Last week we did our first interactive training online using Leopard’s iChat screen sharing. It was a pleasant experience. The client liked being able to talk and see what we were doing during the session. During the session we had a few glitches with audio but re-establishing the connection solved it.

We are slated to do more sessions in the future. If it proves useful, we will start offering a one-on-one session and a webinar, where multiple people can join in for training. If you have ideas, let us know and we will be happy to implement them.

This weekend ProjectWizards had another meeting because of the exchange rate between the US-Dollar and the Euro. Over the past 6 months we sold Merlin under price - compared to the Euro. As you can see here it is a huge issue for us - as for every Euro-based company:

So unfortunately I had to decide this:

Effective April 3, 2008, the price for ProjectWizards’ Merlin 2 application for new users will increase $20 USD, to $225 USD. This slight price increase is to accommodate for the difference between the two currencies which Merlin operates in, namely the USD and the Euro.

As known, all current Merlin 2.x licensed users will receive all updates within the 2.x series for free. And last not least, as soon the US Dollar gets better, the price will be corrected again.

Many Merlin users have been asking for training opportunities to be able to expand their Merlin knowledge, so when we found the right training partner in London-based LgoConsulting, we decided to seize the opportunity to offer personalized training.

The two-day training session will be held April 22 and 23, 2008, in London, and will offer a comprehensive overview of some of Merlin’s more common tasks. This course will be of interest to both beginning and seasoned Merlin users, as it will cover not only the basics of Merlin but also some of the differences between earlier versions and the latest release, version 2.5, which was released this past January.

The training will take place on April 22 and 23, 2008 at The Space Centre Conference Rooms, Judd Street, Central London conveniently located near King’s Cross St. Pancreas Station. The cost for the conference is £495 payable to LgoConsulting Ltd.

For more information or to register for the Merlin training session, please contact Gareth Watson, Director of LgoConsulting Ltd., at gwatson@LgoConsulting.co.uk or via telephone at +44-(0)845-124-9255.

Since most of us like some exciting bedtime reading material, we figured we compile all of Merlin’s help content into a single PDF. You can download it here.

Merlin 2.5.2 is out into the wild along with many tweaks and fixes. Get it now while it is hot.

Change Log

New Features

• Initial beta version of the French localization added.
• In reports, users can define colors for charts or graphs in the options.
• There are now two new orderings for resource leveling.
• Implemented two separate modes for dynamic shifting. You can now specify, whether only the expected values should be dynamically shifted, or planned and expected values.

Changes

• If opening a remote project file did not work, Merlin now provides a better error description.
• Resource users are now allowed to have empty passwords.
• Activities starting on non-working times without a specified work value do not generate warnings anymore.
• The field “assigned resources” now reflects the actual ordering of the assignments.
• Some minor translation issues and typos have been fixed.
• The English and German Help files are improved.

Resolved Issues

• Some reports did not work correctly with combined projects.
• Under some circumstances Merlin could crash if the login dialog was canceled.
• If an activity group was separated into a linked project the resulting file could sometimes not be saved.
• The values in the field “Default Work” were not persistent.
• Linking a project under some circumstances wrongly modified the start date of the main project.
• Deleting linked projects could lead to exceptions.
• QuickLook previews were generated for password-protected files.
• Under some circumstances, activites could not start on certain working times.
• The report “Next Due Activities” did include groups.
• Warnings were even shown if they were turned off.
• In single page PDF export the outline header was wrongly placed.
• Under some circumstances actual values could not be cleared.
• For certain values, changing the “Given planned duration” was not possible.
• Activating a workspace did not correctly update the print settings if the print dialog had been opened before.
• Notes of linked projects did not show up in the inspector.
• Changing the resource initials did not update the “assigned resources” field in the Gantt chart.
• Finish-finish dependencies were sometimes wrongly allowed between summary tasks.
• Calendar exceptions could not be imported from .ics files.

We were proud to see MacUSer give Merlin 5 mice. You can read the review on their website.

We shy away from answering Merlin vs. X type questions because we don’t think we will be 100% objective (well maybe 90% ). When customers answer that kind of question, we like to share it with the rest of the world. In this case, a Merlin user has posted his opinion on Merlin vs. MS Project. Check it out here .

X’mas is early this year and ProjectWizards couldn’t be happier. Merlin has just won a MacWorld Editors’ Choice Award. That is two Awards in 1 week. We don’t know if we can handle this pace. Just kidding, we certainly can .

Check out the details here .

Good news everyone. Merlin 2.5 Beta just won IT Enquirer Golden Cube Award for 2007. We are very happy to see Merlin 2.5 being recognized so early on in its life cycle.

Check out what IT Enquirer had to say about Merlin here .

Hi folks,

As you probably realized, the Macworld Conference & Expo will again take place in January. Of course ProjectWizards this time will be there as well. You will find us in the South Hall at booth 2638.

I am writing to you, to start the discussion about another “The Mac Project Manager’s Get Together”. The last one in Atlanta, GA during the PMI Congress was very funny and we decided to do another one immediately!

So, the Macworld in San Francisco is a very good opportunity for the “TMPMGT #2″, isn’t it? What do you think about it? Discuss this at our Google Groop