta of OpenOffice and it seems to do the job. However I need some more time to get used to all that new stuff.

Having downloaded all relevant stats I would like to have an option to exclude certain categories/galleries from being downloaded without having to download all the others manually. For example I have a "Backup"-category with all my originals in it and these aren't public and therefore I don't need stats for them.

Any news on the image-level-support in S*E? I know you said some time ago it's in alpha testing. With the nice function to download my stats I also would like to have the possebility to assign my original filenames to all the pictures-stats happended before S*E had DB-support.

Awesome work so far, keep it up!
Sebastian Nik

Nikolai

Very nice!

rainforest1155 wrote:

Thanks, I got the newest beta of OpenOffice and it seems to do the job. However I need some more time to get used to all that new stuff.

Well, you're all set then:-)

rainforest1155 wrote:

Having downloaded all relevant stats I would like to have an option to exclude certain categories/galleries from being downloaded without having to download all the others manually. For example I have a "Backup"-category with all my originals in it and these aren't public and therefore I don't need stats for them.

Hmm.. Interesting... I have similar structure with a few private folders storing all the originals, but the thought never crossed my mind.. Besides, some of them do have direct links;-)
I'll see what I can do..

rainforest1155 wrote:

Any news on the image-level-support in S*E? I know you said some time ago it's in alpha testing. With the nice function to download my stats I also would like to have the possebility to assign my original filenames to all the pictures-stats happended before S*E had DB-support.

I got it working, but I didn't officially put it anywhere. I will add it some time later.

Now I'm simply taking some time off coding/design to think about the whole Phase Two thing, prepare for and enjoy upcoming Smugmug Yosemite trip, etc.
S*E is my pet project and I would like it to be fun, not just another job:-).
At least I don't have any HR to ask for vacation..:-)

rainforest1155 wrote:

Awesome work so far, keep it up!
Sebastian Nik

Thank you kindly!

rainforest1155

Nikolai wrote:

Hmm.. Interesting... I have similar structure with a few private folders storing all the originals, but the thought never crossed my mind.. Besides, some of them do have direct links;-)

Nevermind, the download of my 4000 originals stats didn't take that much time, but it would be still nice to have that feature.

Nikolai wrote:

(concerning support on image level)
I got it working, but I didn't officially put it anywhere. I will add it some time later.

Great, I'll wait for this.

Nikolai wrote:

Now I'm simply taking some time off coding/design to think about the whole Phase Two thing, prepare for and enjoy upcoming Smugmug Yosemite trip, etc.
S*E is my pet project and I would like it to be fun, not just another job:-).
At least I don't have any HR to ask for vacation..:-)

Hey, I didn't mean it like that. I just jotted down my ideas. You definately earned yourself the time off. As I always said I can wait, especially after the solid program you delivered ahead of your schedule.
Enjoy the time!

Just one more thing I discovered: When selecting a user-created category (Backup) with 2 subcategories (2004,2005) and then trying to download the stats for the whole Backup-category from the last 12 months I always got:

27.04.2005 21:29:39: Started Downloading statistics
27.04.2005 21:29:39: Started Getting list of category/subcategory specific albums
27.04.2005 21:29:39: Finished Getting list of category/subcategory specific albums (0:00:00)
27.04.2005 21:29:39: No local data found
27.04.2005 21:29:39: Finished Downloading statistics (0:00:00)

Downloading the subcategories seperately worked perfectly.
I didn't have the problem with SM-standard categories.

Tell me if you need some further infos about that. It isn't urgent, so take your time.

Sebastian

Nikolai

Sebastian,

rainforest1155 wrote:

Just one more thing I discovered: When selecting a user-created category (Backup) with 2 subcategories (2004,2005) and then trying to download the stats for the whole Backup-category from the last 12 months I always got:

27.04.2005 21:29:39: Started Downloading statistics
27.04.2005 21:29:39: Started Getting list of category/subcategory specific albums
27.04.2005 21:29:39: Finished Getting list of category/subcategory specific albums (0:00:00)
27.04.2005 21:29:39: No local data found
27.04.2005 21:29:39: Finished Downloading statistics (0:00:00)

Downloading the subcategories seperately worked perfectly.
I didn't have the problem with SM-standard categories.

Tell me if you need some further infos about that. It isn't urgent, so take your time.

Sebastian

I think your local cache is out of whack. Try Get Albums (Ctrl+Shift+A) and Categories (Ctrl+Shfit+G) manually (like in good old days:-), it should fix this issue. Please let me know if it does not..

Cheers!

rainforest1155

Nikolai wrote:

I think your local cache is out of whack. Try Get Albums (Ctrl+Shift+A) and Categories (Ctrl+Shfit+G) manually (like in good old days:-), it should fix this issue. Please let me know if it does not..

Nope, no change. I just tried it on another custom-made category with 2 subcats...the same. Activating all logging checkboxes does not result in a detailed log, so I can't give you additional infos.

The global option to get stats for all categories/albums works though.

Thanks,
Sebastian

Nikolai

Thanks man!

rainforest1155 wrote:

Nope, no change. I just tried it on another custom-made category with 2 subcats...the same. Activating all logging checkboxes does not result in a detailed log, so I can't give you additional infos.

The global option to get stats for all categories/albums works though.

Thanks,
Sebastian

I'll check it tonite!