Wednesday, December 12, 2012

New Release

We just submitted a new release - hopefully it will be finished with certification soon!!
This was a big update - added rotating tiles, support for bmp images and improved the functionality for launching a website!

Monday, November 26, 2012

Multiple Website Workaround

Since we haven't yet created the feature to add multiple website links, I wanted to publish a workaround that I have for those of you who would like.
-Create the tile configuration you would like
-Type the first website you would like to bookmark
-Click 'Pin It!'
-Click 'Pin To Start' for just one tile
-Click anywhere than the pin to start box until the remaining tiles disappear
-Change your website to the next desired bookmark
-Click 'Pin it!' again
-Click anywhere than the pin to start box, just once
-Click 'Pin To Start' for the next desired tile
you can repeat this for as many tiles/links you would like
Hope this helps!

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Tile Genie limitations

The bug for the website launch is fixed as I posted earlier today, but I want to inform everyone of the software limitations.

Website Launch:
Due to security reasons, Windows does not allow a tile to launch another app. Therefore we are not able to launch Internet Explorer directly. The only way that we are able to launch a website is to open our app, and launch a website (essentially a hyperlink that we embed on launch when clicking on your custom tiles). If we could make this more direct, we would. This is not so we can make money on ads -in fact may have the opposite effect and limit ad revenue due to the short duration of the impression.

Photo formats:
Windows only allows .jpg and .png files for tiles. We have disabled the ability to select .bmp files. We hope to allow these in the future.

Camera setting for some portrait photos:
Some cameras we have found do not actually rotate photos. they have the photo in landscape mode permanently, but tell windows to show it rotated. This makes the photo experience act very bizarre in our app. We are currently working on fixing this scenario and will hopefully have this fixed soon.

Bug fixed!

The new release is out, and now your webpage should launch with no issues!

For those of you on a non-touch device, we made it more clear on how to zoom your photo.

We also found out that Windows tiles only support .jpg and .png files so we removed the ability to use .bmp files. Our hope is to add support for all photo types, but since there are so many programs that allow you to convert files, we figured that we should prioritize other features first.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

We are live... BUT...

Our app was approved last night at around 10PM and we went live, but almost immediately we found a bug in the website launch. It works sometimes... but not EVERYtime. There is a timing issue which makes it so that if the app does not launch in a certain amount of time, it will not launch the URL. This was noticed immediately and we resubmitted the app for certification. We are just waiting for the compliance check in the app store and this bug will be fixed! Once this update is available, all you have to do is update the app and voila! your tiles should launch to a website everytime - no need to repin your tiles.

Thanks you for all your feedback! We welcome both positive and constructive negative feedback. If there is something that you don't like, please let us know and we will do our best to fix it.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

We have a Facebook page!

Please visit us at https://www.facebook.com/TileGenie!

We would love it if you take a screenshot of your Windows 8 start screen to see how you used Tile Genie! To take a screenshot, hold the 'windows flag button' + printscreen. The screenshot will then be located in your pictures\screenshot folder.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Tile Genie v1 created!

We have just submitted Tile Genie for approval to the Windows Store.

Tile Genie v1 has the following features:
-The ability to pick one of your photos and create tiles for your desktop
-Zoom and scroll your photo to get the desired placement on the tiles
-Adjust the grid size
-Adjust column width from square to rectangular tiles (though beware, you are able to do wide,small,wide, but the Windows Start Screen does not allow this configuration)

The next version will have the following features:
-the ability to add a URL behind the photo tiles! (maybe files too, but URL for sure!)

Hope you enjoy customizing!