Saturday, August 15, 2009

Please upgrade to NewsRob 2.7.7

Sorry, major screw up on my part.

NewsRob 2.7.5 included a minor bug (please ignore all NewsRob app icons but the one called "NewsRob", that was just an experiment), which I removed again in NewsRob 2.7.6.

Unfortunately I was mishandling my tools and as the consequence some other work-in-progress code was released in 2.7.6. This time it's more than a minor annoyance. 2.7.7 will stop refreshing after the first refresh.

So please upgrade to NewsRob 2.7.7 and accept my sincere apologies!

NewsRob 2.7.7 is available from the Android Market and AndAppStore.

16 comments:

  1. How does the 'new' google transcode feature work? I tried to enable it ... but I don't see a difference between that and viewing the 'full' page? Is there a page on your site going over that feature ?

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  2. I have installed the program, there is one thing missing in RSS Readers for Android phones is when you share the article through the Twitter it just gives me the link of the article and does not include the title. I am the first willing to pay for RSS reader which does that for me and others would prefer to do it for facebook. Honestly you should charge $0.99 when it is on sale or $1.99 when it is not.

    I use this program http://www.apptism.com/apps/inews on my IPOD touch. At last I have to thank you for this application.

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  3. PA, nope, I stopped producing documentation. I wasn't really read and meanwhile I try to channel those questions through the mailing list. Questions like these can be answered by other users. And for other questions I answer myself, but can then refer back to them.
    The time I save there now goes into the development.

    Anyway, you need to open the Manage Feed dialog. You can do that from the article's or feed's context menu.
    There you can select "Feed Content + Mobile Web Page" for downloading. The next new articles in this feed should be rendered by GWT.

    You can also set this as the default for all feeds that don't specify otherwise in the settings.

    If that doesn't work for you, let me know your exact steps.

    Back in the day ;-), when I still wrote at least Release Notes I posted this: http://newsrob.blogspot.com/2009/04/newsrob-19-preview-more-download.html

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  4. MusicLover, you really think that I didn't put a price on NewsRob, because I don't consider it ready? I should take offense, shouldn't I? How many apps do you know on the Android Market that are more ready to have a price than NewsRob is?

    Nope, not at all.

    I don't think that there is any money to be made that at least in part would reimburse me for the time I put into NewsRob. And a "price" like $0.99 or $1.99 is only part of the problem.
    Thank God that I am paid well in my day job and don't need to live off of this.

    Anyway, what Twitter client do you use?

    This should work already, if not contact the author of the twitter client.
    I already provide http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/Intent.html#EXTRA_SUBJECT.

    And it works fine for mail or bookmarking on delicious as can be seen here:
    http://newsrob.blogspot.com/2009/04/newsrob-19-rabbit.html

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  5. newsrob is great, but these two things are pretty annoying:

    (1) Folder changes aren't synced with google reader. For example, if I subscribe to a new feed, or create a new folder, neither shows up in newsrob. This is a big problem -- how can I read my new feeds?

    (2) The last line of text in a posting in obscured by the zoom in/out controls at the bottom of the screen. Please let us scroll just a bit higher so we don't have to wait for the controls to vanish.

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  6. Hey David,

    (1) "How can I read my feeds?"
    (a) Use "All Articles. This works on feed and folder level.
    (b) All new articles will be under the new folder.
    (c) Clear Cache forces the local articles to be discarded and so the next refresh will use the renamed folder. You don't do this every day, or do you?

    Will there be a better solution anytime soon? No, not until the API changes. That would make NewsRob process even more metadata, which is 99% of the time irrelevant, but drains the battery 100% of the time as well as wastes bandwidth and CPU.
    *If* Google Reader will, at some point in time, give me an API where I can just fetch the stuff that has changed since my last sync, your wish will be my command.

    (2) That's defined by the framework. It's the same in the browser. The upside is, that it's hardware accelerated.

    Btw. I plan on getting rid of the dynamic forward/backward buttons altogether and put them in a new nav bar at the top. But I haven't found the right enlightenment to do it right yet and it probably will take some more time.

    Just as a sidenote. I personally very often use the trackball to scroll. That's more exact in my opinion anyway.

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  7. ps. I forgot to mention I added something to my todo list. "Add some padding to the bottom of feeds". This is in regard to (2), but will only help in the "feed" view. I cannot add something to the web view.

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  8. Firstly, thanks for your work on NewsRob, I find it very useful on my HTC Magic. I'm not sure if I missed an option somewhere, but I wanted to check if it's possible to only download/sync specific folders/feeds from my Google Reader account instead of a full sync?

    Thanks!

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  9. Hey,

    nope, that's not possible. You can specify on the feed level how much of an article should be downloaded (text only/header, feed content, web page) though.

    I am not aware of an efficient way to download only some feeds from the Google Reader API.

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  10. Thanks for the reply! :) Guess I'll have to find a roundabout way of doing so, maybe setting up a Reader acct just for specific feeds...

    (The background to my query: the max 500 limit for downloaded posts tends to consist mostly of the zillion 'fun' reads that i subscribe to via Google Reader, which is fine if I were browsing on my computer.

    But on my phone i don't want the more serious news feeds to be drowned out by the fun reads, so i had hoped that there would be an option to say, just download the news feeds and leave the fun reads for the desktop.)

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  11. Yeah, the situation is not perfect that way. I am working on raising the article limit, but there is nothing I can promise at the moment.

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  12. Hi Mariano.

    I love your app. It is by far the best rss relate application on the market.

    I just found two things that might be an improvement...

    1. I have subscribed to a feed that as a complete stupid name. Because of that I have renamed it in Google Reader. But NewsRow still uses the original name. Even new messages appear under the old name. If this is a limitation of the Google Reader API then a rename option in the "manage feed" dialog of NewsRob would from my point of view a good alternative.

    2. I love the notifications, but somehow I never hear anything. Is that just on my device or is this be design? I though that I would here the systems default notification sound...
    What do you thing about a option to choose a own notification sound for NewsRow, like it is done in the SMS and GoogleMail apps? This would make it possible to know just from the sound which kind of notification was raised.

    Thanks again!

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  13. Hi Lars,

    sorry for being late.

    1. How is it now? Do you see the new name? It should change over time when new articles come in.

    2. No, sorry, there is no sound.
    Well, I understand your need, also other people would like to define the color of the led alarm and the sequence and timings as well as the sequence and timings of the vibration.
    Could we just wait until Android provides a pre-built component to do all that? Otherwise I invest time in infrastructure code that I could use to add some NewsRob specific value to NewsRob.

    I hope that's not too much of a turnoff for you, but I need to picky what I implement, otherwise there will not be much incremental improvement to NewsRob given the time constraints I face and the other tasks like answering mail, fixing bugs etc.

    Cheers,
    Mariano

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  14. Hi Mariano.

    Thanks for your answer.

    To your question: No the new articles do still appear under the old name. Maybe it is something special with that certain Feed. If will would like to test it yourself, here is the url: http://www.androidpit.de/c/blogs/rss?organizationId=25428
    I renamed it the "AndroidPit UserBlog" via Google Reader.

    And regarding the notification sound... Well as being a (sparetime-) developer myself, I know exactly what you are talking about ;).
    But to use at least the default notification sound (that is defined in the system properties of a device) should be fairly easy because you have already well implemented notifications... Most likely you just have to add the right "flag" to the "defaults". Take a look at this link: (I guess you already know it ;)
    http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/notifiers/notifications.html#Sound

    The "pre-build" component to use non default sounds is most likely the "ContentResolver". Also mentioned in the link above.

    Thanks again.
    Lars

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  15. I didn't read your first post properly. I was expecting that you were talking about labels, not about feeds ;-) Sorry.

    I wasn't aware that was possible. That's new, right?

    I fear I can't do something about that transparently. I will think about it some more. Maybe yes, maybe no. I'll put it on my TODO list, but it will go closer to the bottom than the top.
    There is no good workaround at the moment. Only uninstalling will help, as "Clear Cache" leaves the feeds untouched as the feeds aslo store preferences.
    Sorry.

    If you have something else on this topic, could you please continue the discussion on the mailing list.

    Also, I am traveling until the 7th of September. My answers will be slow until then, maybe even no more answers until then.

    ---

    As you show some commitment with at least investing the time to lookup what's needed (not that it's really new to me ;-) I will put it (+ a setting) on my TODO list, closer to the top than to the bottom ;-)

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