iMore: “There are tons of great RSS readers already available for iPhone but they all have one thing in common – they manage to make reading news a chore at times”
All posts by Rob Fahrni
Stream on Creativerly
Creativerly: “So, if you are looking for a minimal, distraction-free interface and different experience compared to other RSS readers, you should definitely give Stream a try. Also, every home screen looks better with such a gorgeous icon.”
Stream 1.0
First things first. You can find Stream in the App Store.
What is Stream?
Stream is a feed reader. Some folks call it a news reader, others an RSS reader.
Why do I need it?
Stream is a different take on feed readers. It displays your feeds in a timeline, similar to Twitter.
Stream doesn’t maintain a read/unread count because life is too short to stress over that kind of stuff.
Is it better than my current feed reader?
Probably not. Stream is great for casual reading. It’s a complement to your current reader.
Does it support services?
Nope. Stream treats RSS – and other feed types – as intended. When RSS was created the idea was to provide a decentralized way to get news.
Dave Winer, the man behind RSS, calls this idea a River of News. Stream is a mobile River of News. You have full control over what you subscribe to. It’s all decentralized so you don’t rely on a service to collect your feeds.
What does this marvel of software development cost?
Did we mention it’s FREE? No up front payment, no subscription, just FREE.
What if I don’t like it?
That’s ok! Stream was intentionally built to put simplicity at its core. Simplicity may make it too simple for your needs.
Here are some of my favorite alternative feed readers.
Mac
- NetNewsWire – The granddaddy of Mac feed readers. Pure Mac.
- Reeder – A beautifully designed feed reader.
iOS
- Unread – Beautifully designed, full featured, you’ll love it.
- NetNewsWire
- Reeder
So, you want an app?
Elia Freedman: “Developing an application and making money at it is very very hard to do. Maybe your idea is the right one, maybe it isn’t. No matter the case, though, there are likely faster ways to validate the idea then writing an app.”
Another great piece on the cost of app development. If you’re thinking about writing an iOS, Android, or other mobile application make sure you do a bit of research before you start. I find most people are absolutely stunned by the cost of app development. Elia’s piece points to some other great articles that point out the how-to’s and the why-for’s of apps development, including a classic Craig Hockenberry Stack Overflow post on the true cost of developing their Twitter client, Twitterrific.
Elia later goes on to say:
Want to proceed anyway? Good for you. Just don’t go forward with blinders on.
Great advice.
Introducing Arrgly
We’ve added a new, silly, little application to the mix. It’s called Arrgly. A few years back we’d created a project to explore REST URL shortening services from Objective-C and Cocoa. The code could shorten a URL using a number of services, like bit.ly, ping.fm(gone), tr.im(gone), and a little white label shortener called YOURLS, as well as a few others.
We have a URL shortening service called f67 that uses YOURLS. It became obvious, after a few years, of starting the browser, logging in, pasting the link, pressing the shorten button, and copying the link back to the paste board on iOS that there had to be a much better way. We resurrected the URL shortening code, ARC‘ified it, and created a project. That project became Arrgly.
Yeah, it’s not attractive, and has a funny name, but it does exactly what we needed. It makes shortening a URL using our YOURLS based shortener as easy as copying a URL, starting Arrgly, and pasting the resulting short link that was placed back on the paste board for us.
It’s available in the App Store and, yes, it’s FREE.
If you decide to use it and would like a new feature or would like to report a bug, get in touch.
P.S. Yes, if you’re a designer and feel like improving Arrgly in exchange for our undying love and credit for the app design, we’re listening. Contact us: support@applecorelabs.com
RxCalc is now FREE
Jerry and I have thought it over and decided to make RxCalc FREE. That’s right, FREE.
If you’re a Clinical Pharmacist and iOS is your primary platform head over to the app store and download RxCalc now.
After you’ve downloaded it and used it for a while, please rate us in the App Store, and send any feedback you’d like to share to support@applecorelabs.com.
Merry Christmas!
Help Wanted: RxCalc 1.3 Beta Testers
We Want You
We’re working on an update to RxCalc to address some minor UI issues on the iPhone 5 and iPod Touch. If you’re interested in helping us, please click this link and follow the instructions.
What’s changing? Good question, it’s very minor:
- Requires iOS 5
- Now using the numeric keypad for data entry
- BUG FIX: Some views clipping on the iPhone 5
We’re also working on a feature update, we’ll share more on that later.
Happy Birthday RxCalc
Three years ago my brother and I introduced RxCalc. I remember arriving at his home for our annual Fourth of July festivities a bit bummed. I’d submitted RxCalc for review 21 days earlier and it still hadn’t been approved. When I walked in the door my brother asked if we’d been approved. I said no. We decided to go check the status anyway, and it had been approved! It was pretty exciting to see our first iOS application for sale and it was even better to know it shared its birthday with the birth of the United States of America.
Happy Independence Day!
App Store Reviews
Matthew Panzarino: “But the important thing is that there is a serious discussion now being had about this topic, which I feel is an extremely important one, both for Apple as the App Store continues to grow, and to the developers in its ecosystem. I don’t think anyone has the right answers yet, but I think that there are some very smart folks at Apple working hard on the problem, including the ex-Chompites. So I’m cautiously optimistic that we might see some results later this year.”
The entire app store review process has been a huge source of frustration for many iOS developers. I wrote about this problem in early 2011. RxCalc isn’t a huge seller, and we almost never get direct feedback from users. When we get a one star review on the App Store it’s often impossible to figure out what the user is really after. That’s where an Apple supplied method of contacting the user would be fantastic. We’d be more than willing to fill out a form at apple.com, have that reviewed by Apple employees, and have them forward that information to the end user. We’re not in the business of attacking our users, but we’d sure love to know how to improve our products. When we get a one star rating, we want to fix it.
It’s safe to say, we’re glad it’s getting some attention.
BUG = (LLVM Optimizer + ASIHTTPRequest + ARC)
I’ve been working on a project that makes use of ASIHTTPRequest for my REST needs. It’s been great, I’m a big fan of it.
When I started distributing my build to BETA users we noticed it would start and we’d have an empty screen. Huh? That’s not what was supposed to happen. It should’ve started and made a network request, instead it just stares back at you.
I spent quite a long time trying to figure out what was going on. At first I thought it was some weird TestFlight bug, but nothing could be further from the truth, TestFlight is a rock solid service. I finally posted a question to Stack Overflow, I was desperate. Then it hit me.
This has nothing to do with TestFlight and it only happens with the release build. No network activity, release build, using ASIHTTPRequest, and this is my first project built using LLVM. Ok, that gave me a much better Google search string. Off we went!
The Bug
It turns out to be a combination of things; LLVM Optimizer + ASIHTTPRequest + ARC, is the cause of my grief. Luckily I’m not the only person that’s discovered this problem and it’s documented on Stack Overflow as well as the ASIHTTPRequest Google group.
The Bottom Line
If you are using Apple’s LLVM compiler, ASIHTTPRequest, ARC, and building for release, or archive, make sure you follow the instructions outlined in the answer for the Stack Overflow post or the ASIHTTPReqeust Google group.