[APP] feed me RSS Reader -[U]- 29.09.11 -[V]- 1.12

feed me

feed me has been temporarily removed from the marketplace. I hope to get a new version out towards the end of the first quarter of 2012.

Details: http://www.wpcentral.com/feed-me-removed-marketplace

Full details: www.forty3degrees.com/apps/feedme

When I first got my HTC Mozart I looked for an rss reader but couldn't find one that suited. RSS Central from Adam Dawes came close, but still didn't quite have the structure I was looking for. I always like to look at my subscriptions in groups. If I am tracking two or three blogs related to the same thing then I don't want to have to look at all three seperately. I just want to look at the newest entries from all of them together. So I got to work, and feed me is the result.
Please give feedback about any missing features or possible improvements.

There is currently no video of version 1.11 as I am spending all my spare time getting a mango version up and running.

Here's a video of Version 1.11:


Here's a video tour of Version 1.9 (full details on the site as always):


Changes in Version 1.8:


Changes in Version 1.7:


Changes in version 1.6:


Supported languages:
• English
• German

Key Features:
• Live tile shows new article count1
• Add YouTube feeds 2
• Watch YouTube videos in HD
• View or listen to podcasts while browsing other articles
• Download podcasts for offline viewing (with pause/continue)
• Tweet or e-mail articles, post to facebook or send the link in a SMS
• Add articles to Instapaper or Read it Later
• Allow feed me to run under the lock screen (allowing feeds to be updated when the phone is locked)
• Supports all windows-125* and ISO-8859-* encodings
• Feed groups with optional ‘all’ and ‘unread’ views
• A Google feed search for adding new feeds
• Add new feeds from Google Reader
• Backup and restore settings to our server
• Filtering of views using the title and/or content
• Feeds are only downloaded if they have been updated3
• Optional automatic update on start-up
• Favorites for bookmarking items

The free version and the trial are ad supported. The live tile is also restricted to showing the number of new articles for four feeds only. The trial does not allow podcast downloads or viewing of YouTube videos in HD, these restrictions will be lifted in the next release.

Visit the site for more info and feel free to PM me if you have any questions

just a quick update...
I'm on holiday for a week and am doing the last few bits for the next update... Just got the last bits of live tiles to go, then the tests and it's done.

For the live tiles I will show the total number of new items since the last time the app was open (like the stock e-mail app). You will be able to select which feeds are used for live tiles, so certain feeds with frequent updates can be excluded.
This won't work for backdated items. For example, BBC likes to post items that are backdated to yesterday, these will not be seen as new as the publish date is older than the date of the last refresh.
Feeds included in the live tiles update will always be updated on startup.

Let me know what you think.

I have also set up a page on facebook. And you can follow progress on twitter.

So I've finished the next update... here are a few of the new features:

• A live tile showing the number of new items. This is restricted to showing the total of a maximum of 5 feeds at the moment (or 1 in trial mode). I hope to increase or remove this limit but I want to see how the server handles things first. The tile can be updated in 10, 15, 30 or 60 minute intervals.
• You can now add a feed from your google reader subscriptions. They are shown in a flat list similar to the feed search in the current version.
• I now check the http headers for feeds before downloading. If the 'last-modified' header is present and the feed has not changed then the download is cancelled.
• I added a pivot to the start page. Now you can swipe from the list of feed groups to a list of all the new items (these are grouped for easy browsing).
• There is a backup and restore function for the feed settings. This backs up the settings to a SQL server so you can restore even after a factory reset. In this version an anonymous device ID is used so you don't need to log in.

I have also improved caching and done quite a bit of work on performance. The limits for the trial version have been increased to 4 groups of max. 4 feeds.



Unfortunately I have had to do away with backwards compatibility for the settings. This means that all settings in the previous version will be lost. I really didn't want this, but due to the live tile implementation, backup and cache management I had to change the storage format for the settings. The main problem is that it is impossible for me to simulate an upgrade as a developer so I couldn't event try to implement a settings upgrade. This is quite annoying and I hope microsoft will do something about it, but at the moment all I could do was add the google reader support mentioned above, and ensure this never happens again due to the new backup/restore feature.

This only really affects the few paid versions out there (unfortunately, or fortunately in this case the actual number is pretty small). Trial versions won't update so you need to uninstall it before installing the new version - this is another microsoft 'feature'.



I will post a full list of changes on the forty3degrees.com website after the update hits the market. This should be towards the end of next week. I have decided to run the final build on my phone for the weekend as there is not point in submitting tonight (nobody will start testing it until monday morning anyway), and you never know... there may just be a bug or two still lurking

V1.2 just got published... a load of improvements and new features.

Check out forty3degrees.com for all the details.

Just submitted the next version. A few bug fixes but a nice new 'tweet article' feature as well. The new version supports all the European and Middle Eastern encodings I could find (I will post the full list as soon as the app is certified)

Feed me version 1.3 has been published to the marketplace. This version has Twitter integration, improved encoding support and a few fixes. See the site for details:
http://www.forty3degrees.com/apps/feedme

Thanks for the feedback. Feel free to pm me if you have any questions/ideas.

Calum

bdotr said:

Great app man! Thanks!

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Glad you like it I'm always looking to improve things, so any constructive criticism is welcome...

Version 1.4 is out.

- Podcast support
- Instapaper/Read it later
- Run under the lockscreen

Details here

Just streaming in this version... I did think of doing a download, but it didn't make the deadline
I will add this to my todo list, and it will almost certainly make it into the next version. I just need to sort out the cache management for the downloaded media, or see if I can add them to the media library. Would you want the media to be available in the media library, or just in the app?

On a related note, I wasn't really sure if I should add the viewed media to the media player history. In the end I decided against it. Any thoughts?

Thanks for the feedback.
Calum

gerrymad said:

This might be good as a user setting.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Yeah, I thought that too. I prefer them to disappear as well, and this happened to be easier to implement as there are extra certification requirements if I add them to the history.

I think I'll go with the setting for V1.5 with no history as the default. Thanks again for the feedback.

Hi,

thanks for the feedback. I did think about switching to a panorama with images for the main page, although I would add a setting to allow the current main page to be used instead. Good to know that somebody would like this sort of view
Adding images to the article lists would slow things down too much. Scrolling performance would be pretty bad with more that 50 items. (I still don't have NoDo so don't know if it's any better with that...)

I am working on an update for this week, but it will not change the UI much (maybe a new transition for the main page... don't know yet). The main improvements will be podcast downloads and hopefully facebook integration (time permitting - the update needs to be submitted this week to try a fix a marketplace search bug... feed me doesn't turn up at the moment).

Thanks again for the feedback
Calum

feed me 1.5 is out.

You can now download podcasts. You can also pause the downloads and resume them later (they are paused automatically when exiting the app).

I also added some new animation for the page transitions. I'd be really interested in any feedback as to whether it still keeps the clean look... if not then you can disable them in the settings.