MarketBuddy Changelog

What's new in MarketBuddy 3.1.0

Jun 14, 2016

Enhanced interface and user guide.

New in MarketBuddy 3.0.6 (Jan 29, 2015)

New in MarketBuddy 3.0.4 (Jun 14, 2014)

New in MarketBuddy 3.0.3 (Jan 30, 2014)

New in MarketBuddy 3.0.2 (Oct 31, 2013)

New in MarketBuddy 3.0.1 (Jan 7, 2013)

New in MarketBuddy 2.1.1 (Oct 14, 2009)

New in MarketBuddy 2.1.0 (Jun 11, 2009)

New in MarketBuddy 2.0.5 (Mar 19, 2009)

New in MarketBuddy 2.0.3 (Feb 21, 2009)

New in MarketBuddy 1.1.5 (Jul 21, 2008)

New in MarketBuddy 1.1.4 (Jun 5, 2008)

Find contact button now shows hour glass and is faster on large contact lists.
Enhancements were made to the Integrated Browser.
The User's Guide was added to the Trial edition software installer.
Read and write of a password protected database is now substantially faster.
On the Setup panel, the Select Database on Startup checkbox can be set to present a Select Database dialog on startup. This dialog shows a list of databases to select from and View and Edit radio buttons to determine if the database is opened with read only or read/write access. If a database name shown in the list has red text, the path to that database file is incorrect or is not currently reachable (perhaps the shared drive is not connected).
On the Setup panel, the Database List button presents the Database List dialog. Use this dialog to create a list of databases that can be selected on startup. Click the New button to add a new or existing database to the list. Click Edit to edit the Name and Path of the database on a selected row or just double-click on that row. Click Remove to delete the selected row from the list without making any change to the database itself. All data entered into the Database List dialog is stored in the user's preference folder in a file with a name of the form Application_Databases.ini.
The New, Edit or Remove button on the Database List dialog presents the Add/Edit/Remove Database Definition dialog. To select an existing database from this dialog, click the Select Database button. To create a new empty database, click the New Database button.
All data entered into the application is stored in a single database file. By default, that file is stored in the preference folder for the current user account. The full path to that file is shown at the bottom of the Setup dialog. When selecting a database on startup, the database can be opened for viewing or editing. If View is selected, the Save and Backup commands are disabled.
If any database other than the default database from the users preference folder is opened in Edit mode, then a lock file is used to ensure that only one user is editing that database at a time. The lock file is created in the folder holding the database, then deleted when the database is closed. If the database has the name X.ini, then the lock file has the name X_ini.Lk. In the unlikely event of an application or network failure while using a database, the lock file may need to be manually deleted to reopen the database.
The maximum number of contact records supported in a database has been increased from 10,000 to 100,000.
The Site License edition has powerful new commands for managing large groups of contacts. On the Groups panel, click the Manage button to present the Manage Groups dialog. Each button on this dialog presents a dialog for a specific command with options and a description of how the command works. These commands are optimized to process groups containing 10s of thousands of contacts. Group features allow the user to split groups, merge groups, delete or unassign contacts by group. You can find matching fields by group, clean or default specific fields in a group or locate matching field values between contacts in a group. Check a group of contacts for invalid email addresses or automatically clean email addresses by fixing common typos. Group commands can use an email list to extract email addresses from a group or mark unsubscribers in a group of contacts.
The Send Emails dialog has a new Options button. This button presents a dialog with options to control the sending process since some internet service providers place constraints on the number outgoing email messages or the speed in which they are sent. Set "Delay Between Messages in Seconds" to an integer value to add a 1 or more second delay between each outgoing message. Set the Send Message in Batch Size to smaller number to break the outgoing email messages into blocks of X messages with a confirmation dialog between each block.
On the Help menu, the "Users Guide", "Change Notes" and "Tutorial Movie" commands provide easy access to information about MarketBuddy.
Use the Export to Text command on the File menu to save a selected item on the Documents or Emails panel to a plain text file on disk.
Use the Import from Text command on the File menu to choose a plain text file on disk and read its data to replace the currently selected item on the Documents or Emails panel.
Email messages are sent to the mail server using a built-in routine within the operating system of the computer. From the time the message is sent until its status is confirmed, MarketBuddy may consume 100% of the processor making the computer unresponsive to other applications. On a computer with a multi-core processor or hyper-threading enabled, the processor load can be reduced to 50%, 25% or less. For example, MarketBuddy consumes about 25% of the CPU while continuously sending email messages on a Mac computer with a 4-core Intel Xeon chip. Other applications can be concurrently used while sending email messages to a distribution list.
The Maximum Lines option on the Setup panel controls how many lines of text can be stored in documents and email lists. It defaults to 10,000 lines to run on older computers with limited RAM. If this option is increased to 100,000 or 1,000,000 lines, MarketBuddy allocates more memory. If a Windows computer has limited RAM or the disk swap file is configured too small, performance is dramatically reduced.
Either plain text or HTML formatted email messages can now be sent.
The word NONE is allowed in the Password field of email section in Setup panel for email servers that do not require authentication.
The New Job button in the Send Email dialog warns if a previous job has not been completed.
A bug was fixed when copying and pasting text between some text editors (word processors) and the Documents panels. The bug caused the last few characters to be dropped if the text contained non-ASCII characters.
The Site edition of MarketBuddy now supports collections of Click Fields. Use the popup menu above the Click Field list in the Integrated Browser to append the selected collection to the common Click Fields. This feature makes it easy to organize and retain a collection of fields for each press release you distribute. From the Setup panel, choose the Click Fields radio button and define up to 100 named collections. Reorder the list of collections as desired. Each collection can have up to 100 Name and Value pairs of Click Fields.

New in MarketBuddy 1.1.3 (May 17, 2008)

New in MarketBuddy 1.1.2 (Mar 16, 2008)

New in MarketBuddy 1.1.1 (Mar 12, 2008)

New in MarketBuddy 1.1.0 (Feb 18, 2008)

Find contact button now shows hour glass and is faster on large contact lists.
Enhancements were made to the Integrated Browser.
The User's Guide was added to the Trial edition software installer.
Read and write of a password protected database is now substantially faster.
On the Setup panel, the Select Database on Startup checkbox can be set to present a Select Database dialog on startup. This dialog shows a list of databases to select from and View and Edit radio buttons to determine if the database is opened with read only or read/write access. If a database name shown in the list has red text, the path to that database file is incorrect or is not currently reachable (perhaps the shared drive is not connected).
On the Setup panel, the Database List button presents the Database List dialog. Use this dialog to create a list of databases that can be selected on startup. Click the New button to add a new or existing database to the list. Click Edit to edit the Name and Path of the database on a selected row or just double-click on that row. Click Remove to delete the selected row from the list without making any change to the database itself. All data entered into the Database List dialog is stored in the user's preference folder in a file with a name of the form Application_Databases.ini.
The New, Edit or Remove button on the Database List dialog presents the Add/Edit/Remove Database Definition dialog. To select an existing database from this dialog, click the Select Database button. To create a new empty database, click the New Database button.
All data entered into the application is stored in a single database file. By default, that file is stored in the preference folder for the current user account. The full path to that file is shown at the bottom of the Setup dialog. When selecting a database on startup, the database can be opened for viewing or editing. If View is selected, the Save and Backup commands are disabled.
If any database other than the default database from the users preference folder is opened in Edit mode, then a lock file is used to ensure that only one user is editing that database at a time. The lock file is created in the folder holding the database, then deleted when the database is closed. If the database has the name X.ini, then the lock file has the name X_ini.Lk. In the unlikely event of an application or network failure while using a database, the lock file may need to be manually deleted to reopen the database.
The maximum number of contact records supported in a database has been increased from 10,000 to 100,000.
The Site License edition has powerful new commands for managing large groups of contacts. On the Groups panel, click the Manage button to present the Manage Groups dialog. Each button on this dialog presents a dialog for a specific command with options and a description of how the command works. These commands are optimized to process groups containing 10s of thousands of contacts.
Group features allow the user to split groups, merge groups, delete or unassign contacts by group. You can find matching fields by group, clean or default specific fields in a group or locate matching field values between contacts in a group. Check a group of contacts for invalid email addresses or automatically clean email addresses by fixing common typos. Group commands can use an email list to extract email addresses from a group or mark unsubscribers in a group of contacts.
The Send Emails dialog has a new Options button. This button presents a dialog with options to control the sending process since some internet service providers place constraints on the number outgoing email messages or the speed in which they are sent. Set "Delay Between Messages in Seconds" to an integer value to add a 1 or more second delay between each outgoing message. Set the Send Message in Batch Size to smaller number to break the outgoing email messages into blocks of X messages with a confirmation dialog between each block.
On the Help menu, the "Users Guide", "Change Notes" and "Tutorial Movie" commands provide easy access to information about MarketBuddy.
Use the Export to Text command on the File menu to save a selected item on the Documents or Emails panel to a plain text file on disk.
Use the Import from Text command on the File menu to choose a plain text file on disk and read its data to replace the currently selected item on the Documents or Emails panel.
Email messages are sent to the mail server using a built-in routine within the operating system of the computer. From the time the message is sent until its status is confirmed, MarketBuddy may consume 100% of the processor making the computer unresponsive to other applications. On a computer with a multi-core processor or hyper-threading enabled, the processor load can be reduced to 50%, 25% or less. For example, MarketBuddy consumes about 25% of the CPU while continuously sending email messages on a Mac computer with a 4-core Intel Xeon chip. Other applications can be concurrently used while sending email messages to a distribution list.
The Maximum Lines option on the Setup panel controls how many lines of text can be stored in documents and email lists. It defaults to 10,000 lines to allow MarketBuddy to run on older computers with limited RAM. If this option is increased to 100,000 or 1,000,000 lines, MarketBuddy allocated more memory. If a Windows computer has limited RAM or the disk swap file is configured too small, performance is dramatically reduced.