PinPoint and/or Scenario

PinPoint: Join the Custom Pointer Revolution for $2.99!
Scenario: Automate Easily with AppleScripts! Also Just $2.99!

Developer Interview Below. iLiner Zot continues…
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Normally: $4.99

ZOT Price: $2.99

PinPoint: Join the Custom Pointer Revolution for just $2.99!

★★★★★
This is an excellect application for (1) those with visual problems, (2) those with several monitors, (3) those needing a precision alignment facility always at hand, or just (4) those wanting a bit of fun. I wouldn’t be without it. – An Archeologist

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That beautiful 27 inch screen has one drawback: that mouse pointer is much harder to locate. PinPoint places an image of your choice around it, animated or not, to make it easy to find. Doing precision work? full-screen crosshairs make it easy to spot on multiple monitors too! Suble, pulsing organic graphics or exhuberant, funny animations, whatever your taste, PinPoint certainly has an option to please you.

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Scenario: An unobtrusive tool which launches AppleScripts when certain events occur.

★★★★★
I have it set to lower my computer screen brightness to zero and start playing a certain iTunes Playlist at a certain volume once the specified Hot keys.. when I’m ready to go to bed. For the idle command, I have it set to pause iTunes when the computer becomes idle after a certain amount of time. And then, brings the brightness of the screen and the volume back up once the idle ends.
That requires a little bit of Applescript knowledge, but it’s nothing you can’t just Google and find out.
-Ruthlin Zephyr

Leave your Mac for a while and set your iChat/Messages status automatically. Need to eject volumes when not in use? Make something happen when you wake your Mac or every time you log in? Build the AppleScript and let Scenario launch it for you when required. If you like to customize your Mac and love AppleScript, show Scenario some love too!

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macZOT Developer Interview with Renaud Boisjoly

Lagente Software, Based in Montreal, Quebec

1 What’s the most unique, useful feature of your product?

For PinPoint, users really enjoy the animated properties of some of the pointers, like Pulsing Circle with Click Wave. But the most unique is probably the Full Screen Crosshairs which can span multiple monitors. Each user has their own favorite, so I guess flexibility is the preferred feature?

2 Why did you create these apps? or What need were you trying to satisfy?

Years ago, a friend of mine was using 6 monitors for trading Stocks and was always losing his mouse pointer on all that screen real estate. PinPoint was the solution to that problem and over time, as it became more popular, users send in requests and we simply implemented one after the other. It also became a presentation tool so we enhanced it for that more and more, adding the ability to display keystrokes for example.

For Scenario, being MacBook users we needed a way to prompt us when waking our Macs to remember to set our iChat message appropriately. AppleScript would allow us to set this, but being bird-brained, we always forgot to launch the script. Scenario now takes over and asks us where we are and sets the status accordingly. If you are well-versed in AppleScript, you can even deduce where you are using many tricks like the IP address you get from your provider for example and set the location accordingly.

3 What is most interesting to you about developing SW for the Mac platform.

Really, the Mac and Cocoa would allow developers to focus on the need to fulfill and less on the complexity of the programming environment. The genius in Apple’s strategy was to leverage NextStep which was already an amazing development environment which made it a lot easier to learn how to program and offer great solutions in less time. Leveraging all this again for the iPhone is another fantastic coup!

4 What features should a prospective buyer look into during a trial of your product?
Most people buy a piece of software to fulfill one precise need. With PinPoint, they discover new uses as well. For example, one user bought it because they wanted a way to visually locate their pointer on screen, but discovered that by installing it on their customer’s Macs, and activating the ” Show Keystrokes ” feature, users they were helping would also see which keys they were pressing during a remote connection and learn from this.

5 What are somxe interesting experiences you’ve had creating new versions of your software when OS is upgraded?

Well, moving to the Mac App Store was one change which forced us to reconsider the whole interface. We cleaned up many things in the UI. But it got us thinking of our next version… and how to really take advantage of the new technologies in Mac OS X. Stay tuned, we want to make it exciting!

6 What’s your favorite Mac app out there from another developer? Why?

Anything that makes us productive and creative really excites us. We have a few faves. Acorn for graphics work is something we use every day. Fast, simple efficient. Love it. Omni Outliner to jot down and organize our ideas, Mac and iPad versions. We use it everywhere, even in the car (my wife likes to drive, don’t worry). Keynote and Pages for presos and documents, Crashplan for backups, wow, the list never ends! Twitterrific, FileMaker Pro, 1Password, all awesome! Oh, and our favorite coding tool? This is really great… PaintCode! If you like drawing shapes in code in your Apps, this tool is more than a must! But you need to be a developer to appreciate it :-)

7 What features would you like to add to your product that at this time seem improbable/impossible?
Ah, the Holy Grail of pointer enhancement is to be able to completely hide the Mac’s pointer. Simply not possible on the Mac at this time and the most-requested feature. We tried many things and some users use a tool call Cursorcerer to do this, but that tool would not be approved on the Mac App Store we think. No way around this… so we focus on enhancing the existing pointer as much as we can.

But for our next version of PinPoint… we’re looking into neat neat stuff. Stay tuned, we need some encouragement as this will take some time as it is a total re-write. Faster, leaner, beautiful-er…

8 What would you like a user to ask you?
We just love getting feature requests from our users. It gives us goals to strive for. Any very useful feature we love hearing about.

9 What should I ask that I’m forgetting?
What are the best bagels out there? I’d have to answer either St-Viateur or Fairmount… Montreal Bagels yeah!

10 What are the answers to some common questions people have about your app before they buy?
People buying PinPoint don’t ask too many questions beforehand. They see the value to them and they ask enhancements later sometimes. For Scenario, we do get a few questions before as it is a more technical tool. Users will ask how to solve a specific problem and we let them know if we think it is possible and if Scenario will help them. We love challenges.

More Testimonials:

PinPoint:

★★★★★
I run a pretty custom setup. Mac Pro/Imac with 5 x 27″ monitors. I am prone to lose my pointer often. I use the full screen cross hairs on both machines, this allows me to find my mouse when it is lost. – Guy Denton

Scenario:

★★★★★
I use Scenario on demo computers at a retail store. It’s great to be able to run an application quit-script when the screen saver comes on so that when a new customer comes to the computer all the previous applications are closed and it’s ready for a new demo. It has been a great addition to our toolbox of apps for our technicians as well. Lagente has great customer support as well! This app is a must have! – Chase Thompson-Baugh

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