Panic Blog

Unison 2 wasn’t the only usenet-related upgrade this week: we’ve also made great improvements to Unison Access, our usenet service.

Remember, to use Usenet, you need two separate things: a Usenet client (that’d be Unison 2), and a Usenet server to access. Some ISP’s provide access, but increasingly, many don’t.

Unison Access is now $9 a month, with unlimited transfer.

That’s right: no transfer limit. And all the trimmings are included: SSL support, a European server, 300 days of binaries, up to 8 simultaneous connections, etc.

There’s more! If you launch Unison 2 with no server configured (or choose “Setup Assistant…” from the Unison menu), you can even try a one-time 24 hour trial of the service, free of charge.

There are a whole lot of excellent choices out there for Usenet service. But since Usenet Access isn’t our bread and butter, we can offer this crazy good deal — one of the best prices you’ll find anywhere.

If you subscribe to Unison Access already, thanks! We’ll keep making it better!

I’ll get right to the point: It’s with great excitement that I announce the release of Unison 2.

I imagine some of you are already gone and downloading. Thanks! For the rest of you: Unison is a Usenet browser. It lets you see, read, listen and download the wealth of content on Usenet servers!

Wh.. what is Usenet? Huh. That’s a little trickier. It goes basically like this: Usenet was really the mother of all internet forums — a ridiculous number of topics and people hosted on a ton of servers that are all kept in sync with each other, across the globe. Before the web, this is how a lot of internet users connected, shared tasty chili recipes, or argued about Kirk vs. Picard vs. Ninjas.

Later, some clever boffins figured out a way that you could also post files onto this global message board. These files would be mirrored to every other Usenet server. And lo, primordial global file sharing was born!

So you’ve got messages, you’ve got files, two groups of users that rarely intersect but each love their Usenet like you wouldn’t believe.

As an app, Unison is definitely a bit niche — “people still use Usenet?” is a question we hear often, but believe me, those that do really do. Here’s how we see it: we may be the only actively developed / modern Usenet client on the Mac right now, it’s the type of app a surprising amount of switchers need and are happy to find, it’s a fun design challenge, and, most importantly, even niches deserve a little love now and then.

So what’s new in Unison 2? We’ve completely redesigned the interface from scratch, unified the browsing experience with an all-in-one view, added a beautiful new group directory, improved message reading with a thread view and thread lines, built in a binary search browser, added automatic UnPAR/UnRAR/skipping of unneeded recovery sets, and much much more.

We’ve also made some significant changes to Unison Access, the companion service we provide. But more about that in the next blog post.

One final note: Unison 2 wouldn’t exist without Dave, who has been working a long time, single-handedly, on this insanely massive update. It’s not an easy app to develop, especially solo, so thanks very much Dave for your hard work!

Just a quick note:

If you’re serious about testing software, you’re good at filing well-written bugs, dedicated about trying successive builds, and you have a knack for breaking things, we’d like to personally invite you to sign up to possibly test an upcoming Transmit release.

A few disclaimers: we can only accept a limited number of testers (you’ll be notified only if you’re chosen and please don’t take it personally if you’re not!), you’ll likely will receive no compensation, and there are inherent risks with testing beta software, especially when it transfers your presumably important files.

All that being said, as a small company with (sadly) no QA department (yet?), your input will be literally invaluable to our engineers, and you’ll help make a better shipping product!

10-4 good buddy, etc. We hope you have a nice weekend!

Just a quick Goods update, on this announcement-filled Tuesday:

1. We’ve dramatically lowered international shipping costs.

For example, what used to cost $27 to ship now costs closer to $9. We hope this change — from USPS Priority to First Class International — will help our foreign friends. Of course, there’s a catch: longer transit time and no tracking. But you’ve told us in the past that cost is most critical. Please let us know how it goes!

2. Embroidered Coda t-shirts.

These were a bit of an experiment: our first embroidered shirts. It was a challenge — embroidery, screen-printing, and precision do not mix well — but we enjoyed the ride. They’re printed on special edition organic cotton American Apparel shirts… with matching green stitching! If you’re a Coda user, you can wear this shirt with nerd-but-still-cool pride. We’ll keep an eye out for you.

3. A limited run of Spinner Hoodies.

This is a little embarrassing, but we’ve had a limited run of Spinner Hoodies sitting in the warehouse for multiple years (what was the hold-up? I think it was because it required a special Hoodie icon to be made). They feature the famous Mac OS X “Spinner” design on a warm and comfortable gray American Apparel hoodie. They’re finally ready for sale, and there aren’t too many of them.

We hope you enjoy these new things.

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We just got back from one of the most exciting vertical B2B twebinars we’ve ever cyber-attended, and walked away with an incredible business tip: apparently, a lot of internet businesses now use “internet web logs”, or “blogs”, to communicate with customers! Hot damn!

Welcome to the Panic Blog.

In all seriousness, Panic has always applied the “Apple Model” of company communication: we talk about things when they’re ready and released, and we very very rarely talk in between. But it’s almost the year 2010, and this feels more awkward than ever. Now, we hope to talk more.

So, what are we up to lately?

It goes like this: Unison, Transmit, Desktastic and Stattoo, and yes, Coda, are all currently on the whiteboard for updates, all major (except Stattoo), and possibly in that order.

In short, all of your favorite software is being worked on in some way.

Before you ask: we still can’t talk release dates. The #1 reason? We’ll almost certainly miss them, and you’ll be angry when we do. We’re a small company working on many things, and these things take time, so please have patience while we work! Thanks!

Anyway, hello.

Thanks for reading. And if you’ve got any topics you’d like us to “blog” about, feel free to leave a comment. (At least until we end up disabling comments while sobbing gently into our childhood teddy bear. Lord help us all.)