The Omni Group

You know, I thought we'd get maybe 20 guesses or so on what Brand New Secret Product is. Not HUNDREDS. Holy, uh, fiddlesticks.

So this is one of those occasions when us marketing weasels have to decide between silence, subterfuge, or straightforwardness. And other terms that begin with the letter “S”, like “snake oil” (as in, Our powerful, extensible solution creates a paradigm shift in infrastructure core competencies).

We're going with a large serving of straightforwardness, with a hint of silence on the side and a sprinkling of delicious, bacony subterfuge. (There's a reason we're called weasels, after all.)

Some of you guessed correctly about what Brand New Secret Product is. Some of you are clearly insane and made us laugh until we sprayed Jamba Juice out our collective nostrils. And some of you – check that, LOTS of you – guessed that we're building some kind of GTD app.

Brand New Secret Product is not a GTD app. However, we have been talking very seriously about building a GTD app, and collaborating with our friends Ethan and Merlin, and hearing so many of you tell us that you're interested in that kind of software…well, we would really, really like to come up with something. We have some awesome ideas for how it could work.

In a couple weeks we're sitting down with some folks here in Seattle and brainstorming what this GTD app might do, and how we might be able to get it out the door in a timely manner. We do have a lot on our plates these days, and we're not a big company; we just don't know yet if we have the resources. But! If you would like to send us ideas, feature requests, or just a plea for us to make it happen, please email omnitask-planning@omnigroup.com, in the next week if possible. (OmniTask is our code name. Shhhhhh.)

There: some straightforwardness.

Now for the subterfuge! Well, not exactly, but here's another annoying image of Brand New Secret Product – not blurred this time, but clipped so only a piece of it shows. Go nuts, CSI-enhancers.

And the silence: we're not going to tell you what B.N.S.P. is just yet. But very, very soon we will have more info and a public beta. I think some of you (no, we're not saying how many!) are going to be really happy.

P.S. Yes, those of you who guessed correctly will be hearing from me shortly about the private beta. Booyah!

Well! Apparently our OmniWeb 5.5 beta whooped some butt in a recent browser test.

I'd love to tell you exactly why OmniWeb was so darn fast, but uhhhh….we're not exactly sure. It might have to do with something called garbage collection, which I would explain in great detail except I have no idea what it means. Also, benchmark tests are maybe not 100% indicative of what your own personal browsing experience will be, so take it all with a large grain of salt, but…go, OmniWeb, go!

OmniWeb 5.5 is still in 'private' beta (not exactly PRIVATE when it's in a benchmark test, I guess), but we're shooting for a public beta next week.  Hang in there, OmniWeb fans!

:::

In other news, Omni has a Brand New Secret Product in the works. Before you ask, we are absolutely still working on our other apps – there are, let's see…11 engineers here who are assigned to various projects, in addition to product managers and support folk and sales and QA and of course, the espresso machine – and we still plan to provide you with updates for those (yes, like OmniWeb! And OmniGraffle! And…everything else! Except Oni; you Oni people need to CEASE and DESIST).

Anyway! We are getting very close to opening the kimono on Brand New Secret Product, if you'll forgive me for using a cheesy dotcom-VC-wooing term from 1999. Would you like some hints? SURE YOU WOULD.

Hint the First:

Some of you have asked for this product. Repeatedly.

Hint the Second:

Here is an annoyingly blurred image of the product's application icon:

Hint the Third:

It is NOT a replacement for Mail. Or a word processor.

(I know, I know. Pre-release hype kills kittens, etc. “Remember the Segway”, etc. I know.)

Now for the fun part: if you guess what Brand New Secret Product is, we'll get you on a private beta to start looking at it. You'll have to be sworn to secrecy – on pain of…well, maybe not death, but cake? cake or death? – but you'll be among the ELITE, the BRAVE, the, um, BUGGY BETA BRUTE SQUAD!

Or…wait, did I not make that sound attractive enough? What I meant to say is, if you guess correctly, you'll have an early, exclusive sneak peek at our biggest new product of the year. Cooooool.

HIE YE TO THE COMMENTS SECTION, make your guess, and don't forget to include your email address.

(Update: in order for me to have a snowball's chance of going through everyone's guesses, comments are now closed. Thanks for all your interest, folks!)

Bill has now received his fifth Sega Dreamcast.

He claims that his third one (bought for parts) smells bad. The second one was pink. The pink one had some sort of mechanical error, so there's reason for number three. The smelly Dreamcast had its GD-ROM drive transplanted to the pink one (the GD-ROM did not smell bad). The fourth one was given to him by Brian, however it sits still underneath Bill's desk, unopened.

The first one (it was a limited edition Dreamcast, replete with the project manager's picture on the box and a cellphone trinket) was sold after acquiring the pink one.

His new one is also pink. He also has a large number of pink controllers and one pink keyboard (never used).

Smelly Dreamcast is currently encased in ziploc (minus GD-ROM drive).

Bill's Dreamcast wishlist:

- Broadband adapter (preferably in pink)

- Shenmue 3

Man, do I like coffee—it's total go-juice, like it's like airplane fuel for grown-ups, nothing gets me up and running like a piping hot cup o' joe, and I don't go for that whole latte/mocha/whatever-o-chino that the hoity-toity coffeeshops sell, I just like a good strong cuppa joe (preferably percolated) with maybe even a shot of espresso dropped in it, like it was some sort of coffee boilermaker, man, that would be so totally awesome that all the tea in China would have to bow down before it and energy drinks would hang their heads in shame, I don't even like to put sugar or creamer in my coffee but James showed me this trick where just a little unrefined sugar in an americano can make it taste exactly like really good drip, and that makes me wonder, how can espresso be so darn fast, even if you use a french press you have to wait for the coffee to steep but if you're using an espresso machine it's practically instant without tasting like yucky instant coffee, I gotta figure out how that all works out and then make a miniature version and patent it and I'll be super-rich, or maybe I could sell the idea or we could make some really cool app for controlling coffee makers over the internet, anyways I gotta go now, need to make another cup of coffee.

Hey, did you know that OmniDazzle is based on the unique capabilities provided by Apple's Core Image framework and showcases the power of the OpenGL based windowing system in Mac OS X?

(I have no idea what those words mean. I just copied an engineer's email. Ha! Am v. smart and technical-sounding now.)

The final release is up now: OmniDazzle One-Point-Ohhh Yeah. From beta to final release in 14 days – boy, I'm pretty sure this is a first for us at The Omni Group. I know every single caffeinated beverage has been plundered from the snack room and there's more than one person walking around in that I-haven't-slept-in-days fog (look, I'm not pointing fingers, but guys? The tag on your shirt goes on the inside), so believe me when I say it hasn't been easy.

If you're just joining us, welcome! Pardon the cat hair. OmniDazzle is a set of fun and useful enhancements that help you highlight certain areas of your screen, create special effects, and track the location of your mouse pointer. It is most certainly not just a cursor locator, as has been explained to me repeatedly and maybe with some spirited hand gestures.

OmniDazzle helps you incorporate graphical cues as a presentation tool, capture great screenshots, point out information on your desktop, and make your computer an object of envy by producing impressive onscreen effects.

Or, as some people here are referring to OmniDazzle, it's utilitainment.

(Can I just, uh, make it clear that your trusty Marketing Weasel is NOT one of those people? Okay then.)

We've received some positive feedback from some of you on the Focal Point plug-in, which functions by bordering the active UI element on the screen and dimming the background. As Bill mentioned here a couple posts back, it's great for staying focused on a particular task when you're working by yourself – or, if you're doing a presentation, directing attention to specific elements. People also like the Zoom plug-in, which works nicely for magnifying interesting sections of your screen (like for instance this fantastic squirrel's sweater).

You should also check out the Scribble plug-in, especially if you do slideshow presentations. Being able to draw all over your screen is handy, you can circle things and draw arrows and write notes and so on. I particularly recommend doodling a little robot on top of your Keynote slide while you're talking about something that has nothing at all to do with robots.

Seriously, it's awesome. Try it. Give your robot some fancy eyelashes and maybe a pair of roller skates if you really want to freak everyone out. Then deny, deny, deny! (“What robot? I'm not sure what you mean, Bob, and frankly I think we're getting off track here.”)

If by some bizarre chance you don't find the plug-ins themselves to be fun or useful, just looking at the app while it's active is pretty cool in my opinion. You've got the smoooooth animations, anti-aliased rendering awesomeness, and slick reflections in the plug-in previews. It's eye candy, but not the empty calorie kind, the sports–energy kind with an inexplicable protein source!

Jeez. I mean, it's utilitainment. And it's available for a very reasonable $14.95.

Please note that while we're working to resolve any remaining hardware incompatibility issues, you'll need a fairly modern video card to run OmniDazzle. Check here for more information on that.

Okay, this post has definitely exceeded the Unwritten Yet Generally Agreed-Upon Blog Word Count Limit, so…the end! Go play with OmniDazzle now! And thank you, as always, for coming by. 

Since I just committed my last OmniDazzle fix (at least until QA tracks me down…), I thought I'd share a fun graph.

Omni has been using source control systems like CVS and Subversion since forever.  A while back, we converted to Subversion and imported most of our CVS repository (none of our old consulting projects, just our apps).  Here is a graph of the number of commits in our repository over the last 13 years.

Some people have expressed… concern over OmniDazzle's price, saying that $14.95 is too much to ask for a cursor locator. Well, I want them to know…

Here you see the Scribble plug-in at work. I use Cutout to highlight stuff for screenshots, Zoom to check fine details on interface elements, and Focal Point to avoid distractions while I'm writing in OmniOutliner.

In fact, I think Focal Point is my favorite part of OmniDazzle. Here's how I have it set up while I'm working in OmniOutliner:

No border, and a low-transparency dark background color. This way I don't see 16 applications across 30 inches of Cinema Display, shining in my face, while I'm trying to concentrate on writing.

Of course, if you've lost your cursor, there are free ways to find it. There are also free web browsers, free outliners, and free graphics applications. But price isn't the only variable involved; we believe in the idea, yeah, we thrive on the idea that it's worth paying money for something really, really cool.

Well, I told you it was coming soon, and for once I wasn't proven a snake-oil-shilling-LIAR. Yay! The OmniProduct is now available as a public beta, and we can all stop calling it “OmniProduct” and start calling it “OmniDazzle”.

No, really. That's the name. Shut up, we like it.

So, OmniDazzle. What is it? Why, you may as well ask what it isn't. I mean, it isn't…well, it isn't a meatball maker, I can tell you THAT much.

Basically, it's a set of plug-ins designed to highlight certain areas of your screen and your mouse pointer. Clear as mud? When OmniDazzle is open, various plug-ins can be activated to professionally emphasize a section of your screen, or turn your mouse movement into an area of focus that trails visual effects across your desktop.

Visual effects range from pixie dust to spotlights to dog footprints. What can I say, the engineers are completely nuts creative.

I believe OmniDazzle began as a fun project several months ago when all of Omni started using 30” Cinema Displays. People were occasionally losing their cursors in the giant eyeball-straining expanse of screen, which is truly a bizarre phenomenon and one you can't really complain about without sounding obnoxious (“Oh dear, my massive diamond ring makes my hand too heavy!”).

OmniDazzle first only offered silly ways to locate your cursor, and then we started adding some effects that are actually really useful for doing demos, or taking screenshots, or calling attention to specific parts of your screen.

Now? It's, as our own Joel says, “a playfully practical pixel–pointer program offering mesmerizing mouse movements”.

Please take a look! We're hoping to only have it in beta for a couple weeks. The beta will be unlicensed, but you can grab an expiring license here; the final release will have a demo mode (an hour, I believe, before you have to buy a license or restart the app) and will cost $14.95.

All right. Go forth and enjoy!

So, before I tell you more about the coming-soon-to-a-Dock-near-you new OmniProduct, let me tell you about the other new OmniProduct we've got in the works.

OmniProduct the Second is the Next Big Thing from Omni. It's something a lot of you have asked for. It does a lot of very cool stuff, and while we've had the majority of the application's guts finished for a while (“guts” = v. technical coding term) we are currently in the midst of doing the user interface spit-shining nit-picking arguing endlessly over each tiny detail then passive-aggressively battling each other on WoW polish we're known for.

We're hoping to let you start looking at it soon. “Soon” is a marketing weasel word, OH I KNOW, but that's the best I can tell you. Hopefully this summer.

You will love it. I really think you will.

Okay now! For the imminent OmniProduct we've been hinting at (the Next Small Thing, if you will), we read all your comments and some comments on other blogs and, gosh, if only we had built a Quicken/Mail/iPhoto/office suite/voice-activated-swedish-meatball-maker! Then everyone would be filled with joy and happiness, and no one would tell us that for every word of pre-release hype, somewhere a harbor seal pup is clubbed.

I have to tell you, though, the OmniProduct neither sorts email nor makes meatballs. It's…uh…it's like a utility, except more of a…um….

Honestly, it's sort of hard to describe. I asked if I should say it's sort of widgetlike in scope, and here's a response I received:

I think “widget” is a little too small.  People will think of Dashboard widgets and I think few have managed to charge for their widgets without just getting laughed at.  That said, I can't think of a better word.  It's a sort of a fun toy with a real practical use, like if I had a ride-on lawnmower for my 400 square foot lawn, or keyless entry for my desk drawer.  Yet… nothing like that at all.

So there you go. The new OmniProduct: it's like a ride-on lawnmower for your 400 square foot lawn. Sort of. But not really. It's fun! But useful!

(Won't somebody think of the seal pups?)

We are hoping to release a public beta in the next several days. Stay tuned, folks.

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