Firstly, I do not resemble the caricature put next to this article. It is seriously scary. Let that not deter you from reading further.

Voila! Well this was only supposed to be the code name of the project. But, I think we had been using the name so long that it stuck and why not? When you use this application you are supposed to be surprised by what you can do with it (mind you I am not marketing, that blog article has come before this). Let me begin our story.

The development usually starts when the requirement team is ready with the features. We do a feasibility analysis (i.e., features that we can support in a given time). Well the analysis ranges from - “Well, this is not exactly a walk in the park!” to “Are you crazy?. Go fly a kite!!”. The idea of the requirement team is to imagine and ours is to bring it to reality. The end result is that imagination meets reality. More of imagination, less of reality when we finish the meeting. But hey! who said product development is easy.

Ah! I now have to mention about the testing team. They are the ones who ensure that we do things right and good. They help us make the product better (a very nice way of telling they point out our mistakes). No, seriously they are the reasons why Voila does exactly what it is supposed to do and they are the reason why we develop better.

Now we get down to the job of getting things done. We start with the design. This is the script for our implementation. We batter the details of the features behind closed doors, bug the requirement team on the finer details of the features, use a lot of ink and board, discuss, argue, fight till we reach a conclusion (or people outside ask us to shut up) on how we are going to implement each of the feature.

By this time, each member of the team knows what he/she needs to do (mostly). And then we take the giant leap. We start banging our keyboards, scratching our heads and having distant looks on our faces. Oh! I mean we start coding. This is the fun part. We bring the features to reality.

We were so excited when we started. We wanted to see something real very soon. So we furiously typed a lot of code for 3 days, gathered the team in conference room, put the code on the projector and started putting everyones code together. By the end of the day (and into early next morning) things started working. All we were trying to do was draw one rectangle (along with a lot of other things the user would never see). And somewhere at 2AM ,we got it working. I have never been so happy to draw a rectangle before! By the time we finished we got the rectangle to rotate and move too.

So we had a good start. The UI development, annotations, effects, saving, importing/exporting, capture all of this were going in parallel. We did things that were first for our kind of applications. The various capture options, effects, the 3D callouts were all fun to see (I am sure you will enjoy it). The spray effects (especially the Heart) is quite popular. With Valentines day to come, I bet it will be put to great use. The range of annotations supported from simple rectangle to multi-control point lines to text was challenging. We know you will put it to great use. The UI had to be great. Our CEO is very particular about it. The developers/testing team took a lot of pain to ensure this (had to). We hope you like it too. The testing team really had to work at break neck speed. With the amount of features churning out per day, they had to be on their toes always. Bet they had to run a marathon sprinting all the way. And guess what, they used to point out bugs in Voila using Voila itself (remember capture and arrow). They had to type less on the bug description. Just snap a pic, point an arrow and Voila! they are done. How ironic!

And so it went on. Plans changed along the way, requirements surely did. Murphys law as always held good. So we had to burn some (gross understatement of quantity) midnight oil and so on. But at the same time, things started falling in place, we could see the order in chaos. People started creating amazing things using the product. The developers were the ones most surprised . They have mostly a technical outlook towards their work and to see such creative things come out from the product they coded was something great. We were really surprised when our graphic designers created the About Box, Trial Window of Voila using Voila! One went as far to say that for simple creative work Voila might give Photoshop a run for its money (I have recommended a hike for him). We then started supporting updates, trial and registration. We suddenly realized we are reaching somewhere near the end of the first phase of Voila.

And all the above activities took a mere 5 months. Now that’s Voila!

We loved developing the product because we thought it will make a difference in the area it is intended for. We think you would like it too. We had fun developing it, I hope you feel the same when you use it. I am sure we have still further to go. Our journey in some way has just began. For this we hope you will provide your valuable insights. Each time we see our users feedback we learn things that make our product better.

I hope you have enjoyed this article. Have fun.

Happy New Year!

It’s time to celebrate Christmas and I’m all set to create the perfect greeting for all my viewers! Just follow the steps below:

1. Capture the required image

• Select the capture type from the toolbar. It could be a fullscreen, selection or menu.
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• I have selected Rectangular capture from the Selection drop down.

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• To capture an image simply click and drag over the area you want.
• The captured image is instantly displayed in the Voila window.
• You are now done with the first part-Capture. Wasn’t it simple?? Look at the image I have captured below.
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2. Annotate the image

The captured picture looks a little plain to me. It’s now time to perk it up!

• Let me first go to Effects and add an appropriate Edge effect. Hmm.. let me see.. Let me give a Blur effect to the image.
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  I can modify the edges a bit. Sine Wave looks perfect!  

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• A few lines to give it a more classic look might be helpful. Select the Tools tab, go to Lines, select an appropriate color from the color well and drag them across the image-I’ve chosen grey with a 1 pixel thickness, no shadow and 100% opacity.
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• Let me get Santa to convey some message to you. Go to Callout, select an appropriate callout and style and drag it on the image. Enter appropriate text into it. I’ve selected the cloud callout with a glossy style and red color. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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• Wow this is cool!! A few bubbles might look good. Go to Spray, select Bubble option and spray them away.
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• It’s a festive season and a few balloons would just fit the bill! Choose Balloons from the Spray tool and simply spray them wherever you want
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• And now for the final touch-Select the Text tool and add your message. I’ve chosen the curved text option from the Direction property.
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3. Share your greeting

• Select iPhoto or Mail to send the greeting to iPhoto or mail it to your friends. I’ve selected the Save as option to get this final output!
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Simple, isn’t it??? Here’s wishing each of you a very merry christmas and a happy new year! Go on, get your copy of Voila and become more expressive this festive season!

We just got our surprise package today! Amidst being a beta, Voila has been picked as a ‘Featured 3rd Party Download’ by none other than Apple! It doesn’t stop here. Voila is also a ‘Staff Pick’!

We cannot express in words how thrilled we are! This has been a big Christmas gift to us.

We do know that Voila is still in the beta stage and and we have a long way ahead to make it one of the best Image Capturing, Annotating and Sharing tools on the Mac. Feedbacks, suggestions, feature requests and appreciations have started pouring in and we are more than happy to incorporate them in time.

We look forward to a lot more in the days to come. The countdown for the release has already begun!

With the Mac generation on the rise, and the number of screen capture and annotation tools being immensely sparse, we at Global Delight thought that ‘Voila’ would be the best alternative to convey a simple message in pictorial representation on the Mac platform. We timed the beta of the product for December, so it would be the perfect Christmas present to all our customers. 

We have tried to cover the needs of every possible user with Voila v1.0. It is not simply about capturing screenshots for your work; is more about making screen captures more exciting, enjoyable, effective and expressive by including attention getting graphics, all that with just a couple of clicks!

We intend to release Voila v1.0 at Macworld 2009, which is just a few weeks away from now. We think it is the right time and place to showcase the product to innumerable proud Mac owners, consumers, enthusiasts, prospects from various industry segments under one umbrella. We do have a lot to offer at this Expo-free passes, complementary CDs, special discounts, product demo, samples created with Voila. We would also be giving a presentation to the media.

With the beta now out, you can go ahead, download Voila and start using it in your day-to-day work. While we are aware that the features the product can amass are way over what is included in the first version, we do assure you that you can look forward to a lot more in the next upcoming releases. The list of features to v1.0 is by no means complete and if you have any feedback or suggestions please do get in touch with us. We are all ears to all the inputs you provide us and are hoping to make Voila the best annotation tool on Mac platform.

Yes, you heard me! We have a lot of exciting offers in store for you on this holiday season! Send us your creative output using Voila along with the story ‘how Voila simplified my work’ on or before 31-Dec-08. If we pick your story, it will be showcased on our site and we will reward you with a Free License! Hurry, 10 free licenses are coming your way…

Conceptualizing a product is not a piece of cake, and it definitely was not an easy task for us. We wanted to create something that would fit in just right for the Mac users. A substantial amount of time was spent researching, surveying and brainstorming and finally the answer just flashed in and we knew it was just perfect! Voila!! It had to be it!! An image capturing, annotating and sharing tool wrapped up into a neat package.

What can be more intriguing than conveying information pictorially?? Words convey so much, yet pictures convey so much more!! Voila was built to go with the flow- capture, elucidate and share things on your screen without breaking stride.

With oodles of screen capture tools already swarming the market, we had to be different if we wanted to take the plunge into this segment. After a fair amount of pondering, we decided to go ahead with 7 different capture types- full screen, rectangular selection, circular selection, polygonal selection, object, menu and free hand selection; making screen capture a cinch! The idea was to get away with cropping captured images to get exactly what users needed.

The next step was to get the right annotation tools in the palette. We explored a myriad image editing tools available in the market, some of them being very complex, some just too easy. We needed a tool set that would amalgamate with the capture alternatives we had hand-picked. Annotation was the key area where users would be able to illustrate their screen captures; be it an executive creating a complex presentation with flow charts, or a student enhancing his assignment with colorful sprays, or a journalist adding in peppy comments into the callouts; it all had to be flawless! That was definitely the biggest challenge for us. We spent a great deal of time studying every single tool we intended to put into the palette and finally clinched the set with brush, paint, spray, text, shape, arrow, callout, line, mask and stamp options for the first version. We also integrated a few effects as an add-on to the image.

Finalizing on the Share set was an easy affair compared to the rest and we settled down with iPhoto and Mail.

Eventually, we got around to compiling a snazzy tag line for Voila ” Convert words to visual conversation”. As the saying goes ‘Actions speak louder than words’ we thought that the tag line just fit the bill.

All said and done, we’ve tried to keep Voila as simple as possible and have worked out each and every aspect in detail. Having said that, we might have still missed out on certain elements which we wish to polish, more so with your help. Our journey has just begun and we are very much looking forward to your feedback.

This is our first step and we will move on, hoping to get Voila to be a part of every Mac users’ life.