If you’re into serious business productivity, then the folks at Marketcircle will become your new best friends. As of this week, there is a new version of Daylite that will enable even higher productivity. We’ve written about Daylite before, so this article will discuss what is new, not a complete re-hash of the application.

With version 3.9 of Daylite, small businesses users will have collaboration tools comparative to Microsoft Exchange: multi-user access to calendars, contacts, and tasks. In addition, they will also have multi-user access to opportunities (sales and more) as well as projects. In environments of 50 or less people, setting up Exchange or a comparable enterprise-class solution is cost prohibitive.

What’s New

With Daylite version 3.9, Marketcircle provides a product that simplifies the deployment and management of this business productivity and collaboration suite. Let’s review what is new:

• Daylite Touch
• Daylite Server
• Daylite 3.9
• Billings 3.0.4

Daylite Touch

I’ve written about Daylite Touch before — back in January. The big news is that Daylite Touch is now available in the Apple App Store.

As discussed in my earlier review, the biggest impact of Daylite Touch is the ability to sync the Daylite data to the iPhone and complete so many business critical tasks while mobile, including:

• Group scheduling
• Task Management & Delegation
• Objectives (Opportunity and Project) Management & Delegation
• And much more

Daylite Touch Home Screen

Daylite Server

With the release of Daylite 3.9, Marketcircle has changed the underlying architecture of the application to make it easier to manage. Essentially, they migrated from the OpenBase database system and replaced it with PostgreSQL. Why is that significant? Fundamentally, here are the benefits:

• Enables the ability to create a separate server infrastructure for Daylite Touch.
• Simplifies the management of Daylite software licenses — all licenses are now managed in the server application and not in Daylite itself.
• Re-architecting the offline database functionally for improved robustness and management.

Translation: a more reliable application with a simple management console for a multi-user environment. Bottom line: a huge win for the customer. Let’s take a look at the new Daylite Server Admin application.

Daylite Server Admin

This new application enables users to quickly set up a shared Daylite database for all users of the organization. What is great about this new application is that on the general pane, you get a quick overview of the health of your server, additional information about how many users, the last time you had a backup, and if you are running a Daylite Touch Server.

The following panes let you manage each database, how often you back up, how you share the database across the network, and licensing management.

Daylite Server Admin Tool – General Pane

If you choose to run Daylite Touch, this part of the Daylite Server Admin application lets you view registered iPhones as well as review logs and if necessary, remotely wipe the data from the iPhone.

Daylite Server Admin Tool – Daylite Touch Server Pane

Daylite 3.9
Daylite itself also received some additional features:

• Support for the new database format (PostgreSQL) and server infrastructure.
• Improved support for Apple Sync Services.
• For workgroups, licensing management is available via the Daylite Server Admin application.
• Updated task smart lists (see below) that now reflect an even stronger link to the Getting Things Done method, as well as maintaining cohesion with Daylite Touch.
• A new login with auto-discovery of the database.

New Task Management

Billings 3.0.4

Billings, Marketcircle’s incredibly easy-to-use time management and invoicing application, also received a small version bump with the following enhancements:

• Daylite 3.9 compatibility
• The timer now has a resolution of 1 second (used to be a minimum of 1 minute)
• Ability to edit start and end times for each log entry
• A new report: “Payments received – grouped by client”
• A bulk edit fix so any currency formatted values are applied without tabbing out of the field

Billings 3.0.4 – Payments received – grouped by client Report

Connectors + Daylite Delivery
Each of the following connectors plus Daylite Delivery were all updated to support the new PostgreSQL database infrastructure.

• MYOB AccountEdge
• LightSpeed
• FileMaker
• Moneyworks

So what does this all mean?

For those already using Daylite, this is a major upgrade with a significant amount of new functionality. Most of that functionality (sans Daylite Touch) is not end user-specific. Though this might not be a bad thing, as learning all-new user interfaces for a release does have a training cost. For Administrators of Daylite, this new release is a sheer pleasure, as management has become significantly better.

Here are the details of the 3.9 upgrade:

Pricing

• Daylite 3.9 is a free upgrade for all registered users of 3.x. It includes Daylite Server, Daylite Touch Server and the new Daylite Server Admin application.
• Daylite Touch is a free download from the App Store. It will cost $49.99/year per user. Yes, this is subscription pricing. For clarity, the subscription is not automatically renewed (giving the user choice if they want to continue using Daylite Touch).
• Billings 3.0.4 is a free upgrade for registered users of version 3.x.
• Each connector and Daylite Delivery upgrades are all free.

Marketcircle Support

An item of note is that Marketcircle will stop all support for Daylite versions 3.8 and below effective June 30, 2009. The purpose behind this is to have their customers move to 3.9 so that they can all be on the new PostgreSQL back end.

According to Marketcircle CEO Alykhan Jetha, their highest support costs are with OpenBase. Thus, providing a free upgrade to 3.9 is a good incentive for their users, especially given the long-term benefits of PostgreSQL and the new Daylite Server plus Daylite Touch functionality.

Conclusion

If you are a sole proprietor or a small business (with about 50 users), then Marketcircle’s offering may make you think twice about what solutions you’re using to manage your business productivity.

With this new release, which enables your crucial business information on an iPhone, you ought to consider migrating to the Marketcircle offering. If you already own the product, then upgrade now as the benefits will only improve your business.

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Smule

The team at Smule, the people who brought us Ocarina, Sonic Lighter, and Zephyr, were featured in the briefing with Apple yesterday. They demoed a new app that will take advantage of the peer-to-peer API’s in the iPhone 3.0 SDK.

Yeah, we offered a sneak peak of our new product, Leaf Trombone: World Stage, the first massive multi-player social music game (that’s a mouthful sir). We demonstrated a duet over their new Peer-to-peer API. In effect, this allows to devices to discover and pair, regardless of wifi/cell, etc. The discovery capability is quite neat. And the bandwidth is pretty darn good.

Ge and David performed “Phantom of the Opera” as a duet over bluetooth on two iPhones, which everyone can now enjoy by streaming the presentation. Of course, we haven’t seen all the magic that has become possible with the iPhone 3.0 SDK.

We have held back some of the more significant components of the leaf trombone for when we launch the product…

Iconfactory

Craig Hockenberry is a principal at Iconfactory, the collective of creative minds that brought us App Store favorites Twitterific and Frenzic. When asked about his reaction to today’s announcements, Craig was most impressed by the forward momentum of the iPhone platform.

“The thing that’s most positive in my mind is that today showed us how serious Apple is about this platform. They are not resting on their laurels: this release includes major enhancements for users and developers alike. “

Gedeon Maheux, another princiapl at Iconfactory, expressed his excitement and concerns about the new SDK.

We’re very excited about the potential opportunities that 3.0 represents, but there are also the possibility of pitfalls such as creating “content-free” apps that need paid upgrades to really deliver.

When asked about other changes, Craig felt that it was going to take some time to see how the App Store in-app payment mechanism would affect their current and future products. When pushed for further reaction, no single feature seemed to elicit enough excitement to bring out the CHOCKLOCK today, but expect some ALL CAPS tweets once developer.apple.com is back up and Craig can get his fleshy palms on the 3.0 SDK.

GroceryIQ

Jason Boehle is the co-founder of Free State Labs and one of the developers behind GroceryIQ. The company has since been acquired by Coupons, Inc. and development continues on the next version of the GroceryIQ app which will include syncing shopping lists between phones.

The most significant new feature announced today for Grocery iQ is push notifications. For example, you can know when your significant other adds an item to your shopping list. We are working on phone-to-phone sync right now, and push notifications will make that feature more useful.

While Jason is relieved that cut, copy and paste and MMS have finally found their way to the iPhone, like many others, he was most impressed with the bright future for the platform.

The 3.0 software is hugely important for the iPhone platform, as it shows Apple is continuing to innovate and blur the boundaries between phone and computer. iPhone developers should be very excited, as Apple is allowing more access to the hardware and software inside the device, and is providing us with much better ways to monetize our apps over time.

Marketcircle

Alykhan Jetha (better known as AJ) is the CEO of Marketcircle, the Mac business software company. They are working to bring their Daylite productivity management solution to the iPhone with the imminent release of Daylite Touch. Marketcircle is keen on the push notification service for Daylite Touch.

I also think that cut & paste and Spotlight will make the iPhone or iPod even more productive for a lot of people. We are looking forward to see how apps like ours can participate in Spotlight as well as how the whole thing works.

Still, there were some disappointments too.

I was hoping for background processes, or even periodic background processes, but no luck with that. I think that for a lot of apps, being able to run in the background every 30 minutes (or X hours) when the user is not using the device as opposed to always running would significantly reduce the battery problem. These things wouldn’t have to run for long. For example our typical sync takes less than 20 seconds.

Double Encore

Dan Burcaw, CEO of iPhone development consultancy Double Encore, was one of the early movers in the iPhone market and led the team behind the Brightkite iPhone app. Dan was also on hand for Apple’s announcements and was still riding the Apple high after he left 1 Infinite Loop and spoke with me on the way to the airport.

This definitely keeps the ball rolling. It was going to be hard for competitors to catch the iPhone and the App Store anyways, but I think Apple said, “We need to be flexible so we can keep this snowball rolling.” Everyone I talked to, my peers, other companies, are saying, “this thing just got better in a lot of ways.” Sure, Apple addressed the specific things that people wanted to change, but this is a really solid, broad release.

Since Dan was in the briefing, I was curious about the announcement that got the most attention from those present.

<laughing> You know, the Apple people kept asking that question too. I’m not sure, but as soon as the video goes up, look for this… When the ESPN app gets a push notification, the alert sound is the ESPN jingle. Da-da-da. That was cool. iPhone 3.0 gives people new ways to extend their brand. The new business models are going to allow companies to extend their brand to the iPhone in a big way too. All these changes to the SDK will bring the big boys into the game that had been sitting on the sidelines, now that they can use their branding in a bigger, richer way.

If you haven’t thought about building an iPhone app, you might want to look into it. This thing is going to be a runaway train by the time 3.0 hits.

A Runaway Train

The strong consensus among all the developers that I spoke with is that the 3.0 announcements have renewed their confidence in the iPhone platform. With 30 million devices out there (iPhone and iPod touch) and the momentum of the app store, existing developers are probably more excited about the iPhone than ever. If I could share one insight, it would be to keep an eye on what happens with the new accessory communication options. I heard several rumblings that this opens up a whole new round of innovation for the iPhone.

While no one picked any one single software feature, API, or Core service as the Next Big Thing, everyone was thrilled with the breadth and depth of the changes to the SDK. A theme developed that these developers felt like the wide range of features announced today made a strong statement about Apple’s commitment to the future of the iPhone platform. A future that, frankly, I’m pretty excited to watch unfold as well.

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At the beginning of the interview, AJ explained how Daylite started as a tool that they built to better manage their own consulting business. Eventually they realized that the solution they developed for themselves might be valuable to others trying to manage their businesses on the Mac platform. Sure enough, Daylite has become an invaluable productivity tool for many Mac users.

The decision to bring Daylite to the iPhone was easy. AJ said that they downloaded the iPhone SDK within minutes of it appearing on Apple’s web site (one of their engineers just happened to be on the developer page when it dropped) and everything stopped at Marketcircle while they started working on what would become Daylite Touch. A year later, the effort involved in bringing Daylite Touch to market is evident.

Upon initial viewing of the app, it was amazing to see how Daylite Touch is really a deep companion to the Daylite product line. It has the majority of the functionality of the main application and honestly adds functionality that Apple missed when building the iPhone.

As a smartphone and mobile device user for the past 10 years, one thing Apple missed is not providing an aggregated at-a-glance look of today’s appointments and tasks. Further, previous experience with Windows Mobile devices showed me that having a screen with an aggregated view of my current day is critical in telling me what I need to do next.

Home Screen

Well, with mighty praise, Marketcircle nailed this functionality in Daylite Touch with their Home screen. Here is an example:

In the Home screen, Daylite Touch shows me my appointments and meetings for today and tomorrow, as well as letting you know of any tasks that need completion. Further, the Next tab, visible on the right-side of the screen, gives you one-touch access to the details of your next appointment including the location and contact details. Tapping phone numbers will place a call and tapping addresses will launch the built-in Maps application on the iPhone for directions and so on.

Objectives

Objectives is an aggregated view of your Daylite Projects, Opportunities, Pipelines and Notes. Here, you can navigate the different components and edit them with full fidelity. One feature I really appreciated during the demo was the ability to filter by category (as a user of Daylite, this is very powerful). Users can also delegate any item here to other users of Daylite.

Here is an example of a project and its related notes:

Contacts

Contacts is an aggregated view of both your contacts and organizations. This simplified view provides a single list of all your phone contacts. Within the next version of Daylite (3.9), you’ll be able to specify exactly which contacts and organizations you want to sync with your copy of Daylite Touch.

What makes this especially valuable is that some folks only want specific contacts on their phone. A weakness with MobileMe is that all of your contacts are synced to the iPhone whether you like it or not.

If you do want to sync all of your contacts with Daylite Touch, there is one caveat. If you have over 500 contacts, you will see them displayed 100 at a time (with standard iPhone pagination). AJ said this was a performance issue that will most likely not be resolved by the time Daylite Touch is available in the Apple App Store.

Calendar

You would think that the Calendar component is just another Calendar app competitor. Well, it isn’t. Daylite Touch’s calendar is much richer than the functionality that Apple’s Calendar provides. Similar to the Calendar app, you can view appointments and meetings via a list, the current day or the month.

What’s not in this screenshot is that when you turn the iPhone on its side, Daylite Touch uses the accelerometer to display a week view of your appointments. This is just fantastic.

Also, you can quickly add an appointment via multi-touch. Essentially, users do not need to go into another screen to create a new appointment. Watching AJ perform this task was enjoyable because it was intuitive — it just made sense to create appointments this way.

Synchronization

Synchronization has been completely rewritten for Daylite 3.9 (required for the Daylite Touch Server). Under the hood, OpenBase has been replaced with PostgreSQL. Moving to the more modern, opensource database should provide faster and more stable syncing with offline databases and more reliable connections for Daylite Touch.

A lot of engineering effort has been placed into designing Daylite Touch to only tranmit small packets of data and to gracefully respond to a loss of an internet connection, or an interruption from a phone call. The iPhone app will pick up where it left off and resume syncing as soon as a connection to the Daylite Touch Server is restored.

Pricing and Availability

Daylite Touch will require Daylite 3.9 (a free upgrade for existing users) and a new Daylite Touch device license for each device that will sync with your database. The pricing for these new device licenses has not been set, but AJ said that you can expect them to be competitive with similar apps on other mobile platforms. Reading between the lines, this is not going to be a 99 cent app, or even a $9.99 app, but probably closer to $99.

As an aside, the move to PostgreSQL on the backend also means the end of the ridiculous need to enter all the user licenses on every computer. You will be able to manage all your licenses on the machine that you designate as the Daylite Server.

AJ says to expect Daylite Touch in the first quarter of this year. Given what Weldon and I witnessed at Macworld Expo, its safe to say that we were reasonably convinced that many Daylite and non-Daylite users will install this application. Frankly, it is one of the first complete applications available for the iPhone. Well done Marketcircle, well done.

At a possible ~$99 price point, would you still purchase Daylite Touch? If it’s not worth it to you at that price, at what point would it be?

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Wednesday at Macworld Expo marked a distinct change from the hectic activity around the keynote and the open of the show floor. The big news today was the announcement of the Best of Show awards from Macworld. The products recognized this year are…

Best of Macworld 2009

• iPhoto ’09
• Cisco WebEx Meeting Center
• Things
• Ecamm Network BT-1 Bluetooth Web Cam
• Filemaker Pro 10
• HP MediaSmart Server
• Livescribe Pulse Smartpen
• Daylite Touch
• Sling Media SlingPlayer for iPhone

Our Impressions

iPhoto ’09 is a great upgrade and worthy of the attention, despite the appearance of Google’s Picassa for Mac as a possible competitor. We love Things around here, and quite a few of us actually use it to try and stay on top of, well, things. We introduced you to the Ecamm Bluetooth Web Cam on Monday. Filemaker Pro 10 is a nice update. I talked to a few developers today that are looking forward to the new scripting features, but the UI overhaul is just something that’s long overdue. Daylite Touch really redefines what an iPhone app is capable of doing. We had a chance to talk with Marketcircle yesterday and will share our impressions of using the app soon. One thing I can let slip now, this is definitely not going to be a $.99 app store purchase. Daylite Touch is a full-featured app that rivals what you can do with a desktop app and you should expect it to be priced accordingly.

The Rest of the Best

The HP MediaSmart Server is a really interesting solution for home users that want to store and share media. SlingPlayer is very cool and something to keep an eye on as soon as it gets released to the app store this quarter. We’ll bring you more info on that announcement soon, along with some details on the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen, and Cisco WebEx Meeting Center.

Other Announcements

If you’ve been wondering what happened to the Xserve RAID team after that product was discontinued, several of them have resurfaced at startup Active Storage. I had a chance to talk with Alex Grossman on Wednesday and I am very impressed with the attention to detail, and the particular attention to the needs of Mac users, that Active Storage has put into their products. If you are looking for high-density storage solutions that you can easily manage from the Mac, you may not need to look any further than Active Storage.

Intelliscanner has a new update to their SoHo and Mini scanners. If one of your New Year’s resolutions was to get organized and catalog stuff around your house, you’ll love this little scanners and the accompanying software.

Axiotron recruited Steve Wozniak to demo their new Modbook Pro this week. The Modbook Pro, as the name suggest, is based on the MacBook Pro system just as the Modbook is based on the Apple MacBook.

Ambrosia, one of my favorite developers, is announcing iToner 2 and WireTap Studio 1.0.7 this week. iToner 2 adds three new features: ClearTone to help get the audio levels right so your ringtones always sound great on the iPhone, cropping tools to edit snippets right in iToner, and 40+ professionally mastered ringtones that you can use right out of the box. WireTap Studio has been updated to improve performance and add some new control schemes .

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What can we expect from this new iPhone application? A bunch of new features, to say the least:

1. Daylite touch users can simultaneously book meetings, view other users’ calendars, delegate tasks, manage contacts, projects and opportunities and look at their short term history -– all offline.
2. Daylite touch syncs over the air with 3G, Wi-Fi, or 2G EDGE, allowing Daylite users to coordinate with other mobile colleagues or with workgroups back at the office.
3. Daylite touch offers a more distinctive set of collaborative productivity features than Microsoft Exchange or Apple MobileMe.

Sounds reasonably impressive. What does it look like? Here is an advanced screenshot.

From this screenshot, we can see a pretty rich Calendaring application. I like the fact that Daylite touch is utilizing the iPhone’s screen real estate to best benefit readability. This screenshot alone makes me salivate at what the rest of the application will look like.

At the Expo, I will be meeting with Martketcircle’s CEO, Alykhan Jetha to receive a full demonstration of the new product. I will follow-up with my impressions of the app after I receive this hands-on demo.

Marketcircle expects that Daylite touch will be available in the first quarter of 2009. They will announce pricing at that time as well. Given the cost of Daylite itself ($149 retail), I expect that Daylite touch will not be inexpensive.

Regardless, the ability to have a full-featured CRM/GTD application on the iPhone or iPod touch is noteworthy, as to-date there are not too many quality choices available.

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I thought Daylite 3.7 by Marketcircle was just another PIM, kind of like Microsoft’s Outlook or Entourage. Daylite is not just another PIM; it is a business tool that organizes your data better than any other application I have ever used.

Currently, I am part of FiniteComedy.com, a small video production company that makes video for the web. Creating and producing video content creates tons of projects that require plenty of attention.

My Old System

I had been using a kludge of applications to keep myself organized. I regularly used a combination of Google Calendar + iCal integration and GMail and its Contacts feature. I’ve experimented with 37signals and its Highrise web application — Highrise is an online address book, contact manager, task list web application; I don’t believe it has a calendar. It is a fine web application, but for some reason it never stuck with me.

I have also had a lot of past experience using Microsoft Outlook, but hardly used Entourage.

Enter Daylite: Installation

Installation is done via an installer (no a drag and drop install here). It takes up 141MB of space. While installing, Daylite asks if you want to create your own database or take a look at other databases to get a feel for Daylite in action. I created my own database. At that point, I did not know exactly what I was doing, but I figured I could learn as I go. A “database” in this context is just a term for your Daylite set up. Daylite also asks for personal information and you can import your address book and iCal information. You can also import all or some of your iCal calendars. Those of you who have jumped on board with Google CalDAV integration will be annoyed to know you cannot import these calendars.

The last step is choosing from a template. There are a number of specialized templates to choose from including Film & Video, Law, Print & Design and more. There are also blank and General templates. Each template contains some presets for categories, keywords and settings. I tried General to get a better overall feel for the program.

Life with Daylite: First Thoughts

I started using Daylite like I would any program. I just jumped right in. First I wanted to create a new contact. The default toolbar has often used (or the most useful) functions. When I hit the “New Contact” button, a window pops up with plenty of options for any contact.

After a couple minutes of use, I saw that Daylite provides you with a wealth of options in presenting you your data. To some this may be daunting. In my opinon, this is the kind control that is needed to keep track of multiple projects and data. Connecting projects to contacts is a snap. Just add some one to the “Linked” section. That way, when you look at a project, you can find whoever is connected to that project. Projects can also be linked to to-do lists.

Daylite also puts in an icon in the menu bar with quick access to create new contacts, appointments, notes and more while you are not in the actual program. Daylite is very stable and crashed only once during the testing period.

Daylite has an odd way of searching. The search field looks like a spotlight search, but you must hit enter to get results. Not a big gripe, but I thought it was odd (or at least inconsistent with the Mac interface nowadays) that the results did not populate as you type.

It seems that every bit of information in Daylite can be displayed in at least three different ways depending on how much information you want up on the screen at one time. Personally, I like seeing as much information as I can on someone or some event to get a bigger picture on what I’m doing.

Life with Daylite: Project Management

I have never been completely satisfied with the project management solutions I have tried. The best thing I had found to manage projects and link them to contacts is just using a dry erase marker and my whiteboards. It is an inelegant solution that does not provide any of the comforts of a computer-based solution, but it kind of works except for space issues.

Daylite has excellent project management capabilities. I am currently trying to set up a live taping of “ChannelFlip Tech” and some other shows at the Digital Life Show held at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City this September. There are several elements to this project. There is my contact at Digital Life, my co-host and his schedule, potential sponsors, and material for the show.

Setting up the project is simple. Create a new project and input some data like a name for the project and due date. It is the “Linked” field that I found the most helpful. You can link a project to a contact, an organization or a group. The Digital Life project can be linked to my contact at Digital Life, my co-host, sponsors and any one else who has a contact file.

Daylite’s project window shows you your different projects and you can choose to see the data in different ways. You can get a feel for your projects at a glance. I am not completely familiar with every feature yet, but I know there are many other customizations that could make Daylite more useful for my particular needs.

Daylite: The Rest of the Features

There are some very good components to Daylite. There is a calendar that works as you would expect any calendar program to work. It does allow smart calendars which is nice. Events can be categorized, although they can be assigned to only one category at a time.

There is an Appointments feature that takes your calendar data and lays it out like the Contacts section. It is pretty much an alternative view to just looking at the standard calendar.

Contacts are presented in a similar way to projects. You can see your contact list, selecting a contact will show you what is linked to that contact. I am using the “General” template so there is plenty of data fields already. Contacts also support smart contact lists. I am a big fan of smart lists that actively change as information changes. It saves a lot of time over the long run. The “Organizations” feature is similar to the contacts, just organized by organization instead of individuals.

“Opportunities.” You can add a New Opportunity to the Opportunities section of the application. I have never seen this kind of function before. This feature is obviously geared towards a business. Since I am pursuing advertisers and sponsors, this is a great section. Once an opportunity is acted upon, you can create a project. “Opportunities” is like a pre-Project zone.

There is also a “Notes” feature. I have never been a big fan of notes outside of putting notes in appointment data or in a contact file. You can link notes to contacts or projects. This seems to be the best way in Daylite to add notes to Projects. This allows for greater organization of notes as the note appears linked to the project, and the project appears linked to the note.

Conclusion

Daylite is one of the best solutions I have used to manage information. However, it is not something everyone needs. If you want to use Daylite as an iCal replacement, then it is overkill. This is software built for a small business that wants to manage its contacts, calendars and projects well. Daylite is priced at $149 US for 1 user, $745 US for 5 users and $1490 for 10 users.

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