It's been a very good week of testing the new BitWise Plus capabilities. Hats off to our testers who have done a great job finding inconsistencies, bugs, crashes, etc. Another pre-Beta version went out today to the testers after a week's worth of improvements, so Plus should be Beta-ready within 10 days (assuming no major catastrophes).
BitWise Plus represents a bold stride forward among all major public IM systems. You get seamless identity verification without any complicated technical process. Once your username is upgraded, you will have all current and Plus capabilities when using that name, regardless of where you log in or what OS you use. Your contacts do not have to be Plus users--all Personal users can receive keys, verify keys and use the higher encryption offered to Plus users when speaking with a Plus user.
Identity verification has a strong intrinsic value, which is why BitWise Plus will not be a free service, but instead will involve a one-time fee. All of the new Plus capabilities will be included free for all current and future BitWise Professional users. This is a tremendous value for an already exceptional service.
In response to the anticipated murmuring about adding a paid version for home use: BitWise Plus is the only public IM service that gives its users full benefits without requiring their contacts to upgrade as well, and is the only service that has a one-time, rather than a yearly fee. With AIM's solution, you pay $20 per year. IMSecure Pro costs $20 per year. Both solutions require every one of your contacts also pay for you to enjoy the benefits. Of course, BitWise Plus is also cross-platform.
After all these years, BitWise isn't only a wise bit of software, it's a wiser bit of software, no matter which excellent version you use.
More information about upgrading to Plus will be available as we get closer to a final release.