iDuelpro Sales up thanks to Duelpro Monopoly and new release

We have released Duelpro 2009 yesterday, another major version of the most used yu-gi-oh! lifepoints calculator. Other than the fixes, improvements, new features and GUI overhaul, there was another change. Duelpro now features an iDuelpro introduction screen at start!

The problem with iDuelpro isn’t that it’s not useful, since most people who use it have remarked it being the best LPC around. The problem is how many people know about it. iDuelpro is the cheapest full featured lifepoints aid for iPhone and iPod Touch, but as long as people don’t know this they will keep’on buying too expensive ugly LPC’s with the same or less functionality then iDuelpro. Therefore we are introducing iDuelpro to all people who own Duelpro for Windows, 532.896 in total at the moment.

By doing this we can show people that if they own an iPhone or iPod Touch and they play the Yu-gi-oh! TCG, iDuelpro is a must have. And we are already noticing this, today our marketshare on the iPhone already increased after dropping for a while and our sales were up 75%. We will have another exposure to 5.000 people in the coming month and are even thinking about advertising on major sites by the end of this year. In this way we can provide all iPhone or iPod Touch yu-gi-oh! fans with a decent and cheap solution to improve their TCG experience.

Another great thing is that we have gotten this amazing email today of someone who liked iDuelpro Mobile so much that he wanted to thank us personally. This is just great, if there is anything that makes us more happy than the financial reports at the end of the month, it’s a happy customer. This is something we are now experiencing for the first time, since we have been developing for Windows the past years.

So if you like iDuelpro or Duelpro, send us an email and make us happy!

Phoenxsoftware.com, Blastgen.com and subdomains offline on Monday 23th of August due to backup

All our domains will be offline during a short backup on Monday the 23th of August 00:05 GMT+1. The domains will be back online within 15 minutes. These back-ups will be executed because of recent DDOS attacks on other major software distributors and newssites.

List of all domains being backed-up :
-Phoenxsoftware.com
-Blastgen.com
-36ic.phoenxsoftware.com
-lpx.phoenxsoftware.com
-iphone.phoenxsoftware.com
-duelpro.phoenxsoftware.com
-roc.phoenxsoftware.com

Help pages, update servers, blastgen registration, 36IC, DPR & LPX DashBoard channels and the ROC server will be offline as well.

We apologize for this inconvenience.

Phoenxsoftware and the iPhone, Working!

We recently announced that we are going to focus on the iPhone in the future and it’s already working out. By checking our statistics we saw an obvious trend.

In June 93.8% of our visitors was still coming from windows, 3.9% from Mac OSX and 1.5% from iPhone OS. In July the amount of Windows users on our site declined to 80.4% and we had 17.7% of our visitors coming from the iPhone or iPod Touch. Now for August up to today, 23,3% of our visitors is coming from iPhone OS and 73% of our users is coming from Windows. This means we traded 20,5% of our windows users for iPhone and iPod Touch users over the last few months and we expect this trend to continue since iPhone and iPod Touch users show more interest in our software and spend more time on our site through the help file and the support channels.

Why is this interesting to us? Most Windows users only bring in revenue by clicking on our ads and all iPod Touch/iPhone users directly bring in money from App Store Purchases. These results are also astounding since atm. we only have 1 iPhone app and more than 10 Windows apps. So when iPhix is released, which will be less of a niche product, the share of iPhone OS users on our site will even increase, maybe even more than double thus ruling our statistics.

Our iPhone apps will also be ported to Mac OSX later on, so the Windows share will evaporate in a fast pace now and our revenue will increase.

New business and development strategy

New business and development strategy

As some might have noticed we are going to overhaul the phoenxsoftware business strategy. This might not be very intresting, but if you know that this means we are going to cancel the development of many apps it might concern you.

This all came in response to a 50% decline in our website’s traffic from nearly 30.000 users a month to +-15.000. It opened our eyes and made us realize that investing so much time and money in something where we don’t get anything in return for is useless. To be honest with numbers, Phoenxsoftware and surrounding services cost 280$ for the server, 60$ for each of our 2 domains (Phoenxsoftware.com and Blastgen.com), 99$ for our iPhone Developers account and 99$ for MobileMe synchronization services, making a total  of 598$. And how much do we earn annually? 200$ from advertising revenue. This means we lose nearly $400 dollars a year for bringing free apps to the people.

Some will say that it could be because we aren’t renowned enough. To give you some numbers, we have +-500.000 Duelpro Users, +-700.000 36-image converter users, 100 people testing our Antivirus Blastgen’s Beta and about 100.000 people using various windows utilities we made. A 300.000 visitors a year website and 1.3 million people using our software deliver us $200 a year. That’s how much our current business model earns us. We are a team of volunteers and still people think we are evil and rich.

First of all, you have noticed that we are developing more apps for the iPhone. That’s because there is no money in Windows development. Windows users don’t pay for software, Mac/iPhone users do. So that’s why all Windows users can wait until we are finished building and maintaining iPhone apps before the next Windows app will be launched, which is 36-image converter 4.7. We need the money from our iPhone development to fund Windows Development.

We now have two versions of our windows software in the iPhone production queue, iDuelpro Mobile (Duelpro) and yes, I can admit it, we built an iPhone version of 36-image converter called “iPhix” that was the big surprise on the iPhone part. It should be released to the App Store within this and a week. Even the site is already online, but more about that later.

We are planning a lot more iPhone apps and other apps for the Mac, but also windows apps with premium services. There’s still some software that deserves our attention, 36-image converter will remain our flagship together with all 36-products, but will be linked to a premium web service in a while and we will advertise iPhix during the 36IC installation to people with iTunes installed. ROC will get ROC Plus a premium version which allows custom ROC ID’s. And we will also continue the development of Blastgen, our commercial antivirus.

Now which application’s development will be halted then? Here you go :

-Mphix

-FileTorment

-SpeedShut (OpenSource)

-FileTorment Suite

-InfoBlaster IN4

-LockPhix (OpenSource)

-CachePhix

-LoadDown

-SpeedShut Lite (OpenSource)

Some of these applications may still become OpenSource. But for most of them development isn’t paying of and hence to our new businessmodel, useless.

So in short, most of our apps will be ditched, we don’t care anymore about our annual amount of visitors, we are silently ditching windows for cross-platform development and we want to run at least break even.

As some might have noticed we are going to overhaul the phoenxsoftware business strategy. This might not be very intresting, but if you know that this means we are going to cancel the development of many apps it might concern you.

This all came in response to a 50% decline in our website’s traffic from nearly 30.000 users a month to +-15.000. It opened our eyes and made us realize that investing so much time and money in something where we don’t get anything in return for is useless. To be honest with numbers, Phoenxsoftware and surrounding services cost 280$ for the server, 60$ for each of our 2 domains (Phoenxsoftware.com and Blastgen.com), 99$ for our iPhone Developers account and 99$ for MobileMe synchronization services, making a total  of 598$. And how much do we earn annually? 200$ from advertising revenue. This means we lose nearly $400 dollars a year for bringing free apps to the people.

Some will say that it could be because we aren’t renowned enough. To give you some numbers, we have +-500.000 Duelpro Users, +-700.000 36-image converter users, 100 people testing our Antivirus Blastgen’s Beta and about 100.000 people using various windows utilities we made. A 300.000 visitors a year website and 1.3 million people using our software deliver us $200 a year. That’s how much our current business model earns us. We are a team of volunteers and still people think we are evil and rich.

First of all, you have noticed that we are developing more apps for the iPhone. That’s because there is no money in Windows development. Windows users don’t pay for software, Mac/iPhone users do. So that’s why all Windows users can wait until we are finished building and maintaining iPhone apps before the next Windows app will be launched, which is 36-image converter 4.7. We need the money from our iPhone development to fund Windows Development.

We now have two versions of our windows software in the iPhone production queue, iDuelpro Mobile (Duelpro) and yes, I can admit it, we built an iPhone version of 36-image converter called “iPhix” that was the big surprise on the iPhone part. It should be released to the App Store within this and a week. Even the site is already online, but more about that later.

We are planning a lot more iPhone apps and other apps for the Mac, but also windows apps with premium services. There’s still some software that deserves our attention, 36-image converter will remain our flagship together with all 36-products, but will be linked to a premium web service in a while and we will advertise iPhix during the 36IC installation to people with iTunes installed. ROC will get ROC Plus a premium version which allows custom ROC ID’s. And we will also continue the development of Blastgen, our commercial antivirus.

Now which application’s development will be halted then? Here you go :
-Mphix
-FileTorment
-SpeedShut (OpenSource)
-FileTorment Suite
-InfoBlaster IN4
-LockPhix (OpenSource)
-CachePhix
-LoadDown
-SpeedShut Lite (OpenSource)

Some of these applications may still become OpenSource. But for most of them development isn’t paying of and hence to our new business model, useless. ROC will also be on this list when we have no ROC Plus sales.

So in short, most of our apps will be ditched, we don’t care anymore about our annual amount of visitors, we are silently ditching windows for cross-platform development and we want to run at least break even.

Novus XX_ development restarted for the third time

First we have to warn you that this blogpost is quite technical.

For years it has been one of our goals to create an operating system. Therefore we need to begin the development of a kernel. This is something we attempted many times, we have made it as far as creating a virtual OS which runs on top of DirectX inside windows and simulates OS functions. So now we are going to give it another try, we are going to continue the development of Novus XX_, the Phoenxsoftware Operating System.

Novus XX_  is planned to be a command line OS with a microkernel called HDM. It should support multitasking and uses VFS, the virtual file system. The big advantage should be one core technology called HDM. HDM brings CLI to the normal man. It is a so called HACLI, Human Adapted Command Line Interface and should interact with the user as if you were talking to a normal human being using advanced Logical AI.

Don’t expect Novus XX_ anytime soon, we still have to restart the microkernel’s development.

36-image converter 4.7 to support 35 raw picture filetypes

36-image converter 4.7 “Tiger Chameleon” will support 35 raw input filetypes of over 337 digital camera’s thanks to the great work of Michael Coffin, DCRAW.

for 435Kb of extra load you will be able to batch resize and convert an amount of RAW camera pictures directly to all output formats supported by 36IC 4.7, PNG, JNG, JPEG, BMP, RLE, DIB, TIF, TIFF, ICO, CUR, JP2, PCX, TGA, PBM, PPM, PGM, WMF, EMF, GIF, ICB, RAWPII, RAW portable bitmap, and of course you will also be able to directly encrypt any RAW files with PII and your 36IC password.

As you can see, 36IC 4.7 will be an enormous improvement and with the extra +-35 filetypes of DCRAW, it will be able to support more than 70 input filetypes and about 25 output filetypes.

EDIT : 36-image converter 4.7a with raw support is now available here : http://phoenxsoftware.wordpress.com/2009/08/21/release-36-image-converter-4-7-1-alpha-build-140-tiger-chameleon/

Here is a list of all supported raw filetypes and cameras :
-filetypes :
jpeg (raw), DNG (adobe), arw, srf, sr2, bay, crw, cr2, cap, tif, iiq, eip, dcs, dcr, drf, k25, kdc, erf, fff, mef, mos, mrw, nef, nrw, orf, ptx, pef, pxn, r3d, raf, raw, rw2, rwz and x3f

-Cameras :
Adobe Digital Negative (DNG)
AgfaPhoto DC-833m
Apple QuickTake 100
Apple QuickTake 150
Apple QuickTake 200
AVT F-080C
AVT F-145C
AVT F-201C
AVT F-510C
AVT F-810C
Canon PowerShot 600
Canon PowerShot A5
Canon PowerShot A5 Zoom
Canon PowerShot A50
Canon PowerShot A460
Canon PowerShot A530
Canon PowerShot A570
Canon PowerShot A590
Canon PowerShot A610
Canon PowerShot A620
Canon PowerShot A630
Canon PowerShot A640
Canon PowerShot A650
Canon PowerShot A710 IS
Canon PowerShot A720 IS
Canon PowerShot Pro70
Canon PowerShot Pro90 IS
Canon PowerShot Pro1
Canon PowerShot G1
Canon PowerShot G2
Canon PowerShot G3
Canon PowerShot G5
Canon PowerShot G6
Canon PowerShot G7
Canon PowerShot G9
Canon PowerShot G10
Canon PowerShot S2 IS
Canon PowerShot S3 IS
Canon PowerShot S5 IS
Canon PowerShot SD300
Canon PowerShot S30
Canon PowerShot S40
Canon PowerShot S45
Canon PowerShot S50
Canon PowerShot S60
Canon PowerShot S70
Canon PowerShot SX1 IS
Canon PowerShot SX110 IS
Canon EOS D30
Canon EOS D60
Canon EOS 5D
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EOS 10D
Canon EOS 20D
Canon EOS 30D
Canon EOS 40D
Canon EOS 50D
Canon EOS 300D / Digital Rebel / Kiss Digital
Canon EOS 350D / Digital Rebel XT / Kiss Digital N
Canon EOS 400D / Digital Rebel XTi / Kiss Digital X
Canon EOS 450D / Digital Rebel XSi / Kiss Digital X2
Canon EOS 500D / Digital Rebel T1i / Kiss Digital X3
Canon EOS 1000D / Digital Rebel XS / Kiss Digital F
Canon EOS D2000C
Canon EOS-1D
Canon EOS-1DS
Canon EOS-1D Mark II
Canon EOS-1D Mark III
Canon EOS-1D Mark II N
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III
Casio QV-2000UX
Casio QV-3000EX
Casio QV-3500EX
Casio QV-4000
Casio QV-5700
Casio QV-R41
Casio QV-R51
Casio QV-R61
Casio EX-S20
Casio EX-S100
Casio EX-Z4
Casio EX-Z50
Casio EX-Z55
Casio Exlim Pro 505
Casio Exlim Pro 600
Casio Exlim Pro 700
Contax N Digital
Creative PC-CAM 600
Epson R-D1
Foculus 531C
Fuji FinePix E550
Fuji FinePix E900
Fuji FinePix F700
Fuji FinePix F710
Fuji FinePix F800
Fuji FinePix F810
Fuji FinePix S2Pro
Fuji FinePix S3Pro
Fuji FinePix S5Pro
Fuji FinePix S20Pro
Fuji FinePix S100FS
Fuji FinePix S5000
Fuji FinePix S5100/S5500
Fuji FinePix S5200/S5600
Fuji FinePix S6000fd
Fuji FinePix S7000
Fuji FinePix S9000/S9500
Fuji FinePix S9100/S9600
Fuji IS-1
Hasselblad CFV
Hasselblad H3D
Hasselblad V96C
Imacon Ixpress 16-megapixel
Imacon Ixpress 22-megapixel
Imacon Ixpress 39-megapixel
ISG 2020×1520
Kodak DC20
Kodak DC25
Kodak DC40
Kodak DC50
Kodak DC120
Kodak DCS200
Kodak DCS315C
Kodak DCS330C
Kodak DCS420
Kodak DCS460
Kodak DCS460A
Kodak DCS520C
Kodak DCS560C
Kodak DCS620C
Kodak DCS620X
Kodak DCS660C
Kodak DCS660M
Kodak DCS720X
Kodak DCS760C
Kodak DCS760M
Kodak EOSDCS1
Kodak EOSDCS3B
Kodak NC2000F
Kodak ProBack
Kodak PB645C
Kodak PB645H
Kodak PB645M
Kodak DCS Pro 14n
Kodak DCS Pro 14nx
Kodak DCS Pro SLR/c
Kodak DCS Pro SLR/n
Kodak C330
Kodak C603
Kodak P850
Kodak P880
Kodak Z1015
Kodak KAI-0340
Konica KD-400Z
Konica KD-510Z
Leaf AFi 7
Leaf Aptus 17
Leaf Aptus 22
Leaf Aptus 54S
Leaf Aptus 65
Leaf Aptus 75
Leaf Aptus 75S
Leaf Cantare
Leaf CatchLight
Leaf CMost
Leaf DCB2
Leaf Valeo 6
Leaf Valeo 11
Leaf Valeo 17
Leaf Valeo 22
Leaf Volare
Leica Digilux 2
Leica Digilux 3
Leica D-LUX2
Leica D-LUX3
Leica D-LUX4
Leica V-LUX1
Logitech Fotoman Pixtura
Mamiya ZD
Micron 2010
Minolta RD175
Minolta DiMAGE 5
Minolta DiMAGE 7
Minolta DiMAGE 7i
Minolta DiMAGE 7Hi
Minolta DiMAGE A1
Minolta DiMAGE A2
Minolta DiMAGE A200
Minolta DiMAGE G400
Minolta DiMAGE G500
Minolta DiMAGE G530
Minolta DiMAGE G600
Minolta DiMAGE Z2
Minolta Alpha/Dynax/Maxxum 5D
Minolta Alpha/Dynax/Maxxum 7D
Motorola PIXL
Nikon D1
Nikon D1H
Nikon D1X
Nikon D2H
Nikon D2Hs
Nikon D2X
Nikon D2Xs
Nikon D3
Nikon D3X
Nikon D40
Nikon D40X
Nikon D50
Nikon D60
Nikon D70
Nikon D70s
Nikon D80
Nikon D90
Nikon D100
Nikon D200
Nikon D300
Nikon D700
Nikon E700
Nikon E800
Nikon E880
Nikon E900
Nikon E950
Nikon E990
Nikon E995
Nikon E2100
Nikon E2500
Nikon E3200
Nikon E3700
Nikon E4300
Nikon E4500
Nikon E5000
Nikon E5400
Nikon E5700
Nikon E8400
Nikon E8700
Nikon E8800
Nikon Coolpix P6000
Nikon Coolpix S6
Nokia N95
Olympus C3030Z
Olympus C5050Z
Olympus C5060WZ
Olympus C7070WZ
Olympus C70Z,C7000Z
Olympus C740UZ
Olympus C770UZ
Olympus C8080WZ
Olympus E-1
Olympus E-3
Olympus E-10
Olympus E-20
Olympus E-30
Olympus E-300
Olympus E-330
Olympus E-400
Olympus E-410
Olympus E-420
Olympus E-500
Olympus E-510
Olympus E-520
Olympus SP310
Olympus SP320
Olympus SP350
Olympus SP500UZ
Olympus SP510UZ
Olympus SP550UZ
Olympus SP560UZ
Olympus SP570UZ
Panasonic DMC-FZ8
Panasonic DMC-FZ18
Panasonic DMC-FZ28
Panasonic DMC-FZ30
Panasonic DMC-FZ50
Panasonic DMC-FX150
Panasonic DMC-G1
Panasonic DMC-GH1
Panasonic DMC-L1
Panasonic DMC-L10
Panasonic DMC-LC1
Panasonic DMC-LX1
Panasonic DMC-LX2
Panasonic DMC-LX3
Pentax *ist D
Pentax *ist DL
Pentax *ist DL2
Pentax *ist DS
Pentax *ist DS2
Pentax K10D
Pentax K20D
Pentax K100D
Pentax K100D Super
Pentax K200D
Pentax K2000/K-m
Pentax Optio S
Pentax Optio S4
Pentax Optio 33WR
Pentax Optio 750Z
Phase One LightPhase
Phase One H 10
Phase One H 20
Phase One H 25
Phase One P 20
Phase One P 25
Phase One P 30
Phase One P 45
Phase One P 45+
Pixelink A782
Polaroid x530
Rollei d530flex
RoverShot 3320af
Samsung GX-1S
Samsung GX-10
Samsung S85
Samsung S850
Sarnoff 4096×5440
Sigma SD9
Sigma SD10
Sigma SD14
Sinar 3072×2048
Sinar 4080×4080
Sinar 4080×5440
Sinar STI format
SMaL Ultra-Pocket 3
SMaL Ultra-Pocket 4
SMaL Ultra-Pocket 5
Sony DSC-F828
Sony DSC-R1
Sony DSC-V3
Sony DSLR-A100
Sony DSLR-A200
Sony DSLR-A300
Sony DSLR-A350
Sony DSLR-A700
Sony DSLR-A900
Sony XCD-SX910CR
STV680 VGA

Blastgen Antivirus Primitive Beta successful!

The primitive Beta we released of Blastgen Antivirus has been quite successful. After just a few months without even having advertised, the fastest antivirus on earth already has 100 registered Beta testers. Many people have even asked where they could buy the full version.

But of course we are far from a working Blastgen, we are struggling to get a decent amount of malware in blastgen’s database and there is still much work to be done fixing and tweaking the core, since it has proven unstable with many people getting overloads and syncmode5 errors. These errors are caused because the CPU can’t handle the speed of the code processing.

Although many reviews and comments were positive there are also a lot of sceptical people who can’t believe what they see with their own eyes. Therefore if Blastgen is finally released as a stable version, possibly this summer, we will put the necessary caution remarks on our site. Blastgen indeed is the fastest real time antivirus but it lacks an extensive virus database and in depth or boot sector scanning.

We still have a lot of work in progress but we are confident in the chances Blastgen has. Even of becoming our most successful product, which may be able to put us on the software-map once and for all. Since we would like to get Blastgen Antivirus 1.0 online by this summer, our team has expanded and we are ready to continue development this summer at high speed.

You can still download Blastgen Beta build 3000 here>

“Down with Opera”, we agree!

Everybody has obviously heard of the hassle about the EC anti-trust suit of the European Commission against Microsoft for adding Internet Explorer (their own browser) with Windows. Therefore all European versions of Windows will come without browser, all thanks to a browser which has almost no marketshare and has no special features or advantages to other browsers. Well did you also know that it was Opera who started this mess in the first place?

Therefore an action group was started to boycot Opera and we fully support this action group. Internet Explorer isn’t the best browser, but it is idiotic to make Microsoft ban it from their own products. Therefore we have placed 2 banners on our homepage, one against Opera with a link to the action group and one to download Safari, at the moment in our opinion the best browser around. We will also remove Opera from our testing machines and no longer test our site in Opera.

Spread the word and remove Opera Browser from your PC!

Support FileTorment Suite 2006 ends 31st of May

At the end of this month we will drop support for FileTorment 2006. This means that we will no longer respond to problems which may occur. FileTorment Suite 2006 keys can also be freely distributed now, but we will not deliver them anymore. So we will also stop selling FTS06 licenses at the end of this month. You will still be able to download FTS06 from Download.com and our servers. We will also drop support for infoBlaster IN4 and FileTorment Suite 2007 next year, like we did with PhBrowser 2006.

So next year we will have no original shareware applications left and if Blastgen development isn’t successful all our windows applications will probably be OpenSource and/or Freeware.

ROC Plus coming with ROC 1.1

ROC 1.1 will still be free, but will also come with an extra service. Now you have to remember a long login to access ROC. With ROC Plus you will be able to choose a short word or even a letter to access your ROC client. ROC Plus will cost 3$ for an entire year.

ROC 1.1 will be released next month and will feature : the boot-bugfix, more commands, an improved online manager and ROC Plus.

An opensource variant OpenROC is still under consideration and might not be released at all.