Xequte November Newsletter: Last Big Release of 2010

10 November 2010

 

In this Issue:

 

  • MailList King V10.0 Released
  • V10.0 Upgrade Information and Offers
  • DVD PixPlay V6.15 Released
  • Program Tips
  • Removing yourself from this List

 

 

 

Dear Xequte Software User,

 

Well it’s upgrade time again, so my bloodstream is currently coursing with coffee and adrenaline.

 

As our long-time users will know, we try to get one upgrade out for all of our main products each year.  It’s an extensive process that takes up to four months (depending on the product), starting with prioritizing the hundreds of feature requests and bug reports, followed by weeks of designing, developing and testing, leading up to the final, crazed public release where we email every former customer and then spend days replying to messages and processing upgrade requests.

 

We’re often asked why we don’t offer free updates for life, and on days like today that would sure seem like an attractive solution.  Unfortunately the standard practice in the software industry is the chargeable upgrade model whereby companies are able to offer a lower initial purchase price on the assumption of future income from upgrades.  Whatever our personal feeling about this practice, the reality is that if we were to buck the trend we’d need to significantly increase our initial pricing and so at the onset our products would seem more expensive than our competitors.

 

On the plus side it does encourage us to step back from the usual iterative improvements and focus on adding some big-bang features that we hope will appeal to you.

 

Thanks for your support and I hope you enjoy the new release.

 

 

 

Regards

 

Nigel Cross

Xequte Software

nigel@xequte.com

www.xequte.com

 
 
 

» MailList King V10.0 Released

 

MailList King allows you to manage and communicate with a mailing list from your own computer.  V10.0 is a major upgrade incorporating numerous enhancements with a particular focus on increased speed and usability.

 

Top Fifteen Enhancements:

 

  1. Sending Profiles to make it much simpler to change your delivery method, reply address and other details
  2. Major optimization of all common functions making much MailList King much quicker, including 40% faster member deletion, 75% faster Excel importing, 45% faster building of recipient list when sending, 80% faster changing of members' memberships, etc.
  3. New Find and Replace dialog with conditional updating, case matching and other features
  4. Many search improvements, including searching all text fields at once and text comparisons (e.g. email addresses up to "J" or fullname after "Smith")
  5. Improved "Update Email Address" window to make it much easier to update whole domains en masse
  6. Full Outlook 2010 compatibility, including 2010 style toolbar in Outlook (Note: some exceptions with Outlook 64bit)
  7. Sending Speed/Time Remaining display: Sending Tasks Properties and grid now show your current delivery speed and how long it will take to send your message considering your current speed and specified ISP limits
  8. Added "Database Performance Profile" to automatically determine the optimal settings for your usage type
  9. New "Delete Members" window allowing you to specify the removal method: Unsubscribe, Undeliverable address or simple deletion
  10. Your mailing list can now be filtered by members' history, e.g. everyone who was sent a message in June 2009, or subscribed in 2008
  11. Many improvements to "Message Recipients" window to make it simpler to use
  12. "ISP Limits" settings are now much more accessible with their own tab in Options
  13. Outlook folder selectors now display with graphics and recent lists
  14. Groups can be edited in all Group Selection boxes using right-click menu
  15. Batch update the sent status for recipients of a sending task by loading or pasting an address list

 

Screen shots and complete change list: http://www.xequte.com/maillistking/changes.html

 

More Info and Evaluation download: http://www.xequte.com/maillistking/download.html

 

 

 

» V10.0 Upgrade Information and Offers

 

 V10.0 is a free upgrade to all users who purchased a license or upgrade after July 1, 2010.  If you qualify and you have not already received an updated serial number please contact us.

 

To make upgrading easier, for the next five days, Business Edition users can upgrade for $79.90 (20% off):

 

http://www.xequte.com/cgi-bin/mlk10.asp?v=bup

 

 

And Personal Edition users can upgrade for $39.90 (20% off):

 

http://www.xequte.com/cgi-bin/mlk10.asp?v=pup

 

 

Other upgrade options: http://www.xequte.com/maillistking/upgrade.html

 

 

Note:

-       You do not need your old version installed to upgrade

-       Your mailing list and settings will not be affected by upgrading

-       Upgraders will receive all MailList King releases free until November 2011

 

Note: Offers expire at midnight, November 18, 2010.

 

 

 

» DVD PixPlay V6.15 Released

 

DVD PixPlay allows you to create slideshow discs from your digital photos and videos for playback on DVD players and computers. 

 

Top Five Changes:

 

  1. Now automatically converts incompatible AVI and WMV files (as well as MOV, MP4, etc).
  2. Can now output slideshows to WMV7, WMV8, WMV9 and WMV9 VC-1
  3. Updated MPEG conversion library
  4. Faster handling of slideshows without audio tracks
  5. Now shows thumbnails for MOV files

 

Complete Change List:  http://www.xequte.com/pixplay/changes.html

 

More info and download:  http://www.xequte.com/pixplay/

(Simply install the new version over your old one.  No new key is required if you are already using v6.*).

 

Upgrades:  http://www.xequte.com/pixplay/upgrade.html

 

 

 

» Program Tips

 

- MailList King: Understanding Sending Profiles

 

With V10 we have implemented Sending Profiles which contain all the details relevant to message delivery:

 

-       Sending Method: SMTP, SMTP Server, Outlook or other email software

-       Sending method configuration, e.g. the server and login for SMTP, the sending account for Outlook

-       Reply Address: The email that shows as the message sender

-       Signature: The text that is added to messages that you create

 

So you can create a variety of profiles to handle your different sending methods and/or reply addresses and switch between them with a single click.

 

You can create and edit your Sending Profiles under View > Options, Sending.

 

You will notice that when you open the “New Email” window there is a Profile Selector at the top so you can easily specify the sending method and/or reply address for each message (Note: only shown if you have multiple profiles)

 

 

 

- DVD PixPlay: Fixing Frame Display Issues

 

A question we often see is, “Why are my photos being cropped when shown on the TV?”

 

There are two possibilities for this occurrence:

 

- The image is being "Auto-cropped"

 

By default, PixPlay will crop a little of your photo (generally from the top and bottom) so that it displays with less border (i.e. black area).  If you select Frame > Frame Properties you can disable this by unchecking the "Automatic Cropping" option on the "Remove Borders" tab.

 

- Your TV does not display the full frame of the slideshow

 

It is quite common for TV’s not to display the full frame of a video.  Almost all of the older CRT TV’s did this and many LCD ones still to too.  This is why broadcasters position their logos, tickers and other text quite far in from the border.

 

In this case you can specify a margin (to add a border area around the frame) under View > Options, Other, Advanced.

 

Also, when adding text to images and title pages you need to be wary not to position it to close to the edges.  You may want to use the “Display TV Safe areas” option (View > Options, Other, Advanced) to add a visual guide to help you.

 

 

 

- Smart Pix/MegaView: Batch Renaming your Files

 

Smart Pix and MegaView both offer batch renaming which is a tool that allows you to rename many files with numeric or date-based filenames.  It is particularly useful at helping to you to associate like files, such as all those taken in Xmas 2009 or related to a particular subject.

 

To batch rename you simply need to select multiple files and then click File > Rename on the menu.  Click the "Batch Rename" tab and then select from various options such as the text to use, numbers to append and the date format.

 

Also, when batch renaming MP3 and WMA music files you can automatically assign names based on the artist or song name.

 

 

 

- Amaze: Displaying IPTC Descriptions over your Photos

 

When you specify a description for your images in many applications (such as Picasa, Smart Pix, MegaView and PhotoShop) the data (IPTC) is embedded into the image file allowing you to use it in other applications.  With Amaze you can automatically display such descriptions when showing an image:

 

1.  In the Amaze folder under your Start menu choose the "Configure Amaze"

 

2.  Click the Settings tab

 

3.  In the Slideshow Captions box choose the "Description" option

 

 

 

 

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