Chris J. Karr, March 21st, 2010

Given some of the oddness that I’ve seen in Sourceforge as of late, I’ve gone ahead and packaged up the full source code to Books 3. It’s not the cleanest or most well-organized code, but there should be enough there for folks wanting to take the Books 3 code and run with it.

Enjoy!

Chris J. Karr, March 20th, 2010

I wanted to post a quick note about the state of Codex development. With the announcement of the iPad, I’ve put the development of the cataloging tool on hold as I waited and saw what Apple releases with the new version of iTunes. In short, it appears that iTunes is being tweaked to handle book content as well as music and videos. Since it’s conceivable that the cataloging interface will be a lot like the rest of the application, I wanted to wait and see what that looked like before putting together functionality that Apple would simply replicate. Since everything’s ePub in this brave new world, Apple may end up doing much of the hard work that I originally planned.

I’m still moving forward with using ePub as a record medium for physical books. To encourage myself to move a bit quicker on this front, I’ve stopped using Books 3 as a means for cataloging my weekly comic book runs and the growing pile of issues will serve as a good motivator for getting the ePub creation tools out sooner rather than later.

Thank you for your continued patience and I look forward to discussing more about where Codex fits in an ePub-enabled iTunes future.

Chris J. Karr, March 20th, 2010

Effective immediately, the Shion Mac desktop client is now free and may be downloaded and used with as many devices as you desire for no cost. It’ll take me some time to release an update with the license checking disabled, so please e-mail shion@audacious-software.com for your free license to use until I get around to releasing a non-license-checking update.

The reason that the desktop client is going free is because I have a few new additions to the larger Shion platform that I’ll be releasing in the coming months and the business model for Shion as a whole doesn’t work well if there’s any friction for users getting started. I’ll be happy to post more details when they’re ready, but in the meantime, please enjoy using Shion on our dime.

For those of you who purchased a Shion license in the past year, I’m prepared to give you a full refund for your purchase, so please send me an e-mail if you’d like me to get that process started.

I’m very excited about the next phase in the evolution of this software, so stay tuned to this weblog for further details.

Chris J. Karr, February 6th, 2010

Shion 2.1.0b5 is now available.

This is a major release that includes the following changes:

1. The PowerLinc USB code has been updated to be more reliable. Controller lock-ups were an issue with previous releases, and this update improves that situation. This code is still being tuned, so your command latency may increase with this release.

2. Shion now supports the Smarthome SmartLinc 2414N controller.

3. Sprinkler support remains incomplete, but support for activating zones through AppleScript is now available. Additional device support has been added to the AppleScript dictionary (houses & thermostats).

4. Shion now supports Caller ID events when used with a compatible modem. Currently, Shion has been tested with an Apple USB modem.

Download the update now, and read more for details about the new features.

Chris J. Karr, February 4th, 2010

As a software developer, I’ve become fond of the StackOverflow question and answer website model. Since home automation seems to be one of those subjects that has lots of twists and gotchas, I was wondering if there would be a community interested in a sponsored StackExchange site for home automation enthusiasts.

If there’s interest, I would certainly be interested in sponsoring such a site as marketing and community outreach vehicle for Audacious Software. The site would be product-agnostic and users would be free to post questions and answers about whatever hardware and software platforms that they were using. My interest in doing this stems from the fact that there’s quite a bit of home automation knowledge spread across fractured sites on the Internet and a centralized location might do wonders for helping everyone out and getting new users interested in wiring up their homes and offices to do crazy things.

If you would be interested in using such a site, please let me know by posting a comment below or sending an e-mail to chris@audacious-software.com. Also, if you’re a home automation technology developer and would be interested in sharing the sponsorship burden, I won’t turn you away. ;-)