Hazel is 5!
Five years ago today, I shipped Hazel 1.0.
Hazel started as a personal project that I wrote for my own use but over time I realized that this might be useful to others. Sometimes you just have to dive in. I quit my job to work on Hazel full-time and some months later, I finally shipped my 1.0. Sales were modest at first but over the years it’s paid off. It was a lot of work but it was worth it. If anything, I’ve clocked in more hours over the past few years working pantsless in my home office than over my entire career previous in various other offices.
This blog has been quiet for a while mainly because I’m still at it. Hazel 3 is nearing the testing stage (expect a beta release and more details soon). It’s a bit overdue; I was hoping to release before Duke Nukem Forever but then again, they had bit of a head start. With each new version, I feel like Hazel is fulfilling the vision I had when I first released it five years ago, and then some. Of course, I could never predict the new and interesting ways you have used Hazel over the years and hopefully you, the users, will help shape the product for many years to come.
Enough about the future. It’s Hazel’s birthday today and in celebration, you can get 20% off until midnight tonight (Tues, Sep. 6, Eastern time). Just use this link. Most of you reading this probably have a copy already but I’m sure you have a friend/relative/corporation with deep pockets that could use a copy (or twenty) so send the link along to them. Or buy an extra copy for yourself because you’re just crazy like that. And while you’re at it, have a drink on Hazel’s behalf, or even better, have a drink (or five) before you hit that order page. I hear you save more money have more fun that way.
Category: Business, Hazel, Noodlesoft, Software 8 comments »
September 6th, 2011 at 8:35 am
I hope that you’ll ship Hazel before TextMate 2… oh wait, that’s the Missing Editor™.
September 6th, 2011 at 9:27 am
Will Hazel 3 be on the Mac Store?
I’d love to see more presets included by default, particularly a flow for auto-archiving files in a flow.
And perhaps some LSM + time based system could try to guess if files relate to a single project and label them as such.
September 6th, 2011 at 9:27 am
Oh, and w00t BTW!
🙂
September 6th, 2011 at 10:32 am
Rafael: I don’t know enough about the TM2 situation to comment on (plus as a developer, I understand things on his end). Nonetheless, I do hope to ship first. 🙂
Keith: If you have a workflow already for this, email it to me and I’ll see if it’s something that makes sense in the sample rules.
As for LSM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_semantic_mapping), it’s something I keep wanting to use but I’m not sure how it would be worked in. It’s used in Mail for junk mail but there you have a dedicated viewer with a dedicated button which only has to make a single classification. I’m not sure how users would take to having to train Hazel to do this with their files using their own classifications. Also, it adds a level of unpredictability which users may not like.
Thanks for the feedback.
September 6th, 2011 at 12:43 pm
Congratulations, I LOVE Hazel and can’t imagine working on a Mac without it.
September 7th, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Congratulations on the anniversary.
I just found out about this now, (sept 7, GMT00) via the @macstoriesnet twitter account: https://twitter.com/twitlive/status/111497589777637376
I have tried a trial version and seems great. However didn’t had time then to test-tweak it to my workflow.
With a 20% discount would’ve been an instant buy for me. Too late to the promo, unfortunately. Some other time…
September 7th, 2011 at 3:28 pm
Bummer. Posted wrong link.
This was the one form @macstoriesnet:
their tweet (https://twitter.com/macstoriesnet/status/111497577698050048) links to their macStories wednesday deals which is a bit misleading to their readers (since Hazel ‘5 years’ promo is no longer available today, wednesday).
Once more, congratulations for 5 years of your application.
September 8th, 2011 at 10:06 am
Congrats, Paul. I envy your independence. And I’ve always enjoyed Hazel’s set-it-and-forget-it, Popeilesque nature. I forget it’s there keeping my desktop organized.