Since August of 2007, nearly all attention has been placed on the development of 33 RPM. This past April, 33 RPM was finally released after many years of being in an embryonic state, but the progress has continued with a new update each following month. While this intense focus on 33 RPM is noted, it has taken away time from other Edenwaith projects. 33 RPM has a long way to go before it becomes a more mature product, so the focus will still be on 33 RPM for quite awhile, but it is getting time to mind the other "children".

Between September 2006 and May 2007, Permanent Eraser experienced a flourish of rapid development (undergoing seven releases), but since then, there has been only a single update. Despite the slow down, Permanent Eraser has remained one of Edenwaith's most popular applications.

Permanent Eraser 2.3.3 was never planned, since its features were originally planned for Permanent Eraser 2.4. However, a couple of necessary fixes and improvements needed to be released, and Permanent Eraser 2.4 was still far from being complete. Fortunately, this was the right choice to make, since Permanent Eraser 2.4 is still in an alpha stage of development. A functional version of Permanent Eraser 2.4 has been running for the past several months, but it will continue to be fine tuned and perfected until it is released later this year. Considering that the time between PE 2.1.2 and PE 2.2.0 was eleven months, it isn't new for extended periods of development to take place (and then perhaps followed by a burst of development). After Permanent Eraser 2.4, version 2.5 is planned, and that will likely be the end of the 2.x line for Permanent Eraser, to be replaced by Permanent Eraser 3.

33 RPM 1.0.3 was released on Saturday 26 July 2008, which corrected several small issues.

Considering the reviews I've seen competing products receive, I've been expecting to hear much of the same "but QuickTime can do the same thing" type of responses. Well, wait no more, since 33 RPM has received the first of such a complaint. A harsh complaint, but at least they compared 33 RPM up against QuickTime Pro, and not just the player.

33 RPM and its ilk have similarities to QuickTime, but QuickTime is a more general program, whereas a program like 33 RPM has a more focused view on what it is trying to accomplish by being an efficient and useful tool for changing the pitch and speed of music to aid in transcribing music.

Now, on to 33 RPM 1.1 and Permanent Eraser 2.4.

After a little further tweaking of this custom blogging system, it can now display all current entries, or even display just a single entry, which is useful when perusing the articles from an RSS reader.

After experimenting with a WordPress blogging system for several months, I found it did not meet my needs. There are certainly some cool things that can be done with WordPress, but the lack of control, reformatting of my posts, and severe database lag made it a lot more difficult than it was worth to me. So here we are again, back to a more traditional appearance, with our own customized devlog.

33 RPM 1.0.2 was released today, which includes several small features and application stability. Here's what is new:

• Added new shortcuts to raise or lower the pitch by one cent (1200 cents = 1 octave).
• Corrected the crashes related to the Preference window.
• Displays artist and album information for non-MP3 audio files.

With the first two patch releases complete, it is time to make headway toward version 1.1 by adding more major features.

It has been several weeks since 33 RPM 1.0 was released, and the overall result has been pretty positive. Considering that 33 RPM is Edenwaith's first for-pay product (all other products are freeware), I was not quite sure what to expect, but I prepared myself for the potential onslaught.

Good News, Bad News
The good news is, there was no onslaught. The bad news also is, there was no onslaught. The good side is that I wasn't deluged with show-stopping bugs or negative reviews. The bad side is that there hasn't been quite the level of attention that I would like, but considering that this is a brand new application, that is not wholly unexpected. One very positive note is that 33 RPM was featured on MacUpdate's Weekly Popular list, which helped contribute over a thousand additional downloads.

Sales
Considering that all of Edenwaith's products are freeware, every new paid license that comes in is a blessing. THANK YOU to everyone who registered 33 RPM. I have read some horror stories where someone spent years working on a project to only end up selling six licenses. I'm happy to report that 33 RPM has surpassed this initial milestone (so, that's at least seven license), but still a very far cry from being a working income (more like pizza and pez money for now). Another thing to note: even when your product has been released, don't expect the orders to immediately pour in -- it might take a few days for people to evaluate the product and decide if it is right for them. The only real downside that I did not originally expect was the low conversion rate. Compared to what other small Mac companies have reported, approximately 3 - 4% of the people who downloaded an application eventually paid for the product. 33 RPM's conversation rate has been less than 1% up to this point. Not that I am disappointed with any of the sales, I just was not expecting the conversion to be lower than I estimated. However, this is just the initial release, which hasn't garnered much attention yet, and there are many, many more features to be added in the future. Which leads to the next point...

The Future
As expected, this is only the beginning of 33 RPM. The first update will be out this month, and the next couple of updates will hopefully come out this coming summer (or winter if you live in the southern hemisphere). Somewhere along the line I will write up a postmortem for 33 RPM to detail 33 RPM's journey from its humble origins as a Java application to the final product known as 33 RPM 1.0.

33 RPM, a new music transcribing utility for the Macintosh, has been released today.

33 RPM 1.0 is the culmination of development over the past three years. While proper development started several years ago, the idea of 33 RPM has lingered around even longer. Very early experiments of 33 RPM started out as Carbon or Java-based applications, just right around the time when Mac OS X was introduced. Technologies morphed and evolved over time, and 33 RPM became a Cocoa-based project. However, it is not the underpinnings that is the core to this program. 33 RPM is far from the first pitch and speed changing application, but the programs that were available just didn't quite feel right. Too many of them felt like a dated program that was still clinging to its 90s ways. Leave Windows 95 and OS 9 interfaces to the yester-decade. 33 RPM is not just about working well (very important, of course), but also looking good, as well. A lot of time was spent towards making an interface that is clean and simple, without having to sacrifice the flexibility and power. At a later date, there will be a postmortem entry about the various changes 33 RPM went through.

It's a tremendous relief to have the initial version of 33 RPM finally out the door. There are many, many improvements waiting to be added which will be the fodder for the future incarnations of 33 RPM.

Every couple of years, the technology world shifts enough to disrupt the current inertia of the lumbering beast. This change presents an opportunity for the smaller, sprier developers to leap ahead of the pack and get a piece of the pie before the dinosaurs of the industry realize that somebody is eating their lunch. The introduction of Windows 95 and Mac OS X were defining moments where existing developers had to decide whether they were going to stick with the older systems (DOS and the Classic Mac OS), or if they were going to leave it all behind, and become a pioneer into the new, unexplored frontier. And that brings us to the recently revealed iPhone SDK.

The iPhone certainly has great potential, and after trying to work with my last set of cell phones, the iPhone's simplicity makes it even more appealing. After watching the presentation of what the iPhone SDK could do, this lit my mind afire -- it literally kept me up at night, fantasizing about all of the potential programs that I could write.

We are all sitting on an untapped gold mine, and thousands of others realize this fact. The questions will be: Who will be first? Who will be the best? What new ideas will emerge?

Looking at the current line-up of Edenwaith's applications, some would translate well to the iPhone, while others would not fit in too well. EdenGraph would be a decent candidate, whereas GUI Tar likely would not. EdenList would just be yet another to-do list manager, so it would not be worth the time to rewrite for the iPhone.

However, I did not even initially consider Edenwaith's current offerings when considering interesting projects to work on. Instead, I went back to what started it all for Edenwaith: Games. The use of the iPhone's accelerometer has especially intrigued me, bringing up ideas of the Antwerp Maze in Quest For Glory 4, or the hand-held steely-ball mazes. At this time, these are merely ideas, so one could expect anything from Absolute Nothing to Finished Product.

Today, a new product by Edenwaith has been announced: 33 RPM (formerly NMP). 33 RPM focuses on the practicing musician, which allows one to easily change the pitch, speed, and loop any QuickTime-compatible media. If you have QuickTime-compatible plug-ins such as Flip4Mac WMV Player or Perian, you can also play any additional media that those plug-ins support.

33 RPM is the effects-changing media player for 2008 with its simple, but modern, interface. But underneath this straightforward appearance is the power of Mac-based technologies: Carbon, Cocoa, QuickTime, Sparkle, and more...

33 RPM will be released in the second quarter of 2008 and will initially cost $12.95 USD.

A lot has been going on at Edenwaith, with the new devlog, several upcoming website changes and additions, plus the continuing march to release version 1.0 of the New Mystery Product (NMP).

Consider this to be the announcement to the announcement of NMP. Within the next month, NMP will be finally revealed, with its expected release to be a few months afterwards. Please visit on or around 22 February 2008 to see what we will have in store.

Welcome to the new developer's log. 2008 will bring a number of new changes to Edenwaith.

• First in line is this new devlog, which is replacing the old devlog.
• The remaining vestiges of an earlier incarnation of the Edenwaith website will finally be put to rest as the download system will be simplified, which will reduce the amount of clicks to download a file.
• In the coming weeks, the New Mystery Product (NMP) will finally be announced. The expected release date will be no later than the 22 June 2008.