PictureGo!

Version 2.2 - July 2003

Yes, your suggestions are taken serious. Just before 2.1 was launched I received the suggestion to prevent the screen saver from taking over while running a slide show. It turned out to be an easy change, but it came to me too late to implement it in 2.1. Another suggestion that has been implemented in 2.2 is to feature the use of the keyboard to operate the slide show. Also the idea of using bookmarks, which is new in 2.2, was suggested to me. Apart from all of this, I had a couple of ideas myself. In particular, the maintenance and management of MyShow files have been improved (see image below). Of course there was a number of (minor) bugs existing in 2.1 to tackle. I think I mentioned enough about the importance of testing in the previous release notes.

List of MyShow files

When you install version 2.2 you will notice the procedure is now a regular ,state of the art, installation procedure. The credits for this go to Jordan Russell, author of Inno Setup (a very impressive freeware InstallMaker program).

This software even creates an Uninstall procedure! (Okay, of course nobody wishes to uninstall PictureGo! but still, it is nice :)

The bad news is I haven,t made it to a 1000 registered users yet, I need about 250 more. But with an average of 3 to 4 registrations each day, it shouldn,t take more than 3 months..... I guess my marketing skills could be better!

On the other hand, it is not getting any easier to get the program listed. For instance, I can only update the PictureGo! information on Cnet (which has always been a great source for people to find PictureGo!) for a fee of about $70. (I don,t think so!). I sent Cnet an email complaining about this, but.....no reply! Another example is that I can still update the PictureGo! information on CFS (Completely Free Software), but the site itself is not free anymore. In order to search this site, you have to become a paying member first! (A little peculiar I would say).

PictureGo! users come from all over the world, from Australia to Alaska, but, until a month ago, I didn,t have a single registration from our neighbour country Germany. This had been bugging me for a while, but despite earlier efforts, the number of registrations from Germany remained zero. Finally, I got PictureGo! listed on AgfaNet which got me at least 50 German users. And I think as a result of that, I had a request from a German magazine (C,t) to publish PictureGo! on their CD-ROM in the fall of this year. Since they claim to have 400.000 readers, this might lead to quite a number of registrations. We,ll see....

I would like to thank everyone that came to me with suggestions for this new version. Big ,Thanks, to Tom McCuen (Long Island, NY, USA) and Ian Wright (Greenwood Lake, NY, USA) for testing, important remarks and suggestions.

Now it is time for the holidays and leaving the further development of PictureGo! for a while.

Happy summer holidays!

Auke Nijholt, the Netherlands, July 2003