River of News 2.0 will be exclusively for iOS 7

Google Reader shuts down on July 1. If history is an indicator, iOS 7 will be released in late September. That's a gap of about two and a half months. I've decided that River of News will be dormant for that gap.

I'm excited about iOS 7. The design looks great and there are new capabilities that directly benefit an RSS reader. It will be difficult to support both iOS 6 and 7 and will lead to a product that isn't as good as it could be if focused on iOS 7 only.

River of News 2.0 has a new visual design that I love... for iOS 6. It will immediately look old and tired on iOS 7. I want to make a product that I feel is great. The one I'm looking at now won't be great on iOS 7.

I'm sorry that you won't have a version of River of News to use for the next few months. I've received a lot of encouraging emails telling me they don't want the app to go away. But the reality is I don't have the time to make a polished product for iOS 6 and 7. I'm a one-man show for River of News and it's revenue is small. My time is mostly dedicated to developing products for the awesome Savvy Apps mobile agency and it's clients.

I know I'm going to lose some of you as customers and that makes me sad. I hope when iOS 7 comes out you'll reconsider River of News because you want an app that is designed exclusively to be great on that platform.

River of News (not) for Google Reader

Boooooo, Google!

You may have already seen the news that Google is shutting down Reader on July 1. I never understood why Google didn't try to expand Reader's usage and extract value from all of that data. Google is in the business of selling targeted ads, right? Google Reader is my gateway to the Internet. Even more so than search, it reveals my interests and creates an accurate profile of me.

You are probably reading this post because you want to know what will happen to River of News. The short answer is I don't know, yet, what it will look like but I intend to keep River of News alive in some form. I've put too much time into it and I like the product too much to abandon it. And the iPhone version is kick-ass! I read my feeds constantly on my phone which I never did in the past because I didn't like any of the available apps.

My suggestion to you is not to panic and don't feel the need to immediately find a replacement for Google Reader. You don't need to do anything for three months. Google Reader and River of News will continue to function.

The most important aspect of Google Reader is the ecosystem around it. The technical functions of syncing your subscription list and aggregating content from multiple sources are straightforward to replace. (That doesn't mean it wouldn't be time consuming to implement but the path is clear.) What is hard to replace is the ubiquity of a single platform that uses the Gmail account you already have and is accessible from any browser or tons of native apps for every operating system and device.

That's why I'm not going to decide my next move immediately and I encourage you to wait before finding a replacement

Excitement!! Thrills!!

Thank you so much for all of the thoughtful responses you gave to my survey. It kills me that I have to turn so many people away but I received four times as many responses as I have slots available. I sent out invites this afternoon. I learned a lot from your responses and it was good reinforcement that I'm building a product that people want. I think River of News for the iPhone will hit the mark for a lot of you.


My wife said I should have been more excited in my last post.

 

I'm really excited about the iPhone version! I was never quite sure if the scrolling and swiping would translate well to the smaller screen. There's a lot more space to work with on the iPad and it's more suitable for long form reading. You may not sit down to read a long article as often on the iPhone but the navigation principles in River of News work beautifully on the device. Scrolling and swiping are simple and consistent gestures that you can execute with one hand.

One of my biggest complaints about iPhone apps are deep navigation hierarchies that require me to maintain a mental model of where I am. It's a small screen so app designs often feature lots of screen wipes that lose context. Think of the common newsreader hierarchy. It starts with folders, then you tap into feeds, then you tap into article summaries, then you tap into a single article. That's four levels to go down and back up with screens that often look kind of the same.

Remember the two screen shots I posted the other day?

   

There it is, your entire app hierarchy. It's two levels with distinct visual designs and no screen wipes. If you want to navigate to an entirely different spot in your feed list you open the drawer and choose the feed. Isn't that better than tapping up through three levels of lists and then back down again?

Of course, swiping between feeds carries over from the iPad to the iPhone. You don't ever have to look at your feed list. Lists aren't fun. They feel like work. The goal is to enjoy the content, not manage it like email. Set up your most commonly used feeds in Google Reader to be sequential and you just swipe through them.

You are often doing things in short chunks of time on the iPhone. You have a couple of minutes to kill so you start up your newsreader. Do you want to spend your time choosing this or that or from little lists or do you want it to show you big pictures and engaging content? Do you want to find little buttons to tap while one hand is carrying a grocery basket and you are shuffling in line, or do you want big sweeping gestures like scrolling and swiping?

Something else I don't like about many iPhone apps are tiny pictures and unhelpful ten word snippets of text. This doesn't draw me in. It doesn't tell me whether I want to read the article. Most of the time it causes me to just gloss over the content and three minutes later I'm done and I haven't read anything. When I use River of News I read things. Big pictures and full article text gets me interested.

I'm reading my feeds far more than I ever have on the iPhone. Facebook had even replaced RSS as my go-to time killer on the phone. But finally having River of News on the phone changes that. I have a way to read my news that doesn't feel like a chore and fits how I use my phone.

River of News for the iPhone progress update

I've been hard at work on an iPhone version of River of News. It's coming along nicely. The feedback is positive and I think it's a joy to use. (Surprise! The developer likes it.)  Ragnar Freyr has, once again, provided a brilliant design that is beautiful and lets the content shine.

These are screen shots from the unfinished app. They are not pixel perfect (Ragnar is cringing) but will give you a feel for where the app is going.

Beta Testers

I'm expanding my team of smart and shockingly handsome beta testers. I'd had bad luck with people signing up and then disappearing. This is a problem because Apple only lets developers install software on a limited number of iOS devices. If I assign one of my slots to a device, it's locked for up to a year. I'm running low on open slots and I need a high percentage of active participants from this round of sign-ups.

I'm looking for people who access Google Reader from their iPhone or iPod Touch running iOS6. Your device has iOS6 on it if you have Apple Maps instead of Google Maps as the built-in mapping app.

Reasons you might want to beta test

• You love River of News for the iPad and can't wait to use it on the iPhone.
• You're opinionated and you wish app developers would listen to you because you have great ideas.
• You're like me and you have an insatiable curiosity to know how the sausage is made.
• You want to support an independent developer. You don't want the same four companies to make all of the software you use.
• You want a free copy of the app when it's released.

Reasons you might not want to beta test

• You don't have time to deal with an app that has bugs.
• You're too shy or busy to send emails giving feedback about what you like and don't like.
• You hardly ever use Google Reader or your iPhone or the two of them together.
• You would rate every app as 1 star or 5 stars with nothing in-between.

If you'd like to beta test, I ask that you complete a short survey. I'm sorry to make you jump through hoops but I can't invite everyone so I need to gather the best group I can. I'll collect responses through the weekend and send out invites early next week.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MFJ9MXV

Thank you.

River of News is now free to download

A new edition of River of News hit the App Store this weekend. It is now free to download. That's right - free! Tell your friends. Tell your mother. Tell your accountant.

The free version is supported by ads and doesn't have any sharing with external services like Facebook, Twitter, or Instapaper. You can purchase an upgrade within the app to remove the ads and enable sharing.

I have many new things planned for River of News in the coming months.

Edit: I should have made it clear that existing customers who've purchased River of News will never see ads. It's safe to upgrade.
 

River of News 1.6.1 submitted

I've received a few reports of crashing and stalling in loading feeds. I still don't have a great handle on the problem because neither I nor anyone on my beta team has experienced the issue.

I identified a possible cause and fixed it as well as putting in better crash logging so that I can diagnose problems like this in the future. I'm sorry that it's been frustrating for some people. I try hard not to let that happen.

Version 1.6.1 has been submitted to Apple and awaits the blessing of their app reviewing elves.

River of News 1.6 is in the App Store

Thanks, everyone, for the support and kind words.

Release notes:

✭ Press the couch icon or two-finger tap an article to convert it to Readability view. This works even for feeds with partial text! 

✭ New sharing services Readability and Diigo. 

✭ New preferences in the app. Choose your font, change title sizes and be sure to try out the gestures. 

✭ Bugs were harmed in the production of this release. 

Submitted

River of News 1.6 has been submitted to Apple for review. This part of the process is so aggravating but it is what it is. Reviews are averaging 10 days. In the meantime, here is a screenshot to whet your appetite.

Apps have become the music business

I began this blog with a post revealing my app store sales and my plan to be an indie app developer. It was just over two years ago that I released River of News. It's time again that I show my sales to give the picture of the full lifecycle of an app.

I don't think I'll be retiring soon.

Selling in the App Store is a tough business. I have some idea of how rankings translate to sales and I estimate that only a few hundred apps make enough money to support even a single developer at market rates. Maybe I'm way off and the number is 1000 - but I doubt it. That's out of 650,000.

Selling mobile apps has become like the music business. There are a very small number of creators earning the majority of the revenue. Most of the people in the business are selling their product below cost in the hopes of hitting it big or because they monetize it in ways other than direct sales. It's not a coincidence that iTunes is the storefront for both businesses.

Apple is a brilliant organization. This must be how they want it. They've seen Amazon. They know how they could drive sales towards the long tail and that's not their business. They want low prices, high volume, and a small number of big hits.

This is the spot where I'm supposed to list the ways that Apple could serve me better. I'm not going to do that. Apple doesn't owe my anything and I'm not foolish enough to believe that I know better than the company that is on the most successful five year run in the history of business.

I'm one of those people who uses the App Store to generate revenue in ways other than direct sales. River of News has been a very effective marketing tool for my consulting business. It's landed me interesting projects working with smart people. I work from home and bill at a rate higher than I made when I was salaried. Life is good.

This has been a roundabout way of explaining why River of News has languished. The consulting bucks have been good and I took them while they were there. I enjoy the hybrid business model of my own products plus consulting. But I'm trying to achieve a better balance now. I'm investing time into River of News and I want to create the feedback loop where that time generates more revenue and justifies more time.

I'm sorry that I've disappointed people who wanted more. I hope you feel you've gotten your  $3 or $4 of value out of it. If not, well, there is more to come. Maybe I can win you over, yet.

A new version of River of News is coming

It's been too long!

I'm excited to be working on River of News again. A lot of people have asked why I disappeared and I'll write about that in another post. This one is about the product.

Version 1.6 is nearly complete. The big feature in this release is Readability integration. Readability is dear to my heart because their goal is to "deliver a great reading experience wherever you are." I've been using their tools forever to reduce clutter and make the web better. Apple likes them, too, because Readability's technology is the basis for the Reader function in the Safari.

First of all, you'll be able to send your articles to your Readability account to read later on any device. This is a win by itself and you should check out the Readability service if you aren't using it. It's free and the apps are very well done.

But what I'm most excited about is the ability to insert the full article in your River of News stream, even for blogs that that only provide partial text. For example, let's say you subscribe to the always interesting LifeHacker. It looks like this:

The feed only shows a little bit of text. To read it you have to go into the browser and then back to the feed. It's a lot of changing screens and ruins the River of News concept.

With the upcoming version you can press the couch icon at the bottom of the article or, even better, do a quick two finger tap and a moment later it looks like this:

It's a great feature and I love it. Coming soon.

Retina tease

Version 1.5 of River of News is just about ready to be submitted to the App Store. I wanted to give you a teaser shot of the gorgeous new retina graphics.

You can also see the much nicer feed icons. With this version you'll get icons for more of your feeds and they'll be higher resolution and support transparency.

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.

More browser changes

The feedback was, shall we say, not positive on the in-app browser change. A number of people told me they had been using iOS 4.2 betas with River of News and not having the freezing problem. I don't know the true source of the problem as freezing the entire device is something that iOS guarantees should never, ever happen.

I think it's my job as the developer to make good choices that work well so you don't have to think about it. That's why I'm loathe to add a new setting. But there is no good choice here so I am adding a new option accessible in the iPad Settings app. The next version will have the option to open links partial screen, full-screen, or in Safari.

Apple has notified us they have a reduced staff for the US Thanksgiving holiday so I doubt this will get through approval before next week. And this time my release notes will only talk about sunshine and bunny rabbits.

Rejected!

As I wrote the other day, iOS 4.2 has a bug that required me to make a change in River of News. Occasionally the entire iPad would freeze up when the in-app browser was closed. This bug likely has to do with the new memory management in iOS 4.2 (a lot changed under the covers). I don't know the exact reason for it but it happens and I can't leave it that way. The best I can do is try to work around the problem until Apple fixes it. Hence, the new version with the browser not full screen in landscape which is now in the App Store.

I figured something was up when this version spent a long time in review. After about a day of being reviewed I received an email that my app was rejected because the release notes contained "defamatory comments about Apple."

 It would be appropriate to remove "In-app browser is no longer full screen because of iOS 4.2 compatibility problem" from the Release Notes.

Really? I can't tell my customers why I had to make a change that I knew wouldn't be popular? Some people react very strongly to change like the guy who wrote he no longer uses River of News because the new icon makes him "puke".

I changed the release notes to say "In-app browser is no longer full screen for better performance in iOS 4.2." This was accepted by Apple and version 1.3.1 is now live.