As an indie software developer, one of the biggest challenges I face is keeping a schedule. A real schedule that means I’ll actually ship software every so often.

When you work for somebody else, there’s usually somebody in charge of making sure that you stick to a schedule. These people usually have little concern for code correctness, refactoring, or frankly, anything that falls under the vague heading of “doing it the right way.” There’s something to be said for this: they get things shipped! And if a product is of shippable quality, it’s a shame to withhold it a day longer than necessary.

But I’ve fallen a bit into the mire of excessive feature development with MarsEdit. The old parable about the hand in the cookie jar applies here: I’ve got so many cookies in my hand, that it’s impossible to take my hand out of the jar without letting go of a few.

MarsEdit 2.4 is available today and features a few … cookies … that you might enjoy. In particular, this release fixes bugs, fine-tunes a lot of behaviors that have been bugging me for ages, and takes support for the increasingly popular SquareSpace to a higher level.

What’s New?

MarsEdit 2.4 changes in summary:

• Improved Squarespace support
  • Support for server drafts
  • Support for tags
  • Support for adding new categories
  • Improved error handling
• Post editor windows now automatically remember size and screen position
• Avoid accidental post publishing by disabling the send button when document is not frontmost
• Improved error messages for misconfigured Tumblr blogs
• Bug fixes
  • Fixed Flickr image links so they produce valid HTML when align-centered.
  • Fix a Snow Leopard problem that prevented the Save button from enabling immediately when document is edited
  • Fix a rare bug that could cause locked up dialogs on the second launch
  • Fix a crash that could occur when configuring a blog with an extremely weird URL
  • Fix a bug that occurred when an invalid URL was specified for a blog home page
  • Fix a bug that caused duplication of tags on a previously published draft
  • Fix a bug that prevented existing open document from being located when opening a local draft.

What’s Next?

I’m still working hard on a number of features that people have been asking for. Yes, I’m kind of a jerk when it comes to disclosing details about future releases, but suffice to say I hear you loud and clear when you ask for WYSIWYG editing or support for WordPress pages and custom fields. Am I promising those features anytime soon? Not exactly. But let’s just say that I would be a fool if I didn’t take the demand for these items seriously ;)

Stay tuned for more cookies soon. In the mean time, enjoy these improvements in MarsEdit 2.4!

What a whirlwind few days it’s been. Late Thursday evening, I was inspired by the current MacHeist promotion, and decided I would like to offer a 20% discount coupon to my customers. 1/5 off? That would make it 1/5 free, right? So it’s not a 5-finger discount, but a 1-finger discount. (Too clever for my own good, perhaps!)

I added the coupon code “OneFingerDiscount” to my store. But before I went to bed, I had the idea that other developers might also like to get on board. I tweeted:

MacHeist isn’t enough? “OneFingerDiscount” coupon = 20% off until MacHeist ends. (Other devs, add coupon, retweet).

Feedback from other developers was immediate and positive. What the heck. I registered a domain: http://www.onefingerdiscount.com/ Before going to sleep I invited developers to let me know if they were using the coupon, so I could list them on the site:

Going to sleep. If you want to offer 20% “one finger discount” while MacHeist lasts, email me [email protected]. Launching tomorrow.

Fast-forward 8 hours and we had dozens of developers on board. I spent the weekend splitting time between my usual childcare responsibilities, and desperately trying to keep up with the interest among developers and the press. And customers! Who were thankfully visiting my store at an increased rate, and buying more of my software than on average days. The promotion has been a great success!

Now the event has been going for 3 days, and is slated to last through the end of this week (Friday). As of this writing, we have 85 developers participating, and the number is likely to keep rising. If you are a developer and want to participate, you can still submit information to me after adding the coupon code to your online store.

If you’re not a developer and are just looking for some excellent discounts on a huge variety of Mac applications, check out the One Finger Discount page and see what everybody has to offer. It’s not a perfectly designed web page, but I think it gets the job done!

Dan Wood, one of the guys behind Sandvox, just launched a new blog dedicated to issues surrounding marketing as an indie Mac developer. Mac Indie Marketing kicks off with a nice post listing 11 free eBooks that pertain to the subject. Can’t beat the price, here’s to a long and healthy life for Dan’s new blog.

Speaking of awards, MacTech magazine is currently accepting votes for the MacTech 25, bestowing recognition upon 25 people who are voted by the public as having the most influence on the Mac technical world “through their work, writing, or any other effort they make.”

I am considering the technical realm of the iPhone as part of the community that is being acknowledged. Here are some names that come to mind as excellent nominees for this honor:

Craig Hockenberry. As an extremely early adopter of the iPhone platform, Craig has gone to the trouble of sharing his knowledge about and criticisms of the iPhone development and distribution process, on his blog Furbo.org. I feel that his efforts to draw attention to problems, while providing realistic workarounds, have probably had a huge positive impact on iPhone developers and those who are considering whether to dive in.

Jonathan (Wolf) Rentzsch. As the organizer of the annual C4 Conference in Chicago, Wolf provides a superb context for developers to socialize and exchange ideas with other Mac and iPhone developers, outside the realm of Apple’s well-produced but technically one-sided WWDC Conference. In the years since Wolf started organizing the conference, it has filled a serious void in the technical social scene.

Steve (Scotty) Scott. On the other side of the Atlantic, and soon to move state-side, Scotty has also been working his butt off on a unique developer conference, NSConference. While I haven’t yet had the pleasure of attending, the word I hear from countless developers who have is that it’s a remarkable event and very much worth the cost. In addition to conferences, Scotty is also responsible for producing and distributing a number of podcasts dedicated to Cocoa development, all part of his ambitious Mac Developer Network.

Erica Sadun. Erica has driven a lot of technical inquiry into iPhone development, since the early days before an SDK was available, through the present day when programming for the device is a much less nefarious endeavor. Her role as an authority on many iPhone technical issues was celebrated this Fall when she served as the conference chair for Pearson’s iPhone Developer Conference in Boston.

Jeff Atwood. I think it’s important to recognize that sometimes the most influential people on a community are not even part of that community. Jeff started the extremely popular developer answer-sharing site, Stack Overflow, along with Joel Spolsky and Fog Creek Software. In the past year or so Stack Overflow has become an important starting point for many Cocoa developers, old and new, in search of answers to their vexing problems. Jeff’s technical blog, Coding Horror, has long been considered by Mac developers as a source for thought-provoking questions about software development, regardless of whether they pertain specifically to the Mac or iPhone.

There are dozens of other qualified people whose names could be thrown into this hat. I came up with these 5 after a few minutes of thought and feel that they are all completely entitled to receiving this honor. So if you are stuck for a choice, you might as well pick a random one from above!