Category Archives: DssW

Sleep Monitor Lite on the Mac App Store

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Our third application on the Mac App Store is being rolled out. Over the next 24 hours, Sleep Monitor Lite will become available to buy on the store. This new application joins Activity Audit and Battery Report on the Mac App Store.

DssW Sleep Monitor Lite

DssW Sleep Monitor Lite

Sleep Monitor Lite marks our first Mac App Store only offering.

Sleep Monitor Lite is the little brother to our established Sleep Monitor product. Getting an edition on the Mac App Store has provided a useful insight into the additional requirements Apple will begin enforcing in March 2012.

The requirements of sandboxing and entitlements are looming large in the Mac developer community. The requirements of sandboxing and entitlements are looming large in the Mac developer community. There are new constraints coming that will further limit what an application can do and still be accepted within Apple’s Mac App Store.

We used Sleep Monitor Lite to explore the ramifications. Problems discovered along the way mean today’s Sleep Monitor Lite is not sandboxed; we originally submitted a sandboxed edition but helper applications appear to be fragile. This is something we need to explore further.

Activity Audit Update on the Mac App Store

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Our latest update to Activity Audit is now available on the Mac App Store. This update brings the Mac App Store version back in line with the version available direct from DssW.

A week of activity created by DssW Activity Audit

A week of activity created by DssW Activity Audit

Activity Audit v1.1.1 entered the “review” stage for the Mac App Store on 18th October 2011. After some back and forth, the update was accepted on 21st November 2011.

Activity Audit v1.1.1 requires Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later. A free 14 day demonstration is available.

A Selection of Free Press Release Services

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Megan has mentioned free press release services before. For yesterday’s launch of Power Manager 4.0.3, we added a couple of new services to the mix.

  1. widepr.com published on the release date.
  2. prlog.org published on the release date.
  3. 24-7 Press Release published on the release date.
  4. SanePR published immediately. I found their web site’s member section to be extremely slow, with page response times over one minute.
  5. free-press-release.com published immediately.
  6. prMac.com published on the release date. prMac’s free service requires submitting releases three days before your desired date.
  7. pressbox.co.uk appear not to have published on 24 January 2011.
  8. openPR.com rejected our release as containing too many links or too much advertising language.

Celebratory muffins for AppleScript

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Last week, DssW launched a new preview of Power Manager 4. This preview introduced AppleScript support. To celebrate we made chocolate and walnut muffins.

Homemade chocolate muffins

Homemade chocolate muffins

AppleScript is never easy to implement. I have been planning our AppleScript implementation for more than a year. That planning paid off and the work involved was pleasantly stress free. As ever, a few esoteric aspects of AppleScript’s requirements caused moments of wonder but nothing requiring a change of course.

The muffins were a delicious well-deserved treat.

A better source of SSL certificates

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I am no fan of Certificate Authorities (CA) but they seem necessary to work with in order to offer secure services. Certificate Authorities are the organisations that deal with certificates needed for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connections – the connections in your browser that show a padlock.

Early morning view from Queen Victoria Market, Melbourne

Early morning view from Queen Victoria Market, Melbourne

Thus, I was delighted to find StartSSL‘s offerings. The prices are good and the service has been great.

I had trouble getting the sign up process working with Safari 4 on Mac OS X, and needed help to rectify the resulting problems. Within an hour or two all was put right and DssW’s Reseller site now has a new SSL certificate.

I experienced problems when setting up the site’s authentication certificate and keys. Keychain appeared to get confused at some stage and I was left locked out of my original account.

If you decide to try StartSSL from Mac OS X, I recommend using FireFox. I found Safari’s tight integration with Keychain to be counter productive. FireFox avoided Keychain’s problems and gave me control over where the keys and certificates ended up.

Ultimately, I want DssW’s keys and certificates stored in separate keychains or files, and not lumped into my personal login keychain.

Try following Glenn Fleishman’s article “How to obtain and install an SSL/TLS certificate, for free” from ars technica for the smoothest experience.

Hello Snow Leopard, Good Bye Panther

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DssW launched an update to Power Manager today. This update improves a couple of bits and pieces, but nothing too significant has changed.

DssW Power Manager 3 for Mac OS X

DssW Power Manager 3 for Mac OS X

The biggest change is our dropping of Mac OS X 10.3.9 support. With the introduction of Mac OS X 10.6, the time is right. We have supported Mac OS X 10.3, aka Panther, for four years.

Panther was the first generation of Mac OS X that could support Power Manager. Earlier generations of Mac OS X did not include the underlying functionality we needed.

It feels sad to say good bye to Panther. Going forward the decision makes sense; our efforts can be better directed, and new critical path technologies are calling that Panther can not emulate.

Supporting multiple generations of Mac OS X is not always easy. Each generation of Mac OS X introduces new technologies, methodologies, and quirks that demand a deep understanding of Mac OS X’s implementation.

That effort to support multiple generations of Mac OS X with one binary often results in a much more stable product.

I was pleased to note that Snow Leopard required no specific changes to Power Manager. Instead, we used the allocated time to improve the Login Window notification mechanism and port our process management to launchd.

Now selling digital content

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Today Megan released her first book. The book is called Wordsearch 1 for Beginners, and is available immediately from The English Space.

Megan’s book is being published by DssW; my company is handling the business side of the venture, while Megan focuses on the producing useful content for her readers.

Megan’s book was the cause of our recent Reseller upgrade at DssW. Our reseller software needed to be extended to handle the sale of digital content.

Selling digital content is new for DssW. For this post, I consider digital content to be any content that is not available until a payment has been made. That means allowing only paying customers to download or view the content.

I have extended DssW’s tried and true reseller software to handle the sale of digital content, in addition to software licences. Thankfully the improvements touched surprisingly little existing code.

When you buy your copy of the book, you receive an e-mail from DssW containing a unique download link. That link is unique to you and lets you download the book as many times as you need.

As with nearly all sales through DssW, the download e-mail is sent automatically and immediately after your payment has cleared. If you are buying with a debit or credit card, the book will be yours within minutes regardless of the time of day, or day of the year.

Today marks the beginning of a new adventure. Exciting times are ahead.

Upgrading Reseller to Catalyst 5.8 from 5.7

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The last few days have been spent preparing the way for DssW‘s next big thing. That meant getting my hands dirty and updating our sales and reseller software: Reseller.

Reseller is written in perl using the Catalyst framework. Thankfully Reseller is not too complex, but different enough from my day-to-day UNIX development work to take me a while to orientate myself.

Catalyst has continued to improve since I last updated Reseller. In that time, Catalyst’s minor version number ticked up from 7 to 8 and with it came a handful of significant changes. Catalyst now uses Moose and has generally matured. The update meant I needed to tweak a few bits and pieces but nothing too painful.

Catalyst’s documentation continues to be outstanding; the documentation is main reason I picked the framework over Ruby-on-Rails or Java. Fad and functionality mean little without guidance. Those seeking to compete with the likes of Catalyst need to rival their clear, centralised, documentation and tutorials.

The upgraded Reseller is now live and ticking along nicely. If you notice any problems, please let support@dssw.co.uk know.