River of News updated in the App Store

Version 1.4.1 is live in the App Store. It contains bug fixes and stability improvements. Thank you for your patience.

I've also got a feature update coming soon with a little sneak peak to the left.

Updated and on sale

This week, River of News was updated in the App Store to version 1.4. I'm very happy with the iOS 5 rewrite. This is the best River of News, yet.

Below are highlights.

✭ Rewritten to take advantage of iOS 5
✭ Better scrolling and responsiveness
✭ Tweet with new iOS 5 interface
✭ Many bug fixes and stability improvements


I've put the app on sale to celebrate. River of News will be on sale for $1.99 (or international equivalent) through Friday. Tell your friends. It's 2 bucks! McDonalds charges more for an iced coffee.

Want to beta test River of News?

I'm just about ready to start testing the iOS 5 updates. Please sign up with Test Flight at the link below.

[edit: beta slots have been filled]

Thank you! I appreciate your feedback.

iOS 5 updates coming soon

I'm sorry for problems that River of News is having in iOS 5. One work-around that you can use for now is to change the font settings to Small and Modern. This will fix the problem of the article titles being small and the articles not formatted properly.

I had a version ready for the iOS release that fixed the problems and worked very well on my iPad 2. Then I tested on a first generation iPad with the final version of iOS. I was surprised that it wasn't stable on the iPad 1. This is the first time I've experienced a notable difference between the iPad 1 and 2 with River of News.

After some frantic work and a number of late nights I've isolated the problem and am progressing towards a solution. Apple made significant changes that are only evident on the iPad 1.

These changes are painful but, ultimately, they make things better and I'm expecting River of News to be faster and more responsive when this is completed. I'm really sorry that I let you down and didn't have a fully working version in the App Store for the release of iOS 5.

Estimate the sales of any app

While I was developing River of News I looked around for any discussion I could find where developers revealed their sales or the relation of ratings to sales. I found several sources independently say that about 1 in 30 buyers of a paid app will rate it in the store. I now have two apps in the store and that ratio has held up remarkably well.

I'm sure there are exceptions and my information is far from comprehensive, but I have enough evidence to believe that multiplying the number of ratings in the U.S. App Store by 30 will give you a ballpark estimate of the sales of an app.

I'm curious to hear from other developers if this ratio is accurate for their products.

River of News is on sale

I'm putting River of News on sale to celebrate its return to the top 10 in the news category. For a limited time it is priced at $1.99 in the US or the corresponding price in your region's App Store.

Tell your friends! Tell your Mom! Tell your rabbi!

Tip: Gestures

If you haven't done so, take a look at the River of News section in the iPad Settings app. There are a number of details you can change about how River of News behaves and the most interesting are the configurable gestures.

iOS has introduced a gesture language that we take for granted now with scrolling, swiping, and pinching. It's safe to assume that users know those and for apps to apply them in standard ways. But how should gestures be used beyond that?

I like mobile apps that use gestures in a way similar to keyboard shortcuts on a desktop OS. The intent is to provide a fast way to execute common actions with the key being they are useful, but not required. River of News 1.3 added the gesture choices you see above. The gestures can perform navigation actions like jump to the next article or provide a way to invoke your most commonly used sharing service.

Do you have other ideas about how gestures could be used effectively? Tell me in the comments.