Just saw this great recent article by Steve Grant of The Hartford Courant on Organizing Your Life.
In this modern, multitasking world, the to-do list is essential
All users are encouraged to download this release asap.
In addition to a number of minor bug fixes, this release features the following improvements:
1) Slightly better (but not complete) support for international users
2) Better disk usage. On Windows 2000, the application was causing disk fragmentation due to the caching of photos that were constantly rotating. This problem has been eliminated.
3) Main Page now features a preview of upcoming functionality that will allow you to manage ALL of life’s needs better. (download to find out what it is 
)
4) Weather panel should work now. If it doesn’t, visit Settings->Registration, make sure your zip code shows up correctly, and click on Register Now. For international users, the weather panel will be just a picture. But the weather icon on the tool bar should bring up your country’s weather page.
5) The photo panel will no longer automatically show pictures from My Pictures. Visit the Settings->Photo Gallery area to select the main folders from which to display pictures. Or create a Mediabee folder under My Pictures and put the pics you want in there.
6) A new version the thin client installer is available at http://mediabee.com/download/Mediabee_Client-1.0.12.exe.
7) Every main application is also now a thin client - meaning, you can have multiple Mediabee installations on the same local network, and you can change the server by visiting Settings->Server Settings. This process is a bit slow, but it works. Just make sure that the client and server versions are compatible.
We got a 4-Cow rating at Tucows. We almost got to 5, but they’d like us to better integrate support & do a little better cleanup on uninstall before we can get there.
We’re happy as clams, but you ain’t seen nothing yet. There’s some truly awesome stuff coming down the pike that will show you what Mediabee is all about. Stay tuned.
http://i-newswire.com/pr2243.html - eMarketer’s predictions for 2005 - with the top one being, of course, that 2005 is going to be the Year of Personalization.
Mediabee’s vision is to bring together all the information relevant to your family together in one place. The fun has just begun!
The concept of the Control Journal is awesome! Now you can keep one not in a 3-ring binder, but right on that computer you have in your kitchen. What good is a computer and a broadband connection if you still have to use a 3-ring binder to keep control of your schedule?
We love the FlyLady. She has great suggestions on how to take control of your busy life. Look at the following article, for instance: http://www.flylady.com/pages/FLYingLessons_UsingCalendar.asp.
Then use her tips with the Mediabee application so you don’t have to keep copying things on paper all the time.
Coming soon: articles on how you could follow some of her suggestions with Mediabee.
A CNET downloader (”Damon”) made the following negative comment (exact quote): “…There are features that obviously require communication with the internet like weather, ect. but I decided it wasn’t a good idea to have a personal planner with my whole family’s personal information and plans communicating with the internet…Not for me.”
The downloader is apparently fearful that we’re storing the family’s schedules on the Internet. This is simply not true. If you use a web-based calendar such as Yahoo® or MSN®, those services depend on hosting your data on their servers. Not so with Mediabee. If you look at our privacy policy, we clearly state what is sent to our servers and what is not. Very little of your information is kept on our servers. All of your scheduling information is actually kept on your machine.
As the user himself admits, we access weather information from the Internet. We also keep a connection to the Internet in case any of the calendars you subscribe to changes and your copy needs to be updated.
Please send a note to support at mediabee dot com to request the thin client installer. You can use the thin client installer for client-only installations in a home network where one machine already has the standard Mediabee installation.
The thin client will work on lesser machines, because, obviously, it’s less demanding than the full install.
It took them several days to publish this due to the holidays, but it is finally out there. Please upgrade if you haven’t already.
Much as we like the name mediabee hive, we want to be easier for people to find us, given the intense competition in this space. So today we’re officially changing the name of our blog. The contents and spirit will remain the same.
The very latest version V1.0.7, is now available in http://fileforum.betanews.com/. I like the way they list the product - with screenshot and all.
A download.com user apparently likes the product, but hates the fact that they cannot choose which photos will show up in the photo panel. I guess it was enough of a negative that they’ve given us bad marks. We’re already at work making that more configurable and will let you know when it’s done. (That fix won’t make it to V1.0.7, which is on queue to be uploaded to download.com.)
In the meantime, if you’d really rather turn off the photo panel, here’s a quick way to do it. (When you upgrade, this change will be reset. So wait for V1.0.8 or higher to upgrade.)
Find the Mediabee/src/ui/TopRightPanel.html file and make the following small change in it. Look for the string onload=”refreshDisplay()” and very carefully delete just that string and save the file. Now close and reopen the application.
Et voila. The photo panel will be empty (sorry) until the fix arrives.
We brought in 2005 with 2000 downloads in 2 weeks! It’s going to be an exciting year as people really begin to understand and use the power of Mediabee. We’re looking forward to a quiet revolution in calendaring!
Expect Version 1.0.6 in a couple of days - making it much more robust!