Phoenxsoftware halting Windows Development

We took the decision to halt the Windows development completely for the coming months. This decision is made because when developing for Mac and the iPhone I realized how bad Windows users are actually behaving towards developers. They come, download, don’t care and give a rant about how much you suck once in a while. The Mac community is much tighter and kinder towards developers. They give kind suggestions, they are understanding and they don’t care to pay for a well built app. The kind people at iPhoneography made me aware of this. When initiating iPhone development our monthly profit was multiplied by 30. By developing for the iPhone and Mac I made 6 new friends in 3 months instead of making enemies. So the decision is made rapidly when you have to choose between being disrespected and broke or being congratulated, aided and actually earning something.  No more rants for us!

This means that there will be no 36-image converter update anytime soon. Also Blastgen will be halted until further notice.

We are also going to stop the development completely for the next apps :
-FileTorment
-LoadDown
-SpeedShut
-LockPhix
-CachePhix

ROC will be continued and ported to Mac OSX. Duelpro will be integrated in the iDuelpro project and will be continued as well.

So Phoenxsoftware will downscale from a medium/big Windows developer to a small Mac developer. I look back in nostalgia to the days that Phoenxsoftware was big and that our servers were overloaded with downloads. Every month featured by another magazine, a million people using our software, and high hopes. But those days are completely over and Phoenxsoftware will be facing the future from now on. Which lies in Mac/iPhone development, shareware, services and technology.

We also wont be using the Mac & iPhone earnings anymore to fund Windows development but to renew our infrastructure to be geared towards Apple and towards the future.

I want to make clear that I have no hard feelings towards Microsoft as they are doing a fine job building great tools and making a platform far more superior to Apple’s when it comes to facilitating development, but the Windows community is a demon which has bothered me for years now.

Our new site should be finished soon to empower the change.

A(n) (i)Duelpro for every platform!

Yesterday we announced the coming of v3.5 of iDuelpro – yu-gi-oh! lifepoints calculator for iPhone. Now we can also announce that a drastic improvement of the Mac version is on its way. But that’s not all! Yesterday someone asked for a Blackberry version of Duelpro, and I started thinking.

We acquired material to build applications for Windows Mobile earlier this year, which means that we will start developing a Duelpro version for Windows Mobile anytime soon. This version will have about the same features as the Windows version and will show a donation button in the bottom.

But there’s more, another platform for which we could start to build apps is Google’s Android OS. We will use the same tactic there. People will simply be able to make a donation.

After Android OS, all nokia platforms with Qt framework will follow (including symbian).

So within the coming year, we will have a Duelpro version available for 6 platforms namely :

-Windows
-Mac OSX
-iPhone OS (also iPod Touch)
-Windows Mobile
-Android OS
-Symbian/Qt

Linux and Haiku (BeOS) executables may follow as well in this time. This only leaves the Java platform of some mobile phones and Blackberry OS to be. We can’t develop a Duelpro version for every cellphone available and Blackberry development is too expensive. Otherwise nearly any OS would be covered.

36-image converter video tutorial for people who fail to convert

I’ve been getting a lot of complaints lately <sarcasm>always from nice people who don’t insult me or anything</sarcasm> that 36-image converter is hard to work with and that they can’t find any info on how to convert an image or even open one. So I created a tutorial on how to open images in 36-image converter and convert them. In the tutorial we’re going to convert a DNG raw camera image to PNG in 2 minutes.

A few remarks :
-The version used in the video is a development version of 36-image converter 4.7 Beta which hasn’t been released yet. So you won’t be able to filter filetypes in the open-dialog.
-In versions older than the newest alpha version of 36-image converter 4.7 you won’t be able to open and convert DNG or other raw filetypes. You can download 36-image converter 4.7 here>
-My voice is no opera baritone so I still suggest reading the help file instead of listen to me for 2 whole minutes

I hope everything is clear now and that I don’t have to hear another. “It can’t convert images, this is stupid!” in my whole life.

iPhix 1.2 for iPhone released, new icon, sliders, better filters,…

The newest version of our iPhix image editor for iPhone is released to the iTunes Store. This newest version is one of the last versions of a resizing and cropping iPhix, the next version (2.0) will support full resolution images.

The changes include :
-New icon
-Added Brighten/Darken Filter (comparable to flash-simulator apps)
-Added ability to adjust the color gamma
-Added slider to control “Egalize”-filter
-Added Ability to select more than one filter
-Added ability to remove filters
-Added Solarize filter
-Improved reliability
-New Help file

Screenshot iPhix

iPhix to support full resolution images in iPhix 2.0

We are currently developing the newest version of our image editor for the iPhone iPhix. The biggest issue was that it didn’t support full resolution pictures, everything was resized. And since many people think they are professional photographers operating the iPhone’s cam, this was absolutely necessary. An iPhone image editor must support 1.600×1.200 pixels images or it is useless apparently. So now iPhix will trade the advanced filter system, where you can select and test images before applying, for the ability to edit images at full resolution.

We weren’t able to maintain the advanced filter manager together with full resolution images since the filter system stored cache copies of the image in the memory and since there is only 16Mb of video memory available this was an issue. So we are going to do what all other image editors do in the App Store, make a crappy app with full resolution instead of an advanced photo editor which is suitable for a smartphone.

From this evolution in version 2.0 we will continue development to bring back a few of the lost features. Avoiding memory issues.

36-image converter downloaded 100.000 times on CNET

We know that all together from various sources 36-image converter is downloaded about 600.000 times, but we only take one result as official and untampered with measuring tool, CNET. And this night, the 100.000th download of 36-image converter was confirmed.

36-image converter is around since februari 2006 and has been listed on CNET since July 2006, it took off quite fast quickly bringing it to 20.000 downloads and to one of our most downloaded applications. Later in 2007 we started seeing the potential of 36-image converter and we started building other more advanced tools and version, thus even increasing the amount of downloads even more. In 2008 came 36-image converter 4.4 “Ninja” and this has put us on the map as the most popular real image converter and one of the top 20 most popular image editing tools in the world. And today, we have 100.000 official downloads.

I can only say one more thing : Bring in the 1.000.000!

36-image express 2.0, Project Dragonfly continues…

We are now working on 36-image converter 4.7 but we should begin looking towards the future, which is 36-image express (36Ix). As for now 36Ix can only open and save images, but this will change.

In 36Ix 2.0 we will alter the interface to house a bunch of new features, 1 of the most important features in 36Ix 2.0 will be the layer support. We will try to integrate layer support a well as possible with a focus on usability and ease of use.

Another feature of 36Ix 2.0 will be filters, because filters are now handled by the Core Image Processing Unit instead of the 36-image converter executable, we can easily add support for the same filters to 36-image express. The same for the input and output filetypes.

As a final point we will add some transformations (resize, crop, rotate) and save to web functionality and the first step towards the future is finished. But first we have to finish 36IC 4.7 of course and this may still take months, but the good news is that most of the work we do for 36IC can be reused in 36-image express, thus creating a more functional, lighter and more beautiful version of 36-image converter.

The next step v2.5 will add brushes, layer effects, vector drawing, fill tools, photo altering tools and when this step is completed we will probably be at a point where we overpower GIMP, thus having a +-10Mb application which supports layers, is easy to use and looks good, is light and supports +-60 input filetypes and +-30 output filetypes. We might even reach our goal to develop the first freeware application which can compete with Photoshop. But this is something we will see in the future.

36-image converter and large images

As most 36IC users already know, 36-image converter can’t edit images bigger than the screen resolution minus 20 pixels, eg. 1.400×830 = max. size of 1.380×810 pixels. Many people have been wanting a fix for this problem, but there isn’t any except for 36-image express which allows conversion of bigger images, but isn’t as advanced as 36IC. So when will it be fixed?

In our next version (4.7) coming in the fall of this year, we will include tools to batch convert/resize/rename images of any size. This will be the first step. In version 5.0 this issue will be resolved completely and you will also be able to edit/convert and save images in the default editor. But this won’t happen anytime soon.

The current editor of 36-image converter is too complicated to support images bigger than the screen resolution, the entire application has to be rewritten. That’s why we created 36-image express, 36Ix is build to support large images and to be much lighter. But at the moment 36Ix is still lacking a lot of features and is actually a development version of 36-image converter 5.0 which is publicly being tested and incrementally being improved.

So first we have to complete 36IC 4.7, then we have to update 36Ix with the new CIPU conversion engine from 36IC and make it more stable, then we can begin improving 36Ix step by step to support all functions of the current 36-image converter and to support advanced image editing features like editable layers. Then 36-image converter 5.0 will be build on top of 36-image express. So we can proceed the 36IC development with the same care we used for developing 36Ix.

So in a while 36-image converter will support large surfaces, but it will not be for 2009. Even we are waiting for a stable core to continue the development of 36-image converter. But as always when we fix the size issue, the 36IC users will find something new to rant about on CNET, that’s why all coming versions of 36-image converter and 36-image express will have the Reasonable Feedback Agreement in the EULA, like 36Ix does. In this way we can at least protect all future version of 36IC against idiotic comments and even sue the people who do.

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.