Muffin has been completely redesigned and optimised for iPhone users. You still have the original design available to you, but this new iPhone version is designed to be easier to use, easy to read (no zooming required) and not to mention prettier.
I’ve posted some screenshots to flickr but I encourage you to check it out yourself and see how much more useful Muffin can be for you now!
Another recent change you probably didn’t notice was that my name has gone from the footers and has been replaced by “Uh Huh, Yeah!”
I’ve transferred the responsibilities of running Muffin over to my company “Uh Huh, Yeah!” but in reality it’s still me who’ll be working on updating and improving Muffin. The only change that may affect you is that support requests should go to help at uhhuhyeah dot com instead of support at getmuffin dot com please.
Thanks
- David
Two new features to announce today.
Muffin now has support for Dollars ($), Great British Pounds (£), Euros (€), Yen (¥) and Danish Kroner (DKK). The option to change the currency Muffin uses can be found in your preferences.
A much requested feature - just like you can look ahead to your next pay period, you can now look back to your previous pay period and see how you finished up. And remember, if you want to see any of your spending or income that’s even older than your last pay period you can see everything for any given range of dates under “Reports”.
I hope these new features will make Muffin a little more useful to you all. I’ll be starting work on another couple of improvements focused on making Muffin even easier to use. If you have any thoughts or suggestions I’m all ears guys and girls.
- David
Two new features to announce today
The first is “Bill List” and you’ll see a link for this in the main menu at the top of your screen when you log-in to Muffin.
Bill List is simply a list of bills you can keep in Muffin to refer to of your usual outgoings that you’ll want to list in your planned spending month-to-month. Just like with spending you can specify a description and a category as well as an amount and what day of the month it is usually due.
And as a little shortcut there is a link next to each bill so you can add it directly into your spending. A great little time saver, not to mention handy if you don’t like paying penalties because you forgot your credit card bill was due already!
And for those of us on bi-weekly/fortnightly pay periods Muffin will sort your bills into which paycheck covers that bill’s due date!
The second feature is a behind the scenes improvement without a catchy name like “Bill List”. Now when your regular pay day falls on a weekend (and so you’ll get paid a day or two early) Muffin will do some fiendish trickery behind the scenes to automatically change your Muffin pay day to match your real pay day! So for example if your regular pay day is the 16th (which this August will fall on a Saturday) Muffin will switch your pay day to the 15th (which this August is a Friday) so like in the real world, you can spend it the day you get it!
These are the first of a few improvements I’ll be making to Muffin. So if you haven’t already, click here to create your free account today!
I don’t know where else to begin but the beginning, so I’ll start there.
Due to an oversight/error/goof while trying to install a second application on Muffin’s server I managed to make Muffin inaccessible to the outside world. I then tried undo the damage but I must have broken something in some far off corner of the machine because for the life of me I couldn’t get the server back to how it was before I started messing with it.
I had a backup of Muffin from a few hours prior so I decided to cut my losses and restore the server from that. The backup is an automated service, I pay my host to backup everything on my machine periodically. Somehow it failed to backup the database that holds all Muffin’s (your) data. I tried an earlier backup - same thing. An even earlier backup yielded the same disappointing results. My server host confirmed that my backups should have included Muffin’s data but were not able to come up with a plausible explanation, or more to the point, they were unable to be of any assistance in finding the missing data.
If this is the point where you’re expecting me to say “…but I had a secondary backup just in case” then this is the point where I have to disappoint you (and myself). Unfortunately I was a fool and I relied on what my server host had in place to save me.
So what this means is that Muffin is now working fine, but everyone’s data has been lost. Including your account information. So right now Muffin has one user (me). You do not exist. (It’s a shame I don’t work for the tax man!) - please note that the data has not been “lost” as in stolen or misplaced. It’s lost as in ceases to exist.
If you would like to continue using Muffin (and I beseech you to bear in mind that it’s not Muffin’s fault I messed up) please create a new account and give us both a second chance.
I realise this must be very frustrating but believe me, nobody is more upset than I am. So effective immediately, this is what I’ve done to prevent anything as horrible as this happening again.
Bottom line is, I messed up. I’m really very very sorry and I’ve taken steps to ensure should anything bad happen again, I will be able to have Muffin back on her feet hopefully before any of you have even noticed she was down.
If you have any specific questions about this you can email me (as always) at david@getmuffin.com
With sincere apologies, David
This is an official notice regarding an important change to Muffin.
Essentially the change is that Muffin will be free, or at least free for the immediate future.
If and when it ceases to be free account holders will be notified (via Muffin and via the account’s email address) 30 days before the new billing plan takes effect. If account holders wish to continue using Muffin they’ll be prompted for their billing information. They will also be given the option of closing their accounts with no charges for previous usage.
This is due to some changes in the way sensitive billing information will be handled as does not affect any of Muffin’s current features or abilities.
Thank you for your continued support.
- David (david at get muffin dot com)
You can now edit or remove items via your spending reports (i.e. not just items that fall in your current or next pay period, but rather anything that comes up in your search).
If there is a feature you think Muffin could really benefit from, you can either leave a comment on this post or if you prefer you can email me at support at get muffin dot com. I welcome your suggestions and feedback, but please bear in mind that your request may not make it into the Muffin.
If you’re looking at your Muffin account and wondering where to get started, maybe this little video I made will help you do just that.
A quick tip I’d like to share (Mac OS X only) is to use Fluid for Muffin (and probably for the other Web Apps you are using).
Fluid is a special browser (a “Site Specific Browser”) that gives you a pseudo desktop application to run Muffin in. The basic idea is to keep Muffin (or your favourite Web App) separate to your browser so that you can a) treat it as a separate app (Alt-Tab switching etc) and so you can b) keep your Web App open when you close your browser.
I recommend going to the Fluid website because it’ll make a lot more sense to you seeing it in action.
Oh yeah, it’s free.
Updated: Apparently there’s also Mozilla Prism for all you Windows and Linux (and Mac) boys and girls out there. (Thanks Phil!)
Today (Monday June 2nd) is the day that Muffin finally gets to introduce itself to the world. If you go to getmuffin.com you can read about Muffin, see what it looks like to use it, and even use it yourself!
I’ve been using Muffin myself for the past 8 weeks or so. Those weeks were spent doing all the stuff ya have to do to make it fit for public consumption like having logins, making sure I wasn’t making too many presumptions with the navigation and flow of the application. I wanted somebody who was using it for the first time to feel immediately like they knew how to use Muffin.
Muffin is a simple way to track your spending. It helps you see at a glance what kind of shape you’re in as well as making it painless to keep your budget up-to-date and reflecting reality.
I initially made Muffin for me. One day (while thinking about what I had to pay for out of this paycheck and wondering if I had enough to make an extra payment to my credit card or something like that) I had an idea of “wouldn’t it be cool if I had something that could…” and like that Muffin came to me. I didn’t know any programming language and I had never even made my computer say “hello world” but I now had a reason to learn. I like making lists. And part way through making a list of everything I wanted Muffin to do I thought to myself maybe I’m not the only one who would find this useful. And here we are, six months later.
I have some new features and a few improvements to existing features to come soon. I’ll be posting in this blog about those new features as well as giving you some tips on how to get the most out of Muffin. I’m also working on a free companion web app that if you get any benefit out of using Muffin, you’ll love this too.