Couple simple things:

  1. I’m getting set to release iRooster 2.1 Beta 3 or RC 1. I need to try and repro a couple bugs that have been posted on the forum, and then I’ll evaluate it from there.
  2. I had my best month ever for sales with iRooster; I’m definitely not at the point where I could live off my shareware, and even if I was it wouldn’t change anything (“I love this company!” after all). Nevertheless, it’s very exciting to see such a great reaction to Beta versions of my product. I believe that I’ll continue to see a great response in the community at large to iRooster 2.1. I just need to make sure that its release is driven entirely off quality, and not any particular schedule.
  3. I’m beginning to evaluate other projects to work. iRooster certainly won’t be cast aside… In fact, I am very firmly committed to releasing iRooster for Windows in the next 5-6 months, and I am seriously considering a version for Smartphone, and possibly other platforms. Pocket PC seems like a no-brainer, given how easy it tends to be to port code for the .Net Compact FX between PPC and Smartphone. Palm is a more interesting platform, and I’ll have to evaluate what the circumstances are once I reach that particular fork in the road. I’m not very excited about the idea of maintaining 3 1/2 seperate code bases (Mac, Windows, Smartphone+PPC, and Palm), but I’ll do it if the demand is there.

As a continuation of this, I’d love to see a little more platform/API unification across different operating systems. I sincerely believe that .Net and C# are the way to go here, but I’m not convinced that I’d be able to base a commercial product on Mono and Cocoa# any time soon. Java isn’t the solution to my problem either, given how iRooster works. It wouldn’t solve my needs on Mac OS X, Windows, or any other platform today or tomorrow.

Additionally, I’m considering giving a free copy of iRooster to anyone currently on active duty in the US Armed Forces. This seems sort of trivial, but I’d like to make any kind of gesture I can that is not actually politically oriented… Sigh. Thoughts? Elize?