The Byte Blog

Sleep Blaster is now translated into five languages (or something like that), yet Spanish isn’t one of them! We are desperately in need of a Spanish translation. If there’s anyone out there who is a native Spanish speaker, we’d love to have you help out if you are willing! You’ll get a free copy of our favorite alarm clock and your name permanently engraved in the About Box (under the Special People section). What could be better? The software will finally be available in your native language, and you’ll be the cause of it!
If you are willing to accept this mission, just contact us at support@the-byte-factory.com.

You know you want to.

Whoa! What happened to the Blog Writer Monkeys?! Apparently they’ve all gone on strike or something! (Maybe we do need to give them a banana raise…) Anyway, Things have happened since our last blog posting! We just released Sleep Blaster 1.0.5 a few days ago, which includes a bunch of fixes along with an interface revamp.

But what’s this? There’s no more date selector! We’ve found that people rarely set their alarm more than a day in advance, unless it’s set for a regular schedule, so having the date picker in there only causes mistakes. We think y’all will like this better, but please, please leave us feedback!

What else is new with us? A few new positive Sleep Blaster reviews have come out recently, and one even in Spanish! (This could have something to do with the fact that we suddenly saw a spike in sales from Barcelona…) If you need some reading material and/or you’re not currently playing World of Warcraft and need something to do, check them out:

For Once Your Alarm Clock Will Take You Seriously
Sleep Blaster, grita a tu mac-despertador para que pare

So that’s pretty much it for now. Things happen slowly when the Monkeys are always having to do schoolwork…
If you haven’t already, download Sleep Blaster 1.0.5, or just open the app and choose Sleep Blaster menu > Check for Updates. And if you’re REALLY impatient and/or needing of immediate reading material, here are the release notes for the new version.

ADDED

• Added preference to disable the menu bar icon
• Added alert to notify the user that the alarm will still ring even if you quit Sleep Blaster
• Made the sleep timer also show album artwork, just like when the alarm is ringing

FIXED

• Fixed bug where Sleep Blaster would use Dynamite mode if iTunes isn’t already open at alarm time
• Fixed a bug where Sleep Blaster would use Dynamite unnecessarily
• If the sleep timer is playing when it’s time for the alarm to go off, the sleep timer will stop first before the alarm rings

CHANGED (FOR THE BETTER)

• Removed the alarm date selector. It only causes accidents in setting the correct alarm date, so now you only have to select the alarm time (and optionally day(s) of the week).
• Visual enhancements in the “alarm ringing” and sleep timer views
• Completely eliminated the need to rely on a third-party framework to control iTunes. (This is a good thing, people!)

We’ve released Sleep Blaster 1.0.3, which now includes support for Portuguese, Japanese, French, and Dutch! Thanks to all those who helped translate.
But wait, we’ve also released 1.0.3.1! Sorry about this. 1.0.3.1 fixes a bug having to do with the voice controls, which we discovered minutes after releasing 1.0.3.

Here is a list of all changes in 1.0.3:

ADDED

• Added Portuguese localization
• Added French localization
• Added Dutch localization
• Added (partial) Japanese localization
• Added menu bar item for when the alarm is set but Sleep Blaster isn’t running, to show you that it IS alive and well!

FIXED

• The user now only has to enter his password the first time he wants Sleep Blaster to wake the computer, instead of every time.
• Fixed a bug where the snooze time would always be 15 minutes, no matter what the user set it to!
• Fixed a bug where Sleep Blaster’s helper app could be added as a login item more than once.

As of yesterday, we’ve released Sleep Blaster 1.0.2 which, along with a few other fixes, mainly focuses on the ocean wave generator. (It’s much better now!) Here’s what’s new in 1.0.2:

• Now uses newest version of Sparkle update framework
• The ocean waves now fade in, instead of starting suddenly
• The ocean waves are now 3D (i.e., they shift from left to right)
• The ocean waves now have a more relaxing frequency, less painful
• Fixed a minor interface bug where all the Sleep Timer menu items were always selected
• Fixed bug where in Dynamite Mode, Sleep Blaster wouldn’t set the system volume

Well folks, today marks the end of our first Sleep Blaster promo, and it was a great success. Thanks to all who blogged about us! You’ve helped make the world a better place for sleepers everywhere.

Got any awesome ideas for Sleep Blaster? Want your dream feature implemented in a new version? It benefits all of us, so if you have any sort of feature requests for Sleep Blaster, drop them right here in the comments! (Or mail them to support@the-byte-factory.com.)

So, you may (or may not) have noticed that Sleep Blaster only speaks English right now. This is probably typical for a first release, but we’d like to have it localized into as many languages as possible. If there’s anyone out there who’s interested in helping with this (for any language), just send us an email at support@the-byte-factory.com. Unfortunately we can’t afford to pay you, but we’ll definitely send you a free license if you don’t have one yet, and your name will go down in history (in the credits)!

If you downloaded Sleep Blaster and you like it, please help us get the word out by Digging us!

Today we’re launching our first Sleep Blaster promo: if you post about Sleep Blaster on your own blog between now and Wednesday, July 30th (one week from today), we’ll send you a free license! Just email us your blog entry at support@the-byte-factory.com. Happy blogging!

Today, exactly one week after launch, we released Sleep Blaster 1.0.1, which fixes that fatal crasher which prevented the software from running on PowerPC Macs. So, PowerPC users: we hope you’ll forgive us for that first week of Intel-only-ness, but you can now finally use Sleep Blaster! Download the new version from the software page.