Fixes For iPad RSS Readers Are In The App Store

The folks at Apple are working real fast these days on updates. It only took about 24 hours to get the iPad RSS reader updates reviewed and approved and in the app store. Hopefully the iPhone updates will be in tomorrow.

Bug Fixes Submitted

I found two issues with my iPad RSS readers yesterday. I've already fixed them and submitted them to Apple, so hopefully they will be available by the end of this week. Apple is usually a little quicker with updates than they are with reviewing new apps. The apps were crashing when one attempted to delete a feed or a feed category. As well when adding new feeds one was not always able to see all category options when the keyboard was viewable. This second one wasn't really a bug because one can always dismiss the keyboard, but I just felt it was a better user experience to be able to scroll and view all categories without having to dismiss the keyboard.

As well I've updated all my iPhone RSS readers to better display the categories when adding a new feed. These updates are currently awaiting Apple's approval which I hope will be by the end of this week.

ScienceNewsRSSHD has a great first few days. It peaked at #5 yesterday in the News category in the Canadian App Store (it's currently sitting at #10), and it's at #12 in the News category in the US store. On the first day it was free and had over 200 downloads. It looks like there's reasonable demand for this app so I'll be building and releasing an iPhone version in the very near future.

New App - ScienceNewsRSSHD now in the App Store

My latest themed RSS reader is now in the App Store. The theme is science and it contains almost 150 feeds. It was free for the first day, but is now selling at the standard $0.99. This is an iPad only app. I might make an iPhone version if there's much demand sometime over the next few weeks.

I've also completed updates to one of my Wikipedia themed browsers and hopefully the folks at Apple will accept it. I've cleared up a minor GUI issue and added a new feature; the ability to organize articles into a "My Category" folder. I've also figured out how to offer an alternative view of Wikipedia articles, one that strips out a lot of the surrounding content and just displays the article. I don't think that the result looks great, so I've left it out for now, but I'm considering integrating it in the future if Apple decides that the app needs more features in order to be allowed into the App Store.

EnvrionRSS iPhone now in App Store

I made an iPhone version of the Enviro RSS HD app. It's called EnvironRSS and it's been accepted into the app store. I've added a link to it to the list of my apps.

I made a few more Wikipedia browsers but they've been rejected by Apple. They claim that they are not significantly different from the web experience of viewing Wikipedia. I don't agree with them. I think that the navigation, the ability to make and export notes, as well as the Instapaper/Facebook integration make it a much better study tool as opposed to viewing Wikipedia in a browser. But I guess that's not enough for Apple. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I guess I could put more functionality into it. I was thinking about adding the ability to collect favourite articles into a "bookmarked" or "favourites" folder. I don't know if that would be enough. I've also thought about maybe offering a "reading" view in which everything except the article content is stripped out. So there'd be no links, no references, nothing but text. I've looked into it a bit and it looks like a lot of work. It's not that I'm afraid of a lot of work, it's just that I think that I'd just be repeating the Instapaper functionality and not really offering much value to users. I don't know.

If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them.

iPhone RSS Reader Updates

USGov RSS, CanGov RSS, and MegaTech iPhone apps have all been updated to allow the user to use the apps in landscape mode. The updates have been accepted by Apple and are available in the AppStore. I'm hoping to have a few more Wikipedia based apps out next week. They've been submitted to Apple and are currently awaiting review. It looks like the review process has slowed down again. It got a little better after Christmas, but it's back to about a week for updates and over a week for new apps. Hopefully this is only temporary.

I'd like to encourage anyone who has downloaded one of my apps and likes it to rate it, or leave a comment at iTunes. It would be great to get some feedback.

EU-RSS iPhone Update

I was recently contacted by a user of my EU-RSS iPhone app who requested that I make it work in landscape mode so that they could better read the articles that it provided. I have made this change and it is now available as an update through the app store. I will be updating all of my other iPhone RSS readers with the same functionality this weekend.

Currently I have two apps that are awaiting approval by Apple. One is "waiting for review" and the other is "in review", but I've been informed that the review process for this app will take extra time. Apple gave no reason why extra time is needed to review this app. I sent them an email a few days ago inquiring as to what the hold up is but they haven't responded yet. The same thing happened with Deathpedia and they offered no reason then either. This is kind of annoying, but as long as the app makes it in without too much trouble I guess it's a minor annoyance.

New App - Deathpedia - Inspect Tor updated

My latest app has been approved by Apple and is in the App Store. It's called Deathpedia and it's just like Biblicalpedia only the topic is Death instead of the Bible. I don't have high expectations for this app as far as sales go, but I like it. Death is a fascinating subject and the Wikipedia pages that deal with it and related subjects are really good.

Inspect Tor has been updated with the latest data set released by the City of Toronto.

I'm working on a few new apps and hope to have at least one of them done by the end of the weekend, but since the Super Bowl is this weekend it might not happen. Either way I'm hoping to have both of them submitted to Apple by the end of next week.

I've posted my email on the blog now so feel free to contact me with suggestions, bugs, job offers, whatever.