PillBox v1.1 Additional Info

After some discussion with my company partner we have come to a solution for adding support for those who take medicine more then one time a day (mourning, noon, and night). This feature has been request by quiet a few people, and I thank those who take time to give us suggestions... Their suggestions helps us improve what we have to offer.

Simply put we will be adding the option to have two additional rows adding essentially two additional times a day medicine can be scheduled.The following images is just something I threw together to give a visual idea of my concept.



Via the control panel the person has the option to have one, two, or three scheduled times throughout the given day. If your a person who only takes medicine once then you will still have the option to only see one row.

This update should also have some minor performance improvements and some visuals improvements, hopefully including growl notifications. Although fairly simple to code it will be time consuming and we may not have the update tested and ready until mid to late April as I'm fairly busy with other priorities...

I'll keep you updated as we progress with this update.

PillBox Suggestions

I have been getting numerous suggestions in regard to ways to improve our PillBox widget. The main suggestion being they take medicine multiple times throughout the day and they want the widget to support this. I hope to address his suggestion in our next update coming some time april or may, when im not entirely sure, and add the capability of Mourning, Noon, and Night.

Earth Hour

The one hour Earth Hour event has begun in our time zone and we have turned the lights off until 9:30 PM ET. The website is still fully functioning... If you haven't already you still have a chance to bring awareness to this initiative by turning off power to unnecessary items around your house or business.

Side Note: We will be adding a new page to our website within the next day or so, so keep an eye out for that.

PillBox has arrived! and some other stuff too...

PillBox has officially been released and can be downloaded via Apple.com, our Blog, or our Website. This widget is new so problems may appear as time goes on, but we gave it extensive testing and our pleased with how it works. All the features promised made it to the final release and eventually we hope to integrate Growl Notification with it. This feature was planned but never made it to v1.0, but expect it in the coming months.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/pillbox.html

http://avwidgets.site90.net/PillBox.zip

PillBox is our last planned widget we will be releasing for awhile, I plan on taking a bit of a break from programing and design for a little while although we will continue to improve our current widgets. I'm planning to update Carve A Pumpkin, Build A Snowman, and Dashboard Resurfacer by May, this will add some beneficial features to the widgets.

Now available to the public is our Mobil Website, this website has most of the features of our current website designed for use with the iPod Touch or iPhone Safari browser. It is still in Beta but fully functional and should make browsing and accessing our website even easier with faster load times and larger text. When accessing our website it will automatically detect if your using a iPhone or iPod Touch and will forward you to our mobile website. Once your there you can always choose the option to view the regular non-mobile version if you wish.

Earth Hour is this Saturday and as previously mentioned we will be participating in this event from 8:30 ET until 9:30 ET. At this time we will "Turn the light off" and we encourage you to do the same. The website will still be fully functional...

This weekend as previously mentioned as well, we will be adding an additional page to our website which will be periodically updated with custom Apple docks and icons free of charge. These custom docks can be used to personalize your Apple computer and we hope to eventually provide a wide variety of high quality docks and icons.

Side Note ~ We reached 1,000 hits on our website since the redesign! :)

PillBox Video Preivew, and more!

As promised I have released the video preview of PillBox are next planned widget that is set to release next Friday. You can view the video either below, or by visiting our Youtube Page. I hope everyone enjoys this new look at our new up and coming widget.



We have plans to add two new page to our website soon, the one page will feature custom Docks and Icons for the user to download and use for free. The second page will feature misc. programs and projects we at Alternative Visuals created and would like to share, all of these things will be free. I don't have a set date yet when these things will become available, I'll keep you up to date.

We have also been working on a Mobile friendly version of our website, making it easier to navigate and view the site with your iPhone or iPod Touch. I hope to have it up and running in the next week or so...

The last bit of news is what our site will be participating in March 28th. On this date people, companies, cities, and countries will be participating in Earth Hour. Earth Hour for those who are not familiar:

"Earth Hour is an annual international event created by the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature/World Wildlife Fund), held on the last Saturday of March, that asks households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change. It was pioneered by WWF Australia and the Sydney Morning Herald in 2007,^[1] and achieved worldwide participation in 2008."

We at the site have signed up for this and we will "Turn Off The Lights" of our website in awareness of Earth Hour for one hour beginning at 8:30 PM EST. I hope that you to can take part in this world wide event.

General Updates

Happy St. Patricks Day everyone :) Just would like to share a few bits of news and keep everyone up to date on what all is going on.

As you have noticed both the website and twitter page got a little less dull looking with the addition of a new background style witht the grey stripes. The website is still fairly new and we will continue tweaking the style/layout of the site to further perfect it!

We just got done finishing the video preview for PillBox, I will release it on our Youtube account and Blog this Friday afternoon. This should give everyone a simple overview of what it will offer to the user.

Few remineders:

~ We are always accepting donations!

~ We would love for you to join our social network as well with either Twitter, Youtube, or Facebook

~ We added a digg feature to the website's widget and web app page.

That is about it for now, expect more in depth information Friday on current events/plans.

Alot of News!

It has been a couple days since the last blog post and I have a lot to share with all of you! First off the widget has officially left the coding phase, which means the widget is in working order, and it's now in the tweaking/testing phase. I hope to finish all the visual tweaks and begin the official testing this weekend.

Speaking of testing, we are looking for a few volunteers to test and critique our widget. Simply email us and we will get back to you!

Next Friday we are going to release a video preview of the widget displaying its features and how it works to give everyone a better concept of it. Everything is still set for a release date of March 27th baring any delays or problems. Below I posted five screen shots!

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I updated the website as well with more information regarding PillBox if you want to take a look.

We have a few things in the works for some projects that will occur after PillBox has been released, we hope to get a few more things out to the user by the end of May. As we have mentioned before we will be updating CAP, BAS, and DR all of which are due for some upgrades. Build A Snowman has a Web App version and eventually I want to release a Carve A Pumpkin Web App but not sure if it will happen by May.

Our company has been growing and its popularity is doing the same, we are getting amazing support by the users. I have come to realize that we can increase our market by expanding what we have to offer. In the coming months we hope to begin offering free custom made Docks and Icons so you can have the most visually pleasing experience on your Apple computer!

Expect more news and announcements as time goes on!

Screen Shots!

Just like to post two new screen shots of PillBox, these show the back panel of the widget and some of the possible features. Nothing shown is final or guranteed to be in the released version. If all goes well I hope to begin the testing of the widget by the end of the week. Testing should last about a week to make sure everything is running correctly and as desired. I'm still planning for a March 27th release.

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Official PillBox Description

The following are the features as of now for the next new Alternative Visual widget, PillBox!

• Track if you have taken your medication for all 7 days of the week.


• You have the option of entering the time in which your medication is taken as a reminder.


• The widget will use the time given and automatically set up alerts if you miss your medication by 30 minutes and by one day.


• The widget automatically indicates which day of the week it currently is.


• It Uses Pills as visual indication if you have taken your medication or not.


• All information and settings are saved regardless if the computer is turned off or the widget has been removed.


• You use simple clicks of the mouse to open the pill box lid and to remove the pills that are within the box.


• The Alert Option and Time Option can be easily turned off through the preferences' menu.


• Features automatic alerts when new updates are available for the widget.

A video preview will be available, hopefully coming this Friday. We have set a release date of Friday March 27 for the widget, at the current time we should easily meet the deadline if all goes well. We will keep you posted on further updates.

PillBox ahead of schedule!

When we first made the announcement of this new widget we mentioned a possible release date of April, as it stands now we are ahead of schedule and hoping for an end of March release. The date may possibly be the last Friday in March but we can't say exactly until we get closer.

We still have alot too do with the widget in regards to programing it, we are still running into technical road blocks that should be able to be overcome. Once programing is done it will go through extensive testing that may take up too a week, this will all be done to make sure you receive a well constructed working widget.

We currently don't have a set list of features just yet but we hope to get more information out soon with a possible video preview. So stay tuned for future updates with this widget.

PillBox Screen Shots

Here are some screen shots of our new widget we are currently working on. There isn't anything major but hopefully it will give you an idea how it will look.

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