Owely Blog

Growing up

2011-09-02T15:25:00.000-07:00

Because of further growth of Owely users we moved to new servers with more capacity and now everything should work faster. Hopefully you will enjoy it. Thank you for being with us all these years.

Lion fix

2011-08-26T20:26:00.000-07:00

Good news everyone, we managed to fix issues with that Owely had with Lion. Now Mac OS users can use owely with cool new system. To cover this issue we released version 1.2 only for this occasion, it have some new features which we are still working on. Soon it will be stable and released across all platforms.
Please let us know, if new version won't work for you so we can fix it.
You can download from here

Owely 1.2 for Lion Mac OS

Update up to date

2011-03-18T08:04:00.000-07:00

  Owely desktop clients goes 1.1 not much for new functionality more for fixes, this one is more stable version with fixed Upload Dialog issues and some login troubles our users experienced before. About new cool features, there is build-in autoupdating mechanism, so users that will download this version will be automatically updated and won't need to make it manually like before. We hope there won't be much issues with that (cross the fingers).
  Also, our developers have added one of most desired feature : fast upload, which means that you won't enter no text on Upload window, just want to upload immediately. So now you have Shift + Esc combination , it will automatically upload you screen to the public group and give you link.
  Please let us know about issues and function you have or might want to have in desktop application, this all makes Owely better each update and feel you more comfortable taking part of improving software.

Troubleshooting

2011-03-15T17:27:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,
during today we've experienced unexpected user activity, more than 2500 of new users that was actively registering and using Owely. Because of that we had server crashes and more unwanted issues, such as missing mails. Right now we use Google Mail and it apparently had some troubles, so our account was suspended because of abnormal amount of emails sent today including our support emails. We really sorry about this inconvenience and all registrants don't need activation. Please login without hesitation, contacting support only if some other things will appear.

Thank you!

Owely goes Premium

2011-03-09T10:32:00.000-08:00

  Today is big day for all Owely crew, we are moving toward new features. Because this takes a lot of hard work and support our service now have two membership : Free and Premium. None of old features are going away, everybody who registered have Free membership automatically and thats only adds some screenshot storage limitation of 50Mb wich is 100+ screenshots, that pretty much for average use. If you exceed this limitation don't worry, none of your data will be removed, everything remains. You just need to remove some old screenshots, so you will have more space to put new ones.
  So what are new cool features we present: 1Gb of storage, Groups of privacy and no ads. One of feature we was asked the most was limiting access to your screen shot for some group of people, that what is groups about. You create your group and add your co-workers of family members, so your sensitive information can be kept safely. Let us know what you desire to see in Premium account and we will add it. And it's like $12 a year and you still have ability to refund your order in 30 days, if you won't like it, so give a shot.

  That's not all, we are preparing big update of the Owely desktop application, that will better suits new requirements and we need some time for that. But there is chance that this week we will get new version with automatically updating function, so no need of downloading new version every time.

P.S. there are still some issues with groups logic in old application, this stuff will be fixed with new update. Stay tuned.

PreChristmas upgrade

2010-12-18T03:25:00.000-08:00

This is beautiful saturday morning, snow is falling outside the window and our team moved to new server. During migration we found 2 broken screenshots that couldn't be moved, sorry if that was something important.
Still, migration was successful and site is stable right now, but there can be some delays in page load or other stuff we will try to fix during next week when there will be more load on the server. Thank you for your patience. Please send feedback if you will find some bugs or troubles you didn't had before.

Owely 1.0 has been released

2010-11-26T00:41:00.000-08:00

We are happy to announce that Owely 1.0 has been released and ready for use. A lot of work was done to improve usability of the tool, we added new features such as Arrow line and Rectangle tool. As you can see on screenshot it's easy to use and nice thing when you need to point something on the screenshot.
Also now you have ability to save a screenshot on desktop and copy to the clipboard, so it can be pasted in a Word document or Email or somewhere else.

Thank you for sending feedbacks that helped us a lot on improving website , we are still in the development of new functionality there and hope it will be ready to use by Christmas, so check news for more stuff upcoming.

We found our mistakes and admitted them

2010-10-01T11:02:00.000-07:00

  Last few days we've got a lot of email about login problem, the idea that website login was working ok and desktop application didn't worked gave us wrong idea that there is something with network connection. We found that some of characters are wrong(Owely use MD5 to encode communication with the server). So some people who used in their passwords other characters than these : a-z, 0-9, # @ $ % ^ & * ( ) . Would have trouble with using Owely application.
  Because all your password are encoded in our database, we can't inform send emails to thous of you who have this problem. For now there is only one solution generate new password on this page:
http://owely.com/forgot

  If this problem still occur contact our suppor team : support @ owely.com

Have a nice day.

P.S. thank you for thous who helped us to find this problem and they spend a lot of time trying to solve this problem by their own.

Sorry for troubles

2010-09-30T00:09:00.000-07:00

We are facing high load on email server and that's why some of emails delay or even disappear. Our team will try to fix all the stuff that was reported, thanks for your patience.
Right now you can Sign Up with out verification of your email.
Have a nice day.

Manage screens

2010-09-03T06:40:00.000-07:00

In new interface you can select screenshots by clicking on empty space, while clicking on title or thumbnail will navigate you to your screenshot page. So by selecting your screenshot you can easily delete pack of screens. In future we will add more functions for mass editing.

Improvements on Owely are continuing, I hope they will get more often. Stay tuned.

Surprising 0.9.0 version available

2010-08-28T03:29:00.000-07:00

We've jumped forward version 1.0.0, our desktop version almost have all features we wanted to have in first release. I know that it can be surprising, but we feel it's better. Now few words about what you will have in this version:

Region Crop returned to the roots, now you start with dimmed screen and select crop region by mouse. This functionality was in old Windows version, and this was best solution for crop.
Holding Shift key while drawing will make you draw only horizontal lines, this is very helpful when you need underline some text
Hot Keys are back: Ctrl+T(Cmd+T) for text box, Ctrl+D(Cmd+D) for drawing tool
Comment Box now looks nice, it's yellow with nice delete(X) button on the right top corner.
Fixed issues about mouse cursor

I hope you will like new improvements, let us know what you want to have next.

And Buzz comes in

2010-08-18T23:47:00.000-07:00

After yesterday update we decided that something is missing and few more feedbacks pointed us to right conclusion: we need Google Buzz!
So here it is now. Happy sharing!

Owely goes social

2010-08-18T06:34:00.000-07:00

Now near every screenshot you have buttons to share it with Facebook and Twitter. After feedbacks of AddThis irritation, we removed this button, and placed most popular networks sharing.
So you can easily share funny screenshots with you friends. Let us know how do you feel about this.

Hurray!

2010-08-06T02:27:00.000-07:00

Finally we finished moving all functions to new environment and that means that all three versions Windows, Mac OS and Linux are working and ready to be downloaded. Still there can be some issues with Linux version, this OS is so advanced that we think there can be big differences depending on distribution, hopefully it work fine on Ubuntu wich is most common one. We want to thank everybody who was involved in testing, helped us to build nice stable product.
There are still a lot of things to do, and we plan much more interesting things later this year. But today we gonna have champagne.

Thank you!

Linux version upcoming

2010-08-03T08:13:00.000-07:00

Today we almost finished Linux migration of the client, it took more than we planned. Summer period took a lot of time for vacation and less for work. Here is small preview of how it.
Also we have slight troubles with auto-run implementation, so it will be posponed for a while.

P.S. we plan to update windows version at same time

Fresh Owely updates

2010-06-13T05:40:00.000-07:00

There were some problem with new Mac OS version, some people had interesting screenshots like on the picture. We thought that it's some sort of avant-garde design hidden somewhere deep inside Mac systems, but found that it some small bug cause it. And you know the smaller it is, the harder is to find it.
I hope you will find this version more stable, there are some other fixes connected with crop function. Big thanks to everyone who helped us to find this bug, special thanks to Pavel Voznenko that spend long hours testing Owely on his Mac.

Let us know if some new troubles will appear, new version on download page
Good luck

Mac OS version is here

2010-06-08T15:14:00.000-07:00

It's nice that Mac OS version if Owely is going live at same time as WWDC 2010, it's not for iphone but just for our apple users, that really want simplest screenshot sharing tool. Right now we continue our work to put same logic for Windows and make nice installer for Linux, but this can take time. Meanwhile "HURRAY!!!!!"

I know that we promised to have cross-platform version till end of spring, but you know how it is, you plan and believe, but it so slow... Still this is beta version, so please give us a hint what is not working and what you think would be nice to have.

About our next plans I want to say that we want to extend drawing logic and make it more efficient for users, make color selection and some helping mechanisms. Hope we will have enough time for everything, because some new functions on the site are coming.

You can download mac version on refreshed download page

Few words about tech

2010-04-28T02:25:00.000-07:00

Hi all Owely people. We'd like to keep you posted and disclose some info on how it's going with new Owely client release for Windows and Mac platforms. Here is the framework we've choosen to develop cross-platform app

We hope you are excited as we are, also small insight of how it will look like, check the screenshot :)

Brand new Design

2010-04-26T03:31:00.000-07:00

We are glad to announce our new design in Owely, it's much more clear and we love it so much that decided release before major desktop application updates. One of the things that inspired us was "Save the Pixel" book, there is nice words: Design is not art, it's communication with client.
I hope now it will be more pleasant for everybody to work, play and having good time during "hard talk" with
colleagues and friends. So don't forget Owely is for simplifying the life, making communication more transparent.

P.S. we are about finishing Windows and Mac OS desktop application. I thought it will be in end of spring, but things are going so well so it will be somewhere near by. stay tuned

Small update

2010-03-29T03:00:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody,

we prepared small update on last found issues, this couldn't help without your feedbacks. So here is the list:

1. Fixed multi-login problem, now if you use Owely of few PC's it will work fine with same login information

2. When you logged on the website it will store your info for a month, so no need to re-login everyday and if you check Owely often then no need to re-login at all. Still if you are using some public PC, you can switch one day mode by checking "it's not my computer, don't store my session"

3. Now there is last 3 news under the login, so you can keep track of last news on main page.

Have nice sunny spring week. Don't fight with your clients, send them Owely screenshots with flowers ;)

New news

2010-03-15T03:23:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

some new publication about Owely on MakeUseOf.com, now it's official that there is use in Owely, hehe. More you can read here.

Now some more exciting news for MacOS and Linux users, we started working on client for these platforms and looking forward to finish it this spring, I really hope it will be in one month, but you know how it can be, you are trying your best and when deadline arrives there is still "few things left". So keep in touch with latest news, and you won't miss it.

Fly with Owely

2010-03-05T06:19:00.000-08:00

Good day everyone,

Thanks to the tons of feedback we got during the last few days, our small promotion actions were more successful than expected. Yesterday was a strange day as we had some small problems with the .NET framework on old Windows XP versions, but during the night everything was resolved.

Few news we've got this day

1. KillerStartups publication
2. Softpedia verified and hosted Owely desktop application, so now you can install it without worries from here

We are preparing new functions for your needs that are upcoming in a month. Our team should have good weekend sleep and renew energy, special thanks to Yuriy Tyukhnin and Artem Kanischev.

Owely Release

2010-03-01T02:17:00.000-08:00

Owely have grow up to be nice bird and now ready to fly. We are happy to present first fully working version. There was a lot of changes during last few weeks, some of those changes was very crucial.

From now on Owely.com will be social project without going into bug tracking system, so we removed everything that inform about this. This decision was made during user experience, our users mostly used it for fast screen sharing between colleagues and just as screen memo. So now we have most full version, lets check what is inside

1. Crop - it was most wanted feature to have ability for croping screenshot to show just one area, so now we have 3 different ways of doing screenshot: Ctrl+Win+D - full screenshot, Ctrl+Win+W - active window screenshot, Ctrl+Win+R - capture the region on the screen.

Also there is new tool Crop in the context menu on screenshot editing:

2. Undo/Redo - for thous who make small mistakes it will return normal ability to undo last changes to go throw all process history to the point where it was looking good.

3. Bookmark & Share/Embed code - issue page now have embed code that you can use in your blogs and websites, also there is ability to share your screenshot by "addthis.com" button that more than 100 services such as "Google, Facebook, Twitter,....". Check for this button

4. Domain change, now main Owely address is Owely.com, sorry for inconvenience but you will need login again, and for thous who use saved passwords in browsers will need to store them again.

Basically thats all, check our latest news on this blog. And let us know how you use Owely.

Big Update

2010-02-08T10:07:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

we've prepared big update for Owely, we are still moving to fill the website with functionality and moving forward for bright future.

A lot of work was done for last few weeks, and in the end we decided to put something special on the top:

1. NO LIMITATION for Free subscription, so now you can view all issues.

2. We added manage functions for issue such as Edit, Delete.

3. New issue view that helps you too see everything on one page, and zoom in to see details on the screenshot (if you will find something is missing let us know)

4. Account settings page http://beta.owely.com/account, you can set your time zone so all dates will show your local time. Also we put Display name it will be shown everywhere in the system, email is too long for that.

5. We did some more preparation for further version adding Projects and Price plans , for now everybody will have only one project but if you check paid subscriptions there will be much goods for that, check http://beta.owely.com/prices.

As usual let us know what you think by comments or write feedback http://beta.owely.com/feedback

User agreement for Owely

2010-01-28T23:46:00.000-08:00

Agree or not agree, your questions are important for us. At least what we think is important, still during publicity of the project we want to talk about Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, so you would know what we are doing with your important data. So everybody that afraid about keeping sensitive information at Owely can sleep well without worries, we are working hard to make walls bigger.

Great news everyone

2010-01-28T03:45:00.000-08:00

(said professor in from Futurama)

We've lunched new version of Owely application that work stable offline and can even go "sleep" if no connection was found. This improvement is step to make tool work offline in the future and synchronize with website when you go online.

Also we are preparing big update for website with advanced function of issue tracking system, deadline settled to 05 Feb, so check the news... big wave upcoming...

Updates overflow

2010-01-18T02:33:00.000-08:00

Lately we had a lot of updates for our client application. Sorry for that, I think we will do some normal update schedule, not faster than 1 week period, so updating window won't appear each morning. So you can set "run at windows start" without worries.

Thous updates was linked with large amount of issues that we found from users feedbacks, thank you for your time, I really appreciate it. Also I want to say something about future plans and stuff gathered from feedbacks:

1. Help is very important to use even for this simple application, so during next week it will be ready

2. We are planing to have more features on Capture Screen mode, so text comments can be inserted right away

3. Also we plan to expand upload feature to multiple uploads in same time or attaching multiple screenshots to same issue

4. On the site there will be some updates during development, for example we will run search and manage of issues, so much more features will appear. Check the blog or twitter to be update :)

Cheers

User sign up open

2010-01-14T11:26:00.000-08:00

Step by step Owely moving forward to beautiful better future, still it's not a Pandora from Avatar, but for our small team it's big step. Free sign up is available at Owely website . Everybody are welcome to join and help us develop this product from small seed to something big and wonderful.

Free account is giving you ability to upload and share screenshots, but it will be limited to view only last 20 uploaded issues. I think that premium functionality will be for thous who want work in Owely everyday and free will be for sharing screenshots without taking care of managing them on the site. Something can change during development, but this is our starting plan.

I hope you will enjoy our beta and let me know if something occurs.

Start

2010-01-14T03:47:00.001-08:00

We are happy to start our Owely service to help people better understand each other when they see only chat windows, emails, tons of text. Breaking this wall is main target for whole our team.

1 minute video that show use case of Owely in ordinary life: