I’ve made some update to the website, hopefully making it more useful for existing and potential customers.

• The Differencia application help is now also available online
• The screen shot gallery has been revised to take you through the work flow for using Differencia to diff / compare files
• There is a new Use Cases page giving examples of what Differencia can be used for
• Also added a Release Notes page. There is also a new blog category, specifically for release notes.
• There are also some cosmetic changes. For example, the gallery’s lightbox is now easier to navigate and better matches the overall website design.

Please feel free to explore the updated website and let me have any feedback for making the site more useful.

I believe that Differencia is a truly unique diff tool for the Mac, and want to make its home on the web equally useful for its users.

A key feature of Differencia, is its ability to use comparison and file layout templates that remove the need for any configuration. You can simply select your files and run your reconciliations and comparisons without having to set-up the comparison parameters first. We have an online template database, from which they can be downloaded for free.

A kind user let us know, earlier this week, that templates were not available for download from the database. Although items were listed on the database, there were errors if you tried to download the actual template files. We added the first templates to the online database at the beginning of February. Unfortunately, it appears that the templates have probably not been available for most of the intervening time.

We restored the templates, only to find they were being removed again. We tracked down the source of the problem to an automated clean up process in our shopping cart software. The problem should now have been resolved.

Our apologies to all our customers, who have not been able access these templates.

Also, the database has only a limited number of templates available for the moment. We are working to expand the catalog, in conjunction with our forthcoming 1.1 release.

DayTime is taking part in its first promotion, the Easter mEgg Hunt. Find the hidden eggs on participating website and get 20% off great Mac software. As you’re hunting around for the code for the software you want, you will hopefully find some hidden software gems as well.

There’s an egg somewhere on this site and to start looking for more, click on the image below:

Getting the template database off to a start, I have added templates for the contacts lists from all the major Mail clients. Layout Templates for Apple’s Address Book and the Contacts for Entourage, Thunderbird, Eudora, Outlook for Windows, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail can all be found in the new Address Book category of the template database.

Instructions for how to export contact information from each of these systems can be found by in the detail of each template in the online database.

Apple Address Book

Apple’s Address Book cannot currently export directly to a flat file format that Differencia can import. However Address Book can export to the standard vCard format with files with extension .vcf. There is an excellent utility on the web that will convert vCard files from any source into flat file formats that Differencia can handle. The Address Book templates in the database are based on the output from this vCard Format Converter.

The VCF Converter is quick and reliable and none of your private contact information is ever stored or available to the website running the converter. The converter can be found here.

NB. You will need Differencia 1.0.3 or later to make use of these templates.

Future Directions

Comparing Contact information provides some fascinating challenges for a comparison and reconciliation tool such as Differencia. In the future I hope to add some intelligence to Differencia with regard to contact data so that it can:

• Make a probable match between “Mr J Smith” and “John Smith”
• Understand international & area codes, so that a Home Phone of “+1-408-555-1234″ is the same as a Home Phone of “5551234″ for someone with a Home Address in Cupertino, CA, USA.
• Add support for direct access to Apple’s Address Book, without need for conversion
• Direct support for vCard (vcf) and LDIF files

We would appreciate any further feedback on how we can improve Differencia, so feel free to contact us.

Differencia 1.0.3 was released today with some minor bug fixes to coincide with the addition of templates to the Online Template Database.

Differencia 1.0.3 Release Notes

- Fix to allow importing of templates from Online Template Database when running under Leopard.

- Ensure Comparison Definition Templates (.dcompdef) display the correct icon in Finder

- Switch labelling of Date / Time & Number preference panes

Differencia 1.0.2 was released today, shortly after 1.0.1 with the following improvements: