Today our PayPal funds would have been unfrozen

It was exactly 180 days ago that PayPal froze all money in our account during our MacGraPhoto bundle sale. It was a very negative experience and would’ve been much worse if my elaborate blog post about this didn’t make it first page of reddit with more than 200 comments, first post on Hacker News and a mention on Daring Fireball. All the negative publicity that PayPal had received pushed them to promptly unfreeze my account, even without me asking again (for the 10th time).

What would have happened if they money wasn’t unfrozen?

First, it was a substantial amount. Moreover, most of it was money we had to transfer to our partners, so we would have needed to open our savings. Also, it would have put additional financial pressure on me, since I had left my day job only several months earlier and our family income was (and in fact, mostly still) lower than our expenses.

It wouldn’t have allowed us to participate in application acquisition opportunities and, most probably, we wouldn’t have acquired Blast. It could also limit our ability to pay to freelancers for graphics and other services.

In additional the limitation on my PayPal account also prohibited to use it as a personal account. I use it for personal and other business transactions from time to time. After all, PayPal is still the easiest way to transfer money between different people around the world.

As a business, we still use PayPal when it’s not possible to do otherwise. We no longer use PayPal as a payment processor on our site but FastSpring, which we now use, does offer PayPal as one of the payment methods. We still transfer money through PayPal to third parties and we sometimes get paid through PayPal when we participate in other sales channels, like other bundles.

For MacGraPhoto 2 which we plan later this year, we’ll probably go with FastSpring which allows to split the money between participants upon purchase, which will solve several problems at once – we won’t have to keep other people’s money and it will simplify accounting by reducing our gross income.

Blast 1.3 adds many new features

We’re glad to release Blast 1.3. This version adds many features that you, our users, have asked for and some more that we thought ourselves :-).

Here’s the change list:

  • NEW: Global hotkey (default Control+B) to open and close Blast window
  • NEW: Keyboard actions to open/reveal items in recent files list or in sidebar (Enter to open, Space to reveal)
  • NEW: Easily add excludes right from recent files list: right-click on a file to get context menu.
  • NEW: Option to not track folders. Unselect “Show Folder” in Preferences
  • NEW: Preferences button was replaced by a menu button. Quit button removed, it’s in the menu now.
  • NEW: Visual help accessible from the new menu. See how to best use Blast.
  • Various UI and bug fixes.

Here’s the new help window graphics (reduced):

Blast help

Cashculator 1.1.6 adds several new features

Cashculator 1.1.6 has been released with the following new features:

  • NEW: Cell details sidebar can now be closed/opened using a button below it
  • NEW: Scenario names are now sorted by name. Default scenario is still the first
  • NEW: Last used view (actual, plan, both or combined) is now remembered between launches

Use auto-update in Cashculator menu or download here.

Blast – a new productivit booster application from Apparent Software

This is the relevant part of our press release.Blast icon

Apparent Software announced today that it has acquired Blasted, a productivity booster application from Ted Roden. The application places all recently used files at user’s fingertips, providing fast and easy access to them. This acquisition promises an exciting future for the application, which already has hundreds of enthusiastic users. As part of the acquisition the application is renamed to “Blast” and an important upgrade, version 1.2, is released.

Blast keeps track of all the files the user has been recently using on his Mac. With Blast, all these documents are just one click away. The user can access the file list anytime by clicking on the application icon in the menu bar. Some benefits of using Blast:

  • User doesn’t need to worry about where he just saved a certain file – it’s in his menu bar
  • User can drag downloaded files directly into any application without opening finder and send email attachments faster
  • User doesn’t need to search for a document he was reading yesterday. It is in Blast list, one click away
  • As part of the launch, Apparent Software releases a major update to the application

Version 1.2 includes the following new features:

  • A preview for all the files in the list allows the user to find his file visually just by looking at its icon
  • A favorites sidebar allows user to save his favorite folders and files to be accessed at any time
  • Application shows the list of recent files even after it was closed and the computer was rebooted
  • Improved user interface with several new features, like showing the path to the file

See more about Blast.

Blast screenshot

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