Outer Level Acquires Knapsack

The four of us here at TinyPlanet Software are pleased to announce that Outer Level has acquired Knapsack. This acquisition promises an exciting future for Knapsack and its users and we couldn't be more excited.

Jon Trainer, founder of Outer Level, shares our love for Macs and for travel. When he began describing his vision for Knapsack, we all were nodding our heads. It sounded like something we could have written ourselves.

We strongly believe that with Outer Level, Knapsack will not only live on but will grow and thrive in ways we always hoped it would. Jon's vision for Knapsack's future made Outer Level the clear choice to take over development of the application.

This has been an amazing journey for us and we want to thank our customers for their support along the way. Our primary concern when we were looking for a new home for Knapsack was to ensure that our customers would be well served. Knapsack is in great hands with Jon at Outer Level.

While we'll be focusing our attention on our new little guys for a while, we're still Mac, iPhone, and iPad users and we have plenty of ideas for other applications. When the time is right, we'll throw our hat back in the ring. For now, though, it's time for Knapsack to shine in the hands of a new, passionate developer.

Travel on.

Cheers,
Brad, Merrilee, Chris, and Ruby

Knapsack available for acquisition

The four of us here at TinyPlanet Software, LLC created Knapsack from our passion for travel, our desire to start a business, and our love for the Macintosh. We had three goals when we started this adventure in the summer of 2005:
1. Start our own business
2. Learn Objective-C Cocoa programming
3. Perhaps make some money

Nearly five years after that conversation, and nearly two years after launching Knapsack 1.0, not only have we accomplished all three goals, but we also hit some major life milestones along the way. Chris and Ruby were married in August 2008. Merrilee and I had our first baby in March 2009 and Chris and Ruby had their first baby only three months later.

With wedding plans, baby plans, day jobs, and night feedings, our nights and weekends were taken over by real life, and our labor-of-love fell by the wayside.

After much soul-searching, we have decided to offer up Knapsack for acquisition. We want Knapsack and its users to receive all the love and attention they deserve and so we've started our search for a passionate, talented, committed, and visionary successor. We're focused on finding an attentive, nurturing home for Knapsack while continuing to support our existing customers as we have since the beginning.

If you're interested but new to software acquisition, you should take the time to watch Daniel Jalkut's software acquisition video from the C4[1] conference. You may also want to read up on Knapsack on the web, so here are some links to get you started: Apple, MacWorld, TUAW, World of Apple, Mac360, Mac Tips and Tricks, Softonic, Mac Generation (review in French), Mac Generation (interview in French)

If you or somebody you know is a Mac developer or is looking for a way to break into the "indie" scene, please send an introductory email to acquisition [at] tinyplanetsoftware.com. We're looking forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,
Brad, Merrilee, Chris, and Ruby
TinyPlanet Software, LLC

New Year's promotion ends tomorrow

Just a quick reminder that our New Year's 2009 25% off promotion ends tomorrow. If you've been trying out Knapsack for the last few weeks but haven't purchased yet, head on over to our store and enter the coupon code NEWYEARS2009 before time runs out!

Resolve to travel more and save 25%

According to Wikipedia, one of the most popular New Year's resolutions is to take a trip. Many people make a resolution to visit a new place or to better document their travel experiences. That sounds great to the four of us here at TinyPlanet Software. We have taken many trips together and even formed our company while traveling. Because of our love for travel, we designed our flagship product, Knapsack, to be the personal travel organizer for Mac OS X Leopard.

If your New Year's resolutions include traveling more often or you know someone who wants to take the trip of a lifetime, we'd love to help. To celebrate the new year and get you on your way, we're offering 25% off a single-user or 5-user family pack license for Knapsack from December 29th to January 15th. Just enter the coupon code NEWYEARS2009 on our online store and the discount will be included automatically.

Enjoy and Happy New Year from the TinyPlanet Software crew!

Knapsack 1.1 is here!

The four of us here at TinyPlanet Software are excited to announce that Knapsack 1.1 is now available as a free upgrade for existing customers. Version 1.1 features two-way trip synchronization with iCal among a host of minor improvements and bug fixes (view the complete release notes on our website). We believe integration with iCal is something that improves all aspects of Knapsack's mission to help you plan, organize, and relive your travel adventures and we've made the integration as seamless as possible. There's a screenshot below.



Read on to hear how we chose to focus on iCal integration for our first update.

It's been less than two months since we first released version 1.0, and as Merrilee mentioned in her earlier post, the response has been amazing. We loved finding and reading the apple.com feature, the website interviews, the reviews, the blog entries, the tweets on twitter, the forum comments, and all the rest. But one thing that we really love is direct user feedback. We're continually amazed by the high quality of our users' ideas. Knapsack really resonates with people and many take the time to let us know. Here are just a few examples:

"I'm extremely excited by your software.  Not only can I keep track of everything in one place, but it will be there for future reference."

"I'm a frequent traveler, so an app like Knapsack has a lot of appeal for me."

"I am considering purchasing Leopard just so I can use Knapsack."

Now, not everybody is completely satisfied, as you might expect for a 1.0 product (or any product for that matter). We've had many, many feature requests since we went live and a few keep on bubbling to the top. Our top-three requests continue to be (in no particular order):
* iCal integration
* an improved world map
* iPhoto integration

Our plan is to tackle these features in minor releases (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc) which will be free upgrades for existing customers. Here are a couple of the comments that lead us to iCal first (I love the second one. So ... pithy!):

"The things obviously missing are iCal and Todo integration. I'm pretty much bound to want to put trip details into my calendar. So I hope this is on the roadmap."

"It doesn't integrate with iCal?  Are you kidding?  IT'S A TRAVEL PLANNER!!!"

We took these to heart and got cracking on the design and implementation. We're quite happy with how it turned out and as always, would love to hear your thoughts. Leave your comments on this blog or feel free to send us an email to our support address listed on our help page.