Sharpshooter 2.0.1: Now Available and Lion Compatible

Are you ready for the imminent release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion? We have just released an update to our screenshot utility Sharpshooter 2 which makes it compatible with the new OS. Be sure to get the latest 2.0.1 version for a seamless transition to Lion.

If you purchased Sharpshooter 2 from the Kerlmax website, just choose "Check for Updates" from within the app to easily download and install the 2.0.1 update.

For those that bought Sharpshooter 2 from the Mac App Store, we are sad to report that the 2.0.1 update is still "In Review" at Apple which means that it may not be released before 10.7 becomes available. Hopefully it won't be too much longer before the update appears on the App Store.

Customers still using Sharpshooter 1.x should be aware that we are no longer releasing updates for that product. There are issues which prevents it from working properly on Lion. It will still work on Mac OS X 10.4 through 10.6; however, we encourage you to try out version 2 if you are running 10.6.6 or later. You can download Sharpshooter 2 from the Kerlmax website and try out the new features with its 30-day trial. Upgrading is only $8 USD and can either be performed with the "Purchase License" button within the app or by visiting our store on the website with your browser.

Kerlmax Releases Sharpshooter 2.0

Austin, Texas - June 27, 2011 - Kerlmax LLC today released Sharpshooter 2.0, a major upgrade to its screenshot utility app which gives you finer control over using Mac OS X's built-in key combinations. If you take screenshots to capture what's showing on your monitor, you owe it to yourself to see how Sharpshooter can save you time. The major new features of Sharpshooter 2 are the automatic processing options. In addition to the previous version's manual features which received a Mac Gem award from Macworld, Sharpshooter now lets you automatically rename screenshots with your own naming scheme, move them to folders, change the image file formats, and open them with other apps. Several other features were added to improve usability and fulfill feature requests.

When Apple released Snow Leopard, they changed the default naming of screenshots from "Picture 1" to a slightly more descriptive format like "Screen shot 2011-04-01 at 12:00:00 PM". Sharpshooter takes this a step further and lets you manipulate and process a screenshot while it is still fresh on your mind. After taking a screenshot, Sharpshooter can present the new image to you in a window where you can quickly file it away into any folder, change the image file format, and rename it to something descriptive and memorable. Don't let a bunch of generically named screenshots collect on your Desktop. Let Sharpshooter help you organize them. After a few days, are you going to remember why you took "Screen shot 2011-06-01 at 11.25.44 AM" or that "Screen shot 2011-06-02 at 3.09.01 PM" is a picture of your upcoming vacation's flight itinerary?

System Requirements:

* Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later

Pricing and Availability:

Sharpshooter 2.0 is priced at $15.00 (USD) and can be downloaded and purchased from the Kerlmax website. The app from the website has a free thirty day fully functional trial period for users to explore before buying. Sharpshooter is also available for purchase from the Mac App Store.

Registered owners of Sharpshooter 1 are eligible to upgrade to the latest version for just $8.00 (USD). Anyone who purchased after April 1, 2011 will receive the upgrade for free and will be notified automatically via email.


Kerlmax LLC
Sharpshooter 2.0
Purchase Sharpshooter from Kerlmax website
Sharpshooter on Mac App Store


Kerlmax LLC is a small software company located in Austin, Texas. Founded in 2008 by Isaac Wankerl, Kerlmax focuses on exciting and intuitive products for the Mac and iPhone platforms. Copyright 2008-2011 Kerlmax LLC. All Rights Reserved. Mac and Mac OS X are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

###

Isaac Wankerl
President
isaac@kerlmax.com

Sharpshooter 1.2 released

Sharpshooter update
Kerlmax LLC has released an update to the Sharpshooter screenshot tool. This new version 1.2 addresses a couple of issues that were causing the majority of support emails.

Download Sharpshooter

Customized screenshot names on Snow Leopard
Some users have customized their system to use a non-default name for their screenshots. With Snow Leopard, instead of taking one named "Screen shot 2011-02-06 at 12.32.09 PM.png" it might be named something like "Picture 2011-02-06 at 12.32.09 PM.png". Previously, our suggested workaround was to go back to using the default screenshot name and we provided a small application to change the setting. Now users without the default setting will be able to continue using Sharpshooter.

Mysterious UI locking on trial expiration
Users can test out Sharpshooter with its thirty day fully functional trial. Once the trial period expires, certain features become unavailable. Many users wrote in wondering why the user interface was disabled and locked as the application didn't provide an explanation for the change. With the new version, unregistered copies show a button along the bottom of the renaming window that will countdown the remaining days in the trial period. Clicking on the button sends you to the store so you can purchase a license.

Coming soon
This will likely be the last version of Sharpshooter before the next major release. Sharpshooter 2 is being rebuilt from the ground up. The new app will be dropping support for older OS versions and will require Snow Leopard. Our current plan is to have the app available for purchase from the Kerlmax website and through Apple's Mac App Store. Hopefully it won't be long before it's ready for release.

Austin Traffic for iPad in the works

Lately we've been working on an iPad version of our Austin Traffic iPhone app. It's been a lot of fun as the larger screen size and new user interface elements has made us rethink how we can present the traffic information to you. Most of the functionality is in place now so we're fixing bugs and refining the look.

The app will be shipped as a Universal binary so it will work on iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. It is also just a regular upgrade so if you already bought Austin Traffic, you'll get this new version 3 for free. We also have a brand new icon designed by Trevor Lemoine which looks great.

It will require you to have iPhone OS 3.0 or later installed. Most of our users are already set (our server logs show less than 1% are still using an earlier version). Speaking of server logs, we are collecting anonymous data from your devices to help us make our product better (for more information see section "b. Consent to Use of Data" of the iTunes Store LICENSED APPLICATION END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT). Austin Traffic version 3 will contain our privacy policy for you to read just to make you aware of this.

Based on the past week, quite a lot of Austin Traffic users have the iPhone 3GS model (about 62%) and the majority of the rest have the iPhone 3G (about 32%). There have been some iPad users but not too many yet. Hopefully that will change before too long because the app is amazing on the iPad. One more data point we'd like to share with you is a graph of when people are using the app. Understandably, the peaks are at the morning and evening rush hours.

Interim Austin Traffic Icon

Yesterday we submitted Austin Traffic version 2.3.1 to Apple for review. There are only a few changes; the main one being a new icon. Last week we were notified that the design of the University of Texas Tower, which is depicted in the application's icon, is trademarked. We were disappointed to find this out as the app icon was one of our favorite parts of the app! In order to resolve the infringement, we quickly modified the icon. Without an in-house graphic designer, this new "interim" icon leaves a lot to be desired. Don't worry, we will be working with a trained professional to get a better icon in place in the near future. We want something that is representative of Austin in some way and currently have an idea or two in mind, but you can leave a comment if you have a suggestion.

Kerlmax releases Sharpshooter 1.1 with Snow Leopard support

Austin, Texas - September 15, 2009 - Kerlmax LLC has announced an update to Sharpshooter which adds full support for Snow Leopard. Sharpshooter 1.1 is a background application that displays screenshots as you take them with Mac OS X's built-in key combinations and lets you rename and move them while they are still fresh on your mind. Never again will you have a bunch of generically named pictures cluttering your desktop.

Featured in the Macworld Mac Gems Superguide, Sharpshooter is designed to give you more control over your screenshots. Sharpshooter provides you the opportunity to rename your screenshots with pinpoint accuracy. As you take each one you can decide which folder to save it to, which image format to save it as, what file name to give it, quickly print it, or even trash it if you didn't get exactly what you wanted. Sharpshooter has been described as invaluable by a number of companies in the printing and publishing business.

System Requirements:
* Mac OS X 10.4 or later, including Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
* Mac computer with an Intel or PowerPC processor
* System set to a supported language: English, Catalan, Czech, Danish, German, Spanish, Finnish, French, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Ukrainian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese

Pricing and Availability:
* Sharpshooter 1.1 is priced at $15.00 (USD) and can be downloaded and purchased at the Kerlmax website. Users can also take advantage of the free fully functional trial period for thirty days.

Kerlmax LLC
Sharpshooter Product Page
Direct Download Link
Purchase Link
App Icon

Kerlmax LLC is a small software company located in Austin, Texas. Founded in 2008 by Isaac Wankerl, Kerlmax focuses on exciting and intuitive products for the Mac and iPhone platforms. Copyright 2008-2009 Kerlmax LLC. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, and OS X are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

###

Isaac Wankerl
President
Kerlmax LLC
512-680-4142
United States
isaac@kerlmax.com

Presenting at CapMac in October

In about a month I will be presenting at Austin's Capitol Macintosh user group October general meeting. Sharpshooter 1.1 will be final shortly and this will give me a great opportunity to show off its features to the group. Lately I've been making a conscious effort to do a better job of marketing my products and CapMac has been a wonderful tool so far in this respect. Back in January I got an email from Michael Sidoric asking if I would like to demo Austin Traffic at their first iPhone Special Interest Group meeting. At the time the app only showed traffic incident listings but enough work had been done to show off a prototype with traffic cameras. The new feature was well received and I got several good ideas from the group. I've since been back to several of the iPhone SIGs.

Photo courtesy of Alex Suarez.

Sharpshooter 1.1b1 supports Snow Leopard

Late yesterday night we released a beta build of the upcoming version of Sharpshooter. We are still reworking some parts of the user interface but decided that there are probably enough users out there with early copies of Apple's new Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard that we should make a compatible build available. Apple has published that Snow Leopard is coming September 2009 but we don't have an exact date yet.

We can't get into specifics about what is in Snow Leopard, but there are some changes which broke Sharpshooter's main functionality of intercepting the screenshots that you take. It isn't Apple's fault that this happened. They are free to make any changes they want with new OS releases. The incompatibility stems from how Sharpshooter works to recognize that a screenshot has been taken. This has been addressed and fixed with the 1.1b1 build.

This release comes with a mostly unchanged UI. We did remove the preference to have the Rename button enabled even if you haven't made changes to the name/location/format. This would let you hit return to dismiss the window, essentially the same thing you can do by either hitting Command-W or the escape key. We also incorporated several private changes that had been given out to a few customers such as additional support for Catalan, Czech, Greek, and Polish languages. Since Snow Leopard comes with nearly all of the system applications rewritten in 64-bit code, we did the same with Sharpshooter.

We are interested in hearing if you have any problems with this new build which can be downloaded here. There is a fully functional 30-day trial period.

Kerlmax releases Austin Traffic 2.0 for iPhone and iPod Touch

Round Rock, Texas - April 17, 2009 - Kerlmax has announced an update to Austin Traffic, the premier mobile traffic tool for Austin, Texas. Version 2.0 of the iPhone application adds map links, animated traffic camera images, incident detail views, and improved customization of the settings.

Austin Traffic is a tool to give you information about current traffic conditions on roadways in the Austin, TX area. The incidents tab lets you select the roads you travel frequently and get listings of the accidents along them as reported by the City of Austin and the Travis County Sheriff's Office. Over thirty Austin thoroughfares are currently supported and selectable. The cameras tab gives you access to unique animations of the TxDOT traffic cameras along Interstate 35, Highway 183, Highway 290, and Mopac Expressway which lets you get a good visual sense of how traffic is flowing. All of the information presented in the application is designed for quick and easy interpretation.

Austin Traffic is useful for route planning. If you are stuck in an unexpected traffic jam, it's easy to launch and quickly see if there is an accident or what else might be up ahead. Should you take a different road? Are you going to be late getting home? Let Austin Traffic help you determine the answers.

Feature Highlights:
* Animated traffic camera images along Interstate 35, Highway 183, Highway 290, and Mopac Expressway.
* Listing of known traffic incidents grouped by road and arranged according to your preference.
* Map links for each incident.
* Automatic refreshing of data every five minutes.

System Requirements:
* iPhone or iPod touch with OS 2.0 or later
* Cellular data or WiFi connection

Pricing and Availability:
* Austin Traffic 2.0 is available now and can be purchased from the iPhone App Store for $4.99 (USD).

Kerlmax
Austin Traffic
Download and Purchase


Kerlmax LLC is a small software company located in Round Rock, Texas. Founded in 2008 by Isaac Wankerl, Kerlmax focuses on exciting and intuitive products for the Mac and iPhone platforms. Copyright 2009 Kerlmax LLC. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone and iPod are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

###

Isaac Wankerl
President
512-680-4142
isaac@kerlmax.com

What's happening at Kerlmax

We've been fairly quiet so far this year although we are working on some updates. There are some exciting new features coming to Austin Traffic and we hope to submit it to the App Store soon. We'll be sending it out to a few beta testers this weekend to get their feedback on function and performance. On the desktop front, it's probably no surprise that Sharpshooter has taken a back seat to our iPhone development. As soon as Austin Traffic version 2.0 is out, we will finish up the Sharpshooter version 1.1 work. We're adding support for Catalan, Czech, and Greek languages (although not full localizations) and fixing an error under the Polish language. The preferences window is being reworked and registration will be much easier and forgiving. Finally the other big feature of the 1.1 release will be remembering your favorite folders of where you're moving the screenshot to.

Kerlmax LLC is coming up on its official one year anniversary; it was formed last year on April 1st. It sure would be nice to have new releases available next week as a celebration, but that's a little too ambitious of a schedule based on where we are right now. Nevertheless, we'll do our best to finish up and release close to that date.

Traffic feed problems

From Thursday evening February 5th through Monday the 9th, the City of Austin's traffic feed was malfunctioning. My app Austin Traffic relies on this feed for the data that are displayed. For most of this time Austin Traffic kept showing the same accidents from Thursday like they hadn't been cleared even after 24 hours. Then on Sunday the feed of incidents was cleared and it didn't show any issues, even during empty during peak traffic hours. When I checked again at 5:30 PM on Monday, it was finally back up and working properly.

Unfortunately there isn't much that I can do about situations like this. In the future I might be able to incorporate some sort of messaging system into the app to alert users when there is a known problem. That's not too high on my priority list though because this is the first time I've ever noticed any problems with the traffic information feed. For now I'm focusing on developing version 2 with great new features.

Twitter

For those of you using Twitter, you can follow me at http://twitter.com/kerlmax. I will be using it mainly for Kerlmax business information, but since I don't have a personal account, I'll probably mix a little bit of that in with the other tweets.

Austin Traffic is now on the iPhone App Store

Today Austin Traffic 1.0 was released on the iPhone App Store after being retooled from a web app. I was never very happy with the speed of the web app. As I worked on improving the speed, it became clear that a native application would be much faster and provide other enhancements. Now you can customize the road groups to the ones that you drive on frequently. Currently there are about thirty roads to choose from, but I can easily add more if there are requests. The listings now show the times of the incidents. Most importantly, in my opinion, is that the app downloads a smaller amount of data and only from one network connection which makes it much quicker than a web app.

Sharpshooter

First off, I admit that this blog has been lacking on content. I will try and post here more regularly. The biggest thing the blog is lacking is any news about Sharpshooter, my Mac screenshot helper utility application. In early September, I put the final touches on Sharpshooter and started selling it online.

Before I started Kerlmax, Sharpshooter was a personal side project available as freeware. I got a lot of positive feedback about the app and a lot of feature requests as well. This encouraged me to put some more work into improving Sharpshooter so I put together a plan to start the company and release version 1.0.



Because the app was previously available for free, I sold it at a 20% discount of the regular price of $15 for the first month. Unfortunately I really don't know much affect that had on my sales. Most of my sales came in during the first two weeks and everything since then has been slow but fairly consistent, even after dropping the discount. All of this has been with almost no marketing on my part. That's going to change when I release the next minor revision. Hopefully with some press coverage sales will pick back up.

Austin Traffic updated

My Austin Traffic iPhone web app just received its first major update. There were really just two changes:

• Traffic incident types are now shown at the beginning of the table items and drawn in red.


• Now uses proper capitalization instead of everything being lowercase. This was change was pretty easy to add thanks to John Gruber sharing his title-casing script and Adam Nolley porting it to PHP.

I know there are bugs with some street names (e.g. McNeil) but those can easily be fixed once I know about them. Don't be afraid to send in bug reports to support@kerlmax.com.

Next up on my plate for Austin Traffic is to show the incident times and optimize it more for even faster loading over EDGE while you're sitting in traffic on Mopac or I-35. I still need to investigate the optimizations but already have several pointers and thoughts on how to achieve them.

Austin Traffic is live

Kerlmax's first product, Austin Traffic, is an iPhone optimized listing of current traffic incidents in Austin, Texas. It just made it onto Apple's web apps directory.



I made Austin Traffic because all of the websites I found with this type of information are painfully slow to load on the iPhone. The City of Austin has a page of recent incidents but the text is too small to read and you have to scroll back and forth a lot because of this. Thankfully they provide an RSS feed and that's what I'm using to gather the information for my app. I have reformatted it for easier viewing and grouped the incidents by some of the major thoroughfares around town.

There is still more work to be done, but the web app is quite functional now and I wanted to let everyone else give it a try. Hopefully you find it as useful as I do.

Kerlmax now open for business

The doors are open. Please excuse our mess.

For some time now I have wanted to set up a side business so I could work on my own projects. This year I pulled the trigger and got things rolling. A few months ago I filed the necessary paperwork to start my own company, Kerlmax LLC. Right now it's just me, Isaac Wankerl, running the show (and I don't have any plans to change that unless the company becomes seriously successful). The company motto is Exciting and Intuitive Software and I hope that our upcoming products live up to it.

My first product (a free iPhone web application) is already out and within a month my flagship product should be finished and released. In the mean time I will also be working to clean up the website and get this blog formatted to my liking. Thanks for stopping by and come back soon!