Feeds (Version 0.2)
Update 04/19/2008: Starting from tonight, Feeds should be available through the ModMyiFone.com repository.
A new version of Feeds is available through my repository the ModMyiFone.com repository.
Changelist
- Journaling implemented — blog entries that you read offline now will correctly be marked as read on the server side during the next synchronization
- Smarter syncing: when the number of unread items reported by the Google Reader API corresponds to the one on the iPhone and there are no new entries, nothing will be downloaded. This enormously reduces the time spent on synchronizing.
- New application style with a fancy button bar
- A lot of small bug fixes and some memory management cleanup
Feeds — Fix for Firmware Versions 1.1.3 / 1.1.4
Thanks to Roman for reporting issues with Feeds on his fresh-from-NYC-iPhone running firmware 1.1.3. I upgraded my iPod Touch to firmware 1.1.4 and found that storing the SQLite database file in the application folder was causing the error (probably not a very smart idea anyway 
). I resolved this issue and just updated the Feeds package in my repository (http://424f.com/iphone/repository) with a new version, so you might want to give it another try if it didn’t work before.
Versions that «Feeds» has been reported to be working on are:
- 1.1.1 iPod Touch
- 1.1.2 iPhone (thanks to Bigli)
- 1.1.3 iPhone (thanks to Roman)
- 1.1.4 iPod Touch / iPhone
iPhone-Feeds (Version 0.1 Alpha)
While I haven’t been working on my Google Reader-based news reader for the iPhone (uncreatively named «iPhone-Feeds») over the last two weeks, I finally got back to it on Monday. Though it’s still not a finished application, I guess it’s time for an Alpha version to find out whether it actually runs on other iPhones with possibly different Firmware versions.
How to Install
In your Installer.app, add the repository http://424f.com/iphone/repository. After refreshing the repositories, you should find an entry «Feeds» in the category «Network». Install it like every other App. When you start it for the first time, the settings dialogue will automatically appear and prompt you for your username and password. After that you can now synchronize with Google Reader and download all those witty blog entries.
What’s missing?
- Synchronization works only one way — while changes made on the Google Reader website are reflected correctly on the iPhone, it currently does not work the other way around. This is the most important feature planned for the next version.
- There’s no folder view, so if you have a lot of different feeds, the feed list might look quite messy.
-
x — feel free to tell me what the value of x is and chances are that it won’t be missing anymore in a future version
Native Google Reader App on Your iPhone
Update 04/02/2008: You can now download an alpha version.
For a few days now, I’ve been playing around with the iPhone’s unofficial SDK on my Ubuntu machine. Last friday, I finished milestone I of my very first app. It’s a simple news reader using the (also still unofficial) Google Reader API. Currently, it does retrieve your feeds and entries directly from Google every time you view them, so it’s not very useful in places without W-LAN (which, according to rumors, still exist). But now that the fundamentals are there, I’m going to add the really cool features.
My wish list:
- Store all data in a local SQLite database
- Allow the user to search amongst feed contents and the tagging system
- An offline mode
- One-Button-Synchronization™ between the iPhone and Google Reader
As soon as the basic offline features are working, I’ll probably upload a beta version on this blog along with the source code. Until then, here are a few screenshots.
Screenshots
In the settings screen you can completely customize the application to match your personal preferences. Well, not really, but at least I spoil your eyes with a few icons from the fantastic fam fam fam icon set.
This is the feed view. In future versions it will hopefully be possible to swap between different feeds by just vertically scrolling beyond the visible area.
PS: I know that with MobileRSS there already is a native news reader for the iPhone. While it is indeed a very cool app, I don’t like the fact that I have to manage my subscriptions twice: once on my iPhone and once on my desktop. Apart from that it’s also fun to see your own application running on your iPhone (or iPod Touch in my case)
