Many of you have taken advantage of the free FogBugz Trial account that we offer at https://try.fogbugz.com.  The trial account gives you a chance to try FogBugz completely risk-free and make sure that it's really a good fit.  We're happy now to offer you a chance to try Fog Creek Copilot the same way.  Developed by the now-famous Aardvark’d interns, Fog Creek Copilot makes it REALLY easy to help your customers, family and friends.  Lots of FogBugz users (us included) already use Copilot to provide remote support for their products.  If you don’t already have an account, you can sign up now for a fifteen-day free trial by going to:

https://www.copilot.com/freetrial/

An email from a customer who had posted a job, received no response, and then decided to run the add for an additional 3 weeks: 

Success!

We hired someone we got from the Joel board, and our second best candidate also found us there.

Thank you!

Cash that proverbial check.

Best,

Larry 

 And another email we received about Fog Creek Copilot:

Hi Guys,

I'd like to thank you very much for helping solve a very important customer's problem.

As a long time Fogbugz user I had high expectations of CoPilot, all of which were met.

I had concerns about how difficult it would be for me to connect to my customer, but all was seamless.  I managed to solve their problem in 2 minutes instead of the 30 minutes of phone calls it would have taken previously.

A very happy customer,
 
Byron 

Just a reminder that this coming Sunday, June 17th (Father's Day), we're making Fog Creek Copilot free for the day.  You can use it to fix a relative's computer, as Joel suggests.  It's way less frustrating than phone-only support.  But you could also connect using Fog Creek Copilot to show each other travel plans, or work on a photo collection together (a phone or Skype connection would come in handy).

Tuning up the relatives' computer when you're home for the holidays is a rich tradition; with Copilot, you can do it on National Legume Day too.  Or Father's Day.  Enjoy!

FogBugz works great on its own, but it really magnifies your productivity when you hook it up to your other tools.  FogBugz works together with source control, RSS aggregators, IDEs, and reporting software - and more.  The new FogBugz Ecology page lists major applications and systems that you can use to extend FogBugz's functionality.  We'll be adding to it as we find out about new plugins and mashups - tell us about them.

Also: if you're a Fog Creek Copilot subscriber, you can now cobrand Copilot with your logo, and point your customers at Copilot helpee download pages from your own site to provide a seamless support experience.  Check out the FAQ and branding tutorial.

Fog Creek Copilot, now at version 2.3, has file transfer, Mac support, and direct connect to make tech support really painless.  If you haven't checked it out since the 2005 initial release, check again -- Day Passes are only $5.