Medical industry analyst Mike Mancuso emailed me today about SimpleDiagrams: “its simplicity and style really made communicating with my client so much more fluid.”
Right on, Mike. I’m happy SD was helpful to you!
More medical symbols
I’m putting a push on to create some new libraries. First up was adding some symbols to the medical library, as it was a little slim on content. I added a few symbols for equipment and patients (thanks Mike Mancuso for the request!)
For users who already have this library, just load it and it will replace the earlier library (all the old symbols are still there). However, for now please restart SimpleDiagrams to see the changes. I’m working on a fix so that you see the changes to your library right away.
Enjoy!
Hello Teachers
Richard Byrne wrote a short review of SimpleDiagrams on his blog Free Technology for Teachers. Thanks Richard! I hope you and other teachers are able to use the program to good effect in planning educational strategies or simple creating diagrams for your students.
There’s been a request for a library of educational shapes. I’ll try to put something together soon.
Nice Comment from LinkTrakr
I received an email from Gobala Krishnan of LinkTrackr yesterday with a nice quote:
“Simple Diagrams is awesome, and exactly what I’ve been looking for all this while. I think people underestimate the power of simple, hand-drawn diagrams for group communication, content illustration and even as sales material. Simple Diagrams is going to change that for good.”
Thanks Gobala! I hope SimpleDiagrams helps you make complex processes easier to understand.
Update: here’s an example of how Gobala is using SimpleDiagrams as part of his marketing:
AIR 2.0 is out, so new version of SimpleDiagrams is now live
AIR 2.0 has been released by Adobe (download it at http://get.adobe.com/air/) so I’ve posted a new version of SimpleDiagrams that works with AIR 2.0.So, I’m happy to release a new version of SimpleDiagrams that works with AIR 2.0!
The new version of SD has an auto-update feature, so now you’ll be notified whenever a new version is available…no need to come back to the site to see if there’s an update.
You can install it now by clicking the download badge on the “free” page.
AIR 1.5.3 to the left and AIR 2.0 to the right
…and here I am, stuck in the middle with you. Ugh. That was terrible. But partially true. You see, I’ve been spending some time improving the SimpleDiagrams code, fixing some bugs and getting SimpleDiagrams ready for AIR 2.0, which should be officially released any day now. (With AIR 2.0, I’ll finally be able to include the automatic update feature, which I couldn’t use before because it didn’t quite behave with Flex 4 and…well, long story.)
Anyways, a complication: A few new users had install problems this week with the current version, which runs on AIR 1.5.3. I started digging, but then realized that all my code is now targeting Flex 4 and AIR 2.0. Arg!! So trying to push out some fixes to AIR 1.5.3 is really tough.
What to do? Well, I sure wish Adobe would just release AIR 2.0 officially, so I can post SimpleDiagrams 1.0.32 and “bob’s your uncle” as they say. But that might be a week or more away. Who knows.
So, until I can get this sorted out (i.e. until AIR 2.0 is released officially), I’ve disabled the free download on the free page to avoid giving anybody else an install headache. However, for those intrepid few who are willing to install the AIR 2.0 runtime in it’s final pre-release form — the AIR 2.0 Release Candidate — you can get the newest version of SimpleDiagrams here.
If you are one of the intrepid, please let me know if you have any trouble installing or getting to the point where you can actually make a diagram.
I never realized how hard it is for a one-man show to keep a software application running smoothly on multiple platforms, forget about improving it or adding new features! But improve and add new features I will. And you will go on to create most excellent diagrams.
New library for energy
Added a new library plugin today with a few energy icons. No “Lower Marine Riser Package” but maybe I’ll add that tomorrow….
Download it now on the libraries page (if, that is, you have the “Full Version” of SimpleDiagrams!).
Donation to Tibetan Healing Fund
I’m very lucky to live in such a wonderful place (Santa Cruz, California) and enjoy the beauty of the redwoods, ocean and California sun. As a small business owner, I try to give back to the community — both local and worldwide — as much as I can. Today SimpleDiagrams made a donation to the Tibetan Healing Fund to help the people living in Tso-Ngon where the recent earthquake caused so much devastation.
I’ve met Dr. Kunchok Gyaltsen, the founder of The Tibetan Healing Fund, personally and highly recommend his organization for anybody who would like to contribute, either to help with this particular tragedy or with his organization’s wider goal of improving the health of the Tibetan community. Find out more at : http://www.tibetanhealingfund.org/
Here’s a short description from his organization of the crisis :
Tibetan Healing Fund needs your support to help us meet the most critical needs of children and families affected by the earthquake in Tso-Ngon (Ch: Qinghai) Province. A rapid series of strong earthquakes hit a mountainous and impoverished area of Tso-Ngon (Ch: Qinghai) Province early Wednesday April 14th, with the death toll rising sharply killing 1,706 people, at least 12,088 others were injured including 1,394 seriously and 312 people are missing (at latest count on Sunday). Many victims, including school children, were buried under debris. 15,000 homes and buildings collapsed and 100,000 people have nowhere to live. The epicenter of the 7.1 magnitude earthquake was about 30 miles away from Jiegu Township, which has a population of 250,000 in and around the town.
Tibetan Healing Fund has been working in the regions of Tso-Ngon (Ch: Qinghai) Province since 2001. THF’s founder, Dr. Kunchok Gyaltsen was born and raised in Tso-Ngon (Ch: Qinghai) Province and most of our in-country staff, friends and family members of Tibetan Trustees, board members and friends live in and around this area affected by the earthquake. “Initial reports indicate extensive damage in Yushu county, with continuing aftershocks,” says Alex Mahoney, regional manager for the American Red Cross programs in Asia. “When earthquakes happen, we expect to see immediate needs for food, water, temporary shelter, medical services and emotional support, as well as for warm clothing and quilts due to the location of this quake.” More than 85 percent of houses in Gyegu have collapsed, a prefecture official told Xinhua. “Many are buried in the collapsed houses, and there are still lots of others who are injured and being treated at local hospitals,” he said. The Hong Kong Red Cross said 90 percent of houses throughout Yushu had collapsed.
Please help Dr. Kunchok bring compassion and healing to this area.
New version available
I’ve posted version 1.0.27, with the main addition being a better Basecamp export feature. Now, you can select who you want to notify when you upload your image. This is in response to a request from one of our users, so thanks for the feedback!
My excuse: Version 2.0
I’ve been away. Without even a note saying where I went. I left you without tweets, without many updates and without even a link to an interesting example of data visualization. How could I? You thought I cared.
Well, there was a good reason. We released Version 2.0 and it needed a lot of help going prime-time. But now it’s live and all is well. Little 2.0 is production ready and already getting good usability reviews:
Now that the initial bumps are resolved, I’m back to working on the other software project, SimpleDiagrams. In fact, I’ve just posted a new version (1.0.35) that has what many users have been wanting for awhile now: fonts! You can now set the font on text area and symbols. (Osamu, ていあん をわりがとうございます。）
However, due to legal restrictions I can’t just go embedding all kinds of fonts for you to use. So, you have to rely on the font library installed on your system. The font drop-down list in SimpleDiagrams will list all the fonts available on your system…so if you want a font that you don’t see there, you’ll have to go buy it and install it on your system. Then restart SimpleDiagrams and you’re golden.
Please give the new functionality a shot and let me know how it goes. WHOOPS. Sorry forgot to mention that this feature is only available to Full Version users. So, there’s no better time to upgrade than now. Get all kinds of crazy and kill your users with font soup. Actually, don’t do that. Use fonts wisely, probably no more than two in any one diagram.
Ok. Now I’m working on more features you’ve been requesting. Next up, the big one everybody has been asking for : importing custom symbols. So I hear everyone go “yeah baby!” and I’m in my head saying “uhhh” because this will take a bit of work. But I’ll stop at nothing to make sure that SimpleDiagrams does what you need. Just in baby steps.
And no more baby pictures, I promise.
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