First, I released Ideal BB.NET 3.1.7 today.  This new version fixes a lot of bugs, optimizes a lot of the code for better performance, and adds a few minor features.  Mainly, this release will provide us with a better platform to add some major new features which we plan for the 3.1.8 release.

We also released a new version of the Ideal Science web site.  The updated web site will help us distribute serial numbers which are now required for all Ideal BB.NET products.  Rather than using the license files to unlock features, we are going to give you a serial number which you add to the web.config file. 

We’ve also added a new Wiki for product documentation.  (http://wiki.idealscience.com.)  Going forward we will be placing all documentation there.  This will help us keep our docs more up to date and allow the community at large to edit them.

We sent out a poll recently and based on some of the early results, it looks like the next big feature is going to be a buddy list.  If you haven’t sent in your results yet, now is the time to do it as we are going to close the polls soon and issue a winner for the iPod.  With the popularity of Facebook and Myspace I can see why folks would want a buddy list.

We will be upgrading our forums tomorrow to run the latest version of Ideal BB.NET so that you can try it out before you download and install it.

I probably wrote over 1000 lines of code over the past few weeks preparing for the release of Ideal BB.NET 3.1.7.  This build is mostly a bug fix build, but it also adds a new licensing system which will not only make it easier for us to license the product, but make it a lot easier for you to install and upgrade the product.

With the 3.1.7 release will be a new version of the Ideal Science web site which will allow you to manage your serial numbers and maintainence contracts. 

Lastly, the 3.1.7 release is going to be ready for some big new featues that we’ve got planned.  Which features get implemented first depends on the answers we get from the recently published questionaire.  I’m hoping the reply by email wins, because that is a feature that I’m excited about creating.  I’ve got some great ideas for it.

Ideal Science welcomes you to our new feature survey for Ideal BB.Net. Please take a minute to complete all 10 questions as your opinion matters to us. We utilize your feedback to improve our products and services. Click here to take this survey. We will choose one person by random drawing to win an 8GB IPOD Nano. Because of the small number of people given this survey, your chances are very high to be the IPOD winner!

I’m almost done with Ideal BB.NET 3.1.7.  There are a few outstanding bugs that I’ve fixed, but I’m still needing some more time for testing.  This new build is more of a bug fix build rather than a feature build.  It removes a lot of the legacy 1.1 stuff and adds more efficient ASP.NET 2.0 code.

I do have a lot of neat features planned for the 3.1.8 build.  Among them is a rating system for rating posts and users which will also incorporate a mechanism to search based on those ratings.

Lastly is a better profile system for users that includes buddy lists and some nice AJAX mouse hovers to view profiles of members without needing to open a new page.

I’m hoping to have 3.1.7 wrapped up in the next two weeks.

Ideal BB.NET uses Xheo Software’s Licensing 3.x product to secure the DLL’s and allow us to limit the feature set on each copy of the software. This has worked out fairly well for us but it does have some annoying issues which cause our customers to complain. For example, when you purchase our software, you have to wait for us to build and send you new license files. These files must be placed in the /bin folder for both Ideal BB and Ideal Admin. Thats a lot of work for one piece of software.

Now Xheo has a new product called DeployLX which would allow us to change the way we license our products. Instead of using a separate license file for each customer, we can now deploy with a serial number. So when you purchase one of our products you’ll get a serial number which will unlock it and allow you to get the full feature set. When you need more features (like more boards) we’ll send you a new serial number.

This serial number can be stored in the web.config, registry or a file on your HD. For now we’ll probably just use the web.config since it allow portability between a dev box and a production box.

We are experiencing several problems with this system as it caused quite a hit on our performance. Xheo’s technical support says that their products shouldn’t cause that kind of a hit, but I’m not so sure. We’re trying to work with them to get these issues resolved, but they’ve been less than helpful. Hopefully we’ll be able to resolve it soon so we can get 3.1.7 out the door. I’ll keep you updated.