June 1, 2010 – Reno, NV. – Moraware has increased the limits on attached file space by 5 times the previous limits. Basic Edition now includes 5GB of attached file space. Standard and Enterprise edition include 10GB, and dditional user packs contain 5GB.

These limits take effect immediatly, and apply to all Moraware JobTracker subscribers

More details are available on our company blog: http://www.moraware.com/blog/

For more information about Moraware JobTracker scheduling software, contact us toll-free at 866-312-9273, email or web http://www.moraware.com

If you have a subscription to Moraware JobTracker, good news!  We increased the limit on attached file space to 5 times what is was before. 

What that means is that you can attach up to 5GB of files in Basic Edition.  And, there’s now 10GB for Standard and Enterprise Edition.  Additional user packs come with 5GB of space, too.

We’re really glad that we can bump up the limits.  We’ve been improving how we manage, save, and back-up the attached files on our servers.  Usually, this kind of investment in our hardware and software is invisible to our users. 

This time, we wanted pass on a benefit of the technology gains we’ve made.

For all of you who have the purchased version of Moraware JobTracker (you’re probably in this category if you’ve been using our software since before April 2009) there’s no change in how your plan works.

We had a great time at Coverings – the show was exciting, and the overall mood was very positive. It was fun to see lots of existing Moraware JobTracker users, new faces, and our friends in the stone industry.

A few hundred folks entered our giveaway over the course of the show. There was a big range of reactions to the giveaway, including confusion “iPad, I what?”, skepticism “Nobody really wins, do they?” and bribes “I’ll bring you some chocolate if you draw my name”.

On Friday afternoon, with help from our impartial booth-neighbor Michelle Parker from Bucket Ape, we drew the winning name – Melissa Diaz!

Melissa is an Account Manager for Davison Publishing, which produces the   Tile & Stone Blue Book. Since she claims that she never won anything before, we hope that this is the beginning of a new trend for her.

Congratulations to our winner, and better luck next time to everyone else who entered.

This package just showed up at the door, and it’s going to take a lot of restraint not to open it.

One lucky person is going to win an iPad on April 30, 2010 at Coverings.  Just come by the Moraware booth #2796, and drop your name and phone number in the bowl.  Don’t worry, we’ll have paper and pens, too.

Anyone can win – there’s no need to purchase anything, and existing Moraware JobTracker users are just as eligible as anyone else.

We’re giving the iPad away at the show, but if for some reason you need to leave Orlando before Friday… we’ll give you a call to get your address and deliver it to you.

For those of you who live under a rock – the iPad is the newest, hottest, tablet-style computer from Apple.  The reviews so far say that it’s a powerful, elegant, revolutionary device.  We love new technology, and this seemed like a really cool way to share it.

Last week, I heard about one of my friends experiencing a huge tragedy, and I want to help. 

Kevin Cole is the editor of Countertops & Architectural Surfaces, a great contributor to the industry, and an overall fun and interesting guy.  Kevin’s situation struck a chord with me that I didn’t expect, and all of us at Moraware want to give him support.

Kevin’s son Aron was hit by a drunk driver on February 23rd, and has suffered incredibly severe head injuries that have left him hospitalized with a very slim chance of survival.  Since Kevin is a single dad with two other kids, this obviously has a put a huge strain on his time and finances.

In order to help Kevin deal with the expenses, ISFA has set up a fund.  To make a donation via credit card, please call 877.464.7732, or visit ISFAnow.org and click on the Aron Cole Fund. 100% of the funds will go to Kevin’s family.

We had our user first-ever Moraware JobTracker user group meeting, and overall, it was valuable to all of us.  There’s plenty that we’ll do better next time, too.  The primary thing we hoped to provide was a place for our users to connect with each other…and I think we succeeded.

Here’s the outline of what happened.

1. Introduction by me (Harry Hollander). I introduced the speakers, and gave some useful links for help and staying connected.
   Answers – http://answers.moraware.com
   Help – http://www.moraware.com/help
   Blog – http://blog.moraware.com
   Facebook – http://facebook.com/Moraware
   Newsletter – subscribe by emailing moraware-news+subscribe@googlegroups.com
2. Tips and Tricks by Roderick Bley of Fabricator’s Choice. Roderick covered topics that are beyond the scope of how most people use our software (and how we ever imagined people would use it), so it provided a great alternative to how we usually recommend using JobTracker.  Roderick showed how his company tracks vacations, machine maintenance, and how they deal with multiple shops that handle a huge volume of stone, solid surface, and laminate jobs.
3. How I use JobTracker by Don Hinckley of NBC Solid Surfaces and Connecticut Soapstone.  Don went though how they track a job, from start to finish – starting with a quote, turning it into a job, scheduling, and tracking inventory.  At NBC, Don hired a programmer to extract more detailed reports from Moraware into custom software, so he could have a very specific overview of the work in progress in his shop.
4. How I use JobTracker by Scott Daily of Maxwell Counters. Scott was instrumental in planning our meeting, and very clearly articulated his desire to have a community of Moraware JobTracker users.  Scott also took us on a live tour of how they manage their jobs, and though they have a business that’s similar to the other speakers’ – multiple product lines, servicing large number of big dealers – their approach was very different.  At Maxwell, their approach is intentionally simple.  Unless they all agree that a particular addition to the software is useful, they leave it out.

Thanks again to everyone who participated!   If you’d like to get involved in the Moraware User Group, contact us any time.

We’re about to have our first-ever user group meeting, and I’m really excited, but also terrified.  Since we’ve never done this before, it’s extra stressful… but hopefully there will be lots of value for everyone there.

It’s ironic that we make scheduling software, but I’m totally daunted by this kind of planning.  Here’s what I’ve done so far – if it’s a success, this will be the roadmap for what we do in the future.  If it’s a failure, it’ll be the “what not to do” list.

1. Who – About a month before our planned date, we sent out two blanket emails.  One was fairly impersonal and went out to lots of folks, the other was a personal email from me to a much smaller list.  We also posted the invites on some industry forums.
2. What – There are two questions we want to help answer.  “How do I use your software better?” and “How do other people user Moraware JobTracker?”  I think everyone sharing their knowledge will be great.  To do this, we’ll have 3 speakers that are actual users of our software presenting what they do well.
3. Where – we’ve scheduled our meeting in conjunction with the ICE trade show on 2/8/2010, so lots of our customers will be right there.  This gives us a conference room that’s really convenient.
4. When – I’m a bit worried about the time.  5:30pm after a full day of trade-show might be tiring.  But, hopefully food, beer, and caffeine are the solution to keeping everyone engaged and awake. 
5. How – I’ve had multiple conversations with the speakers, hotel, and show organizers double-checking the room, food, audio/visual, internet, tables, chairs.  None of it is hard, but there are lots of decisions to make – “Are chicken fingers worth $5/person?” “Do we want seating classroom-style or auditorium style?”…and I’m sure things will go wrong.

Still on my to-do list:   Get nametags. Make a feedback card. Practice introductions for the people who’ll be speaking.  Triple-check that the room and services are correct.  Figure out how to keep everything on time.  Videotape the meeting so more people can benefit.

Less than two weeks to go!  Hope to see you all there.

The phone started ringing today with about 10 people who suddenly couldn’t connect to JobTracker. That was strange because the servers were fine and everyone else was connecting just fine. What was special about these few?

Luckily there was a work-around: they could get to the servers by IP address, but just not by the moraware.net domain name. That’s strange because the DNS servers are hosted on the same set of servers as JobTracker, so if you can get to one, you can get to the other.

Then we found a clue: none of us could resolve the DNS for www.moraware.com This was a different story — the DNS for moraware.com has always been hosted on a 3rd party service, zoneedit.com, and apparently both the servers that were hosting the DNS went down at once. We’ve been using this service for 7 years, since we first set up our website, with no problems. But it’s a free service, so there’s noone to yell at when it goes down.

So I quickly rebuilt the DNS entries on our own servers and pointed the domain there, and had it fixed in about 15 minutes.

So why did the moraware.com DNS being down stop just a handful of people from accessing moraware.net addresses? It turns out the moraware.net domain was using name servers named like ns10.moraware.com. Now that doesn’t usually matter because the DNS servers can get the ip addresses for the name servers directly by using what’s called “glue” without having to do a separate DNS lookup. But apparently these 10 customers were connecting to some DNS servers that didn’t use the glue, but instead tried to lookup the addresses on moraware.com, which was failing.

So now moraware.net and moraware.com both use the same cluster of 4 DNS servers so this kind of problem won’t happen again.

Please join us for the inaugural Moraware User Group meeting, being
held in conjunction with the International Countertop Expo.

Location: Tradewinds conference room at Mandalay Bay convention center, Las Vegas, NV.

Date: February 8, 2010

Time: 5:30pm-7:30pm

Agenda to follow. Topics will include tips, tricks, real-life examples, new features, and more.

Space is limited, RSVP to Harry Hollander via email:
harry@moraware.com or phone: 866-312-9273 x802