Hurry to take advantage of a freebie from SplashData.We haven't even evaluated this yet, as we wanted to give you the best chance to take advantage of a 'this week only' offer to have the Snap 'quick entry tool for palm'. It appears to provide an 'always available' toolbar for data entry, designed to interface with their own SplashNotes application, but which will also function with the built in ToDoList and Memo applications. Download it while you still can here.
We've not played with SplashNotes yet, mainly because with a Treo 650, there's precious little memory for new applications, let alone to fill with replacements for built in applications!
In other SplashData news, we must report the demise of the company's foray into blogging support applications, with the death of SplashBlog. In a statement on the SplashBlog website here, the organisers state:Dear Splashblog user,
We regret to inform you that the Splashblog service will be terminated on Friday, August 10th, 2007. The Splashblog website, any uploaded pictures or content, and customer support will no longer be accessible after this time.
However, we value all of our users and don't want you to lose any of the content you have created since you began using the Splashblog service. Therefore, we have designed an easy way for you to save all of your published content.
To preserve your Splashblog content, please follow the simple steps below:
1. Go to Splashblog.com and sign in.
2. In the Blog Admin page, click on the "Manage Blog" link, then on the "Export Photos" link.
3. At the bottom of the page, press the "Create Zip File Now" button.
4. Click the generated link to download your pictures.
Once you complete this process, all of your pictures will be safely saved on your computer. Look for an email for more instructions on where you might move your photos to.
Regards,
The Six Apart Mobile Team.
--Ends--
Now Confused+Emotional is a huge SplashData fan of long standing, so it's always a shame when things go wrong, but we can't help think this is indicative of a new overly-commercial approach by SplashData. When we first encountered the company, back in the day, they appeared to be a developer-led company of great talent, producing software that filled a need and met with great success. We're proud to own SplashID, SplashPhoto & to a degree, SplashTravel. Regular updates provided welcome improvements and increased functionality, and they were always a company to watch.
Over the last 18 months or so, a new commercial focus has come into play, with often negative impact:
- The software doesn't keep pace with the rate of innovation from competitors (SplashPhoto for example is looking very limited when compared to Resco Photo Viewer, which despite the name, provides image editing facilities sadly lacked in SplashData's offering). SplashPhoto last received a feature upgrade in August 2003 (yes, 4 years ago) - subsequent releases have been bug fix & maintenance updates. And just look at SplashClock and compare it to the other products on the market. Compare the recent innovation from SpashData to a company like GX5.
- Irregular updates are revenue-generators with little real value to the loyal customer who continues to fund the company (there's not that much in the new SplashID that we can't live without).
- Pricing has begun to over value what we've already noted are applications looking a little dated. (the 4 year old SplashPhoto will cost you $30, which isn't small change in the world of Palm Apps; the more capable Resco Photo Viewer will cost you $24.95).
- Their new trend of outsourcing development (or buying in the work of other developers) is confusing the brand identity (witness the shoddy & ridiculously memory-hungry SplashNews developed by Smaato, a company that demonstrates that taking a good idea and making it free doesn't always benefit the end user).
- The revenue greed is most apparent in the 'professional' versioned packages now coming on line, milking the user for all they're worth. SplashTravel is a case in point.
- The commercialism is never more apparent in the SplashData blog, which completely fails to see the value in communicating with customers in the way that blogs allow (but seems instead to suggest that having the SplashData website is not doing the job well enough). For example, announcing that the new version of SplashData, released 22nd June, was actually being 'early' released to coincide with Independence Day is just tacky; failing to post a reader comment pointing this out demonstrates just how contrived the 'blog' is - if you don't want criticism, don't mislead the public - they pay your wages.
- Now SplashBlog goes under. A further example of revenue greed, we're sure the SplashData company of old would have developed this useful application to support the leading blogging environments of the day; instead, because it was easier and bought into the revenue generator which is subscription services, SplashData failed to read the marketplace, and has now failed. Lesson learned, we wonder?
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