Late in September I had noticed a sharp drop in the sales of Osk.  The current economy has not gone unnoticed with me.  For example in Iceland the price of Osk has gone from 2.300 kr to a whopping 6.900 kr, it had gone from $35 to $47.

I am extremely happy to announce that I have cut about 50% of the price of all software.

Osk has gone from 30 euros to 20 euros, means from $47 to $26.

Why do I do this ?  I am lucky.  I have a job I really like and I have a hobby I really like.  My only thing is that this hobby comes close to pay for it self, meaning I only want to come out even, without charging salary, so pay for licenses of software I use, magazines I read and Internet hosting.  Thats it.

Enjoy.

Version 4.51 has proved that one can never test the software enough.  There have been a few extremely annoying bugs, probably the most annoying was that a few hundred clients could not register their new version.

This has been fixed this version along with 3 other annoying bugs.

I don't like bugs and there has not been many bugs in the history of Osk, and I want to keep it like that.

Rest assured that I have upped the testing seriously and I am now working on a new upgrade, if I was Microsoft I would tell you that this would be called Service Pack 2, but I like to call it Osk versionn 4.60.0.

This version should be out in a short time and everyone will get an e-mail about it.  if you have any ideas or feedback you want to let me know about or if you really want a new feature I want to hear about it.

For the customers affected by these bugs, I am extremely sorry about these amateur like bugs and I will try my best to make sure this does not happen again.

Best regards,

Trausti

A new version has been released.  This is a bug fix release

- Registration not approved error, is now fixed

- Menu item to buy / License application pointed to preferences, fixed

Studlar Software released today Osk version 4.51.0.

This is a major new overhaul of the application and much .

Much faster in displaying data

Much faster picture handling

Better media handling

Improved look

New demo period for all

Added more name support like title, nickname, family name etc...

Improved web export

New and better search features

New and improved person display

Better editing of persons

Better information handling

Much better gedcom import and export

Even faster data handling

Quite a lot of fixes and improvements

Bug fixes

Today, Studlar Software releases a new version of Osk Genealogy software.  This upgrade is a large upgrade and everyone is encouraged to upgrade.  What is new in this version is :

Version 4.31.0:

• Much faster in displaying data
• Much faster picture handling
• Descendant report can display much more generations
• New items :
• Now displays more parents information
• Now shows all parents children
• Each parent child is specially marked on relation

Fixed a bug where displaying of Day of death was incorrect

When resizing the main window it could crash the application.  It is now fixed

New version

Among fixes are fixes in the italian translation

New version.

Bug fix.  If a multimedia file was corrupt or damaged in anyway or not found, the program could stop working.

This bug is now fixed for both Mac OS X and Windows

Minor bug fix release.  The old gedcom exporter could cause crashes and hang up the machine for a period of a time.  This release has a brand new gedcom exporter.

Enjoy this free upgrade

New version.

Today version 4.20.1 has been released.  This version has many new fixes and features.

Both Mac OS X and Windows version was updated.

Fixed a few bugs with windows displaying

Simplified adding new persons.

Improved date support

Better handling of importing dates with gedcom import

Now you can add new persons directly as children, spouses and parents

Easier to connect people

And many new things.

Studlar and Maczot (www.maczot.com) proudly presented Osk as a 50% discount product for one day.  The sales and feedback were outstanding, and more than doubled what I had planned.  Everything went smoothly, besides a wrong screenshot in the first minutes which the Maczot gang fixed very quickly.

Everyone that bought Osk 4.6 is able to get 50% discount of Osk full version and upgrades.

Just to clarify :

The version that was sold on Maczot is almost the same version as the latest version out now. The biggest difference is that the Maczot version does not include upgrades, only bug fixes.

Feel free to drop a line, and ask questions

Osk 4.11 is out.  This release fixes some Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) issues with redraws

I would like to thank everyone that decided to buy and use my products last year.

Thank you all so much

The coolest mac devs, Rouge amueba, have their current Macsanta offer.  The offer is like this.    Every day you get a bunch of new software introduced at 20% discount, after that you can buy any application that has been introduced at 10% discount.

Today, Studlar is in extremely good company with among others Read Sweater software, Daniel Jalkuts software, which is like Marsedit, and barebones software that make BBEdit.

This is the time to buy cool apps.

Macsanta click here !!

Studlar today released Osk 4.10.  This release has new media handling features, like drag and drop picture straight to the media list.

This release fixes also a few Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) issues with regard to redraws.

This version also includes some other fixes.

This version is available to Mac OS X and Windows.

Studlar has released a public beta application.  This application is totally free, no strings attached, use it anyway you like.

Studlar Resizer will help you to convert a huge amount of pictures, resize them, rotate, colorize so you could for example upload smaller and cleaner pictures to Flickr® or any other such service.

This is a beta version, which means it is as good as feature complete for version 1.0, but it lacks quite a few things like an application icon, it has no icon.

If anyone wants to design an icon for the app, please let me know.

The future of this application is totally unsure.  Depending on feedback, if you like the application let me know, let the good people on Macupdate.com know, rate it, send me comments.

Studlar has released Osk 4.8. Major improvements have been done.

Among other issues done for this release

• Much improved media handling
• Unified toolbar
• Bug fixes
• Picture of active person

Studlar software has now added videos explaining how to work with Osk.  These videos are short and explain how to add people, family, media and other information.

A lot of things have happened in the last few weeks.  First and foremost Future Publishing distributed Osk with their magazines, Windows XP magazine and Genealogy.

Osk is now in the hands of tens of thousands of people.  This has of course increased the amount of support e-mail, but it will not delay new versions of the software.

On Macupdate, Osk has reached more than 10.000 download barrier.  In a very short amount of time Osk is one of the most popular Genealogy software out there, it is still by far the fastest one which was the main design goal from the start.

And just wait for Osk 5.0, then it will be the best looking of them all, by far, don't believe me ?  Here is a very small screenshot of a work in progress, and my lawyer requires me to say that this makes no promise of being the release candidate, and things change every day.

Osk 4.6.1 is out now.

This is a bug fix release.  Bugs that were fixed were related to web exporting.

For everyone that does web exporting, this release is a must.

Osk 4.6 is now available for download.

Among new things available in this version is

A bug in the web exporting feature is fixed

Pictures now always maintain ratio, and resize correctly

And a few minor other

It is totally recommended to download this version.

Osk version 4.5 for Mac OS X has now shipped.  Among changes are :

Now available in Italian

Number of items been updated

Windows version will be available real soon

In less than one month there were over 2.000 downloads of version 4.4.  Now less than two months later, well over 4.000 downloads and not slowing down much.

Your Family Tree Magazine, shipped Osk and Container with their current Magazine, both Mac and Windows versions, in issue number 49.  Inside the magazine is an offer, 20% discount to buy Osk, and this discount is valid for more than 1 year.  If that is not worth getting the magazine over, then at least they have great articles.

Their site is at http://www.yourfamilytreemag.co.uk/

Check them out

Osk Version 4.4 is now out for both Mac OS X and Windows, this version works on Vista.

Among new things in this version is :

No limits on family tree sizes

Printing of family trees is now possible

And many many more

Well, no updates in one month ?

I know, it has been a long time since last update.  I have not received any bug reports, and no feature requests.  What does that mean ?  It means that I have been busy with back-end programming, on the things you do not see when using the application but you will notice.

One thing I have been real busy with, is the limit of displaying only 16 generations in a family tree at a time.  So, next version will have unlimited size of family trees, yes, unlimited.

One thing to keep in mind though with pedigree trees.  They grow by a factor of 2 for every single generation, so when you display 25 generations, the size of the picture grows to be larger than 2 million pixels height.

To put this into perspective, a normal wide screen laptop has 900 pixels for the height, and the picture will get to be more than 10.000 pixels wide, so to put things in perspective, you would need 2223 laptops just to display one column, and you would need 1.000 laptops for the width, so all in all, you wold need 2,223,000 laptops to see the whole three at one time.  Normal computer screen is ca 23 centimeters height, and 36 cm wide, so the whole 25 generation three would take :

360 meters height, and 360 meters wide which would give you a wall square meter size of

129 600 square meters.

And you can print the family trees now.

I am working also on a more condensed pedigree tree, but if you do many generations, it will still be quite large.

I have received a few e-mails asking for limits of Osk, here they are :

Number of spouses of any individual : Unlimited

Number of children of any individual : Unlimited

Maximum amount of text information on any individual : 1 GB, ca 4 million A4 pages of text

Maximum generations you can input : Unlimited

Maximum individuals in the database : Unlimited

Maximum generations in graphical tree viewer : 16 *

All this unlimited depends on how much disk space you have.  Each person record is average 4 KB, which you can store more than 20 million persons on a normal hard disk, but by combining disks and buying the latest and greatest disks, you could pretty much store information on every living individual on the planet at this time.  If it takes you one minute to enter each person, it would take you more than 15 years to type in 20 million people, that is without any rest, sleep, eating or any distraction.

The only thing is when you pass over 100.000 persons in your database, it will take a few seconds listing them all.

It is nice to have perspectives.

* Will be fixed in next version

2006 has been a great year for Studlar Software, and Studlar walks proudly into 2007 with new products on the horizon and new ideas for our current offerings.

In august 2006, I released Osk in English, until then it had only been available in Icelandic.  The results were overwhelming, and by the end of the year we are at 10.000 downloads for a genealogy software, which far far exceeded the expectations I had.

Very shortly thereafter I started receiving feedback and feature requests, and I rolled out new versions as quickly as I could, and all in all, since 12th august 2006, there have been 10 versions out there, some minor and at least 4 major versions.

Some of the requests were from people all over the world asking if they could translate the software, and now Osk is available in Russian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish, German and of course English and Icelandic.

MacZot offered us the opportunity to list Container on their page, the result was both impressive and a disappointment.

Then Osk got listed on MacUpdate site as a special promotion.  The result was a very good one and it totally blew us a way.

The best thing about being listed on MacZot and Macupdate is that I was asked to be listed, not the other way around.  That is one of the biggest encouragement's one can ask for.  I would like to use this opportunity to thank both MacZot and Macupdate people for this, thank you very much.

This year that is passing was a big development year, not only did I add Container into Studlar software, but also both products became Universal Binaries.

Today Studlar released Container 2.4.

Among new items in this release :

Fixed the Application Icon

Better handling of multiple cpu's

New back-end system

If you right click items which are web urls, then you can visit the site

If you click on a RSS feed, you will open it up in your favorite RSS news reader

A minor release to upgrade all back end code.

Osk now handles multiple cpu computers much better by distributing load between them.

Let's say that your great-great uncle Remus Starr, a fellow lacking in character, was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889. A cousin has supplied you with the only known photograph of Remus, showing him standing on the gallows. On the back of the picture are the words: -- Remus Starr: Horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison, 1885. Escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton Detectives, convicted and hanged, 1889. -- Pretty grim situation, right? But let's revise things a bit. We simply crop the picture, scan in an enlargement and edit it with image processing software so that all is seen is a head shot. Next, we rewrite the text: Remus Starr was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory. His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad. Beginning in 1885, he devoted several years of his life to service at a government facility, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renown Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Uncle Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed. We now give Uncle Remus a distinguished place inside the family tree, not hanging from it. 

This story is very funny, and very useful.  Who would have figured that the black sheep of the family could be made to look like a knight on a white horse.

I hope people find this story not only funny but useful. 

More jokes if you click this text

Osk 4.2 is now out.  This version features much improved searching

After incredible amount of work, adding new features and re working other parts, Osk 4.0 is finally out.

Go get your copy now.

As with all our software, there is no upgrade fee, upgrades are free.

Current customers will be sent a new license key shortly.

Both windows version and Mac OS X version are now 4.0

Container 2.3 is now out.

The biggest change in this version is that you are now able to print items, and therefore convert them to pdf.

Price has been reduced to $5 for now

Ok, Osk 4.0 is finally out in a beta version.  If you want to test it, send us an e-mail.

This version is a major overhaul of the current version, a long with a lot of new features.  Among things added :

- New control for graphical tree-views

- Improved speed significantly in all major functions, like drawing of trees, searches

- Information.  Now you can put any kind of information on any person.  This allows you to maintain information like sickness, work and anything you like.  You can also have this information show up in all family trees, like list all people in my family and mark people who worked as accountants.

- New family tracer.  When you trace to people to find common ancestor it only shows you the information you want, and is much faster.

- Show generations on the work space.  Will show you the grand parents and grand children of any person.

- Much improved Gedcom 5.5 import

- Universal Binary for Macintosh Users.  Many improvements for windows users as well.

This is just to give you some ideas on what to expect.  There are many many more changes, so many that it is almost impossible to count them all

I sometimes get feedback on my software, and almost always I implement what people want.  Two of those feedbacks are now implemented.

One asked to be able to drag items straight to the icon in the dock, took some effort but is now done.

Another one asked for Undo mechanism in Container, that surprisingly only took a few minutes, and it is unlimited Undo no less.

And I only released Container 2.0 two days ago.

Here is a little experiment for YOU.  Now there is a chance to buy our applications on your terms.  This experiment will run to the end of October.

If you think our applications are worth more or less than what we advertise, tell us how much you are willing to pay for it.  Perhaps there will be an agreement or not.

This is a so called pirate sale, or almost.  Either this offer will end by the end of the month, or it will end when we reach a specific number of sales.  That number will not be given out publicly.

And here is the good part.  How far can you go down ?  The level will go down the further we are in the month and the more sales we do, the more discount will be given.

New in 2.0 :

- Universal Binary
- Improved speed in the application
- Use Save for saving files
- Easily move items between groups
- You can also move items between groups
- Better picture handling
- And more

Unfortunately there were unforeseen bugs in version 3.10 that we released yesterday. We have now released a new version, 3.10b which has the fixed.

Fixes were :

- Fixed a bug in gedcom importing

- Fixed a bug where the program would stop working if you cancelled the operation of opening a new database.

We are sorry for the inconvenience, but we need to ask you to download a new version.

Osk 3.10 is a minor upgrade feature wise, but a significant upgrade speed wise.

We have slaved over every aspect of the software, and increased speed significantly.

You will notice how much faster it is when you have large datasets, for example more than 40.000 to 100.000 persons

Osk speaks Norwegian now too, thanks to Rune Devik, Norway.

Osk speaks many languages now, English, Icelandic, Russian, German, Portuguese, Swedish and Norwegian.

If you would like to see Osk in more languages, or if you would like to translate it, please contact us.

In just 24 hours, we have more than 300 downloads and in total well over 1.500 downloads.  This is totally incredible and I am quite happy about this.

It would be good to get some feedback on how I can make this product even better.

New in this release :

Swedish translation, thanks to Marcus Karlsson from Sweden.

Fixed some localization spelling

Studlar just released Container 1.5

This version has a lot of new things and fixes.  Among them are 

Save As, now you can save items to a file

Copy / Move / Cut, now you can easily organize data between groups

Some smaller issues fixed

Studlar has now released Osk 3.9.5

New things in this version are among other things:

New localizations, German translation done by Wolfgang Mederle from Germany and Portuguese translation done by Helvécio Mafra from Brazil.

Now keep track on sources and residency information.

The software is available now

Windows version finally has an Installer.

Studlar has never charged people for service or upgrades, and has no plans to do so.

This is mainly because we would not be here without our customers, and without our earliest sales we would have stopped a long time ago.

This might of course change in the future, but there are no plans on doing so.

Osk 3.9.5 will be released on Sunday.  When it is released, the price will have gone back to $39, but those who bought at $19 will get a free upgrade.

To name a few things that will be new in this version, Locations and sources.  Now you can set sources for your information, and places where the individual has lived.

Also, we will be releasing two new translations, German and Portuguese.

That will make Osk available in English, Icelandic, Russian, German and Portuguese.

When Osk 3.9 was released, the price was $39.  It was decided to lower the price to $19 as an introduction.  So on sunday (tomorrow) the price will be increased again.

There are no downsides to pay $19, you get all upgrades for free.  It is the same application.

So, now the clock is ticking.....

On August 12th, Osk 3.9 was released in English and Icelandic.  Russian translation followed 2 days later.

So in just 20 days we have had over 1.000 downloads.  This is just awesome.

This has caused us to set a high goal before then end of the year, we estimate 2.000 downloads or more.

Studlar Software Releases Container 1.2

Container is a drag and drop (copy and paste) container of objects.  Objects can be almost any kind of picture and text.

New in this release :

More refined look.

Added groups. Now you can organize and store your items logically in an easy to find manner.

Perfect Unicode support

Due to this overwhelming downloads.  I have decided to reduce the price to $19.00

This is just an offer, and the price will be re-considered in a few weeks.

Jump on this offer

We just received an e-mail from Softpedia, which I am going to paste here :

*********************

Hello,

Your product "Osk 3.9" has been tested by the Softpedia labs and found to be completely clean of adware/spyware components.

We are impressed with the quality of your product and encourage you to keep this high standards in the future.

To assure our visitors that "Osk 3.9" is clean, we have granted it with the "100% CLEAN" Softpedia award. Moreover, to let your users know about this certification, you may display this award on your website, on software boxes or inside your product.

More information about your product's certification and the award is available on this page: http://mac.softpedia.com/progClean/Osk-Clean-22042.html 

Your product review page is located at: http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Utilities/Osk.shtml

Please feel free to link to us using the URL above. If you choose to link to the award page for your product, you may use the award graphic or a text link such as: "100% CLEAN award granted by Softpedia"

Don't hesitate to contact us for more information.

Sincerely,

The Softpedia Team

Osk 3.9 is now available in 3 languages, all in the same application thanks to advanced development.

We now support English, Icelandic and Russian.

Michael Krekin did the translation, and has my thanks for this.

We of course would like to support more languages, and we are looking for help.  So if you think you can help us, don't hesitate to contact us, studlar @ studlar.net

Today, Studlar finished translation of Osk Version 3.9.  To this date, the app has only been available in Icelandic, but is now available also in English thanks to advanced development of compilers.

Osk is a modern genealogy software both for professionals and you.

Easily create entries, import gedcom files.

New things in this version 

New kind of family trees

Able to save trees as jpeg / png pictures

Improved speed significantly

Is both in English and Icelandic.  It defaults to english.  Your computer settings will decide which language is used.

Allow drag and drop of persons, so you can for example drag a person on to the work space.

If you have something to say, let me know, I love getting e-mail.

studlar @ studlar.net

A lot more people are downloading our software than in our wildest dreams.

So we have made a link on kagi.com so if you like our app, and want to see continuing development on it, you can now buy it.

The link is in the menu above.

Hope you like our software.

Unfortunately it is not positive, but on the other hand, not that negative.

Just someone saying that if you do a lot of work with Quicksilver, you can get some of the functionality of Container for free.

Well, Container is free, you only pay us $15 if you like it.  That might change in the future, but it might not.

Why $15 and not $5, or $10 ? Well, it costs to receive money on the internet.  A lot of things to think about, a lot of cost, taxes and so forth.

But we have been using kagi.com for over a year now, we like them a lot, and they take care of everything for us, for some amount of money.  Thats why.

After only a few hours, we have 103 downloads.  This is incredible.

You can see it here : http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/22411

This exceeds everything we had even dared to think about.

This just means, we got serious, we have now decided to push hard and make this a finished product with everything we want to put into it.  Fortunately most of the code is already there, we just need to hook it up.

So keep looking for version 1.5 (or 2.0 depending on how well we do)

I have registered at macupdate.com . I have also registered with Version Tracker, but are not finished there.

Now we have put Container to that site.  Now lets see what happens

What does Studlar mean ? What is Studlar ?

Well, I am into genealogy, and as such I have written a moderately successful genealogy software in icelandic.  I of course have grand parents, and only one of the families that make me... well... me, has a name, Studlar Family, drawn from a very nice place in Iceland called (you guessed it) Studlar.  It is located in the east side of Iceland, near a place called Reydarfjordur.

Well, enough about me, how are you ?