Adam Behringer's Blog

Gocco Cards

2008-07-10T10:24:00.000-07:00

This week, I have been working on printing up a bunch of new "Thank You" cards with my Gocco printer. Illustration by Engin Korkmaz.

Award Winning Software!

2008-06-16T10:06:00.000-07:00

Last week in San Francisco, Bee Docs' Timeline 3D Edition was awarded "Runner-Up Best Mac OS X Leopard Application" at the Apple Design Awards 2008. I made it one of my career goals to win one of these awards three years ago and am very proud to be recognized with this award.

The best part of receiving the award is to be in the club with so many other developers that I respect who have won the award in the past. Plasq, Delicious Monster, Panic, OmniGroup, Vara, Boinx, etc... These guys have been my inspiration. Thanks again to Gary who made all of the 3D timelines work in a few short months in order for us to make the award deadline.

Here are my kids wearing their Apple shirts to celebrate:

Warning: Quicktime 7.5

2008-06-11T05:48:00.000-07:00

It appears that Quicktime 7.5 update released by Apple this week may be causing 3D Export functionality to stop working, at least for some customers (including myself).

I am working on an update to Bee Docs' Timeline that will fix the issue. My goal for the release is Friday.

Until then, please avoid the upgrade to Quicktime 7.5 if you are using Bee Docs' Timeline 3D Edition. Thank you for your patience and I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

Update (June 13, 2008)

This QuickTime incompatibility has now been fixed with release number 2.1.2. Please use "Check for Updates" to download the update. Note that the update is only for the 3D Edition.

Thank You Cards

2008-06-10T13:11:00.000-07:00

Last year I had the idea of sending hand written thank you notes to every first time customer in order to add some humanity to the on-line order process. I started with just the USA and then expanded to international customers a few months ago. Hopefully many of you have received them. My first order of cards was from an on-line digital postcard company. I just ran out, so that means 2,000 cards have gone out so far!

Volume has increased dramatically due to the 3D Edition, and it is tempting to further automate or scale back the thank you card production. But then I thought, more volume should equal more thankfulness... Why not do the opposite?

To make the cards even more special to receive, the next 4,000 cards we are going to be hand printed cards with a Gocco printer. A few weeks ago I received three Gocco printers that I ordered from Japan. I've commissioned a very exciting artist from Istanbul / Turkey named Engin Korkmaz to design the postcards and I'm building a network of crafty friends and family members to help with the printing process.

One big challenge was finding a good paper that would have a high quality feel, work with an offset printer (for the return address), work with my laser printer (for the "to" address), work with the Gocco printer, and also with my fountain pen. After several frustrating failures, I found Kelly Paper who's great sales people were able to help me find some options that met all the criteria.

With any luck, everything will come together and the new cards should start going out next week. By the way, I love this kind of stuff and am very grateful for everyone who has supported Bee Documents over the past few years and made it possible for me to have the kind of business where I can pursue all my crazy ideas.

If you are interested in Gocco printing, be sure to search Google, YouTube, and Flickr for more information. Here is a video I found on YouTube of the Gocco in action:

What I'm looking for in Steve's Keynote

2008-06-08T14:26:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow at 10am is Steve Jobs' WWDC keynote. I thought I'd take a moment to tell you what I'll be on the lookout for...

Convergence
A longer term trend I have been watching is convergence of the mobile and desktop operating systems. Of course, this has been talked about in the Java and Microsoft worlds for some time but I think that we are getting to that point in history where the lines really start to get blurry between different categories of devices. Though everyone has been trying, I think Apple will be the one who will finally ignite our imaginations at the boundaries of previous categories. My gut says the iPhone is only "step one" in the same way that iTunes was only step one of the music revolution.
Blinking Lights
The thing I want most from the next iPhone is not 3G, Video Conferencing, GPS, blah blah blah. What I want is some little LED lights that let you know at a glance whether you have any new e-mails of phone calls. My Sidekick had a great light that would do different flashing color patterns based on the number of type of messages you had. Doesn't the Blackberry do the same thing? Why do I need to wake up the iPhone to see if I have any new messages? It doesn't have to be big light... a tiny little LED like the iPod Shuffle has would be fine... Please?!?
3rd Party iPhone Apps
I'm sure we'll be seeing some 3rd party iPhone apps in the Keynote. I can't wait to see what the development community is working on. As a developer, I'll be looking out for holes of opportunity as well.
Announcements that will lead to more Mac OS X market share
My success will always be a subset of the platform's success, so I hope to see announcements in the Keynote that show how Apple is going to take it's current momentum to rock the Mac market share numbers in the coming year or two. If the iPhone is the only thing talked about, I will be disappointed but I am cautiously optimistic Jobs will spend 45 min talking about the iPhone and then change the subject to Mac OS X (if they aren't so converged as to be the same subject).
Mac Market Share Gains
I'm very interested to hear the latest numbers on Mac market share and Leopard usage in particular. Everything points to huge gains, but each year I like to see one of those charts that goes off the page.
High Density Displays
Apple has been pushing developers to build resolution independent applications. Isn't it about time we saw some hardware to go along with that technology? Don't you think? Maybe at least one one pro-level display with a high density display... I would be first in line for one.

Well that is my list for Santa (Steve Jobs). What are you hoping to see in the WWDC Keynote this year?

Rethinking the brand

2008-06-08T14:05:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone who left a comment on the two logos I posted. You didn't say what I thought you were going to say, so it was very educational to hear your first impressions.

As you may have guessed, I have begun a process to rethink the brand of Bee Documents. I picked the name and came up with the concept for the original logo (pictured here) in December 2002. At the time, I was working exclusively on a web-based document management system for lawyers, thus the "Documents" in Bee Documents.

In the last five and a half years a lot has changed. The focus of the company is now timeline software, I have much more business and life experience, and the company generates income to name the first three things that come to mind. I've decided it is time to update the branding. It is an ongoing process, but hopefully you will see some improvements to the brand in the coming months. Eventually the changes should show up on the website, blog, videos, product design, etc...

By the way, the black and white logo that I posted first was meant to represent the stamen and other inside parts of a flower. I had this ambitious concept that instead of making the viewer look at a bee, the perspective would be reversed and the viewer would become the bee looking at the flower. Out of the concepts that I have played with so far, this was my personal favorite but I can see now that it is too abstract for folks to grasp at first glance. So, back to the drawing board...

Logo #2 - Feedback Request

2008-06-05T15:55:00.000-07:00

Here is another logo from Design Hovie Studios for which I would appreciate your feedback. Just to reiterate, the kind of feedback that is most useful is not what you would change about the logo or even whether or not you would personally choose it, but rather the feelings, connotations, and impressions that the logo gives you. Thanks!

Logo Design - Feedback Request

2008-06-05T12:05:00.000-07:00

Here is a new company logo I had designed by Design Hovie Studios. Would you please a quick comment with a word or two that describes the your impression of the logo (For example, "breezy", "uplifting", "oppressive", "bubbles", "itchy", etc...). Please be creative and don't just say -liked it-.

There are a few hundred people subscribed to this blog so I would like to see at least 50 different comments on this one. It will only take a second... Please?!

Introducing Larry Staton Jr.

2008-06-04T07:51:00.001-07:00

I was speaking to a Martin King, founder of Exbiblio, about the desire to expand Bee Documents and bring on some more people. We were chatting about who the next person should be... a programmer? an assistant? customer relations? a web expert? a graphic designer?

His insightful answer was that a competitive advantage of Bee Documents so far is that I have been doing all of these tasks myself and thus can bring perspective from one discipline to another. For example, the feature design and prioritization is directly related to the customer service conversations I have on a daily basis. He suggested hiring more generalists who can do a bit of everything alongside me instead of hiring to take certain focussed tasks off my plate.

With that in mind. I'd like to introduce Larry Staton Jr. who is helping me on a part time basis from his home office in Charlotte, North Carolina. Larry has been a long time customer of Bee Docs' Timeline, signing up for the very first beta mailing list back in December 2004 when he was a law student. He was also part of the "T2 Customer Design Panel."

In 2005 we collaborated to design and build a custom web application for a law firm in Florida. Larry is now a full fledged intellectual property lawyer and runs a blog called Scripting for Lawyers. He is also a Web / AJAX developer and knows some Cocoa programming too.

Larry has been helping me update the beedocuments.com site as well as prototyping some web-based timeline interface ideas. Also, I have asked Larry to help field customer service e-mails, so some of you may get to hear from him over the coming weeks. As a long time customer of Bee Docs' Timeline, Larry should be able to share some good tips and tricks especially concerning the integration of Timeline with other applications using Applescript.

Everyone give Larry Staton Jr a warm welcome!

French and German Localizations Released!

2008-05-29T11:10:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago I posted Bee Docs' Timeline 2.1.1 (both the 3D and Standard Editions). I'm very excited to announce that the new versions include, among other things, French and German localizations. I have had many loyal and enthusiastic customers from Germany and France for a while now and it gives me great pleasure to be able to provide Bee Docs' Timeline in their native languages.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a request for help translating to these two languages and received so many volunteers that I had to turn a handful of people away. To do the translation work, I posted phrases that need translating in a Google Docs spreadsheet and my collaborators filled in the proper translation, often in real-time. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone that volunteered and helped!

I'm sure the translations aren't perfect yet and there are still a few missing phrases, so feel free to send me an e-mail if you see something that needs correction. In fact, I already have a stack of suggested corrections so I will try to make sure those get fixed in the next update. After the translations in the user interface are stabilized I will work on localizing the help documentation, website, and videos too.

I started with German and French because I already had a large number of existing customers in those countries, but I am definitely interested in localizing in more languages in the future. If you would be willing to volunteer to help translate to another language, please send me an e-mail (Adam at BeeDocuments dot com) and we'll get started!

Songs Used in Our Videos

2008-05-20T08:09:00.000-07:00

I've been receiving a lot of e-mails about the song used in the original "3D Edition" announcement video. Each time I put together a screencast or video, I usually spend a few hours scouring the net for a great song that captures the feeling of the video and is available with a podsafe or creative commons license. Sometimes it takes a bit of hunting, but there is some wonderful music out there.

Here are direct links to some of the music I have used recently. Enjoy the music and please support these artists who have allowed their music to be used for creative projects.

Wake the Sun - by The Matches (used in current "3D Edition")
ditto ditto - by ditto ditto (used in original "3D Edition")
Turn Out The Light - by The New Amsterdams (used in "RSS importer and Chart Backgrounds")
The Blue Roses - by Rookie of the Year (used in "NetNewsWire Importer")
Its About Your Soul - Delphinium Blue (used in "Tick Marks")
Stop - by the Plain White T's (used in "Recently Played Songs")
Mystic Chants - by Anne Young (used in "Lord of the Rings Timeline")

Bee Docs' Timeline in German and French

2008-05-16T13:42:00.000-07:00

I am working hard to include German and French localizations of Bee Doc' Timeline in the next release, but I need your help to finish the work.

If you would like to volunteer to help translate some of the user interface labels to French or German, please send me an e-mail (Adam at BeeDocuments.com) and I will send you instructions on how you can help. Even if you only have time to translate a few phrases, it would be wonderful. Thanks!

Upgrade to Bee Docs' Timeline 3D Edition

2008-05-12T16:24:00.001-07:00

Thank you for all of the positive feedback and kind e-mails so far! Knowing that people are excited about the new features makes up for the late nights Gary and I have been spending trying to hit this deadline.

The most frequently asked question so far is "How do I upgrade to the 3D Edition if I already have a Bee Docs' Timeline license?" Here is how:

Download and install the 3D Edition.
Confirm that your existing license is entered in the Registration Panel (should transfer automatically)
In the Registration Panel, click the "Upgrade to 3D" button.
The upgrade will cost $25

Alternatively, you will be offered an opportunity to upgrade if your standard license is installed and you attempt to use a 3D feature that is restricted (such as export to Devices).

Timeline 3D Edition Available Now!

2008-05-12T11:55:00.001-07:00

I have just posted the 3D Edition to our main download page.

Be the first on your block to have 3D timelines!

Bee Docs' Timeline - 3D EDITION (video)

2008-05-09T15:14:00.000-07:00

I am very happy to announce Bee Docs' Timeline - 3D Edition! I've put together a five minute video to tell you all about it:

WEB:

Watch Now

DOWNLOADS:

Apple TV Optimized - 159.9 Mb (zip)
iPod / iPhone Optimized - 41.3 Mb (zip)

About 3D Timelines - Part III.

2008-05-02T09:59:00.000-07:00

In December 2007, Gary C Martin sent some feature suggestions to me regarding Timeline 2.0, which was still in beta at the time. As I often do, I followed the links in his e-mail signature because I can see what kind of people are using Bee Docs' Timeline. Turns out Gary is a 3D artist and made a very sophisticated Asteroids game using Apple's Quartz Composer technology.

I've always thought that it would be great to be able to hire some customers to help me develop Bee Docs' Timeline and here was a great opportunity. I sent Gary the 3D design concept that I made using Motion and asked if he would be interested in helping me make the feature a reality. Within days he started sending me working prototypes of 3D timelines and we have been collaborating on it ever since.

Doing a mock-up of a 3D timeline was relatively easy, it took about a day. Getting it to work for the huge diversity of timelines that are possible with Bee Docs' Timeline is a much greater challenge. Timelines and events can be different sizes, aspect ratios, fonts, etc... Performance and interaction issues are tricky too. Gary has been doing the Quartz Composer programming and figuring out the calculations for zooming, rotation, movement, and performance while I have been doing the associated Cocoa programming and leading the design.

All of our communications have been via e-mail (Gary lives in Edinburgh, Scotland) and it has been fantastic working with someone who does amazing work and has also been a customer of Bee Docs' Timeline since May 2007.

I look forward to hiring more customers in the future, so if you'd ever be interested in working with me, be sure to let me know what you do! At the moment, I could really use some help with PR...

About 3D Timelines - Part II.

2008-04-29T09:09:00.000-07:00

When I designed the first product (a web-based document management system) for Bee Documents back in 2002, I started with pen and paper and then used Adobe InDesign to complete the prototype.

Since that time I have used Apple's Keynote software to do design and prototyping for dozens of websites and desktop applications. For me it has several advantages over Photoshop, which is the classic tool of choice for this kind of work:

I find it much faster to draw and make adjustments with Keynote.
The effects (rounded corners, tinted fills, gradients, drop shadows) are all very Mac like.
I can link up the Keynote presentation and add animated actions to simulate the interactive behavior of the application.
People who are not designers can participate in the design with me since it is intuitive to drag things around and make changes using Keynote

As an example, see the following two screenshots. The image on the left is the Keynote file I used to design the "T2" website. This was one of several possible designs that I can created. When I played the Keynote file, I could interact with the links and videos as if it was a real website. The image on the right a screen capture of the real website.

However, as well as the current process is working for me, I keep thinking about cinematic software, touch interfaces, animation, motion, and "No Limits Design". The technical barriers are falling for this kind of software. I'm concerned that prototyping tools that encourage page-by-page designs may limit creativity.

To that end, I have been experimenting with video as a prototyping tool as well as some motion graphics tools such as Apple's Motion.

Several months ago, I transformed the 3D Timeline idea that I had sketched into the following video using Apple's Motion:

I wanted to be able to test readability of the timeline at distances and get a sense for whether this would be a useful feature that helps solve the challenges of presenting timelines or if it was only eye candy.

...to be continued...

About 3D Timelines - Part I.

2008-04-28T08:52:00.000-07:00

One of the most challenging aspects of working with timeline charts is presenting them to an audience. Timeline charts often have fractal like complexity, with both the entire context of a large chart as well as the individual event details being of equal importance in digesting the meaning behind a chart. Printing can be a challenge as fitting a complex timeline on one page makes the details very small, but spanning many pages is not a good solution either.

Presenting timelines on a projected screen can be challenging for the same reasons. Either you need to show the timeline so small that there is no detail visible, or you need to zoom in and lose the context.

Last summer, while I was attending Apple's WWDC developers conference, I was pondering this problem and drawing sketches in my notebook. During the conference, folks from Apple where showing some of the amazing new graphics capabilities in Leopard and encouraging developers to make their software "cinematic."

I was inspired by the thought that I might allow customers to create cinematic timelines while, at the same time, solve the issue of presenting timelines to groups using a projected screen.

My idea was to treat the timeline as a physical object that could be viewed in 3D perspective. If you looked down the timeline on edge, you could see many events off in the future and the events near the "front" would be nice and large. If each event was also a little door that could swing out parallel to the screen as it was selected, it would solve the distortion problem for the selected event as well as making it clear which event was highlighted.

Here is the sketch I drew back in June 2007:

However, back in June I was hard at work preparing the release of Bee Docs' Timeline 2.0. and didn't have time to add any major new features. So the idea had to remain in my notebook along with all of the other "big ideas" that live there.

Story to be continued...

Screenshots: We Need Your Help!

2008-04-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

We've been doing some design work to refresh the Bee Documents website. Currently we don't have product screenshots on the main website but a Google search will search will turn up this page from a few years ago which is sadly out of date.

I was doing some thinking about what timelines to use for the new screenshots and it occurred to me that it would be much better to feature some real customer timelines instead of using contrived examples. We would give you credit of course, and maybe include your picture and a quote about the work you do (the page is still in the concept stage)...

If you are willing to help out, would you please send me an e-mail of your best or most interesting timeline to date?

My e-mail is Adam at Bee Documents dot com

Thanks!

CircaVie Timeline - The Beatles

2008-04-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

This is a web-based timeline service called circaVie. After you try it out, I'd appreciate your thoughts. Do you think it is intuitive to navigate? Does it present the information clearly? Would the information you are presenting work well in a format like this?

Also, for this one I would like to ask how would you feel about the advertising they are showing on each timeline page. Would it be worth it for you to have ads on your documents in exchange for free services?

A personal introduction

2008-04-10T13:26:00.001-07:00

Introducing Milo. Born 4/6/8.

The Passion Timeline - BBC

2008-04-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

David Huyng, developer of the SIMILE open-source timeline project, sent me a link to this highly customized SIMILE timeline that the BBC created for Easter week. The BBC seems to have some of the best examples of interactive timelines on the web these days.

Check it out and let me know what you think of it.

NY Times - Barack Obama Interactive Timeline

2008-04-02T09:35:00.000-07:00

Thank you for all of your valuable comments and insight regarding the BBC Timeline I posted a few days ago. In that same spirit, I'd like to point out the following from the NY Times website and gather your thoughts:

Please give it a spin and let me know what you think. Do you think it is intuitive to navigate? Does it present the information clearly? Would the information you are presenting work well in a format like this?

Screencast: Tick Marks

2008-04-01T09:18:00.000-07:00

Here is a movie that shows how automatic tick marks work and demonstrates the new manual settings available in Bee Docs' Timeline 2.0.9. Enjoy!

Bee Docs' Timeline 2.0.9 (beta)

2008-04-01T09:01:00.000-07:00

I have just finished Bee Docs' Timeline 2.0.9.

However, this new version updates timeline documents to a new format which means that files opened with 2.0.9 will no longer open in previous versions of the software. This is true even if they are only opened and not explicitly saved.

Because of this I am doing some extra testing and am going to release it as a beta for a few days before I add it to the automatic update. If you would like to try the new release, please make a backup copy of your timeline documents first.

After you make your backup and delete existing versions of the application, you are welcome to download a copy of Timeline 2.0.9 (beta). Please send me you feedback!

New in Bee Docs' Timeline 2.0.9:

Manual tick mark settings!
Event links are now included in copy and paste operations
Improved automatic tick marks for timelines spanning 1AD
Improved automatic tick marks for timelines spanning less than 2 hours
Fixed freeze when importing certain malformed RSS feeds
New document format (not compatible with earlier releases)