iPad pre-ordered today! woohoo!

Enigin Development > Enigin Random!
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The iPad has been available in the states for a good month or so, and as always Europe is left behind! But no more! Apple have finally allowed us to pre-order the iPad from today!

So this Enigin developer has signed up, paid the cash and now has a 3 week wait before the product is in my hands!

Apart from having all the fun of an iPhone but with a larger screen, there’s another use I have in mind.

Here at Enigin we are always on the edge of technology and as soon as the iPad was announced we spotted it’s massive potential as a hand-held device to view your energy usage. So, all those who have been asking about an iPhone app can be assured that we are on the case!

That’s it for now but i’m sure you’ll hear more about the iPad and Enigin in the very near future!

Enigin Development Team ♥ Mac

Enigin Development
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All members of the Enigin development team use Mac products – either a Mac Pro or Macbook Pro and Apple Cinema displays. Here’s my personal reasons for using these fine machines:

  1. They generally don’t go wrong! I’ve been using Macs for around 3 years now and I can’t recall a single time when I’ve had any major issues. It’s certainly true that they don’t crash as much as Windows-based PC’s.
  2. Mac OS is UNIX based. This is the same technology which powers the Enigin server cluster.
  3. They are optimised for user happiness! Being in front of Mac OS is such a nice place to be and let’s be honest, the hardware looks awesome. If you’re in the development business then why wouldn’t you want to use the nicest equipment around? You practically stare at it for 8 hours a day!

All the above items contribute to my productivity, I would estimate that I get 50% more work done since I switched from my Sony Vaio 3 years ago.

Here’s what the software development company 37 Signals think about Mac:

The last of the Enigin Directors has just completed the move to Mac so we are all hopeful for a company Mac policy soon!

Screencast Videos for Enigin Software

Enigin Development
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Over the last month or so we’ve been busy recording a series of screencast videos for Enigin web applications. These are mainly to demonstrate our powerful suite of Sales and Marketing tools to our newly appointed distributors, but i’ve also found it useful to create videos for staff training. It sounds like an overkill but here’s the killer statement:

I recently completed a web application to manage Enigin PLC’s news articles from around the world and collate them on our various corporate websites. The system took around 5 days to build and is used by 7 people within Enigin. Before launching the application internally, I spend some time putting together a 6 minute tutorial video of how to use the system and explained all the basic functions. I sent this to each of the users along with their login details. 5 days later I have not answered a single ‘how to’ style support question!!

How cool is that?! I did the work, shipped the product and didn’t need to handle the tech support! That has to be every coders dream!

There will be another article on building screencasts in the near future but for the techies amongst you, here’s the software which I used:

  • iShowU HD – For recording the actual screen movements
  • Apple Final Cut Express – For editing the video, recording the voiceover and adding titles
  • Stomp – For compressing the final Quicktime movie in to a smaller file size