News
Apokalypse Software Corp. today announced it has acquired the productivity applications Mori and Clockwork from Hog Bay Software, and vows to continue moving progress forward on their famed simplicity and utility.
“Mac users appreciate the functionality of these apps because they can do basic tasks simply, and yet take advantage of their rich set of tools should the need arise,” said Alfonso Guerra, founder and president of Florida-based Apokalypse Software Corp. “Mori is well-known for its ability to let a user fire off a series of quick notes which the user can then structure how they see fit whenever they like. Whether it’s outlining, tags, smart folders or any other of its organizing tools, users know Mori is a powerful writing tool that enables writers to express themselves fully.
“Clockwork is an extremely practical timing utility which allows users to quickly set up several timers that can run simultaneously. Whether they run as alarms or stopwatches, Clockwork will help you track almost anything that involves time.”
Both Mori and Clockwork were developed by Jesse Grosjean, founder of Hog Bay Software of Bangor, Maine, who sold them after much consideration to continue to work on WriteRoom, his company’s full-screen writing environment and some new product ideas.
“Selling Mori and Clockwork hasn’t been an easy decision. Clockwork (originally HBTimer) was my first Mac app, and I’ve worked on Mori for years trying to create the perfect tool to store my thoughts and keep myself organized. But it was becomming obvious that I just didn’t have time to give them the attention that they deserved. I considered three solutions, I could put them into maintinence mode and forget them, I could open source them and forget them and collect cans for rent money, or I could find another developer who was excited to keep the vision going and finding new customers. I’m very happy to report that Alfonso Guerra stepped out of door three. Mori and Clockwork will now live on in active development and with new energy behind them!”
“Alfonso Guerra. What with his living in Florida and me in Maine we’ve never met, but here’s what I know and like so far. His spelling on iChat is much better then mine. He’s got the same weakness that I have for strange URL’s… apokalypsesoftware.com? And more importantly he’s really excited about Mori and Clockwork and has the technical skills to make great things happen. And for the geeks out there, he’s also a Smalltalk hacker. And in my experience that’s a wonderful indicator of deep thinking and great ideas to come. I can’t wait to see what happens next!”
Guerra continued, “Both of these apps provide most of what a user is looking for in their product class, and in a way that is tailored to the Mac user. They work so well, they have a loyal fanbase that promotes them heavily. When Jesse first spoke about possibly offering these products to another developer, I was impressed by how strong their user community was and how well their tastes matched my own, so I jumped at the chance. My goal is to continue improving both Mori and Clockwork so they’re held up as quintessential Macintosh applications and indispensable to anyone who wants order in their lives.”
Mori is available for USD$39 and Clockwork is USD$9. More information and a free 30-day trial for both products can be found at http://apokalypsesoftware.com/products.
Zarra Studios, LLC and Apokalypse Software Corp. announced today the sale of Zarra Studios’ “Simply Elegant Sales” product line to Apokalypse Software. Simply Elegant Sales, the point-of-sale application for small businesses, was designed from the ground up for the Mac OS X operating system from Apple, Inc., and with this transaction Zarra Studios has completed its transition to the consumer market while Apokalypse Software broadens its SOHO (Small-Office/Home-Office) presence.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
“This is a great move for both seSales and its customers”, remarks Marcus S. Zarra, Owner of Zarra Studios. “Alfonso is in the perfect position to move the development of seSales forward. With the ever expanding business market for Macintosh computers, Alfonso stands to be at the fore-front of small business software. Along with his existing offerings, Alfonso will be able to provide a wide range of product offerings to the SOHO market. I could not be happier with this passing of the torch.”
“I’m ecstatic!” said Alfonso Guerra, President and CEO of Apokalypse, who corresponds with his clients by his first name on the company website. “This is truly a fantastic continuation path for users of seSales in receiving support and further updates to a wonderful product, and Apokalypse Software in building upon its office productivity focus to more fully serve the home-based and small business market. As more businesses and freelancers have looked into the Mac platform, they’ve been looking for just these sorts of applications to support their business and productivity needs. With the acquisition of Simply Elegant Sales, we’re better able to help Mac users access the functionality they need to respond to their own customers in this tough economic climate.”
As part of the integration into its product line, Apokalypse Software will join the user database into its website to provide current users with updated licenses that reflect the acquisition, and incorporate the feature requests and bug reports collected by Zarra Studios into the issues system currently serving users of the other Apokalypse Software products. It will also rebrand the product as Merchant Wisdom.
“Apokalypse Software is committed to fully serving our clients, providing them with the tools to adapt our products to serve their needs, communicate their concerns and wishes to us, and even direct the progress of our products by our feature voting process,” said Alfonso. “We’re just as much users of our products as they are, and make every effort to provide the best experience when using them.”
About Zarra Studios, LLC.
Zarra Studios LLC was founded in 2005 by Marcus S. Zarra who has been developing software since the mid-1980s. Zarra Studios now serves the Macintosh community in both an educational capacity via the Cocoa Is My Girlfriend (www.cimgf.com) blog and via its current software title, iWeb Buddy (www.zarrastudios.com/ZDS/iWebBudy.html). Zarra Studios is privately owned.
About Apokalypse Software, Inc.
Apokalypse Software Corp. was founded in 2001 by Alfonso Guerra, who has over thirty years of experience in the computer industry, and has developed software for such companies as IBM, Apple and HP. Apokalypse serves the SOHO market with its point-of-sales application Merchant Wisdom; and its productivity applications Mori, a digital notebook package; and Clockwork, a personal alarm application. Apokalypsee is a privately held concern.
Crawfordville, FL, USA – October 6, 2008 – mamooba and Apokalypse Software Corp. have jointly announced that Apokalypse has acquired “TrackTime” from mamooba for an undisclosed sum. TrackTime is the in-depth activity tracker for users of the Mac OS X operating system from Apple, Inc. that wish to have a sophisticated accounting of their computer- or project-based activities.
TrackTime allows you to view your activities on a beautiful timeline. You can view your activity by day or any other period. You can quickly see what matters to you through statistics for applications, music, and websites as well as for your own defined projects. Will all your activities arranged like in a multi-track-recording application. You can quickly see how much time you spent on each “track”. Discover forgotten music and websites in your personal history and enjoy them instantly again. Or see which music you listened to while working on your important company documents or anything else.
TrackTime joins Apokalypse’ recent acquisition of Simply Elegant Sales, now renamed Merchant Wisdom, and its other products Mori and Clockwork, expanding the company’s ability to serve the small office and home-based business market.
“TrackTime is an important and effective tool for professionals to improve their productivity by closing the feedback loop in managing their time,” said Alfonso Guerra, president of Apokalypse Software Corp. “Almost all task management applications leave a hole where they don’t show users what activities they’re doing throughout the day and how well they’re sticking to their pre-planned schedule, and in this hyper-competitive market any percentage improvement in one’s productivity gives them an advantage. Using TrackTime in conjunction with a task manager like mGTD, knowledge workers and freelancers can not only plan out their day’s activities, they can spot small time-wasters throughout the day that hinder their effectiveness and get in the way of achieving their long- and short-term goals.”
TrackTime’s Features:
* Tracks activities based on application, document and project
* Tracks online activity using popular web browsers based on web pages
* Tracks music played on iTunes
* Generates statistics for activities and time
* Set date/time range for reviewing activities
* Edit activity logs
* Enable/Disable logging of specific activities
TrackTime’s Minimum Requirements:
* Mac OS X Version 10.4 Tiger or higher
* Universal Binary for PowerPC and Intel
* G3 Processor, 500MHz or faster
* 5 MB Hard Drive space for app, min. 1 GB recommended
Apokalypse Software reports that it will have the database of TrackTime’s registered users as part of its system within a day or two to provide current users with updated licenses that reflect the acquisition, as well as have a new forum and an issues database set up for the TrackTime user community to request features and report bugs.
About Mamooba
Mamooba is a privately held company formed in the UK in 2007 by Steve Scott that focused on Macintosh software development. The sale of TrackTime will allow mamooba to concentrate on some exciting product they have in the pipeline. For more information on mamooba and its products visit http://www.mamooba.com
About Apokalypse Software, Inc.
Apokalypse Software Corp. (http://apokalypsesoftware.com) was founded in 2001 by Alfonso Guerra, who has over thirty years of experience in the computer industry, and has developed software for such companies as IBM, Apple and HP. Apokalypse serves the SOHO market with its point-of-sales application Merchant Wisdom; and its productivity applications Mori, a digital notebook; TrackTime, a personal time/activity tracker, and Clockwork, a personal alarm application. Apokalypse is a privately held concern.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Bartas Technologies LLC and Apokalypse Software Corp. announced today the sale of two products from Bartas’ line, Temporis and XTabulator, to Apokalypse Software for undisclosed terms. The timeline compositor Temporis offers point-and-click simplicity for crafting date-based and sequential data into sophisticated graphs for use in presentations, publishing for print or web, reports, etc. XTabulator provides a no-nonesense workflow for dealing with one of the most pervasive formats for sharing info today, tabulated data in the form of CSV and tabbed fields (TSV).
“These two gems each provide a lot of power for their particular niches, yet focus on that niche so well and are so easy to understand that they’ll provide immediate results for any workflow they’re part of,” said Alfonso Guerra, president and founder of Apokalypse. “They’re a perfect complement to the Blocks plug-in architecture at the heart of our products, so the SOHO users we cater to will be able to integrate the tools or develop the workflow necessary to manage their workloads and get better results from their time.”
Alfonso said the two apps had just completed porting to the Blocks framework before the announcement was made, and that plug-in support is the primary new feature of their release by Apokalypse. “It was very straightforward to make the apps function under the framework. A combination of the original Blocks implementation by Jesse Grosjean, Blocks’ originator, judicious design by Bartas Technologies, and the Cocoa framework and development toolset by Apple made it possible in under a week.”
“I have a great deal of respect for Alfonso’s work and have no doubt that his plans for these products will result in even greater value for their users,” said Joshua Nozzi, president and founder of Bartas Technologies. Josh added, “Most importantly, I am completely at ease with Apokalypse Software’s ability to care for our mutual customers. Although it’s always hard to let go of a labor of love, I believe Temporis and XTabulator are going to a great new home.”
With price tags of $24.95 and $9.95 respectively, Temporis and XTabulator’s newfound expression as plug-in based apps offers a great deal of potential for those looking to tailor their Mac experience to the greatest functionality at the lowest cost, and is part of Apokalypse’s master plan for its products. “By basing our entire product line on Blocks, our partners are assured of the leanest workflow for their processes without the bloat of unnecessary functionality and content often associated with other products. Pay for what you need without digging deeper into your pockets for useless bells and whistles or bigger hardware just to get your job done.”
If these newly-acquired apps are supposed to be lean-and-mean, will any new work be done on them? “Absolutely, there’s still work to be done to get them meeting my goals. The next release will provide AppleScript support. Then they can be integrated with Mori, my digital notebook & outliner; Clockwork, the personal timer; and TrackTimer, the time accounting app, along with other components as the Mori Pro package I promised last fall. After that, they’ll still be available individually and have improved integration with Leopard and future MOX releases.”
About Bartas Technologies, LLC.
Bartas Technologies, LLC was founded in 2003 by Joshua Nozzi, an award-winning software developer and usability analyst. Bartas provides desktop productivity applications and utilities for the Mac. In addition to the conception and launch of Temporis and XTabulator, Bartas Technologies’ portfolio includes CopyWrite, Transcriva, Ziplight. Bartas Technologies is privately owned.
About Apokalypse Software, Inc.
Apokalypse Software Corp. was founded in 2001 by Alfonso Guerra, who has over thirty years of experience in the computer industry, and has developed software for such companies as IBM, Apple and HP. Apokalypse serves the SOHO market with its point-of-sales application Simply Elegant Sales; and its productivity applications Mori, a digital notebook package; and Clockwork, a personal alarm application. Apokalypsee is a privately held concern.