NewsRob January Release / 4.7
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/nrfaq
NewsRob January Release / 4.7
NewsRob Turns Two -– Special Promotion
NewsRob was initially published roughly two years ago and now enters its third year of life ;) It has been a great time and I'd like to use this occasion to offer NewsRob for €1.99 (€2.37 incl. Tax in the EU) until the end of February.
If you just very recently purchased NewsRob for the full price and feel cheated now, please contact me: mariano.kamp@gmail.com.
Subscribe to Feed in Google Reader
You now subscribe to feeds in Google Reader from within NewsRob.
Either you select it from any article lists' option menu or you send a link to NewsRob from another app or NewsRob itself.
The subscription dialog shows you a list of possible feeds for your keywords and works interactively. The actual fetching of new articles happens in the background during the next sync.
This is the implementation for the #3 feature suggestion at uservoice.
It seems that the new authentication – introduced in the previous release – works well for the vast majority of NewsRob users.
However as there were a few disgruntled one-star-comments on the Android Market I'd like to say again that this only works for proper Google accounts. These are all accounts that end with gmail.com or googlemail.com as well as the Google Apps For Your Domain accounts that Google already migrated.
If you don't have one of those, please continue to use the classic method.
Well, if you didn't read the previous release notes explaining that, you probably aren't reading these either and I am preaching to the choir ;) Anyway, there is also now a hint text on the account list / login dialog.
Misc
A lot of small performance/responsiveness improvements went into this release. Please come to the mailing list if you still see a black screen or an Application Not Responding dialog.
Another small enhancement should be valuable for web comics. When "Image Fit-To-Width" is enabled the resizing will be done again when changing the orientation of your device, at least until you first scroll into the article.
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/nrfaq
NewsRob January Release / 4.7
NewsRob Turns Two -– Special Promotion
NewsRob was initially published roughly two years ago and now enters its third year of life ;) It has been a great time and I'd like to use this occasion to offer NewsRob for €1.99 (€2.37 incl. Tax in the EU) until the end of February.
If you just very recently purchased NewsRob for the full price and feel cheated now, please contact me: mariano.kamp@gmail.com.
Subscribe to Feed in Google Reader
You now subscribe to feeds in Google Reader from within NewsRob.
Either you select it from any article lists' option menu or you send a link to NewsRob from another app or NewsRob itself.
The subscription dialog shows you a list of possible feeds for your keywords and works interactively. The actual fetching of new articles happens in the background during the next sync.
This is the implementation for the #3 feature suggestion at uservoice.
Google Ads - Full Screen Available in Free Version
Unfortunately AdMob dropped the support for narrow ads in their current SDK. As this was the only reason to still use AdMob, those ads are now replaced by Google Ads. NewsRob was showing Google Ads already on the bottom of the lists, but will now also do that on the article detail view.
Those are a bit taller than the narrow AdMob ads. To sweeten the deal the full screen mode of NewsRob is now available in the free version too and in full screen mode you should now have more space than you had before.
You can toggle the full screen mode with a double tap on the content area.
Unfortunately AdMob dropped the support for narrow ads in their current SDK. As this was the only reason to still use AdMob, those ads are now replaced by Google Ads. NewsRob was showing Google Ads already on the bottom of the lists, but will now also do that on the article detail view.
Those are a bit taller than the narrow AdMob ads. To sweeten the deal the full screen mode of NewsRob is now available in the free version too and in full screen mode you should now have more space than you had before.
You can toggle the full screen mode with a double tap on the content area.
End of Support for Android 1.5 - 2.0.1 Devices
Meanwhile there aren't that many Android devices accessing NewsRob anymore that run an Android Version below Android 2.1. See the graphic on the right for a distribution of Android versions for NewsRob Pro.
As a consequence I am now dropping the official support for versions below Android 2.1.
This is the last version of NewsRob that is available for older Android versions and will be frozen. Hopefully that strikes a good balance between moving forward and not leaving the users of old versions totally behind.
At the beginning of March you will see the following message if you use an old Android version:
New Authentication
Meanwhile there aren't that many Android devices accessing NewsRob anymore that run an Android Version below Android 2.1. See the graphic on the right for a distribution of Android versions for NewsRob Pro.As a consequence I am now dropping the official support for versions below Android 2.1.
This is the last version of NewsRob that is available for older Android versions and will be frozen. Hopefully that strikes a good balance between moving forward and not leaving the users of old versions totally behind.
At the beginning of March you will see the following message if you use an old Android version:
NewsRob kept compatibility with old Android versions for quite some time and to some extent will continue to do so.
However this comes at a cost and as meanwhile there are only a few users left who use NewsRob on Android 1.5 - 2.0.1 devices, this cost became harder and harder to justify over the last releases.
To pick up speed with development the support for the older Android versions will be dropped from the main version of NewsRob.
However to make sure that you are still able to install NewsRob and get an update when I discover a very critical bug, a new version of NewsRob is on the Android Market for devices running older versions of the AndroidOS.
Please install the new version using the button below. You then need to uninstall the current version of NewsRob.
If you have the Pro version of NewsRob this will also be recognized by the new version.
Also your per-feed settings will be picked up by the new version, but you need to login again and configure the basic parameters.
Thanks! – Waiting for you on the other side.
It seems that the new authentication – introduced in the previous release – works well for the vast majority of NewsRob users.
However as there were a few disgruntled one-star-comments on the Android Market I'd like to say again that this only works for proper Google accounts. These are all accounts that end with gmail.com or googlemail.com as well as the Google Apps For Your Domain accounts that Google already migrated.
If you don't have one of those, please continue to use the classic method.
Well, if you didn't read the previous release notes explaining that, you probably aren't reading these either and I am preaching to the choir ;) Anyway, there is also now a hint text on the account list / login dialog.Misc
A lot of small performance/responsiveness improvements went into this release. Please come to the mailing list if you still see a black screen or an Application Not Responding dialog.
Another small enhancement should be valuable for web comics. When "Image Fit-To-Width" is enabled the resizing will be done again when changing the orientation of your device, at least until you first scroll into the article.
Sounds great! I think you are handling the fragmentation issue quite well - maybe still going above and beyond to support older devices, in my opinion. Regardless, keep up the great work! And happy anniversary! =P
ReplyDeleteNice to see fit to width fixed for my comics :)
ReplyDeleteThanks guys. I appreciate the positive encouragements.
ReplyDeleteI would have paid triple for the amount I use this app. Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteMarino, I love newsrob, and loving the updates. Still holding out for share full article feature. I have voted for it but other users don't seem to care, so it's not getting up there. Once this feature hits I can get rid of feedr for good. At the moment I'm doing the awkward task of running both newsrob and feedr in parallel. Newsrob to read and share in google reader, but have to rely on feedr still to share full articles to those that don't have google reader (I sometimes also share to myself to keep record of a full news story in my gmail). Hoping the feature comes soon, it would make newsrob complete to me.
ReplyDeleteAnd my sincere apologies for spelling your name wrong - damn you swype!
ReplyDeleteAndrew, thank you!
ReplyDeleteJivemaster, you make a compelling case, but the thing is that every feature that I do add to NewsRob (for some people) is another feature that I don't add (for other people). To make the right tradeoff here I listen to the interest expressed in uservoice.
But no matter what, this feature will eventually get implemented, just not soon. Sharing will get a bigger part in NewsRob. There is just a lot of other stuff that I need to do first.
And thanks for taking the time to correct my name ;)
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI thought I'd take this opportunity to upgrade to pro as I believe the amount I use this, it's fair to compensate and with the offer I have no excuse not to...except that ads are still showing. Any idea why? (Htc desire running 2.2)
Thanks
Tom
Hi Tom.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Hard to say. If you provide a screenshot it would be easier to judge where you are seeing what, but from the top of my head I would guess you see ads that are part of the content and not the banner on the bottom that NewsRob ads. NewsRob does not filter out ads from publishers.
To see if you have the pro version you can launch NewsRob and look at the header, does it say "NewsRob" or "NewsRob Pro"?
Hope that helps so far.
Happy birthday! Just a little point: this page behaves very weirdly (HTC Desire, Dolphin HD, user agent = desktop). Vertical and horizontal scrolling constrained when zoomed. Never seen this before.
ReplyDeleteHi Simon.
ReplyDeleteThanks ;)
This web site? I don't see in on my Nexus S with GB. I have seen this on other sites though, including lack of multi touch zooming. No idea what the trigger is.
Hi.
ReplyDeleteA bought the Pro version,which can be moved to SD card, but the old part of app is still on phone memory and can't be moved. This is problem for me, because I have not enough space. Can you add this possibility to the app?
Thanks
Jenda,
ReplyDeletesorry, I don't want to do that. Apps2SD is broken and(!) Google didn't communicate its implication properly.
For Android 3.0 it seems it will be completely replaced and NewsRob will likely follow that approach. It will take some time though until Android 3.0 will be real for most users.
Sorry, Mariano
From an old blog post:
Froyo: No Apps2SD
After a quick trial period where I enabled apps2sd I disabled it again. In the case of NewsRob it wouldn't help you much anyway and it kills auto-syncing when the phone's SD card is mounted on a PC. It also removes a widget and it seems the widgets cannot be re-added again.
Given the very minor benefits in case of NewsRob and the hard to explain nasty side effects, I decided to disable it again.
This decision is final for Froyo. I will re-evaluate it when the next Android version is out.
I have the feeling that major changes are coming, because this feature is targeted at games that could now have large static assets, say 50MB+., but unfortunately it doesn't work for games as those are the most pirated apps anyway and are fake-secured by copy protection. Copy protected apps are not compatible with apps2sd though ;(
Hence I would expect that apps2sd will evolve to something more useful over the next releases.
Hallo,
ReplyDeleteI have buy the pro Version few weks ago.
I like the App.
But the settings for sync are not god.
Better is to setup how much articled every Feed,
and not only 100 or 250 for all.
I have 15 feeds, and only one of them
have about 170 articles,
the other 14 together only 80.
The reason is, it is a neews feed,
that have all 10 minutes a new articles,
and the other feeds One or Two articles at Day.
Veilside, we discussed this topic a couple of dozen times on the mailing list and the issue is that there is no efficient way to do that with the current GR API. The best we came up with is this suggestion:
ReplyDeletehttps://newsrob.uservoice.com/forums/35624-general/suggestions/685746-stop-noisy-feeds-drowning-out-quiet-feeds?ref=title
I had pulse news reader, however it was giving me problems with sharing links and so forth on Facebook...so I downloaded this. However I was wondering if instead of just having the share option, can there be a Facebook and Twitter share option...
ReplyDeleteHi Genise,
ReplyDeleteyes you can use "Share Link" from within NewsRob. It will show you a list of possible targets for the share. If you have the Facebook app or a Twitter app installed then it will show up in the list, alongside with sharing it via Gmail or a text message etc.
Check it out.
Hi!
ReplyDeleteI love the app! I would like the app to remember were in the list I am, it's working if I hold down the home-button and choose NR it remember but that's not always possible.
You can use a widget as a launcher. That gets closer to what you want, I think.
ReplyDeleteMariano,
ReplyDeleteI enjoy your newsreader better than all the rest. It is what makes my Android fun. It is what I prefer to use over my desktop or laptop.
I have run into an issue where I cannot sync after upgrading to cyanogenmod 7 rc3
Any advice for a pro purchaser such as myself?
Ryan,
ReplyDeleteyes, the best thing would be to come to the mailing list and describe the symptoms. After you get the fail message you could launch the free Log Collector app and send me the log (mariano.kamp@gmail.com), but still post to the mailing list.
http://bit.ly/nr_list
I don't know if this CM version is buggy, but per se it should work.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi, thank you very much for this great app. I think is the best feed reader for android but, I miss something: a good widget where you can view the recent news (like pulse news)
ReplyDeleteIt would be fantastic. Please, can you try to consider including this option? Thanks a lot;)
Javier, it's probably this? http://newsrob.uservoice.com/forums/35624-general/suggestions/416463-add-widget-support-showing-latest-headlines?ref=title
ReplyDeletePlease vote for it there ... and yes, it is considered and will eventually be implemented.
Ok, I am glad to know that. In my opinion, the app is almost perfect. At the moment I only miss the widget, and a better UI prettier and more attractive where you can view more feeds and more clearly (probably like pulse, more less)
ReplyDeleteNow I will check this link and I will vote what I think best ;D
Yes, I see your point and for landscape orientation in particular (or a tablet) the way that news/folders are displayed will be different in future versions of NewsRob.
ReplyDelete