I arrived in Albania this morning after a long train and ferry journey from Cologne, Germany. As a true geek, I have my MacBook Pro with me. On the journey I alternated between being enchanted by Mediterranean views, watching old South Park episodes, and improving the Poker Copilot unit tests.
I’m yet to find wifi in this unique and chaotic country so I’ll sometimes be slow in replying to Poker Copilot questions and issues for the next week or so.
The #1 support issue with Poker Copilot is making sure the customer has enabled hand history recording in PokerStars or Full Tilt Poker. Almost daily, someone contacts me because they have this problem. It’s causing many customers (and potential customers) unneeded frustration.
Therefore the coming Poker Copilot update has a practical solution: the casino detector. This is shown for all new users. It can also be summoned at any time using Window -> Detect Casinos.
If PokerStars or Full Tilt Poker are not found, the Casino Detector shows download links. If hand history is not enabled, it shows links to instructions on what to do.
…or help files, or some nice HTML pages explaining how to use Poker Copilot. I foolishly – even arrogantly, perhaps – claimed that Poker Copilot would be so easy to use, there would be no need for documentation.
Then I noticed some of the Google search queries that send people to my site. Queries like “how to use Poker Copilot”, “Poker Copilot help”, “Problems with Poker Copilot”. In a way, I feel a little chastised. 🙁
So over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to resolve this, hopefully in time for the release of Poker Copilot version 1.3 (the one with the funky dashboard).
As of ….. now, I’ve frozen the code for the next update of Poker Copilot. The only development now is testing and bug fixing. This means I’m on track to release update 1.3 in mid-October.
Naturally all existing licenses will work with the new update.
There’s a new screen in the upcoming Poker Copilot update I’ve particularly enjoyed working on: the dashboard. It’s given me a chance to try something creative and new, as well as a chance to apply and hone the skills from my professional work with data warehouse user interfaces.
Hopefully it will be invaluable to online poker players, and will make Poker Copilot something quite unique amongst poker tracking software (other than simply being the only actively-maintained Mac OS X product).
Enough words, time for pictures. Here ’tis:
The released product may be a little different, in terms of layout and statistics shown. Possible future enhancements include customisable dashboards and HUD-style mini-dashboards.
I type similar phrases or paragraphs often in support e-mails. There’s software that will auto-type repeated fragments for you, to make e-mail support easier. I found Mac OS X software to do this: Typinator. Great name, I’m almost want to buy it because of the name alone.
Here’s an example of how I use it. In an e-mail I type:
rgds
Typinator instantly replaces it with:
Regards,
Steve McLeod
Poker Copilot
In fact, it just did it now in this post. Twice.
Pretty neat. Before I buy this software, please let me know if you are aware of a better product. Free would be good, too.