Thursday 3 January 2008

2008 is when it all happens

First of all I'd like to say Happy New Year and I hope that you all had a good christmas (if you celebrate it).

I have a slight update on the new program which we are coding but it's not a good one and I'll explain below. I am estimating that the first realistic release of this new product will be in March depending upon how development progresses. The delay is not because we are not working on it, we have actually been developing it near non-stop each evening since the last release of FastIMF and have already achieved a heck of a lot, believe me. The main reason is that I have made the decision to not release what we have now, but rather wait until it has a more 'complete' feel to it and at least some of the documentation done (this is mainly developer API documentation, it's still easy to use as a regular user). This is so that it doesn't scare new users by giving the product a bad 'first impression'.

We have our domain all registered but we have the website to code which will be very database driven and will allow you to request features, place support issues and much much more. You know that box or software that you pay £1000's for, just for detecting spam email? Get ready to throw it in the bin. :)

Although it's starting to sound bloated and full of features you may not use, this was one thing I didn't want. A program that's 500mb will be painful for everyone so I will confirm that so far it is around 500kb (yes, not even 1mb!).

I will keep you all updated every few weeks with another post here. Again, I can only thank you all for your patience and assure you that it will be more than worth the wait.

It would be nice to hear from some of you, even if it's just to say how your christmas and new year celebrations went so please post a comment!

8 comments:

Andrew said...

Looking forward to your new release and all the extra features you say you have added. I just downloaded your .4 release and will test it out tonight after I can reboot the server. I originally downloaded this just for white listing because I have someone we used to receive email from for over a year, now all of a sudden their email is getting an scl rating of 7 or above. So, are you saying with your next release it will be able to replace expensive spam filtering software? Could you give us a list of some of these new features that will make this possible?

Anonymous said...

I just installed it and it looks nice!
May I just give you some suggestions/bug:
- Using it as a service (greatest improvement)
- When adding a new email address to the white list, it's not displayed. You have to close and reopen the white list menu
- Add some display options: row to display the "from:", "to:", "subject", "SBCL" fields. This allows to sort the spams.
- Send a report to the administrator
- Send an alarm to the administrator (email) when he doesn't check blocked emails after a defined amount of time
- add an automatic refresh
May be more.
- May I help you in the developement (C++, Delphi?)

It's a great job.

Philippe (cerber_at_sunrise.ch)

aurora said...

Hi Philippe,

We have nearly finished the first beta of our new product that is far superior to my quick application that I made here and fulfills your requirements.

Mid way through last year development stopped but we are hoping to start it up again soon, it's so close to being released as a beta and I know everyone will love it.

We are hoping to support Exchange 2003 and 2007 straight "out of the box" so to speak but so far have only concentrated on 2003.

Once we enter beta stage, we will have a proper domain registered for it and hope the community join in and code their own plugins so that you can achieve whatever you want with ease.

Again, thanks for the feedback, it's amazing that I still get feedback for this even though I haven't contributed for some time, it gives us boost to pick up and carry on with the better product.

I will post here and maybe even email some of you when we hit this important next stage.

Many thanks.

Anonymous said...

aurora, what features are you planning for this new release? when it be out? You can email me at rl@terralink-global.com.

Unknown said...

Where can I find the previous version? The link doest work anymore.

aurora said...

Ron,

We are nearly there with the next product now, but we want to make it more professional seeing as there is demand for it. We still have to code module/plug-in support but other than that, the base is pretty much completed.

It currently runs as a service and has no GUI, the GUI element will be part of the plug-in framework and developed as a separate entity. We want the base solid and working before we make it pretty and user friendly. Our biggest struggle is how to tackle the database side of the service to make it user friendly for you all to use and install but we will get there.

Andres: the link still works for me?

Anonymous said...

Are you still planning on releasing your new version any time soon, or have i missed a link to where it is currently aviliable.

Many thanks

Roshan said...

Hi
I am anxious to see you new release which is supporting for Exchange 2007.

Keep up the good work, just thought of putting a comment to appreciate your work here.

Thanks
Roshan