Support soon to be on iPhone

I'm heading out of town with my family for the next two weeks - a much needed break for all of us. We haven't done one of these for a few years when we used to do them every summer - ah, the busy lives we all lead!

FunnWare Development's phone is in the process of being transferred from the Sprint network to the AT&T one as we'll soon have an iPhone so support can be done anywhere by phone as well as email. Hopefully, we won't have any issues with the move - I've heard good and bad things about the AT&T network - we'll see how it goes! If you get voice mail or a weird message (my husband's phone will once in a while give me a 'the caller you are trying to reach isn't accepting calls at this time' message), make sure you leave your name and a number to call you back on. Even in this day and age of caller ID, when a call is unintentionally dropped, if the phone was off or the battery dead, caller ID isn't recorded but voice mail is likely activated.

Email and voice mail will be checked periodically as usual so just because no one is in the office for the next two weeks doesn't mean we're not available to help you out ;-)

For those of you stateside, have a safe and happy holiday weekend.

Subscribe via email - FeedBurner

So I thought that setting yourself up as a follower of a blog automatically would send an email to that follower when something new was posted. Wrong - it does send an email to the follower if someone comments on a post but not when the post is first pushed out - so in order for our posts to get noticed by our followers, we'd have to post the post and then comment on it ;-) Seems a bit awkward - figured there had to be a better way. There is - FeedBurner.

If you'd like to be notified when we post a new post, put in your email address and click the 'Subscribe' link in the box to the right. You'll get a pop up with some info and eventually an email to verify that you are who you are (are you?) and then when we post something new, you'll get an email so you can read it without having to check back to us every day or RSS it if you aren't into that sort of thing. Hope that helps!

Better Ways of Communicating

In this day of spam, sending out emails to a large group of people (i.e. our user base) has become increasing difficult and time consuming. With so many users in our list, sending out an individual email to everyone is impossible as is sending the same email to all our registered users at once. Our first try when the 2009 release was posted gave us numerous email addresses that bounced back even though we knew they were valid. We even got blacklisted (sorry to Amiee McCaffrey who runs WMIT Studio A Design as we got her server mixed up in it!). Amiee recommended using phpList which allows us to build our database of users and send the same message to everyone properly - it does it in the background, one at a time. We are in the process of subscribing all our registered users from the past few years to our phplist so all our messages will get to you correctly and in a more timely manner ;-)

Brother printer issues fixed with an updated driver from Brother

For those of you who had printing issues with Brother printers (preview looked fine on the screen but then either printed only one page of a multi-page report or printed blank pages), some research on our part showed that the software Brother uses for their printers (versus other companies) is not compatible with all programs - but apparently they fixed the problem on their end and have posted new printer drivers.

A user who tested it for us said that she downloaded an updated driver from their website and everything worked correctly. Here's a link to their website where you can select your particular printer and download what you need.

Thanks to Rick for his original post on one of the many news groups I reached out to regarding the issue as he had a client who also had the problem - and thanks to Cheryl for being our tester since we don't have any actual Brother printers here in our office!

v7.64 Now Available for Downloading

As previously blogged, a few issues were reported from v7.63 that needed cleaning up. We've also added several other things that didn't make it into the first release for 2009. One new Vista issue came up since the list we posted in the last blog and has been addressed. Everything has been posted to the website for downloading. Remember that you should have a current license that expires in 2009 - if you haven't yet updated, you'll receive an message that you aren't licensed for this version so be pro-active and get yourself a new Maintenance Contract.

You'll also see the addition of the field Slot Owner on the Horse screen and the ability to have it included on the Announcer's Report - this was something specified to us from a particular user - it's noted here for two reasons; the first is that it's something new and we wanted to make sure that you realized it was supposed to be there ;-) and the second is to remind you of the changes we regularly make to the software to make it better for our users - many of the additions that we do come from requests and we do our best to include those that we can. If it's something that no one else will use but you really would like to see it, we'll quote you a price of the time it would take us to get it added and leave it up to you to decide if you are willing/able to do it. If it's something that would benefit the majority of our users, we'll add it to our 'to-do' list and see about getting it in to future releases. If it's something we really can't do; either because of time constraints or because it can't be done within the constraints of our programming, we'll let you know - we're not shy about that!

Anyway, here's the update - we're taking a much needed break from programming to work on other projects that have been left to the wayside while we cleaned this up but, as usual, we're always around for tech support. Happy Showing!

Fixes

• Reports - Announcer/Draw Report - owner information on the first horse of the report was missing
• Awards - Circuit/Hi Points - if there is an owner missing from a horse, a syntax error occurred (you can verify you have owners for all horses by running a Back Number List report)
• Classes - several of the new ABRA class names had the incorrect sex of the horse listed
• Vista issue - Utilities - Association Disk Creation - some configurations of Vista don't allow creation of files to the root directory so an adjustment was made to select a drive as well as a directory to save the file
  

Additions

• Paso Fino Module - classes included with error checking (allowing adjustment on age as of Sept 1 instead of Jan 1) and association disk creation
• Classes - AQHA Select classes will do and age check on the starting date of the show instead of January 1st
• Financial - NRHA Tally Report implemented
  
• Reports - Labels for Photographer - exports to CSV file which can then be opened in Excel
• Reports - People by Name - exports to CSV file which can then be opened in Excel
• Shows - Show Information - allow the editing of the alphanumeric show ID for printing on reports
• Payback/Checks - Pre-check report - if separate page for each payee is selected, the total of all the checks pushes to a separate page as well
• Horse/Announcer's Report - addition of Slot Owner to each horse and ability to include it on the Announcer's Report under each horse
  

Next release coming soon

There are a few small glitches from v7.63 that are being cleaned up and a new version will be released shortly with those fixes along with a few other things that didn't make it into the first one. Here's the list of what will be in v7.64 when it's posted.

Fixes

• Reports - Announcer/Draw Report - owner information on the first horse of the report was missing
• Awards - Circuit/Hi Points - if there is an owner missing from a horse, a syntax error occurred (you can verify you have owners for all horses by running a Back Number List report)
• Classes - several of the new ABRA class names had the incorrect sex of the horse listed

Additions

• Paso Fino Module - classes included with error checking (allowing adjustment on age as of Sept 1 instead of Jan 1) and association disk creation
• Classes - AQHA Select classes will do and age check on the starting date of the show instead of January 1st
• Financial - NRHA Tally Report implemented
  
• Reports - Labels for Photographer - exports to CSV file which can then be opened in Excel
• Reports - People by Name - exports to CSV file which can then be opened in Excel
• Shows - Show Information - allow the editing of the alphanumeric show ID for printing on reports
• Payback/Checks - Pre-check report - if separate page for each payee is selected, the total of all the checks pushes to a separate page as well
  

v7.63 Now Available

Sorry for the delay - between computer issues and illness, this update took longer to get posted than originally expected. Unfortunately, I think that's par for the course on computer stuff - nothing ever takes the time you think it will ;-)

Anyway, version 7.63 of the software is now available for downloading if you are a current license holder (service date after 12/1/2009). You can view the added items and download it from our HSW Update page on our website.

If you still need to update, see the blog entry below for information on doing so. Those who have purchased the mailed version, manuals are currently being printed and CD's burned - they will be mailed later this week.

I am heading away from my development computer for a few days on a much needed break with my family. As usual, I will still have access to voice and email so if you need to get a hold of me, you know how!

Who's Thinking About Horse Shows?

Well, as I sit down to write another blog entry, I'm finding myself mesmerized by the falling snow outside my window. Those of you in southern states/countries likely haven't enjoyed this in a while (if ever ;-) but it's beautiful and I have stared at it for too long already.

So...back to work...here in the office, we are going through old emails and notes to prioritize our to-do list for the first release of HSW in 2009. We've got notes out to the national associations in the hopes that they will pass on any rule changes that might affect our show managers (if you know of any, feel free to post away). We are gathering information to add a few new breed modules to our list.

We expect our first release to be sometime in the next 3-5 weeks. Be ready for it by purchasing your Maintenance Contract now...with a credit card through our website at www.funnware.com or by sending a check to where it's currently snowing:
FunnWare Development
3292 Atlin Ave
Dublin, OH 43017

Cost is $150 to download all updates from our website or $200 to have us mail you them on CD's. Both options include $200 credit toward technical support for 2009.