I just want to tell everyone about my new photography blog useful photo tips. Every week I’ll write about one photography challenge (how to photograph mirrors, how to create motion blur, etc.) or one photography concept – the posts will be practical, easy to follow and with lots and lots of example photos.

I made a mistake when creating the yaTimer 2.6.6 auto-update package, the mistake is my fault and I’m very sorry, the result of this mistake is that yaTimer crushes after updating to version 2.6.6. I’ve fixed the problem, this should not happen to anyone upgrading from now on. If you’ve already upgraded and you are seeing this problem just download and install yaTimer from the upgrade page, the setup program will fix the problem. I’m truly sorry and I will see what I can do so mistakes like this don’t happen in the future.

I’ve just finished uploading yaTimer version 2.6.6 to the web site and added it to the automatic update system. This version is a free upgrade to all existing customers - to upgrade: from the yaTimer main window, click the big round button on the top left corner to open the main menu, click “About yaTimer” and than “Check for Updates”. The automatic updates system has been disabled for a long time due to technical problems, I think I’ve fixed all of them, I’ll really appreciate it if you tell me about any problems with the update (or yaTimer...

Giraffe Upload – my automatic photo backup software is now available for download. The cool thing about Giraffe Upload is that you install it and never have to think about backups again – well, at least for your photos – not only it’s fully automatic but it’s also monitored – if, for some reason, something goes wrong with your backup it will e-mail you. I would like to thank all the beta testers for their very important feedback and invite everyone who has an hard drive full of priceless digital photos to give Giraffe Upload a try.

In case you don’t know, yaTimer Central is a service that let you synchronize your copies of yaTimer, share client and project lists and create reports for everyone in your company. As of this week every yaTimer account will have access to all features for no additional cost (except for personal accounts, since there’s no point in enabling team features for single user accounts). I’ve also renamed the accounts to make them less confusing and to show there’s no longer difference between accounts accept for the maximum number of users – so the Basic, Plus and Premium accounts...

I have a lot of software I’ve written for my own use, some of it specific to the way I do things but a lot of it can be useful for other people and I’ve decided, in hope that other people will actually find them useful, to release most of those programs as open source. The first open source program I’m releasing is Everything Up? server self test, it’s a small program I use to verify all the software on my server is still running after every server configuration change.

Every yaTimer license includes a full year of free upgrades, up until now I’ve let all existing customer upgrade for free even after that year is over, unfortunately I can’t continue with this policy and starting at the next major version upgrades will only be available to customers who paid for them or are still in the first year of free upgrades. The cheapest way to continue to receive upgrades is to register for the “yaTimer Upgrade Subscription” when you buy yaTimer itself for just $9.99/Year (that’s right, less then ten bucks for an entire year) – this offer...