Hi! Our last newsletter was ages ago (December 2006!), and a lot has changed since then. I'm living in a new city, going to a new school, and pursuing a new degree. You can read more about that personal news at the bottom of the newsletter if you like. For now, though, let's talk about product news.

Apple caught me off guard with OS X 10.6 ("Snow Leopard", although I can never remember these silly names). I gather I'm not the only one. There is good news and bad news. PhotoReviewer, our super-fast photo viewing and sorting app for digital photographers, seems to work well on 10.6, and in fact works well on the latest releases of 10.5 as well. So those of you who knew that it was broken on early 10.5 releases, have no fear; it's great on 10.5.8, and apparently on 10.6.1. Fracture, on the other hand, has been broken by 10.6. I haven't had time to look into that yet, so I don't have an ETA on an update for it, but I hope to get to it soon. Trisection and Solarian II are apparently broken on 10.6; I should get to them eventually as well. Our other products work well; no bug reports so far!

To my surprise, the app that has generated the most 10.6-related emails is one of our freeware apps, Jiggler. I guess since we don't get registrations for it, I didn't realize how many people were using it! Anyhow, I have just posted a new version of Jiggler that is OS X 10.6 compatible:

Jiggler is a little freeware app with one purpose: to keep your Mac awake. When you have some lengthy task for your computer to do, it's annoying to have to turn off your screensaver and turn off the sleep timer, only to have to turn it all back on again when you're done. (The "never sleep" corner will keep your screensaver from kicking in, but still won't prevent your machine from falling asleep.) What you really want is a little helper who will bump your mouse every once in a while to keep your machine alert. That's Jiggler.

Jiggler is great for keeping your machine awake when you're watching a movie or playing music on it, doing a big download or upload, burning a CD or a DVD, or running a job in another application that will take a long time to complete. Users have found a bunch of other uses for it, too; apparently there are a lot of narcoleptic Macs out there!

Jiggler is freeware (which means use it freely with no charge). If you like it, please check out our shareware products, and pay for the shareware you use. Thanks!

New in 1.4:

• OS X 10.6 compatibility
• A wider range of jiggle delay times, from 5 seconds to 24 hours

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This traditional French saying means "Doubt is the key to all knowledge." This seems apt for my present life. I finished an undergraduate degree (a B.S.) in biology this spring at San Jose State University, and my wife and I have now moved to Montréal, Québec, for me to attend graduate school in evolutionary biology. So I've switched from an environment where it felt like I knew a fair bit, into an environment where I know nothing at all. But this is, nevertheless, a step forward. The saying is also apt simply for being in French. Living in Montréal, we are now surrounded by French culture. It's quite fun, going to the little neighborhood shopsand hearing people speaking French all around us! Montréal is a wonderfully international city; I think we're going to enjoy our time here.

So Stick Software remains on the back burner for the time being. I hope to find the time to get my apps working well again on OS X 10.6, but new application work is unlikely as long as I'm in graduate school. After that, who knows? Anything is possible. Doubt is the key to all knowledge.

If you've got comments, bug reports, or anything else you'd like us to see, send a note at support@sticksoftware.com. Thanks for your support. I always enjoy hearing from happy users!