We have arrived!

Well, today we have released DashBook version 1 as a product, ready to be utilized in production for publishers around the globe. The program is on the internet for download, our website has been revised and augmented with a shopping cart, and we are ready to accept credit card payment. You can see it here: http://www.dashbook.com/

A press release is in the works, and we'll have a lot to do in the marketing department now. But frankly, development is where my heart is. I am very excited about working on the enhancements that will go into the next version of DashBook that will make it even more powerful and easier to use.

Our latest revisions to version 1 include much speed improvement on the Order form, particularly as it relates to royalty calculation results. While working with one of our excellent beta testers who discovered a very odd way to trick our program, we realized that having over a dozen royalty recipients per product on an order with many such products caused the program to move too slowly from order to order. The user was not complaining about the speed, because he felt that his usage of selling music with complex royalties was beyond DashBook's intended scope, so he was happy that it worked as well as it did. We, however, were not satisfied until we improved it. Now, everyone's order display time is faster. Bonus.

Aside from that speed issue, we discovered that our program updates were not correctly replacing the report templates. This means that many users did not get to see a lot of our latest advances. Worse, their old templates may have failed completely due to incompatibilities with our latest program. Fortunately, that has been resolved, and version 1 will be installing all new report templates in addition to the program code improvements.

In reference to the royalties on music, we have been seeing an increase in downloads from people who are in the music business. I would like to speak with more people in that industry to ensure that DashBook is handling music well. I can imagine someone selling songs on iTunes and needing to account for the royalties to the musicians and other artists involved. Having to keep track of all of those dimes that could add up to millions would be a lot of work without good software. We want to help!