Wednesday, August 4, 2010

NewsRob August Release / 4.2

Want to report a bug? Discuss a feature? Need help? Please come to the mailing list: http://bit.ly/nr_list

Want to submit a feature suggestion? http://bit.ly/nr_suggest

Looking for the FAQ: http://bit.ly/nr_faq


NewsRob August Release / 4.2



Pin Articles (Pro)


Here comes the implementation of a workflow feature "Pin Articles For Later Reading".


On the article list or article detail view. when you swipe right to left on an unread article header the article becomes pinned. The unread indicator changes from green to blue.



Pinned articles are not affected by Mark All Read and Mark Read Until Here. They will also no longer automatically being marked as read when opened.


When you swipe left to right a pinned article is unpinned and marked as read. Also when marking a pinned article as read on the Google Reader webapp it will be unpinned and marked as read on NewsRob also.


It depends on you if and how you want to use this feature. A possible workflow is to check articles quickly, pin those you are want to go over with more time later, and then use Mark All Read or Mark Read Until Here to deal with the other articles.



Unsubscribe Feed


You can now unsubscribe from a feed from an article's or feed's context menu. All remaining articles will be marked read and the feed will be unsubscribed during the next sync.



HTC Desire / Incredible / Froyo


Because of bugs in HTC Sense some minor NewsRob features (hovering zoom controls, sync-in-progress notification) were locked for the Desire and Incredible. The symptoms were random reboots and crashes.

Preliminary testing of the leaked Froyo builds indicate that those issues are fixed. As a consequence NewsRob 4.2 enables those features again for the mentioned devices if they run Froyo.


Hopefully that is a good idea. Please let me know if you experience the issues I described.



As always this version also contains bug fixes and small enhancements.

27 comments:

  1. Thanks Mariano! Keep up the good work :)

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  2. Perfection is a dream. This reader is a reality, thanks!!

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  3. Great update! Knocked two of my three wish list items (pinning & unsubscribing). My final wish is the ability to subscribe to new feeds from the browser. No idea if this can be done, but I've seen other readers that give you an option to share to Google Reader in the browser.

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  4. Andrés & Wayne. Thanks, the positive energy you're sending my way is appreciated! ;)

    Hi Wes, no, shouldn't be a problem from a technical point of view. It's just that there are many features that want to be implemented.

    It'll come, this year, not sure when exactly though: http://newsrob.uservoice.com/forums/35624-general/suggestions/409294-add-feeds-on-the-phone?ref=title

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  5. My incredible hangs then reboots every few minutes over the last day or two. Often not when newsrob is running but it might be syncing in the background. So many apps get updated on my phone every day that its difficult to pinpoint the cause but I'm stopping the newsrob service to see if it helps.

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  6. ElTopher, ok, good plan. Let me know the results.

    It would be best to come to the mailing list. http://bit.ly/nr_list
    Could you please state then which version of Android you use.
    You should be able to enable settings/ui/in-progress-notification to see when something runs in the background.
    You can a also enable newsrob to write a log file. Check it out at the bottom of the FAQ. http://bit.ly/nr_faq

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  7. Why is newsrob so slow on my at&t captivate? Will g this be fixed soon?

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  8. Robert,

    this Samsung phone and its brothers have a birth defect. They store by default app's databases on very slow memory and apps that are tasking the database heavily suffer from that tremendously. We'll see what the next Samsung update will bring us, but currently for a non-rooted phone it doesn't look good. If you rooted your phone you can change avoid using the slow memory and you should be ok.

    Here is the relevant thread, if you are interested in this topic and have something new to add, please add to the conversation there: http://groups.google.com/group/newsrob/browse_thread/thread/b7bcb4c0e76f8bde

    Sorry for not having better news.

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  9. Thanks for the update! Pinned articles is a great feature, but I miss two things:

    1) "Pinned articles" folder on NR's first screen (together with "all articles" and "starred items").
    I would like to see all pinned articles together in one place (just like starred items), not having to search through all of my subscriptions.

    2) See pinned articles in Google reader webapp.
    Could be done by attaching "Pinned" label to pinned items. Not sure if Google reader API is flexible enough to do that, though.

    Anyway, thanks for adding this feature, and keep up the good work!

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  10. Pure, that are both good ideas. Please submit them to user voice (http://newsrob.uservoice.com) individually.

    2) I think it is possible, just not in the way that an article marked as read on the server side will get the pinned label removed. I haven't thought about this deeply, this may or may not be an issue. Let's discuss it when it has some votes.

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  11. Pinning! Awesome addition, definitely was one on my wish list.

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  12. Had to revert back to v4.1.1 as v4.2 just hangs and reboots my HTC Desire OS2.2 when trying to update in the background :(

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  13. Thanks for the feedback.

    Could you share some more details here? http://bit.ly/nr_list

    I would like to fix whatever the issue is, but I would need to know the exact symptoms, maybe even logs.

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  14. I was opening in browser then sharing to instapaper. This might be a lot less clunky so thanks!

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  15. Rick,

    you can install the Read Later app and then use Share Link from within NewsRob to add an article to Instapaper.

    In a future version there may be the possibility to define quick share targets where you could share then with two clicks.

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  16. Installed this version on an MyTouch Slide (Android 2.1) yesterday and uninstalled within an hour. 2 random reboots in that time. Sorry for the lack of logs, but I can't keep something that unstable on a phone I need to use for work.

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  17. Thanks for the feedback Liam.
    Did you enable settings/ui/in-progress notification?
    The logs would likely not helped anyway, the reboots are not a newsrob issue, only maybe triggered by newsrob.

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  18. It's slowing down my Nexus One when the update to SD card is running. My phone is almost useless until NewsRob done with the downloads.. Please fix it if it is possible! Thanks!

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  19. Erwin, I am using pure Java calls to write to the SD card. If your phone becomes useless then, cancel the sync. I don't see any potential to "fix" it.

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  20. Too funny. Your ads are touting another newsreader (Tristiana?). I guess you can't control that.

    I ran across another app using the same ad service. It has a setting that allows you to turn off ads for a week. Then you have to go back and check it again for another week.... just sayin....

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  21. hi, the articles from:
    golem.de
    notebookjournal.de
    mobilearea.de
    notebookcheck.de

    aren't doenloaded correctly. often there's only the haeder there...
    can you fix this? if this is done i would buy the pro version :-)

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  22. Hi,

    I can't seem to get read articles to sync up to my Google reader. (web)

    I mostly connect to the net, sync, read and disconnect. I know about the 5 minutes timer after syncing, so I kept the connection alive for hours.

    My G Reader shows about 220 unread articles while NewsRob is totally read.

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  23. Shared my problem in the forum, but there seems to be issues with the latest update on HTC phones. I used newsrob daily with zero problems for several months, and suddenly HTC EVO is frozen when newsrob syncs and requires a battery removal to reboot, everytime. Not sure what is going on.....I have 150+ apps and phone runs flawlessly but newsrob suddenly is problematic.

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  24. It would be great to be able to synchronize only certain folders

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  25. Guys I was on vacation. So sorry for the delay.

    Bob, yeah, it is kind of funny ;) However I don't think they offer an Android based product. Anyway, thanks for watching out for me.

    Galaxykeks, how do the articles look like in the Google Reader web app? Also just the headers? Then those are so called partial feeds, i.e. the feeds don't contain the full article.
    You can tap on the article header then and it will switch from "feed" view to "web" view (and back if you tap again).
    You can tweak the default behavior when you go select "Manage Feed" from the context menu.

    VMax, what is your setting for: settings/sync/sync type?

    Tomas, yes, found your issue on the mailing list. Will answer there. It may take a couple of more days so, as I have to go through more than 30 conversations, but I will get there eventually.
    Have you tried disabling settings/ui/in-progress-notification?

    FLOW, this is handled by the following feature request and will be release within the next two weeks or so: http://newsrob.uservoice.com/forums/35624-general/suggestions/450237-sync-only-certain-folders?ref=title

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  26. 1. Thanks for the really great app!

    2. Could you fix the issue that the phone gets restarted during syncs? (HTC Desire)

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  27. Kristaps,

    thanks.

    Regarding the cause: I hope that HTC will fix that. I can't.

    Regarding the symptom: When you disable Settings/UI/In-Progress-Notification then it shouldn't do the reboot. Please let me know if you experience otherwise and include what Android version you use.

    The next version of NewsRob will disable the in-progress-notification for HTC Desire/Incredible/EVO.

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