As promised, we wanted to have our blog readers be among the first to hear about our new product for the iPhone. Apple has just shipped the iPhone 2.0 software and opened the App Store, which enables iPhone 2.0 users to purchase any of a large number of third-party applications for the iPhone and iPod touch. Our application is called iEnvision.

As we talked about here a few months ago, our first hope was to supplement our line of Macintosh Internet security applications by developing a security application for the iPhone. Right after Apple released the iPhone SDK in March, we spent a significant amount of time looking for opportunities in the security area. But it looked (and looks) like Apple had just done too good a job with security on the iPhone. By limiting, in some small way, the type of applications that could be developed using the SDK, by distributing those applications itself, and by requiring security features (such as digital signing) in those applications, Apple has to a large extent eliminated much of the need for third-party Internet security software. These same restrictions also seem to additionally prevent us from implementing the few security applications that we felt might still be useful and fit in with our product line (in particular versions of our DoorStop X firewall and Who's There? firewall advisor).

With security applications off the table, we spent some time brainstorming about our core strengths, and how they might fit with the iPhone's. We concluded that networking and ease-of-use were key aspects of both our mission and the iPhone's design. From there, it was only a small jump to realize that we already had some very cool networking technology that could work well on the iPhone. Although our Macintosh Envision product is really intended for the large screen (HDTVs and other high-resolution displays), it turns out many of its concepts and technologies work just as well, if not better, on the small, but ultra-high-res screen of the iPhone. In particular, the ability to quickly and efficiently pull images off graphic-intensive Web sites and display them in automated full-screen slide shows fits well with the on-the-go lifestyles of many iPhone users. And it's way cool :)

We knew we had to move quickly to ship a product concurrently with Apple's iPhone 2.0 software, so we teamed up with another long-time Ashland-based software development company, Project A. And today we're happy to announce that iEnvision 1.0 is now available, on an iPhone or iPod touch near you, direct from the App Store. And, oh yeah, it's all of $9.99. If you're an iPhone user, please check it out and let us know what you think. You can even write a review at the store.

Now back to our regularly scheduled security blog...