New look and social network sharing

In this release (1.0.8) we have several new features for you:

• Social Network Sharing: Now you can easily tell you friends about uME via LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Just go to the new ‘More’ tab and select from the options at the top. Also check out the ‘Rate the uME app’ feature and the new location for the ‘Contact Us’ option. Stay tuned for more social network integration features in upcoming releases.
  
  
• New Look: Our creative guru has been working his magic on several parts of the app including new login screens (see below) and snazzy check-marks and buttons. We’re always looking to keep the app looking polished for you.
  
  
  
  We also fixed a few pesky bugs so uME should be even more reliable!
  Here’s how to update to the new version.

New: News updates, usages tips and badges

In this release we have several cool new interactive features for you:

• uME News: Get notified of new features and how to use them by clicking on the Home tab. Swipe a new item to hide it. New tips on how to get the most out of uME every week or two.
   
• Badges: See numbers on the uME app icon and on tabs within the app when events have occurred such as news arriving or queued card sends when you don’t have network coverage.

New: Card Designs and Push Notifications

Version 1.0.5 has some exciting new features:

How to update your uME app to the latest version

Hi folks, since we have a new version coming out shortly I figured I would post a brief tutorial on how to manually update an iPhone app to a newer version.

Step 1: Find your App Store icon and click it.

The red numbers (the badge) indicates the number of app updates that are waiting.

Step 2: Click the ‘Update All’ button.

You can also go down the list and look for ‘uME - Business Cards’ and click just that.

After they start downloading you’ll see a loading progress bar on your uME app logo. Once it’s done, click it to try out the new features.

How to add a logo or image to a uME card

uME version 1.0.4 adds the ability to add logos to your cards. The process for preparing the logo image (especially if you want a clear background on the logo) can be a little tricky, so this blog post will walk you through the process.

Here’s the quick view of what we will be covering:

1. Find Your Logo Image
2. Prepare the Image File (optional)
3. Email the Image to Yourself
4. Save the Image to Your Phone Photo Album
5. Add the Logo to Your Profile
6. Create a New Card With Your New Logo

Step 1: Find Your Logo Image

You may already have an image file of your logo, which you may have sent to a printer for paper business cards at one point. Another option is to use a scanner to capture your logo at a higher resolution. You may want to save the image as a standard format such as PNG, JPEG, GIF.

Step 2: Prepare the Image File (optional)

If there’s anything you would like to do do your logo, such as cropping it, or applying a transparency to it, you should do this now. A good tool to do this is called SnagIt, but you can use whatever graphics tool you prefer. Applying a transparency to the background of your image will mean that you can use it on light or dark backgrounds and you won’t see a different square of color behind your logo, which makes it look more professional.

Here’s what applying a transparency in SnagIt looks like. In this tool you use the PaintBucket tool to paint the Transparent color into the background areas (shown as a gray/white grid here). You may also want to crop the image down to just your logo.

Save the image to your computer when you’re done.

Step 3: Email the Image to Yourself

Use your standard desktop email system (Gmail, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc) and attach the image to it. Send it to one of your email addresses that you receive mail for on your phone.

Step 4: Save the Image to Your Phone Photo Album

Go into the Mail program on your phone. You should see the email you just sent to yourself. At the bottom of it should be a picture of the logo you attached. Tap the picture once. You should see the dialog below. Select Save Image.

Step 5: Add the Logo to Your Profile

• Launch the uME app.
• Go the the Home tab.
• Tap ‘Profile’ in the top right.
• Tap the ‘Edit’ Button
   
• Tap the Add Logo/Icon link.
  
  
  
• Select your image from your photo album on the phone.
  
• You should see the new logo added to your list of logos in the profile.
  
  
  
• Remember to Save your changes to the Profile.

Step 6: Create a New Card With Your New Logo

There are several ways to create a new card:

• Go to the Send Tab > Add Card
• From the Home Tab > My Cards > Add Card

When you are selecting items to add to the new card you can choose the logo you have uploaded to add to your card.

Other Things

• Currently you can only add one logo, image, or profile pic per card.
• We are looking into ways to add the transparency to the image from within the app, but currently the above step are the best solution.
• Let us know what you think from the Feedback tab in the app!

New version 1.0.4 posted

We’ve released a new version that should make a lot of people happy!

Here’s what’s new:

• Stability: Multiple fixes for crashes and stability. Also fixed an email validation problem.
• Logos: There is a new logo feature where you can add your choices of logos to your card designs.
• Notes: Editing of notes and location for events showing people you met. This means you can send a card fast, and then add reminders about them later.
• Offline Support: Now add and delete cards, edit profile, edit history, edit card label and other things without needing an active network connection. It just seamlessly syncs up later.

We never realized exactly how much complexity there is to create an app that has a heavy dependency on storing data in the cloud. Turns out there is lots of potential for a crash when networks are spotty and other fringe cases. In any case, we think we have substantially improved the underlying architecture and increased stability. Bottom line - if you were having trouble with the app crashing, or the email validation system not working correctly, update to the new version and see if it works better for you.

And please send us your comments via the app or the forums. We love to get feedback on what isn’t working and how we can improve.

Please download v.1.0.3

Hi Folks,

We are happy to announce the availability of v.1.0.3.

If you have been experiencing any crashing of the app while it loads, you should see the problem go away with this release.

To update your uME App to the latest version:

1. Find the App Store icon on your iPhone main screen
2. Launch it
3. Click the ‘Updates’ tab on the bottom-right.
4. Click the ‘Update All’ button in the top-right

Or, to download the app from the app store: go here

Major features in the last two releases:

• Add a Company name to your card.
• Additional phone number formatting/entry features.
• Ability to independently show labels and items on card (phone numbers, emails, etc.).
• Support for international character sets.
• User Interface speed ups.
• Helper to speed up email entry when sending cards.
• Fixed bug in email validation for some emails.
• Improved operation where networks access is marginal.
• Added card creation and deletion while offline.

Tip: Determining your App Version - You can always confirm which version of uME you’re using by going to the uME app, click on the Home tab, click on the Settings icon, and going to the About page where it shows the version number.

We’ve put a lot of hard work into these releases so we hope you enjoy the result! Send us feedback if there’s things we can improve.

uME Featured on Make Use Of

We have been featured on a blog called Make Use Of:

“While the v-card method is efficient, it’s not the most elegant way to send contact information. As the old saying goes, images speak louder than words.”

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/ways-send-receive-business-cards-iphone/

Bug in our last release

If you downloaded the latest version of uME (v1.0.1  1.0.2) you may be experiencing some problems with having the app crash when you try to load it. We apologize to everyone who has experienced this issue and ask you to bear with us in our early growth stages of the company. We will be submitting a new version of that app (v.1.0.3) that resolves this problem to the Apple today, and they are likely to release it on the app store within a week. Please download the new version when it becomes available to resolve these issues. We will do our best to be more careful in the future so that your ability to send cards isn’t interrupted.

Here’s what the problem was: It turns out that any users with entries in their addressbook that have malformed email addresses (e.g. no @ in the address) will result in a crash of the app when it tries to scan the addressbook during launch (to determine common email domains for the Send card process).

Workaround: The only way around this issue is to ensure that all email addresses in your addressbook are valid. For many of you this may be too much trouble to manually review. If you can easily spot any bad addresses and correct them then the app should launch properly. The next version will make the app less finicky about the content it scans.

We are a new startup and are still getting our bug testing and development process standardized. Please be patient with us while we work to bring you a great product that will continue to revolutionize how you are able to meet and stay connected to people. Thanks for your support.

-Jeff Axup, CEO & UX Strategist, uME

Blog about us and get Custom Cards!

Interested in getting advance access to our Custom Cards feature?

Custom cards allows you to create up to 3 uME digital business cards with a completely custom layout with images/fonts/colors/icons you select (instead of our stock designs that you get out of the box).

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Blog about us. A brief review with a link to our app is fine.
2. Tell us about it. Log into the uME app, and via the Feedback tab, send us a link to your blog post, and ask for Custom Cards.
3. We set you up. We’ll mail you back with instructions on how to get your custom cards set up.

It’s that easy. Happy blogging!

* We’re still figuring out what services we will eventually charge for. You’ll get custom card access for free for at least a year regardless.