Category: News

8 New Video Tutorials Now Available

We know you love our easy to follow, step-by-step video tutorials for MIDAS… so we’ve just uploaded a whole bunch of new ones, updating for the very latest release of MIDAS, version 4!

With nearly an hour of new tutorials, broken down into 8 new individual tutorials, the following topics are covered:

  • Setting Up Your Venues
  • Setting Up & Allocating Resources
  • Add, Modify, and Delete Bookings
  • Add, Modify, Delete, and Email Clients
  • Invoicing
  • Accept Booking Requests Online
  • Control and Customize Booking Fields
  • Messages, Notifications, Reminders, and Watches

If you’re an existing user of MIDAS, you’re sure to find these tutorials useful as you start exploring MIDAS v4. If you’re not a MIDAS user just yet, these tutorials will show you just how easy our software is to use, and provide an insight into some of the incredibly powerful and versatile features you can expect from MIDAS.

You can find this video tutorials at https://mid.as/tutorials as well as on our YouTube channel.


Introducing Our New Pricing Structure

When MIDAS was first release back in 2005, we sold copies of our software for a “fixed price”. This same principle has remained in effect ever since. Now, after careful consideration, we’ve decided to change our pricing structure to coincide with the release of MIDAS v4.

The primary reason for this change is to ensure fairness for all our customers. We also want to facilitate greater access to our software to a wider audience. Under the previous “fixed price” pricing structure, a small organization with one administrator and a handful of rooms was paying the same price for MIDAS as a large organization with dozens of administrators and hundreds of rooms. To us, this didn’t seem fair!

The idea behind MIDAS “Lite”

That’s one of the reasons why last year we introduced a “cut-down” version of MIDAS, that we called MIDAS Lite. MIDAS Lite was designed to cater for smaller organizations and those on tighter budgets. MIDAS Lite was limited to 10 bookable spaces and a single user. It also didn’t include functions such as Statistics or Invoicing.

Replacing MIDAS “Lite”

With the release MIDAS v4, we’ve dropped our “Lite” edition of MIDAS, and changed our pricing structure. Now, the price you’ll pay for MIDAS will depend upon both the number of bookable spaces (venues) you wish to manage, and the number of user accounts required.

The new basic price for MIDAS will allow for a single user and up to 10 venues. This is similar to the previous limits that MIDAS Lite had. The new basic price includes all the features and functions of MIDAS (including Invoicing, Statistics, and Public Booking Requests, etc)

If you have more than 10 venues, or require multiple users have access, pricing options are available to meet your needs. You can also upgrade at any time to more venues/users. So as your business develops and grows, MIDAS can grow with you!

There are also “Unlimited” options available for both Venues and Users. Unlimited licenses remove limits on the number of venues and/or users you can add to your MIDAS system.

Our support/subscription pricing structure will also be updated to reflect the number of venues/users in your MIDAS.

How these changes will affect existing users

If you purchased MIDAS before 1st August 2012 and have a valid Annual Support Subscription, you’ll be entitled to a FREE update to MIDAS v4!

Users of MIDAS Lite will be entitled to upgrade to MIDAS with 1 user and 10 venues. These are the same limits you had in MIDAS Lite.

If you were using the full edition of MIDAS v3, there were no restrictions on the number of venues/users you could add to your system. For MIDAS v3 users, the same unlimited restrictions will apply when you update to MIDAS v4!

That’s right, existing customers will not have any limits imposed on the total number of venues/users they can add to MIDAS v4!.

We care a great deal about our existing customers, many of whom have been with us since the start! That’s why there will also be no increases in “Annual Support” or “Hosting + Annual Support Subscriptions” for existing customers! In fact, around 30% of existing customers (those with few users/venues) will actually find that their Annual Support/Hosting Subscriptions will decrease upon their next renewal!

We believe our new pricing structure, coinciding with the major new release of MIDAS v4, will be fairer for all. It will help make MIDAS more accessible to all organizations whatever their size!

As ever, we remain totally transparent and upfront about our pricing! Unlike many of our competitors who don’t display their pricing on their websites, our prices are always plainly shown at https://mid.as/pricing.

If you have any questions about our new pricing structure, please feel free to contact us.

UPDATE: Our cloud-hosted pricing model was subsequently updated again in 2020


MIDAS v4 Now Available!

Today, we are pleased to announce the release of the much anticipated MIDAS v4!

New & Improved Features in MIDAS v4:

New Default Theme
New Default Theme
View Multiple Days in a Single Booking Grid
View Multiple Days in a Single Booking Grid
Drag & Drop Bookings To Reschedule
Drag & Drop Bookings To Reschedule
Add Venue Photos/Descriptions & Managers
Add Venue Photos/Descriptions & Managers
History Panel Logs History of every Booking
History Panel Logs History of every Booking

With much of the original code re-written from the ground up, MIDAS v4 is the culmination of over eight months development work, and is packed full of new and improved features.

MIDAS v4 also uses a faster, more efficient, database architecture than previous versions.

Here’s a little more insight into some of the new features in MIDAS v4:
MIDAS v4: A Fresh New Look
Weekly & Multiple Day Views
Invoicing Improvements
Improvements to Booking Requests
Do More Direct From The Booking Grid
New History Panel Showing Complete History For Each Booking

View the full changelog here

Existing MIDAS customers with valid Annual Support Subscriptions will be able to update to MIDAS v4 in the coming days as part of their ongoing subscription!

Customers who have their MIDAS “remotely hosted” by us have already been updated to MIDAS v4!

If you’re not yet using MIDAS, now’s the time to get your organization’s room scheduling in order!
Not convinced? Read what some of our existing customers say about our software and support

…and why not try MIDAS v4 out for yourself now in our free online public demo.

New & Improved Features in MIDAS v4:

Generate Invoices Form The Booking Grid
Generate Invoices Form The Booking Grid
Approve Requests From The Booking Grid
Approve Requests From The Booking Grid
Restore Deleted Bookings From The Grid
Restore Deleted Bookings From The Grid
Show Booking Fields To Select Users
Show Booking Fields To Select Users
Specify Resources Per Venue
Specify Resources Per Venue

Firefox 13 out now, IE10 updated, Chrome beats IE, and Facebook to purchase Opera!?

Well, it’s been a busy few days in the web browser world! We’ll try and summarize what’s been happening for you!

Internet Explorer 10 Updated

Internet Explorer 10On Thursday, Microsoft released Windows 8 Release Preview. Along with it came an update to their Internet Explorer 10 browser. This is the browser that will ship when Windows 8 is fully released later this year. Sadly, IE10 isn’t currently available for Windows 7, but we very much hope it will be before too long, as IE10 sees some significant leaps forward for Microsoft’s browser.

Firefox 13 Out Now

Firefox 13The latest version of Firefox – version 13 – is now available to download from Mozilla (even though it’s not “officially” released until tomorrow!). Notable changes in this version, according to Mozilla, relate to the “Home” and “Tabs” pages. The “home” page can now be customized with bookmarks, history, sync, and previous session data. The “new tabs” page has also seen a feature introduce that has been knocking around in Chrome and Opera for a while. This feature shows thumbnails of recently/commonly viewed pages

Chrome overtakes Internet Explorer

Chrome more popular than IEStatcounter also reported recently that Google Chrome has now overtaken Internet Explorer in terms of market share. According to StatCounter, Chrome now accounts for 32.76% of the worldwide browser market. This compares to 31.94% for Internet Explorer and 25.47% for Firefox. This is the first time that a browser other than Internet Explorer has commanded the largest share of the browser market. Ok, so it’s not a massive lead – in fact, Chrome’s lead is only 0.82%. Still, this is quite an achievement for a relatively new browser, which was first launched less than 4 years ago!

Facebook to purchase Opera?

Opera 12It’s also been rumored this past week that Facebook may be gearing up to buy the Opera browser!
That’s according to a report from Pocket-Lint.com. The article claims (via unnamed sources) that Facebook is looking to purchase Opera Software. Opera Software are the makers of the long-running Opera web browser. Details are sketchy, but the story claims that Facebook is looking to compete in the web browser war that already has Microsoft, Google, Apple and Mozilla among its big players.

The Opera web browser has historically always had the smallest market share of any of the 5 major desktop browsers. That said, Opera has gained some ground most notably in the mobile web browser market. Facebook is currently very focused on the “mobile” side of their operations. This is due to an increasing number of users regularly using Facebook on their mobile devices. So, Facebook could be about to purchase Opera Software as a shortcut towards making a browser that could compete in the smartphone and tablet space?

The Facebook purchase could actually be very good for the Opera browser. Such a move has the potential to become much more of a “threat” to the other 4 browsers. This in turn will likely see increased development, competition, and a race to strive to produce the fastest, most “standards compliant” browser.

We’ve been closely monitoring Opera developments in recent months. Opera Software are about to release Opera 12, and we’ve been impressed with what we’ve seen so far from the nightly developer “snapshots”. Opera 12 is a substantial improvement on Opera 11 – it’s faster, and far more standard-compliant

MIDAS Booking Software is compatible ALL major browsers

Our browser-based software, MIDAS, is fully supported on Internet Explorer (including on IE10 in Windows 8), Firefox (including v13), Opera (including v12), as well as the current versions of Safari and Chrome.

…and there’s still time to take advantage of our very special Diamond Jubilee discount!