Sketches Update and AppStoreGems.com

This week is looking great. We uploaded Sketches 1.3 to the App Store last Tuesday, so, we are hoping to see it in the App Store very soon. This new version includes:

+ Text input using the virtual on-screen keyboard, for those situations when that option is more adequate than entering hand-drawn text. This is possibly the most frequently requested feature from our current customers.

+ Web Sharing via a built-in web server. A very tiny and efficient HTTP server has been integrated to facilitate exporting the drawings in PDF, PNG or JPEG format. Users simply use their browser to connect and download their drawings, and they don't need to install desktop synchronization software or use other intricate solutions.

+ Improved shape placement algorithm. The shape placement algorithm is now tolerant to the user accidentally taking one of his fingers out of the tactile area during a multitouch gesture. This was a frequent issue when trying to locate a shape near the edges of the screen. In this new version, users can even purposely lift one of their fingers to easily move the shape to a corner or even halfway out of the screen.

+ Tip system. Small "hints" are displayed the first time the user selects a new feature or tool. This will solve the problem of some users that found themselves in full-screen mode and did not know how they got into it or how to bring the toolbars back! These help topics are presented as nice subtle overlays that dismisses after a certain amount of time to not interfere with your work.

+ Additional shapes, featuring a brand new "Office" category with pushpins, sticky notes, tape paper and the like. Fun and Callout categories have been improved as well.



In addition, several bugs have been corrected and several optimizations have been made.

But this week, we are also starting with a new idea: App Store Gems. We are joining forces with other developers that have created quality applications, in an effort to stand out from the already pretty crowded App Store. Promoted by John Casasanta and Austin Sarner, it includes 5 other applications apart from Sketches: File Magnet, Where To?, Pennies, Kineo and Groceries.

Today, in its first day, we are all donating our application revenues to a charity. In our case, Prevent Cancer Foundation.

To promote this new effort, we are making cooperative advertising, as explained in this post. It would be great if you help us digg it. Many thanks!

Text, Sketches, Soon!

We have received a good number of requests about adding text to Sketches. We are working on it, here is a sample:



It will take a some more days to get all the details finished and done correctly, but we are getting there!

Sketches Available on the App Store!

We are extremely excited to announce that Sketches is now available on the App Store, and is highlighted in several countries:


We want to thank everyone who has supported us in this process: Apple, our users, our friends, and particularly, our families.

Sketches Web site is now back. Any comments or suggestions can be posted through the contact form.

LateNiteSoft Acquires Snapshot

As a consequence of our last visit to San Francisco for WWDC, we are happy to announce that we have acquired Snapshot from Stunt Software. We sat down with Dan Messing and reached an agreement that we have now made operational.



We are excited about this opportunity. We believe Snapshot is a nice product that makes a great addition to our portfolio, and that will become a nice complement for Sketches in the future.

To all current Snapshot customers, welcome! We'll try to live up to your expectations.

WWDC 2008

If I had to summarize this year's WWDC in one word, it would be "Awesome". A year ago, we went to WWDC with no clear goals. We attended a lot of sessions, and met a few people. Overall, it was a good experience, in which we gained a lot of technical knowledge.

This year, it was different. Our primary goal was not to spend all of our time in sessions. We wanted to make our visit business oriented, meeting people, and getting feedback about different aspects of our applications.


After 2 years of working with him, we finally met Louie Mantia, our graphic designer. Currently, he works mostly for our friends at Tapulous, but, fortunately, he still does some work for LateNiteSoft.

We also met Chuck Soper, Cabel Sasser, Daniel Jalkut, Mike Lee, Kenichi Yoshida, Steve Scott, Tristan O'Tierney, Colin Wheeler, Kevin Hoctor, and some others in the SF Mac Indie Soiree.

During the week, we met with many Apple employees, as well as other entrepreneurs, developers, designers and journalists. We participated in a few labs and different consultancy sessions. We were present at the parties and events, but overall we probably did not make it to more than 5-6 sessions each.

The overall result has been very good, and we are very satisfied. Within the next few weeks we hope to start showing you the outcome of our visit.

Server Up :)

We are glad to inform you that the issues with our Web server have been fixed, and it is back online. We are sorry for any inconveniences caused.

Server down :(

I regret to inform you that our web server is currently down. It started responding very slowly a few hours ago, and not at all some time after that. We've asked our service provider to reboot our server (it's a dedicated one), but they have just found a hardware fault in one of the hard drives and are working on a fix or replacement.

This affects the Xslimmer and Sketches web sites, as well as the remote Xslimmer license retrieval feature we released yesterday. We beg your patience and understanding while the problem lasts.

Our services had been 100% available for the past 250 days, even through a change of IP addresses. Jorge and myself had been planning to set up a second server in a different service provider as an emergency backup solution. Unfortunately, we didn't do it in time.

We'll keep you posted. Thanks again for your patience.