Life Balance™ News

Download Life Balance v3.2.5, which is a great free update for all Life Balance v3.x customers for the platform on which you have a license. If you have an earlier version of Life Balance, get in touch with us and we'll see what we can do to bring you up to date with the latest!

Join Us! at the PalmSource Euro DevCon 2004 at the Hilton Munich Park Hotel in Munich Germany, September 28-29, 2004. Register at: www.palmsource.com/eurodevcon

We are being encouraged to localize our Life Balance software. Indeed, we are being encouraged to hop to it! So, being the llamas that we are, we built a nifty web based tool to try to make this happen with the involvement of our terrific user community. :-) The idea being that our users will have to live with these translations, and we don't know how to judge whether they are good or not without input from the customers who know.

The tool allows customers to translate resources that haven't been translated yet. Nobody has to commit to doing the whole thing. Do a little, or do a lot. Many hands make light work!

You can vote on the existing translations. You can suggest a better translation, and indicate that you think a translation needs a correction.

We are trying out this newfangled Blog stuff. We've included some fun photos, mostly taken with Catherine's Treo 600! We even have a version formatted for mobile viewing.

12/23/2003 – Life Balance available at CompUSA via SoftwareToGo kiosks in selected cities

Life Balance is now available in 50 CompUSA stores in Dallas, Seattle and San Franscisco at "print on demand" stations from Protocall. If you need a last minute holiday gift, or you want to help someone else start out the New Year using Life Balance, you can now get a boxed version of Life Balance through these "SoftwareToGo" kiosk sites.

Ever wish you had the Life Balance Advice Book on your Wireless Handheld? Or that our web site was easier to view when you are on the road? The site now has a web view that is optimized for small screens. You can even get the llama thought for the day!

Know someone who prefers to make online purchases with a PayPal account? We now can do that. Get in touch with us and we'll provide the details.

Llamagraphics president, Catherine E. White, recently volunteered her time for an event for girls interested in careers in science and technology. She and other local business women were each awarded a box of Junior Mints by the students, since the students were all Juniors, and the professional women were there as Mentors.

11/30/2003 – Llamagraphics underwrites WRNI public radio station in Providence, R.I.

Llamagraphics is proud to sponsor the WRNI public radio station. The local Providence area radio station features local and national news and information. WRNI is a valuable community resource that we are glad to be able to support.

06/23/2003 — Llamagraphics releases Life Balance v3.2 for Palm Powered Mobile Devices

New Life Balance version supports XML templates of prioritized goals, projects and tasks to share with colleagues and family members.

FRANKLIN, MA, June 23, 2003--Llamagraphics today released Life Balance version 3.2 for Palm Powered™ handhelds and smartphones, as well as Macintosh and Windows. Life Balance is the first product that enables people to balance career and personal goals. Life Balance allows users to input their goals, check off tasks and have what they got done immediately influence what appears on their to do list next. The order of the task list is kept up to date whether you are at work, running errands, or attending a school event for your kids. Life Balance for Palm OS® provides a valuable solution for working families who often struggle to prioritize home, work and leisure activities.

The new Life Balance Desktop companion editions for Mac and Windows feature XML exchange files, which customers can use to add a variety of plug and play templates for common business and personal projects like preparing for a sales event, product launch, applying to colleges, or developing a diet and exercise plan. In a business setting, a project manager can export a project as a template, and coworkers can import the template, HotSync®, and use Palm Powered handhelds to stay on track wherever they happen to be. Each individual on the team can then balance the new project among other work and personal tasks. At home, that same project manager can also use the Life Balance software to share home responsibilities and chores with other family members.

“Busy modern lifestyles require new tools to help working families focus on long term goals amid a hectic schedule of daily tasks,” said Catherine E White, software designer and founder of Llamagraphics.. “For the first time, working families can use Life Balance to maintain high productivity at work, meet the needs of family life, and even carve out time to relax or pursue hobbies. Life Balance has a very strong user community, and the new XML exchange files give our customers a great way to share their experience with new users who are just getting started with the Life Balance product line.”

“With its unique data management solution, Life Balance gives Palm Powered users an efficient and convenient way to get things done, while maintaining a balanced lifestyle, said Larry Berkin, director of developer marketing for PalmSource, Inc.

The Life Balance bundle includes the Desktop Companion software for Mac or Windows, Palm OS Mobile edition and the Life Balance Conduit. It is now available for an estimated street price of U.S. $80 at local retailers and on the web at www.llamagraphics.com.

Founded in 1993, Llamagraphics, Inc. is a developer of award-winning personal productivity and life coaching software to balance career and personal priorities. Based in Franklin, Mass., Llamagraphics is a privately held company. Life Balance is a trademark of Llamagraphics, Inc. PalmSource and Palm OS are registered trademarks and Palm Powered and HotSync are trademarks of PalmSource, Inc., a subsidiary of Palm, Inc.

Third-party product and brand names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Life Balance was recently featured in a review in an IT magazine in Israel. Here is a quote from the article kindly translated by the author from Hebrew into English.

"I found that thinking about my life as a hierarchical structure, on the occasion of configuring Life Balance, was a pleasurable, rewarding experience. Two days after inputting Tasks Of My Life, first draft, into my Handspring, it felt so great to see the home half of the task list disappear during work hours, and pop up after hours. Operating LB on a daily basis had me hooked on my ever-changing task list. A month later, looking at the pie charts, I learned a lot about the stronger and weaker points of my time management skills. Indeed, I could literally see that I work too much; play not enough. My real-life personal coach was elated."

Life Balance for Palm OS was featured prominently in edition 33, in an article called "Yin & Yang - Life Balance am Palm", which is published by PalmTop Pro Magazine. The magazine is available online and sold on all newspaper booths within German speaking Europe, as well as by subscription worldwide.

1/16/2003 — Version 3.1.1 of Life Balance available for Palm OS, Macintosh and Windows

Last but not least, we wanted to let you know that version 3.1.1 of our Life Balance software is now available for Windows, Macintosh and Palm OS. This version is a free update for all of our 3.x customers — For the platforms where you have a v3.x license, the license will continue to work in version 3.1.1. If you are still using version 2.6.1 for Palm OS, we recommend that you purchase an upgrade license in order to take advantage of our ongoing development efforts.

We've changed the release notes format to make it easier to tell at a glance what is changed for each of the produccts. Complete release notes are now available at:

When updating the Windows version, please be sure to select the "Update/Repair" option after you launch the installer.

12/06/2002 — Life Balance named Shareware of the Month by MacWorld Germany

Life Balance for Macintosh named "Shareware des Monats", Shareware of the Month by MacWelt Magazine, MacWorld Magazine, Germany!

Enables Users to Manage Career and Personal Priorities at Home, Office and on the Road

The new desktop edition, brings the full power of the Life Balance software to the Windows platform. By adding the Windows desktop version of the software to Apple Macintosh and Palm OS versions, Llamagraphics provides handheld users with convenient integration among office, home, laptop and PDA devices. Users simply transfer data from the desktop by performing a HotSync@ operation. The Windows version also enhances data entry capabilities and enables easy download of online information.

More than a simple time management solution, Life Balance helps users set priorities and increase personal productivity. The application provides a dynamically ordered to-do list driven by the importance of a user's goals, desired allocation of time and effort, and feedback from activities completed by the user each day. Unlike traditional scheduling tools, Life Balance uses fuzzy logic math techniques to prioritize tasks and provide users with an easy to use, sorted list of activities — from business meetings or household chores to tasks related to personal projects and life-long aspirations.

As a life coach, much of the woek Chris Howard undertakes with clients is emulated in the Life Balance software. Once he and a client have developed a contract and begin coaching sessions, he encourages the client to use Life Balance because it is a mobile tool for "full life management" that is easy to learn and use. Says Howard, "As soon as I used Life Balance myself, I realized that it was THE coaching tool that I wanted to give to my clients. This is the only product that I've seen that is built with the individual's whole life in mind. It's so easy to use that I knew the technology wouldn't get in the way — it would wjust work and work well, for my clients."

"Life Balance software helps users rediscover spare time to explore personal projects and aspirations amid the constant demands of work and home by helping users identify and prioritize what can be done 'right here, right now,'" said Catherine E. White, president, Llamagraphics. "Launching a Windows version of Life Balance completes our core product line and allows us to provide a solution that fits all users, independent of their platform of choice. In addition to providing convenience and increased availability for our existing customer base of Palm OS and Macintosh customers, the Windows version of Life Balance opens new market opportunities for Llamagraphics through sales to business customers who typically depend on the Windows platform."

The Windows version of Life Balance is priced at $65 and is available immediately by electronic download. The application requires Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 or Windows XP, as well as the Microsoft .NET Framework. Life Balance is compatible with Palm Desktop for Windows 3.01 and higher. The product is also compatible for HotSync with all Palm OS based handhelds running Palm OS 3 or higher, including Palm OS 5.

Life Balance is a trademark of Llamagraphics, Inc. Palm OS and HotSync are registered trademarks, and Palm is a trademark, of Palm, Inc. Third-party product and brand names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

09/26/2002 — Llamagraphics Unveils Windows Desktop Edition of Life Balance Software

Enables Users to Manage Career and Personal Priorities at Home, Office and on the Road

The new desktop edition, available in October 2002, brings the full power of the Life Balance software to the Windows platform. By adding the Windows desktop version of the software to Apple Macintosh and Palm OS versions, Llamagraphics provides handheld users with convenient integration among office, home, laptop and PDA devices. Users simply transfer data from the desktop by performing a HotSync@ operation. The Windows version also enhances data entry capabilities and enables easy download of online information.

According to Kris Paige, a coach at DragonFly Coaching, an organization focused on clients with Attention Deficit Disorder, "Most of the business world runs on a Palm — it's what's in the clients' briefcase, on their desk, on their kitchen table, and on the nightstand. But for those without a Palm, the fact that Life Balance runs with both Macintosh and now Windows allows everyone equal access to improving their life."

The Windows version of Life Balance is priced at $65 and will be available in October 2002. The application requires Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 or Windows XP, as well as the Microsoft .NET Framework. Life Balance is compatible with Palm Desktop for Windows 3.01 and higher. The product is also compatible for HotSync with all Palm OS based handhelds running Palm OS 3 or higher, including Palm OS 5.

Life Balance™ 3.0 for Palm OS and Macintosh with a data exchange conduit was released today.

Life Balance is award winning coaching software that provides a dynamically ordered To Do List driven by the importance of your goals, your desired allocation of time and effort, and feedback from what you get done each day.

With the new Desktop Edition of Life Balance, you get all the power and flexibility of Life Balance as you know it on the Palm, plus many new features that are uniquely available on the Desktop. Of course, the Desktop Edition syncs with the Life Balance Mobile Edition for Palm OS for easy data entry!

Life Balance Desktop Edition for Macintosh takes advantage of the beautiful new Mac OS X Aqua interface if you are running Mac OS X and yet it is still compatible with Mac OS 9.

Version 3.0 of Life Balance for Palm OS is a major release in its own right. Providing a Desktop application for Life Balance and hotsyncing to Palm OS is a major "feature" that has generated more customer requests than any other enhancement request! To make it possible to hotsync without creating duplicates required designing and implementing one of the most sophisticated conduits in Palm OS history. The conduit exchanges data with multiple interrelated databases, including the built in Palm OS Datebook. It has its own "sync logic" and reconciliation process.

In addition, version 3.0 for Palm OS has significant perfomance improvements in the speed of the display of the To Do List view and Balance sections, support for Natara Daynotez, and JogDial support. The software is in good shape for the upcoming Palm OS 5 release. Only minor updates, if any, will be required to support the new version of the operating system which is intended to run on new devices using the new ARM based chip.

The new Macintosh software has a suggested retail price of $65.00, the new Palm OS version which normally sells for $39.95 is available for a limited time for $30, in celebration of the new 3.0 product line. Existing customers can upgrade all three products, the Macintosh, Palm and Conduit for $50, which is $15 off the Desktop software, and the conduit and Palm licenses for free. New customers who buy the Macintosh license can add on the Palm version license for half price. The conduit is included in this special bundle offer. Existing customers who wish to upgrade just the Palm license can do so for $15. Customers who purchased Life Balance for Palm OS after April 1, 2002 are eligible for free license code upgrades to the new Life Balance v 3.0 for Palm OS.

A Windows Desktop Edition is in development. It will provide similar functionality and make use of the conduit support in Life Balance v3.0 for Palm OS.

Additional information about Llamagraphics and the Life Balance application can be found at http://www.llamagraphics.com.

###

Top

02/12/2002 — Life Balance™ recognized among best Palm OS software applications of 2001

Handheld Computing™ Magazine Honors Best Palm Powered Products of 2001 at PalmSource Conference

Franklin, MA. — February 12, 2002 — Life Balance has been named among the three top productivity applications for Palm OS in 2001 by Handheld Computing Magazine at the 2002 PalmSource conference in San Jose. Life Balance is coaching software that prioritizes career and personal life tasks in a dynamically generated list.

Senior editors from Handheld Computing Magazine, the leading resource for information on Palm OS® technologies, selected and honored the most innovative and noteworthy Palm Powered products in 37 different categories. Life Balance was included as a finalist in the Best Productivity Application category, along with QuickBudget, a financial application, and top winner Natara DayNotez, a journal application.

"The wealth of excellent software and hardware for the Palm OS platform is amazing," said Denny Atkin, editor-in-chief of Handheld Computing Magazine. "To pick the best from a field of over 17,000 was a challenge, and we’re pleased to be able to recognize these stand-out products."

Llamagraphics, the Massachusetts based company that created Life Balance has been a developer of software for handheld computers since 1993. “The beauty of being a finalist in this category is that each of these applications is unlike the other and useful in its own right.” says Llamagraphics president, Catherine E. White, “You can get the good out of all three. We will be including features to interact with Natara DayNotez in our next version of Life Balance for Palm OS. The new version of Life Balance for Palm OS will also provide support for our new Desktop Edition for Macintosh and its conduit which is now in beta and due out later this month. A Windows desktop is also in development, and will be available later this year.”

A feature article on the winners and finalists will appear in Handheld Computing Magazine’s issue 5.1, which will be available in March 2002. For more information about the Best Palm Powered Products of 2001 Awards, visit www.hhcmag.com.

Additional information about Llamagraphics and the Life Balance application can be found at http://www.llamagraphics.com.

Our intrepid beta testers have their hands on our newest product, Life Balance for Macintosh. So far, the testing is going well. Work continues every day to meet our goal of releasing a complete desktop companion edition of Life Balance for Macintosh as soon as possible.

W. Scott Meeks graduated from MIT '85, with degrees in Computer Science and Cognitive Science and continued his education from Brown '88 to get his Master of Science degree in Computer Science.

Mr. Meeks is an early adopter of Life Balance, starting with the first Newton beta release. Mr. Meeks remarks that he "is thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to its further development." Scott's strengths are in user-interface design, database-backed websites and computer-aided collaboration. He has worked at a number of interesting companies including Bell Communications Research, the Open Software Foundation, ArsDigita, and HydroSki International.

Stuart Malone and Scott Meeks shared many classes at MIT, lived in the same dorm, and both were "Lick's Kids" who worked for Professor Emeritus J.C.R. Licklider at the MIT Lab for Computer Science on undergraduate research projects. The two understand how to work together effectively, and share a common language of problem solving and software design. Apart from Scott's talents as a software engineer, his ability to meet rigorous technical challenges with understated grace truly reflects his deep understanding of the intentions that motivate the development of the Life Balance product line.

Says Catherine E. White, president, "I couldn't actually clone Stuart, but in terms of productivity, this is pretty darn close."

07/31/2001 — We're hiring!

We're looking for a full-time Windows software engineer to join our team. Think you might be just the llama we're looking for? Let us know! (This position has now been filled.)

06/01/2001 — This Old Newt Interviews Llamagraphics, Inc.

This Old Newt has chosen Llamagraphics for their June feature in an interview with Catherine E. White, president of Llamagraphics.

In honor of the interview, the price of the NEWTON version will be heavily discounted for the month of June. (All two or three expected sales!)

We've isolated what is happening for people attempting to use Life Balance v2.6 on the Sony Clié. People running on that particular device were experiencing a crash whenever an alert dialog appeared.

This problem which occurs when we call a particular Palm OS system routine, exists even if you have installed the Sony 3.5.2 patch. It seems to occur on both the PEG-S300 and the PEG-S500.

Life Balance customers who are not experiencing any problems can safely ignore this release.

Llamagraphics is proud to announce that a free update to Life Balance for Palm OS is available for download by registered customers from our web site:

Version 2.6 marks an important milestone for the speed and reliability of Life Balance. To Do List display is 25% faster. Updates are 10% faster. We've added features to give you finer control over task deletion and duplicates when synchronizing with the built-in To Do List. Beaming is now available not only from the Outline, but from the To Do list and the Balance section. Life Balance v2.6 refines the use of beaming to allow for "Ronamatic" beaming with a single gesture. We've improved our compatibility with Action Names Datebook and PocketMirror. And we've made dozens of small changes, fixes and optimizations in response to our customers.

In addition, we've gone to great lengths to ensure that the already stable and reliable Life Balance application is even more crash proof under even stricter constraints. We've revamped our memory management so that out-of-memory errors are handled more gracefully, so that if you are close to running out of memory on your Palm, Life Balance will give you better information about what is happening. We've coded around a long-standing Palm OS bug that can cause intermittent display glitches or crashes. And we've used Palm's latest testing and debugging tools to ensure that Life Balance can run under a barage of millions of random events continuously for days without errors. (Most other Palm applications that we've tested only last a few minutes under these rigorous conditions.)

The revisions are detailed in the revised PDF version of the Advice Book, which is included when you download the software. An HTML version is also available on-line at:

If you have questions or comments about Life Balance, or want to discuss time management issues in general, be sure to check out the User Forums at our web site.

A wealth of information about the Life Balance software, including a free 30-day trial version, release notes, online manual, free User Forum and eZine discussing Life Balance issues, is available at www.llamagraphics.com. Life Balance version 2.6 runs on any handheld computer running the Palm OS software version 3.0 or higher, including the color Palm IIIc™ handheld, and the Handspring Visor™ product.

Life Balance is the first personal productivity application designed to help Palm users go beyond conventional planning systems to not only manage their time but to achieve balance between the often conflicting demands of career and personal life. Price US $39.95.

Llamagraphics, Inc. is a privately held software company in Franklin, Massachusetts which is proud to be developing the most sophisticated software applications for use on Palm handheld computers.

Life Balance™ is a trademark of Llamagraphics, Inc. Palm OS is a registered trademark, and Palm and Palm IIIc are trademarks of Palm, Inc. or its subsidiaries. Visor is a trademark of Handspring, Inc. Other company, product, and service names may be the trademarks or service marks of others.

02/23/2001 — New Frequently Asked Questions feature added to the Llamagraphics web site!

We've added a new dynamic "FAQ" section to the Llamagraphics site. In keeping with the Life Balance mission of helping you focus on the most important thing at the moment, not only does the new FAQ have answers to your common questions, the new FAQ will automatically sort the questions according to how often they are viewed by our readers. Over time, the most frequently asked questions will find their way to the top of the list.

FRANKLIN, Mass., January 6, 2001 - Impressive new features in Life Balance™ v2.5 for Palm OS, have made it even easier to get started toward a saner, more authentic life as you make your new year's resolutions for 2001.

Version 2.5 of Life Balance from Llamagraphics, Inc. introduces the ability to share Life Balance tasks with applications that make use of the native Palm to do list database.

The new to do list import/export features make it easy to use desktop programs such as Microsoft Outlook and the Palm Desktop with Life Balance for data entry, printing, and archival of completed tasks. It also allows for greater integration with other third party Palm OS applications.

The to do list import/export features in Life Balance v2.5 are controlled by customizable preferences to set exactly which categories in the Palm built in databases map to which places and sections of the Outline on import. Similarly, Life Balance can prevent personal tasks from being exported to the built in to do list if the objective is to share work tasks with colleagues when using the Palm hot sync feature at the office.

Also new in version 2.5 are simple dependencies among tasks, so that you can specify that tasks in a particular section need to be done in order. Tasks that depend on other tasks will be kept off your to do list until you complete the prerequisite tasks.

A new Duplicate menu command allows for copying a section of the Outline for projects that are very similar but which may have different due dates or details.

In addition to the cool drag and drop method of moving tasks within the Outline, which is convenient when the tasks and the destination are nearby, there is a new Move menu command, which is convenient for moving tasks across long Outlines.

A wealth of information about the Life Balance software, including a free 30-day trial version, release notes, online manual, free User Forum and eZine discussing Life Balance issues, is available at www.llamagraphics.com. Life Balance version 2.5 runs on any handheld computer running the Palm OS software version 3.0 or higher, including the color Palm IIIc™ handheld, and the Handspring Visor™ product.

Llamagraphics, Inc. is a privately held software company in Franklin, Massachusetts which is proud to be developing the most sophisticated software applications for use on Palm handheld computers.

11/29/2000 — Llamagraphics adds two authorized distributors of Life Balance.

Handango and PalmGear HQ are now authorized distributors of Life Balance™, software for Palm OS from Llamagraphics, Inc. These new distributors are able to offer customers a familiar alternative for purchasing software for handheld computers. "Many of our customers are used to shopping for software through these popular channels," Catherine E. White, company president said, " We made a number of changes to further automate our business processes to accomodate the procedures of our new Channel partners, so that customers will get quick responses from us even if they order though third party Palm software sites."

The Llamagraphics web site still offers real time credit card processing and fulfillment of License Codes as well, through their own secure eCommerce site. More information about Llamagraphics and the Life Balance application can be found at http://www.llamagraphics.com/.

Catherine E. White, president of Llamagraphics, Inc. is scheduled to make a presentation at the next meeting of the Silicon Valley Palm User Group. Llamagraphics will demonstrate and discuss Life Balance, the first personal productivity application designed to help Palm users go beyond conventional planning systems to not only manage their time but to achieve balance between the often conflicting demands of career and personal life. The SVPUG meeting is scheduled for December 7, 2000, 6 PM at Palm Inc.'s Corporate Headquarters. Directions to the meeting can be found at http://www.svpug.com/. More information about Llamagraphics and the Life Balance application can be found at http://www.llamagraphics.com/.

11/9/2000 - Life Balance v2.4.2 released

Life Balance v2.4.2 contains a few bug fixes that didn't quite make it into version 2.4.

Among the changes for this version, we fixed an additional case of the “2031” bug. The earlier fix in version 2.4 reduced the frequency of the bug, but did not eliminate it entirely.

We fixed an “object not in form” error when tapping the Add button in the Task Details.

Also in version 2.4 we introduced some checking of the Datebook database to alert customers of corrupted Datebook entries that could throw Life Balance into a tizzy. In version 2.4.2, we relaxed the rules that check for corrupted Date Book records a little bit.The old rules were complaining about yearly repeating appointments imported from the Palm Desktop for Windows, even though the uninitialized repeatStartOfWeek field in these records was harmless. That particular field is only necessary to weekly repeats.

Also for customers with color Palm devices we changed the color checkbox drawing code to be more compatible with Chrome.

11/1/2000 - Michael J. Rowny joins Llamagraphics Board of Directors

FRANKLIN, Mass., November 1, 2000 - Llamagraphics, Inc. today announced that Michael J. Rowny, former MCI executive, and chairman of Rowny Capital has joined the company’s Board of Directors.

“To have access to Michael’s advice is a great pleasure,” said company president, Catherine E. White. “Michael has phenomenal knowledge of businesses at all stages of growth and we are delighted to have his active participation.”

Rowny was responsible for MCI International operations from 1994 to 1999, (before WorldCom) negotiating the company's strategic alliances, acquisitions and divestitures. He had previously been with MCI from 1983 to 1986 during the break-up of the Bell System and the beginning of equal access, when he served as vice president and treasurer of the company, and also senior vice president of finance for MCI's long distance division.

Rowny was executive vice president and CFO of ICF Kaiser International during the interval between his years of service with MCI. During his career, Rowny has held positions as chairman and CEO of the Ranshohoff Company, CEO of Hermitage Holding Company, vice president of the Bendix Corporation and Deputy Staff Director at the White House during the Carter administration.

Rowny holds a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a J.D. degree from Georgetown University Law Center.

Rowny also serves on the board of several other companies including Step 9 and Ineto.

Llamagraphics, Inc. is the creator of the software application, Life Balance, the first personal productivity application designed to help Palm™ handheld computer users go beyond conventional planning systems to not only manage their time but to achieve balance between the often conflicting demands of career and personal life.

More information about the Life Balance software, including a free 30 day trial version, release notes, online manual, free User Forum and eZine discussing Life Balance issues, is available at www.llamagraphics.com. Life Balance version 2.4 runs on any handheld computer using the Palm OS® software version 3.0 or higher, including the new color Palm IIIc handheld, and the new Handspring Visor™ product.

Llamagraphics, Inc. is a privately held software company in Franklin, Massachusetts which is proud to be developing the most sophisticated software applications for use on Palm handheld computers.

Life Balance™ is a trademark of Llamagraphics, Inc. Palm OS is a registered trademark and Palm is a trademark of Palm, Inc. or its subsidiaries. Visor is a trademark of Handspring, Inc. Other company, product, and service names may be the trademarks or service marks of others.

10/2/2000 — New web service added to Llamagraphics site for Life Balance customers

In order to help customers with the task of identifying other quality software products that are compatible with Life Balance, Llamagraphics has created a new interactive section of their web site to allow customers to post which hacks, launchers and applications work particularly well with Life Balance.

Llamagraphics hopes that this new web service will be helpful to its growing customer community who frequently post tips and suggestions to the User Forums about software that they use in conjunction with Life Balance. This new third party compatibility listing, will make it even easier for new customers to locate this useful information about other Palm OS products they might find interesting.

9/18/2000 — Web Site Server Upgrade completed! Thank you for your patience!

Our Internet Service Provider moved us to a fancier and more sophisticated UNIX system today. Please bear with us while this switch takes place. If you encounter any web site problems, please send email directly to support@llamagraphics.com. We will coordinate the support with our Internet Service Provider. We apologize for any inconvenience you may experience during this transition to the new server. It should mean a better more effective site when the ISP is done moving the site sometime later this evening. We had some problems earlier in the day, but they seem to be resolved now.

FRANKLIN, Mass., September 5, 2000 - Llamagraphics, Inc. has released version 2.4 of Life Balance™ for Palm OS handheld computers today. Life Balance is the first personal productivity application designed to help Palm users go beyond conventional planning systems to not only manage their time but to achieve balance between the often conflicting demands of career and personal life.

The new version of the software features the ability to beam tasks and projects between two Palm OS handhelds using the infrared port. Beaming allows for greater collaboration between family members and colleagues.

There are new lead time icons which allow users of black and white handhelds to see that a task is nearing its due date. Life Balance shows this information on the color Palm IIIc by changing the color of the checkboxes in the To Do list.

Life Balance v2.4 has a reorganized preference system, paving the way for greater personalization of the software in future versions, while maintaining the simple yet surprisingly powerful interface that Life Balance customers now enjoy. Two new preferences have been added to allow the lead time and note icons to be turned off to make room for more task description text within the Outline and To Do lists.

Life Balance version 2.4 also fixes several bugs, and checks for corrupted entries in the Palm Date Book application database and reports problems back to the user when the Life Balance software encounters them.

With all the new features in Life Balance v2.4, the unbeatable technical support in the User Forums, and a new breakthrough price of $39.95, Llamagraphics has made it even easier to get started toward a saner, more authentic life.

More information about the Life Balance software, including a free 30-day trial version, release notes, online manual, free User Forum and eZine discussing Life Balance issues, is available at www.llamagraphics.com. Life Balance version 2.4 runs on any handheld computer running the Palm OS software version 3.0 or higher, including the new color Palm IIIc™ handheld, and the new Handspring Visor™ product.

Llamagraphics, Inc. is a privately held software company in Franklin, Massachusetts which is proud to be developing the most sophisticated software applications for use on Palm handheld computers.

In his review of Life Balance for Palm OS, John Ohnstad of PalmGuru writes, "Life Balance by Llamagraphics brings to the Palm OS an excellent Life Management Solution that gives the user a real time "Check Up" as they complete tasks that matter. "

We've been concentrating so hard on the next versions of Life Balance that we nearly missed the wonderful review from Handheld Computing! In issue 3.1 May/June, Handheld Computing (the magazine formerly known as Tap) declared Life Balance™ a "Top Pick!"

Denny Atkin writes, "Calling Life Balance a 'To Do List Replacement' is like calling an F-22 fighter jet a faster way to get to work. This time-management program, which began life on Apple's Newton MessagePad, has migrated to the Palm, and there's not a busy person on the planet who won't benefit from it....it's one of those rare and powerful software tools that you'll soon wonder how you lived without."

8/1/2000 - Back to School — $10 savings on Life Balance for Palm OS !

September will be here before you know it. For a limited time, Llamagraphics is offering $10 off of your order of a License Code for Life Balance for Palm OS when you answer our "Back to School" survey.

Life Balance is the perfect tool for making the most of the end of the summer. With Life Balance to help you manage conflicting demands on your time, you can plan to spend more of your time goofing off at the beach, and still get those pencils and wits sharpened in time for your first day of classes.

Customers who take the time to answer our brief "Back to School" survey will get immediate savings automatically as they complete their order on our secure real time fulfillment order system. No waiting for email to get your registration code or for a rebate check to arrive in the mail!

Promotional Offer effective 8/1/2000 until 8/31/2000. Llamagraphics respects your privacy, we do not share information about our customers with other companies. Your survey information is kept anonymous and is not linked to your order information.

6/30/2000 - A new Llama...

Please welcome Jonathan Bexiga, our new summer intern, to the herd! Jonathan will be helping us with customer support questions, and to keep The Meadow portion of our web site up to date.

Ziff Davis's ZDNet web site, one of the most trusted sources for online software reviews, has awarded Life Balance version 2.3.1 for Palm handhelds its highest "5 star" Editor's Pick rating!

6/2/2000 - Life Balance v2.3.1 is twice as nice!

Version 2.3.1 of Life Balance for Palm is now twice as fast and 25 KB smaller than version 2.2.1! We've optimized the low-level data handling routines to be more efficient, and the result is a leaner, zippier application that all our users should appreciate. The more you use Life Balance, the more you'll benefit from upgrading to the latest version.

With over 300 pages to explore, the Llamagraphics web site is now large enough that implementing a site wide search feature has become necessary. The new search is simple and powerful, and available from the blue navigation bar at the top of all the web site's pages. Bon appétit!

5/25/2000 — Life Balance™ software receives award and highest rating from Geek.com

New task management software for the Palm OS platform goes beyond conventional planners to actively manage conflicting demands on your time.

FRANKLIN, Mass., May 25, 2000 - Life Balance™ software from Llamagraphics, Inc., was recently awarded 5 “Geekheads” for Quality, and 5 Geekheads for “Geekness,” which is described in Geek.com’s rating system as "Revolutionary software that allows a lot of customization. Complex features. Worth showing to your friends." The Geek.com Pick Award puts Life Balance in an elite group of 21 popular handheld software applications that have received the award since March 1999.

Life Balance™ is a new kind of task management software designed specifically for handheld computers that helps busy people manage conflicting demands on their time. Life Balance is designed to help customers find their own delicate balance among work, home and leisure activities. The software recognizes that items on a to-do list can have a high priority for different reasons: because they are part of an important project, because the deadline is near-at-hand, because you are in the right place to take action, or because you have been neglecting the task.

Internally, Life Balance uses fuzzy logic math techniques to balance all these competing factors. As a result, it can provide an easy to use, sorted list that makes it simple to figure out what is the most important thing to do right where you are at that time.

“Our software was originally written for Apple’s Newton MessagePad, which was unfortunately discontinued,” said company President Catherine White. “However, the methods we used in Life Balance still appealed to our customers who are struggling to balance home life with the demands of their professional careers. Most of the time our customers are pretty good at managing what they are doing. However, because they are very busy people with many facets in their complex lives, somehow the longer term goals tend to get lost in the shuffle. We developed Life Balance to work on the popular Palm OS® platform to help with this increasingly common problem. We released the new version in December and have had over one million web hits since the release. We are very pleased that the reviewers at Geek.com liked the new version of Life Balance.”

Geek.com's reviewer Jen Edwards writes in the site's PDAGeek section, "This program is good enough to make any paper planner user make the jump to [a] Palm™ [handheld], as it not only replaces the planner, but improves upon it by leaps and bounds... A Geek.com Pick if I have ever seen one!"

The GeekPick award is Geek.com's highest rating, reserved for "Review items that
meet the highest standards in Quality, Readability, and Geekness. As well, these items must have that extra something that separates them from the rest of the pack."

Life Balance™ software is available now from the Llamagraphics web site for $49.95 and runs on any handheld computer running the Palm OS software version 3.0 or higher, including the new color Palm IIIc™ handheld, and the new Handspring Visor™ product.

Llamagraphics, Inc. is a privately held software company in Franklin, Massachusetts which is proud to be developing solutions for use on Palm handheld computers.

Geek.com is the Online Technology Resource for Geeks, with daily geek news, hardware and software reviews, computer buying and building guides, a technical glossary, areas dedicated to PDA and Processor enthusiasts, Message Parlors for communal knowledge sharing, and much more.

4/28/2000 - Llamagraphics to speak at New England Palm User Group Meeting in May

Llamagraphics is scheduled to speak at the upcoming New England Palm User group meeting about Life Balance for Palm OS. Catherine and Stuart will discuss why thinking about Life, the Universe and Everything is hard, and how Life Balance can actually help! The meeting with be held at MIT, 175 Albany St, Bldg, NW17-218, Cambridge MA, on Tuesday, May 16, 2000 at 6:30 PM.

4/25/2000 - Llamagraphics visits school to talk to students about entrepreneurship

Llamagraphics executives, Catherine White and Stuart Malone visited Laraine Hawkins' Business class at Franklin Senior High School to discuss the pleasures, excitement and pitfalls they've experienced as a software startup in the Palm economy. The students were particularly interested in the Palm devices, the eCommerce business plans and how Catherine and Stuart use their math training in their careers. They were also interested to learn that Catherine and Stuart occasionally wear double wedding rings, one for their personal partnership and one for their business partnership.

Jen Edwards has awarded Life Balance 10 Geekhead "Beanies" and a GeekPick award!

PDAGeek's Jen Edwards review goes through her experience getting started with Life Balance 2.2 on a color Palm IIIc, complete with over half a dozen color screen shots of Life Balance in action. She really put Life Balance through its paces and gave Life Balance a perfect 10 Geekhead score! Edwards writes, "This program is good enough to make any paper planner user make the jump to Palm, as it not only replaces the planner, but improves upon it by leaps and bounds... A Geek.com Pick if I have ever seen one!""

Life Balance was awarded 5 Geekheads for Quality, and 5 Geekheads for Geekness, which is described in their rating system as "Revolutionary software that allows a lot of customization. Complex features. Worth showing to your friends."

The GeekPick award is PDAGeek's highest rating, reserved for "Review items that meet the highest standards in Quality, Readability, and Geekness. As well, these items must have that extra something that separates them from the rest of the pack."

4/12/2000 — Two bug fixes for version Life Balance v2.2 released

Version 2.2 was a major release of Life Balance that introduced color support for the new Palm III c devices, as well as several other important new features. Version 2.2.1 is a follow up release that fixes two bugs in version v2.2 which were recently reported in the User Forums.

Occassionally, under the right circumstances, there would be an error in the To Do list when changing the Place in the task details screen. The specific error message was "Life Balance encountered an error: task not found (0x8002), WishPriorityCursor.cpp line 234" This intermittent error might occur if the changed place would cause the task to "disappear" from the to-do list popup filter when the task's place was changed and was related to the specific scroll bar refresh necessary when the task details window was closed.

We also fixed a problem where the wrong description could get posted to the DateBook when a task was added to the DateBook. This occurred if the task description was editted in the task details in the same transaction that posted the task to the DateBook. For instance, if you created a new task, pulled up the task details, edited the description, and immediately tapped ADD to post the DateBook. The OK had not occurred yet, so the data description had not been committed to the database. As a consequence, the task was posted in the Datebook with the name "New Task" instead of the appropriate description. Most people seem to edit the task description in place as soon as the task is created, so this didn't get reported earlier although the bug undoubtedly existed in earlier releases too!

Llamagraphics recommends that you download and install this follow up release at your convenience if you encountered either of these problems in version 2.2.

Additional features and fixes are described in detail in the version history in the online Advice Book. This is a free update for existing Life Balance for Palm OS customers.

More information about Life Balance, including a free 30 day trial version, release notes, online manual, free User Forum and eZine discussing Life Balance issues, is available at the Llamagraphics web site.

3/23/2000 Oh Wow! Color Pie Charts!

Franklin, MA — Life Balance™ v 2.2 introduces color support for the new Palm IIIc as well as new features that will benefit all Life Balance users. Life Balance ™ helps busy people manage conflicting demands on their time.

Color is a natural for the Life Balance approach. In the Balance section of the software, the user's ideal balance and their actual actions are represented by two pie charts. Life Balance provides feedback as tasks are checked off in the To Do list view. The software then proactively adjusts the tasks in the To Do list view to try to encourage the user to gradually bring the Actual pie chart to match the Desired pie chart.

Life Balance also uses color in other ways, for instance, to indicate approaching deadlines. A Red checkbox next to a task in the To Do list means that a task is past due. Yellow means that you are within one lead-time of the due date. Green means that you are within two lead-times of the due date. The colors are updated when you update the To-Do list.

There have been several important changes to the Task Details. It is now possible to schedule a non-repeating task with a simple Due Date within Life Balance without posting the task to the Date Book, and the next scheduled time for a repeating task can be skipped ahead to a future occurrence. Combined with changes to the import feature, this helps to keep the DateBook from becoming cluttered during import from the built in To Do list tasks.

The addition of an "Effort" tab to the task details adds a new concept to the software. Effort is an abstract term that can be used to apply to time spent, task complexity, or even task stressfulness. This allows Life Balance users to adjust the credit awarded in the pie charts for tasks that require extra time or energy.

Additional features and fixes are described in detail in the version history in the online Advice Book. This is a free update for existing Life Balance for Palm OS customers.

2/16/2000 — Life Balance™ version 2.1.1

Franklin, MA — More new features have been added in Life Balance™ v2.1.1 for Palm OS which was released by Llamagraphics today. Life Balance™ helps busy people manage conflicting demands on their time.

Many of these features are the direct result of requests from customers that were posted in the company's popular User Forum on the www.llamagraphics.com web site.

The Life Balance software will now suppress a parent task from appearing on the To Do List if any of the subtasks will occur again in the future. This is particularly handy for top level goals like Health and Fitness, where the overall goal is not likely to be completed per se, but the child items in the outline will repost themselves to the To Do list according to their scheduled frequency.

There were requests for more menu shortcuts. "New task" and "New subtask" menu items were added to the Outline's task menus so that GoType users can use the shortcuts to create new tasks from the keyboard.

Life Balance now has a note icon that displays in the Outline, To Do List, and Balance views when a task has notes. Tapping the icon will display the notes.

The wording of some displays has changed slightly to clarify the meaning based on user feedback.

A problem has been fixed that occured when the user tapped on the Open button for a task was not scheduled yet. The software was attempting to access a non existent Date Book record. Life Balance now will open the DateBook application as requested, but not attempt to find the unscheduled record under those circumstances.

More information about Life Balance, including a 30 day trial version, release notes, online manual, User Forum and eZine discussing Life Balance issues, is available at the Llamagraphics web site.

1/27/2000 — IMPORTANT documentation changes for 2.1:

If you have an earlier version of Life Balance installed on your Palm, be sure to read the instructions for version 2.1 in the Release Notes and you may also want to read the new sections of the Advice Book about Working with Built-in Applications.

1/26/2000 — Dramatic Speedups in Life Balance 2.1!!!

Franklin, MA — Llamagraphics released version 2.1 of Life Balance™ for Palm OS today. Life Balance™ helps busy people manage conflicting demands on their time.

If you carry a lot of history in your Dates applications, with thousands of Dates records, you'll probably appreciate the changes that were made to Life Balance™ in v2.1. In tests with version 2.1, the Update function improved by as much as 200 times under some circumstances.

There were reports of slowness in the earlier releases of Life Balance. Llamagraphics looked into them carefully, and found that the data in the Dates application was likely to influence some functions more than expected. In particular, the Update, which is fundamentally a numerical calculation, does need to look up some data from the Dates application. That lookup was taking much longer than it needed to.

Llamagraphics substantially reworked the interaction with the Dates so that one person who had a painfully slow 26 minute update now has an Update of 8-15 seconds on the Palm III. While not everyone will get such dramatic speedups, this version will help some Life Balance customers quite a bit.

New in version 2.1 is a "Link with Dates" feature which also allows customers to pick and choose which items in their Dates application they want to track in Life Balance.

Other enhancements include a feature to allow cycling through the major views in Life Balance when the hardware button assigned to Life Balance is pressed repeatedly. There is also a new preference in the Startup Settings menu that allows you to explicitly tell Life Balance which Dates application you want to post tasks to when "According to Dates" is chosen in the task Details.

If you were having trouble with slow updates, we recommend that you try version 2.1 of Life Balance. Download it today!

More information about Life Balance, including a 30 day trial version, release notes, online manual, User Forum and eZine discussing Life Balance issues, is available at the Llamagraphics web site.

1/23/2000 — Attention early adopter Newton customers!

As promised, we have added a 50% discount on the Palm version for our loyal early adopter Newton customers! YES! Both of you!! (...Only Kidding!) The eCommerce changes for the discount are now implemented on the secure site. Remember that you will need to supply your registration code from the back of the printed manual to get the discount.

1/17/2000 — Speeeeeed ups.

We have not gone to Tahiti, although we have been a little slower to respond to email this week! This is because we are in the process of speeding up various Datebook handling routines. Early tests indicate that the speed up will be very significant for the Update function for some people, especially for those who carry a long history in their Dates applications.

If we can just get the CodeWarrior debugger to cooperate, there will be an important update soon. And then we'll be back to responding to your questions.

1/5/2000 — Life Balance v2.0.2

We're listening. In addition to a few bug fixes, we've also added a new menu for startup settings, and optimized some DateBook operations for better speed and performance.

1/4/2000 — Happy Millennium!

We've added a fancy new User Forum to the web site to answer your questions about the Life Balance software and provide a general area on the web site where visitors can discuss topics related to balancing home work and leisure activitites.

12/29/99 — And just to show that we mean business!

We know we were a little slow coming out with the Palm version, but we want you to know that you will not have to wait a long time for updates. Life Balance Version 2.0.1 fixes a few things that escaped our attention before release. In particular this new version fixes the following:

This update is free. Just download again to get the very latest. Do not uninstall before you install the new version on top of the older Life Balance release in order to retain your data.

12/28/99 — A word to faithful early adopter Newton customers!

We will be adding a cross platform upgrade discount for Newton customers! We wanted to be sure that the eCommerce site was working properly before we got fancy with discounts. Download the 30 day trial, and by the time that expires, the eCommerce changes for the discount will be implemented on the secure site. You will need to supply your registration code from the back of the manual to get the discount.

12/22/99 — Llamagraphics releases Life Balance™ for Palm OS!

Just in time for the new Millennium! Whooopeee! So, we've got our party hats on a little bit early!

We're really proud of the job our beta testers did in helping us refine some of the details in the program in the last few days. Thanks to everyone for your participation, support and enthusiasm!

Life Balance v 2.0 for Palm OS is available with a 30 day Free trial version. After 30 days, a License code must be purchased in order to keep using the software. License codes can be purchased through the company's web site for $49.95 US.

Llamagraphics is now a fully active participant in the Palm Economy with the introduction of our mobile software product, Life Balance™ for Palm OS. Hooray!