Poster 1.2 is available both on this site and the Mac App Store today. This version gets an updated user interface design, improvements when posting to Facebook and SmugMug and the ability to export faces from iPhoto and Aperture. Poster on the Mac App Store is now a sandboxed application on 10.7 and later.

SmugMug

On SmugMug, Poster now supports using subcategories and allows the creation of user categories and subcategories when creating galleries. Poster now also supports uploading images to SmugVault, if your account has that enabled, so rather than be restricted to just JPEG, PNG and GIF files, just about any image format can be uploaded and will be recognized on SmugMug’s servers as belonging to your SmugVault.

Facebook

For Facebook, it’s now possible to use friend lists such as “Close Friends” when posting to personal accounts. Poster will show all the lists associated with your account once you give it permission to access those lists. You’ll be prompted for this next time you create a new upload. Poster can also post videos to pages, now that Facebook has made this possible.

Flickr

There are no visible changes for Flickr, but all the communication with Flickr’s servers has been changed to use OAuth instead of Flickr’s own authentication scheme. In practice this shouldn’t make any difference apart from when you authorize Poster on Flickr in a web browser, you will return to the app automatically. Flickr is moving to using OAuth authentication exclusively from June, so this ensures Poster will continue to work after then.

Plug-ins

Poster has export plug-ins for iPhoto and Aperture which can be downloaded separately. These have been updated to export faces from your photos when you’re posting to Flickr or Facebook (SmugMug doesn’t support tagging people in photos). The plug-ins have also been updated to work with the sandboxed version of Poster on the Mac App Store, so you need the latest versions if you are running that version.

And More…

There are many more minor new features and improvements in Poster 1.2, see the release notes for a full list. Poster is available from this site or the Mac App Store and requires Mac OS X 10.6 and later. A 15-day trial is available on the Poster Downloads page. Poster costs $19.95.

Starting today, there is a new discussions forum for Reinvented Software, which replaces the old support forums. Long story short, about a week ago, the “users” table on the forums got corrupted and while I could restore it, the backup wasn’t quite complete and people would need to register again.

I decided that rather than make people do that for no clear benefit, I may as well set up something much better. It’s something I’d been meaning to do anyway.

The new discussion forums (based on Vanilla) have some great features, including signing in with your Twitter or Facebook account (or create one just for the forum, as before), pretty URLs, drafts, bookmarking and the ability to manage the discussions you’re interested in. Also, hopefully, it will be less plagued by spam.

The old forums were a few years old and there is a lot of stuff on there, some of it still useful and relevant, so all the posts are archived at the exact same URL as before but it’s no longer possible to register, respond or create new topics.

I hope you will enjoy using the new discussions forums.

Just to follow up on my previous post that mentioned sandboxing, if you follow the Mac news, then you’re probably already aware that Apple gave developers (and dare I say it, users) a reprieve on sandboxing until next March.

Considering I had spent the last two months working on it and had already wrapped up the work on Together and Feeder on Oct 28, you might think I’d be pretty peeved, but I’m not, because sandboxing sucks.

I won’t be releasing sandboxed versions of Together or Feeder on the Mac App Store until it’s a requirement, because the apps will lose certain capabilities that I know people appreciate and to some extent define the usability of the app. Things you really take for granted, like the ability to store your files wherever you please. Poster isn’t too badly affected by sandboxing, mostly because it’s a fairly straightforward app, and I have already been forced to change certain things so it behaves as though it is sandboxed.

If you know how sandboxing works, it won’t take you long to work out that, in its current form, it is incompatible with some of Apple’s own apps on the Mac App Store, such as Final Cut Pro. Quite how Apple is going to resolve the situation is unknown.

For now, be aware that if you purchase apps from the Mac App Store — any app, not just my own — it is possible Apple can dream up new rules that could hobble the functionality of those apps in the name of security or anything else at any time, whether or not they ultimately choose to go ahead with sandboxing.

It’s my personal opinion that, while some of the ideas of sandboxing are good, others are just not worth the compromises, even sacrifices, that must be made, and the concept was not well thought through. I know I’m not alone in this view, so let’s hope Apple can take a more moderate approach that will work well for everyone.

A question I suspect I’m going to get asked a lot is “When will Together support iCloud?”.

The answer is I don’t know. I have spent a lot of time looking at all the things I need to do to make that happen, even done some of it, but I have come to the conclusion it’s going to take a lot longer than I’d like, because both iCloud and Together are all about files and Together does an awful lot with them.

Some of the things I need to do slot in nicely with what is there, but others require significant changes to the very heart of the app, which will take time and need a lot of testing. I cannot even hazard a guess at how long it will take, because everything is new and there are too many unknowns. I want to get it right.

Meanwhile, Apple announced at WWDC that all apps submitted to the Mac App Store need to be sandboxed from November. Application Sandboxing, introduced with Lion, restricts what apps can do in the name of security and these requirements affect both Together and Feeder quite significantly. Without that, I will not be able to deliver further updates to Mac App Store customers. I have completed a lot of work on sandboxing already, and once it is implemented for all three apps I will be able to turn my attention back to iCloud.

In the meantime, I would like to thank all my customers for your patience and understanding.

I have seen Steve Jobs as an inspiration for my entire adult life. Obviously, in the industry I am in, I am far from alone in that. That Stanford speech he made? I’m living it, and I was when he made it, but I didn’t know back then whether I was just kidding myself. That speech didn’t just inspire me, it validated my life and helped me appreciate how fortunate I am. Watching again earlier, I felt the same. The message can apply to anyone.

“Stay hungry, stay foolish.”

I take nothing for granted. You can have all the ideas and talent and work as hard as you like, but success in any area of life always comes down to some measure of luck and timing. When you set out on the long road to make something happen, you have no idea if it will work or what people will think, but when you know your intentions are good, how could it ever be wrong?

I love what I do. Every day is potentially amazing. I owe that to him.