While many people, especially in Germany, are complaining at the moment about everything becoming worse, this perception is distorted. Yes, some managers sack thousands of people only to drive their company’s shareholder value into even higher heights. The German health care system reform is a mess. And unemployment is dropping very slowly. But, from a meta perspective, this is clearly “Lamenting at the Top Level.” For people in many other regions of this World, our wealth and our high standard of living is beyond imagination. (more)

Many of you who are using our software now for a long time know that we’re sensible to today’s major problems, among them the unequal distribution of resources (leading to poverty and starvation in a rich world) and the destruction of our planet through pollution. So, some may ask, where are these sandal moments? Buried in commercialism? No, by no means. Here’s one again: We have just switched our electricity provider from traditional power, which is nuclear power here, to hydro-electric power. It’s environment friendly, does it not produce any waste, and, best of all, it’s cheaper, too. So, the DEVONtechnologies servers are now powered by a small hydro-electric 3 million kWh power station located just about 300 meters from here. It was build right after the second world war and was completely modernized just four years ago. By night, it’s even nicely illuminated! (more)

Our developer Annard Brouwer moved recently from Budapest, Hungary, to sunny Malta. And besides making the DEVONthink Pro Office plugins and lying around lazily in the sun, he’s now also demoing our applications at the local Mac show! So, if you happen to be in Malta (lucky you!) this weekend, visit him!

This saturday, the hard drive of my brave MacBook broke. From one second to the next, no warning, no scrating sounds, nothing. Now, it just makes click-click sounds, and I see the “System Folder Missing” icon. Well, this happens, and my MacBook is already in repair. (more)

Mercury Software, our Japanese distributor, has just finished the CD boxes for the DEVONthink/DEVONagent bundle. They’re so nice I couldn’t resist to show you. BTW: This boxed bundle is exclusively available in Japan, and you’ll see why when you click the boxshot. (more)

In the last four years people people kept asking if we have t-shirts, caps, mugs, or dog’s wear with our applications icons and our company logo. And as we are a customer-focused company, we try to keep them happy: We have just opened our own fun shop with gifts from textiles to paper notebooks. You can even get DEVONthink and DEVONagent U.S. postage stamps printed. Isn’t it cool?

In the past I have published interviews with users doing interesting things with our applications in the irregularly published PDF newsletter called, of course, “DEVONtalk”. Now, with the blog and the HTML newsflashes a PDF newsletter looks strangely outdated. (more)

This month I’ve had a coffee with Matt Bontrager. Matt is the owner of Southpaw Data, LLC, a company that offers various services around the huge field of data management. Matt uses both DEVONagent and DEVONthink for his daily work. (more)

Finally, after we have already published two video tutorials for DEVONagent, I have just uploaded our brand new video introduction to DEVONthink! Christian Meermann and Ed Vawter explain how to use DEVONthink’s user interface, how to create databases, how to write within DEVONthink with the built-in text editor, and how to use its unique artificial intelligence functions for filing, for organizing, and for navigating your documents.

We have just finished the second video tutorial for DEVONagent. It explains everything you need to know about search sets: what they are for, what they consist of, and how you can tweak them to your needs or how you can create your own search sets. You can even create sets that run unattended queries that completely automatically search the net for you and send you the results by email. Isn’t that cool?