Netizen Newsfeed

It seems like some of the initial optimizations for dual-core CPUs that we made available last month backfired. While it made packaging parcels and LAN transfers significantly faster, it also caused an unacceptable amount of CPU time to be consumed by the application. We are making a new version available to correct this problem. Expect a more feature laden release next time around.

Speed, speed, and more speed. Some of our loyal users have pointed out that Netizen was not taking total advantage of their LAN’s network capacity and that they were hoping for more speed in these situations. So for this release, we have included a number of enhancements to ensure that Netizen can detect, adjust and go full throttle in a LAN environment. Your speed will vary of course depending on how fast your computer can pump data to the network. We have added enhancements that will allow hyper-threaded and dual-core computers to scale better in those environments. This release also fixes some problems discovered by our users that would unexpectedly crash Netizen during the middle of transfers. We also make sure that, like the Windows version, the Mac OS X version only uses one window for the application and that permission problems during startup won’t prevent the application from running.

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BETA RELEASE 6 HAS BEEN DEPRECATED IN FAVOR OF BETA RELEASE 7.  PLEASE UPGRADE TO THE LATEST VERSION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. 

Today, we are proud to announce Netizen Beta Release 6.  This release includes a number of convenience features that our users have long been asking for.  First and foremost is the addition of the ability for Windows users to minimize Netizen to the system tray.  If there are outstanding parcels waiting to be picked up or are if there are downloads or uploads in progress, Netizen will ask the user if they want to minimize the application to the system tray instead of closing the window and shutting down.  This release also registers the pickup slip and parcel file types with Windows, allowing users to double-click on a pickup slip from their desktop to load it onto Netizen.  This is a good alternative to copy and pasting pickup slips and should allow users to send pickup slips as email file attachments or post it on their blog or website.  This release also corrects an upload progress calculation error in the "Parcel Details" screen and improves the networking engine to ensure more efficient uploads and downloads.

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BETA RELEASE 5 HAS BEEN DEPRECATED IN FAVOR OF BETA RELEASE 6.  PLEASE UPGRADE TO THE LATEST VERSION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.  

As mentioned in one of our previous posts, today we are going to start providing a secure web bridge service to all our users for free. Starting with Beta Release 5, netizens behind restrictive firewalls will be able to send and receive parcels using a standard HTTPS connection. No configuration is necessary. The application will take care of switching to secure web bridge mode when the need arises.  With Netizen Beta Release 5, all the plumbing is in place to ensure that connectivity is guaranteed across a wide variety of networks.  Since this is the first release of our web bridge feature, minor bugs may still hang around. If you or your friends encounter any problems sending or receiving parcels, feel free to send me email and whine.  Rest assured that those problems will be addressed quickly through our auto update mechanism.  Aside from the new web bridge feature, this release contains a number of critical bug fixes and is a required upgrade for all users.

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BETA RELEASE 4 HAS BEEN DEPRECATED IN FAVOR OF BETA RELEASE 5.  PLEASE UPGRADE TO THE LATEST VERSION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.  

We've been receiving emails from our users asking for Universal Binaries support for Mac OS X.  We're proud to announce that starting with Beta Release 4, Civil Netizen runs natively on both Intel and PowerPC based Macs.  It took a bit longer to get to this point than expected since we ran into some problems getting Netizen to run under the new Firefox 1.5 platform.  We're about a month behind our intended release date, but we believe that it has been well worth the wait.  Beta Release 4 is much more stable than our previous releases and it addresses some of the more serious issues our users have been experiencing.

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BETA RELEASE 3 HAS BEEN DEPRECATED IN FAVOR OF BETA RELEASE 4.  PLEASE UPGRADE TO THE LATEST VERSION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. 

Introducing Civil Netizen for Mac OS X. Though we’re two weeks behind our intended release date, we were able to stamp out a lot of interoperability and Mac OS X specific bugs with that extra time. We have yet to buy our first Intel Mac, and are still working on migrating Netizen to the new Firefox 1.5 code base, so it may take one more release cycle until we support Universal Binaries.

As mentioned in my previous post, this is a REQUIRED UPGRADE. I tried to maintain network compatibility, but given all the interoperability work and bug fixes required to get this Mac version going, I had no other choice. Previous beta releases of Civil Netizen will not be able to connect and share parcels with this new release. To alleviate this hassle in the future, this release includes automatic update notification so that users can be notified of future versions.

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BETA RELEASE 2 HAS BEEN DEPRECATED IN FAVOR OF BETA RELEASE 3.  PLEASE UPGRADE TO THE LATEST VERSION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

During the last month we have collected lots of good feedback and bug reports from our users around the world. After many long and late nights, I'm happy to announce our much improved second beta release. We have implemented a number of the most requested features and fixed some of the most annoying bugs.

Parcel Pickup/Download Resumption. This has been in the works for quite a while and it missed the original Beta Release 1 ship date. Now you no longer need to worry about broken downloads, intermittent wireless connections, or if your friends are not online. Netizen will continue to periodically start, retry, and resume your pickups until it is downloaded safely on your computer

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BETA RELEASE 1 HAS BEEN DEPRECATED IN FAVOR OF BETA RELEASE 2.  PLEASE UPGRADE TO THE LATEST VERSION.

Finally, we reached public beta.  This is our first public release and we worked really hard and spent many late nights to get this release out the door.  We hope that users find this release of Civil Netizen useful for those everyday file transfer tasks.  Many thanks to our friends and family who helped take much earlier versions of our software out for a walk around the Internet.  We know the software isn't complete, and we're still missing some obvious features, but keep an eye out for newer versions as we continue to improve.

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