I was born by the river…

When we started The Blue Technologies Group back in 2003 (yup), we were pretty naive. We looked at what other companies were doing, at the state of the Mac software market. The downfall of classic Shareware, the rise of official “beta”-releases, the trend of constant updates through .dmg-downloads or of half-baked full version cycles.

Lots of low-priced products that you ended up buying but not using, lots of feature add-ons that completely changed the UI and even some core functionality — to us, it all looked pretty messed up for the end-user, and we wanted to take an alternate route.

So we set out to do it all in the “right” way. Old-school, conservative, so to say.

Full-scale internal beta-testing. Don’t release until it’s ready. Don’t update unless it’s essential. Don’t go for a mass of price-happy users, but instead go for those who really want your product.

Concentrate support on your users, and not on those who want a totally different application. Make it a worthwhile purchase by releasing free updates, even years after the original shipped. Don’t fall for he who screams “feature request” the loudest, but instead double-check every feature addition every time for compliance with the app’s goals and intentions.

Yeah, we know.

But looking back, pretty much every decision we made came from an end-user perspective. We did what we wished others were doing.

And looking back, we made some of the worst decisions a startup company could possibly make. We were essentially fighting a set market structure. People were so used to how the system worked, that our offer was just alienating them left and right. From day one, we were attacked for what we did and how we did it.

How many times did we hear that we were pricing Ulysses “for sheer greed”. Of course, the same folks were giving us helpful advice on how to “effectively sell more copies”. Now picture that.

So, the vast majority of potential users didn’t like our approach.

The vast majority of press outlets didn’t like our approach either. It was all good and dandy for the first two years, but after that… try getting a news splash on a point update when everybody else is releasing full version jumps.

We didn’t even get large coverage in germany, even though it’s our home, and (e.g.) Ulysses is the only writing environment in its class to offer fully-fledged localization. It’s a shame, really…

Of course, we also made a lot of mistakes here. I try to forget, but I remember being on an internet-tv show where I should demo Ulysses to a large crowd and totally blew it. I could make excuses here, but who gives a damn, anyway. This ended up being so embarrassing, that I swore to never do anything like that again. Ever.

I also think that we over-estimated our possible output by under-estimating the signal-to-noise ratio that’s imminent in the way we’re working here. You may not know this, but we’re doing this all over the internet, pretty much in our spare-time (for the most part), with each member of the group living at least 250 kilometers away from another.

Given the situation, it’s a small wonder we’re still working together. I got two kids now. Max has left home and moved to a new city. Mac OS X went from 10.2 to 10.6 — it sure has been a looooooooooooooong time.

And economically? It’s not a total disaster, but it comes close.

We haven’t seen a penny for an update from our installed user-base during all this time. Full Screen editing, Markers, Semantic Styles, Groups, Filters, Collections, that crazy advanced Search & Replace function, Multi-Notes, Project Notes, the Text Trash; we added all that stuff for free, and some of it has been truly revolutionary. For Ulysses, of course, but also for the greater scope, the Mac market, the “creative writing” market.

In a couple of weeks, we’ll be releasing Ulysses 1.7 at no cost. It will be the 10th or so update. It will feature a brand-new look, some pretty impressive feature additions and lots of user-requested improvements.

We could, once again, release this with a new full version number tacked on, like 3.0, maybe even 4.0 or 5.0, charge a small update fee, and it’d be completely legit. But we won’t. Call us stubborn, but we’ll stick to this.

So, you ask, which change is gonna come?

Well, today I’m officially announcing the beginning of the end of The Blue Technologies Group.

Over the past couple of months, we quietly established a new company. We got a new website up and running to which we were (and still are) slowly adding content and features. We had to do it that way so it could really sink in, with us at least.

We’ll openly begin phasing out blue-tec come Ulysses 1.7, and then transfer everything we got to that new company.

It will not be a mere name change, but rather a complete shift in corporate philosophy. For starters, we’ll be far more transparent with pretty much everything than we ever were with blue-tec, be it on a personal or development level. The new site will be slimmed-down, with focus shifting away from large product descriptions to essential information and user feedback/communication.

We’ll also be making radical changes to our portfolio, with the Localization Suite out- and likely being open sourced. With a new version of Stapler coming later this year, that will (hopefully) blow everybody’s mind. With research & development continuing on what we believe to be a revolutionary music playing application. With a bunch of iPhone apps in the pipeline, ranging from games to utilities, not least an experiment called “Ulysses mobile”, which may show that you can, indeed, write longer texts or be otherwise productive on Apple’s tiniest machine to date.

We’ll also try to avoid most if not all of the mistakes we made in the past. That’s not going to say that we’ll go on a .x-update frenzy or begin charging for every bug-fix release. But 1.7 will most probably be the last time you see a 1.x Ulysses, and we won’t go for classic shareware with Stapler 2.0. Things will be different from now on.

Of course, we’ll also have a new forum open, and we will run a new blog. As a matter of fact, the new blog has already been started. So without further ado — here we go.

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce to you: The Soulmen.

This “Interface Gem” is even more “hidden” than the two first ones:

Multiple Document Word Count

This is for everyone who likes statistics (or needs them because the paper has to have a certain number of words)! Ulysses allows you to keep updated on all sorts of stats: character, word, paragraph, line and page counts. You can always find these counts for the current document in the Control Panel. The numbers on the left correspond to the whole document, the ones on the right to the currently selected text.

What if your paper consists of multiple documents and you need the counts for some or all of them? Fear not, Ulysses has a solution for that too. Simply select the Documents you need the word count for in the Browser and have a look at the line below the previews. All the information you need are displayed there.

Have fun with Ulysses!

Götz

mupromo

It’s a coupon that runs until Sunday night and gives you an extended rebate on the full retail version of Ulysses. It’s 42,10 € which is a bit more than the promo pricing, but I bet it still a fair deal!

Have fun,
Max

If you miss Ulysses in your native tongue, you can also help us to add your language.

So if you’re willing and able to help, please drop Dirk a line, and tell him which translation you could provide.

… and we’re moving along in our little “Interface Gems”:

Lock Documents

Ever wanted to put a seal on a document so you don’t edit it by accident? That’s exactly what the Document Lock is for. You can find it on the right bottom of the Control Panel:

Whenever you close the lock, you can neither edit this Document anymore in the Editor nor edit the Notes. It’s read-only. Again, to unlock it, click on the lock again.

Read you soon!

Götz

… and here comes another one! This time I’ll show you two neat features that are just one button big, so you might not have noticed it yet in the Ulysses interface.

Preview Zoom and Notes Switcher

You probably all know about the preview of the your Documents and Notes on the left panel: select a Document in the Browser on the top and a small preview is shown below. If that preview should ever be too small for your, you can always enlarge the preview with the arrows button on the top right:

Click on the button again, and the preview size is back to normal.

The Notes Preview doesn’t have a zoom, but a switcher. By default, the Document Notes are displayed in the preview. If you press the switcher on the right top of the Notes Preview (see Screenshot below), the preview rotates in the order Notes – Project Notes – Excerpt.

That’s it for today. Hope you enjoyed it!

Götz

After a rather long break we’re back to deliver you some more gems of Ulysses. Let me start with a feature that gets your Great Novel down to paper:

Printing in Ulysses

Personally I love to print out my writings so I can proof-read them on train rides or other places I don’t have a Mac at hand. One way to print your documents is to export your documents (see our third Screencast on Exporting) and open the exported document in your favorite viewer or editor.

The thing is, sometimes you just want a quick printout, nothing too fancy, or want your Styles & Markers included in the printout. Well, Ulysses has a solution for that as well. You can always send your currently open Document to your printer. Please notice that the features I’m going to describe were mostly introduced in version 1.6, so if you don’t have that version for some reason, printing is another great reason to upgrade.

Printing itself is very easy, simply go to Documents > Print. You can either print the Document or the Notes separately (if you want to combine them when printing, you’d have to export the Document first (for instance to the PDF format) and insert the Notes). When you click on Print Document or Print Notes, you’re presented with a sheet like you can see below.

In the printer settings you can set Ulysses to print the text according to the Norm Page Settings or just to use the complete page. When you use the first setting, the number of characters per line and the number of lines per pages are both limited. You can always adjust these numbers in the Preferences under Counting > Norm Page.

And while we’re in the Preferences, let me show you show to customize the look of your printout like you want. In Interfaces, there is a section called Printing. Here you can not only set the font style for the text, but also alter the look of the Styles and Markers, because not everything that looks good on the screen has to look good on paper.

That’s it for now… hope you liked it.

Götz

Hey everyone,

I’d just like to let you know that we just finished our fourth Screencast for Ulysses. After we covered the basic features and concepts of Ulysses in the first three Screencasts, we’re now moving on to more advanced features that make working on your projects much easier. We’ll show you how you can not only Search & Replace texts, but also Styles and Markers, you’ll get to know Project Notes and the Text Trash, then we get into the Fullscreen Modes and finally we’ll show you how you can backup your projects automatically and how to customize your Ulysses interface so that it’ll suit your needs. We hope you enjoy it!

Have fun!

Götz

There are big news swirling in the air. At the end of this year, the beloved Blue-Tec we once had will be gone. There will be a new Version – 3.0 if you want. We will have a new name, new looks, new power, new products and go to a new platform (you might guess what). Details will follow. But it would be quite funny to hear your guesses ;-)

Have fun,
Max