French and German Localizations Released!

A couple of days ago I posted Bee Docs' Timeline 2.1.1 (both the 3D and Standard Editions). I'm very excited to announce that the new versions include, among other things, French and German localizations. I have had many loyal and enthusiastic customers from Germany and France for a while now and it gives me great pleasure to be able to provide Bee Docs' Timeline in their native languages.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a request for help translating to these two languages and received so many volunteers that I had to turn a handful of people away. To do the translation work, I posted phrases that need translating in a Google Docs spreadsheet and my collaborators filled in the proper translation, often in real-time. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone that volunteered and helped!

I'm sure the translations aren't perfect yet and there are still a few missing phrases, so feel free to send me an e-mail if you see something that needs correction. In fact, I already have a stack of suggested corrections so I will try to make sure those get fixed in the next update. After the translations in the user interface are stabilized I will work on localizing the help documentation, website, and videos too.

I started with German and French because I already had a large number of existing customers in those countries, but I am definitely interested in localizing in more languages in the future. If you would be willing to volunteer to help translate to another language, please send me an e-mail (Adam at BeeDocuments dot com) and we'll get started!

Bee Docs' Timeline in German and French

I am working hard to include German and French localizations of Bee Doc' Timeline in the next release, but I need your help to finish the work.

If you would like to volunteer to help translate some of the user interface labels to French or German, please send me an e-mail (Adam at BeeDocuments.com) and I will send you instructions on how you can help. Even if you only have time to translate a few phrases, it would be wonderful. Thanks!

About 3D Timelines - Part III.

In December 2007, Gary C Martin sent some feature suggestions to me regarding Timeline 2.0, which was still in beta at the time. As I often do, I followed the links in his e-mail signature because I can see what kind of people are using Bee Docs' Timeline. Turns out Gary is a 3D artist and made a very sophisticated Asteroids game using Apple's Quartz Composer technology.

I've always thought that it would be great to be able to hire some customers to help me develop Bee Docs' Timeline and here was a great opportunity. I sent Gary the 3D design concept that I made using Motion and asked if he would be interested in helping me make the feature a reality. Within days he started sending me working prototypes of 3D timelines and we have been collaborating on it ever since.

Doing a mock-up of a 3D timeline was relatively easy, it took about a day. Getting it to work for the huge diversity of timelines that are possible with Bee Docs' Timeline is a much greater challenge. Timelines and events can be different sizes, aspect ratios, fonts, etc... Performance and interaction issues are tricky too. Gary has been doing the Quartz Composer programming and figuring out the calculations for zooming, rotation, movement, and performance while I have been doing the associated Cocoa programming and leading the design.

All of our communications have been via e-mail (Gary lives in Edinburgh, Scotland) and it has been fantastic working with someone who does amazing work and has also been a customer of Bee Docs' Timeline since May 2007.

I look forward to hiring more customers in the future, so if you'd ever be interested in working with me, be sure to let me know what you do! At the moment, I could really use some help with PR...

The Passion Timeline - BBC

David Huyng, developer of the SIMILE open-source timeline project, sent me a link to this highly customized SIMILE timeline that the BBC created for Easter week. The BBC seems to have some of the best examples of interactive timelines on the web these days.

Check it out and let me know what you think of it.

NY Times - Barack Obama Interactive Timeline

Thank you for all of your valuable comments and insight regarding the BBC Timeline I posted a few days ago. In that same spirit, I'd like to point out the following from the NY Times website and gather your thoughts:

Please give it a spin and let me know what you think. Do you think it is intuitive to navigate? Does it present the information clearly? Would the information you are presenting work well in a format like this?

Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race: A Timeline

Here is another great customer timeline!

Michael Alden runs a website for a traditional canoe race held in Maine every April and created this timeline to highlight some of the major events in the race's 40+ year history.

The blurred image looks fantastic as a background. So good, in fact, that it makes me think that Bee Docs' Timeline should include some image filters someday so that you can do these kind of effects without 3rd party software.

T2 Sneak Peeks: iPhoto Import

Here is a screenshot sequence that shows creating a photo timeline in about 3 clicks. T2 will be able to import photo albums from iPhoto and chart them based on the date they were taken! This is going to be very cool for vacations and creating timelines of your kids' first steps, etc...

Second Anniversary

One of this blog's readers just reminded me that this week is the second anniversary of the release of Bee Docs' Timeline. I was just reviewing the statistics and saw that we sold more licenses this past year than the first year. Thank you to everyone who has helped to make it a continued success by telling your friends about Timeline and by sending valuable feedback and suggestions.

By request, I have reactivated the ANNIVERSARY coupon code which you can use through the end of the month to save 25% off any Timeline order.

Event Timelines in redSTAR Magazine

Ian Burns, founder and managing director of redSTAR Times Media recently sent us some copies of redSTAR magazine. The magazine, which features culture and travel information for Qingdao China, recently switched formats and now features a full spread timeline to show the monthly event calendar!

We are excited that Ian chose Bee Docs' Timeline for the redSTAR event calendar and we are always thrilled to see the creative ways our customers use timelines.

In other customer news: Congratulations to Larry Staton, Jr who is now an official member the Florida Bar!

One of the best parts of running Bee Documents is getting to know all the talented and creative people who use our software. Be sure to drop me a line and introduce yourself if you haven't yet. I'd love to hear from you.

Discount Day!

We decided to do a special one day sale in collaboration with MacZOT today.

Today only, you can buy Timeline at a 40% discount for 24 dollars! If you have been on the fence about purchasing a license, or know a friend or co-worker who should own a copy of Bee Docs' Timeline, head on over to MacZOT and grab your copy. This is the biggest discount we have ever offered to the public, and is only being offered today.

Please note that we also have a steep discount available every day for teachers and students (even cheaper than MacZOT). To receive the education discount, just send me an e-mail and let me know where you study and what your favorite subject is and I'll send you back a discount code.

With T2 around the corner and deep discounts in the air, this is the perfect time to get on board the Bee Docs' Timeline bus!

Marketing Bee Documents - Getting the word out

I wrote earlier about how we track the success of our marketing efforts. I wanted to list some of the marketing techniques we have tried and give some comments.

"Traditional" Marketing

• Phone Sales - Early on we hired a local phone sales company to ask lawyers some survey questions. This cost a few thousand dollars and we didn't get one person to talk to us. I won't be doing that again!
  
  
• Direct Mail - We had some Bee Docs postcards printed up. I can customize the content and I usually send the postcards our to targeted clients when we release a new product or in coordination with other marketing efforts.
  
  
• Print Ads - We've ran some print ads in the local bar association journal. Though these ads don't often turn into immediate sales, I believe that it helps people trust you when they have seen your name in their trade journal. It seems to be that local association newsletters are a better value than the big national publications.
  
  
• Web Advertising - The Google Adwords program has resulted in a handful of new customers. As far as "traditional marketing" goes, this has been the most productive media. It takes time to get everything tweaked so that these ads are effective though.
  
  
• Trade Shows - It is fun to set up a cool display and meet potential customers in the flesh. At this point, I have only done local association trade shows, but it would be fun to do a Mac World or something like that in the future. It certainly isn't a cheap way to advertise though.
  
  

Press Releases

The Mac sites and Law Technology News have been great about publishing my press releases. I always get a large number of hits when they mention me in their publications. Press Releases are definitely a priority every time we do something new.

Free Software

I have been doing a cost comparison between the cost of traffic from web ads and the cost of developing free software that also generates web traffic. It turns out that I can sometimes whip out a program in a few days that will generate web traffic for months to come. It's a pretty good marketing technique that fits my expertise. You always want people to get warm fuzzies every time they hear your name, and giving away free stuff is always helpful to that end.

Community Participation

For Bee Docs' Timeline we tried something new. Instead of keeping everything secret until the product was ready to launch, I released a beta version about once a week and had people sign up on a mailing list to be informed of the releases and provide feedback. I was surprised at the amount of people who signed up and the great feedback that I received. This blog takes things one step further. Getting the user community involved in the creation of products has really been fun, has generated lots of traffic, and helps increase the number of times people mention Bee Documents in their blogs.

In the coming weeks, we will use the blog to announce a new product that is in development and will be posting updates and our design ideas so that folks like you can follow along and participate in the creative process. Stay tuned!