Categories
news trivia

Yummy Browser Update

Yummy Browser, the “lite” version of Yummy, was first available for download late last Wednesday UK time. It reached its first major mile milestone this weekend: more people now have a copy of Yummy Browser than Yummy, which has been on sale since August 2008. It has far exceeded expectations. If you picked up a copy, I hope you like it. And please consider upgrading to the full version of Yummy!

Some interesting trends have also become apparent. After the US, more copies have been downloaded in Japan than anywhere else. This surprises me since the main Delicious.com site is, as far as I can tell, not localised. Also, while I have made a few sales of Yummy there, Japan is way down the league table, far below the US, Canada and most of Western Europe.

Still, Yummy does work with non-Western text (indeed some features have been much harder to implement since I was trying hard not to assume an English/Latin alphabet) so perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised.

My wife wrote a special message for Japanese speakers: “iPhoneとdelicious.comを使っていますか。Yummy Appを試してみませんか。yummyapp.com” (I’m told that it means “Use iPhone and Delicious? Have you considered Yummy?” although for all the Japanese I speak it could say “Own a donkey? Always remember to carry a shovel.”)

Something that I was hoping for was wider distribution, into countries that I had never made sales. Indeed that is exactly what’s happened. In the last couple of days I’ve seen my first downloads in India, Russia and Romania.

But I think I should finish on Yummy Browser’s first review in iTunes. It was five stars, which is great. But it’s the text that stood out. Can’t say I’ve ever had a review like it: “Hi colliflower u can eat my poop u stinky hot dog . Enjoy your magic u little wizard.” I honestly don’t know what to think.

Thanks.

I think.

Categories
news trivia

Yummy 2 Screencast

Well, it’s been a busy week, what with the shorter-than-expected half-price sale and the release of Yummy Browser, the free, some would say “lite,” version of Yummy. I’ve also been making some good progress on the next version but there’s not a lot to add at the moment.

Instead I will leave you wish a short video showing some of the key features of Yummy 2.0.

Yes, it’s missing the saved search and tag suggestion features that I introduced in version 2.1 but it’s otherwise entirely up to date.

Categories
news

Yummy Browser 1.0

I am pleased to announce a new version of Yummy, Yummy Browser 1.0.

Yummy Browser is an iPhone application that allows you to view your delicious.com bookmarks. Key features:

  • Browse by date
  • Browse by tag
  • View all Delicious meta data, including the tags, date and notes fields
  • Open bookmarks in Safari
  • Mail bookmarks
  • Synchronise your Delicious bookmarks on demand

Yummy Browser is free and is available immediately in the App Store. If you need to add, edit or delete your bookmarks, want more sophisticated searching functionality, want to preview your bookmarks without launching Safari or send them to Twitter, have a look at the full version of Yummy.

Categories
news

Half Price Promotion ending soon

When, a few hours ago, I said that “Apple could approve Yummy Browser at any time, maybe an hour, a day or a month from now” I kind of assumed that it would be more like a few days than a few hours, but Apple were as unpredictable as ever and I just got this:

As promised, the full version of Yummy will be returning to its usual price ($1.99 or local equivalent) shortly.

Categories
news

Half Price Promotion

Rumour has it that patience is a virtue. But it’s not one that I have ever acquired, especially for things outside my control. (Maybe that makes me a control freak rather than impatient, but the end result is the same.)

How does this relate to Yummy? Well, those with good memories will recall that I announced a free version called Yummy Browser a couple of weeks ago.

I’ve not mentioned it since because it’s still in Apple’s review queue. Unfortunately there’s not very much I can do about that. But maybe there’s another way to get Yummy out to more people:

Until Apple approves Yummy Browser, the full version of Yummy will be half price.

Of course Apple could approve Yummy Browser at any time, maybe an hour, a day or a month from now. If you want to get Yummy for 99c (US, Canada), 59p (UK), 79c (Euro), 115Y (Japan) or $1.19 (Australia), now is the time.

Categories
news trivia

A week in review

It’s been a quiet week for the public face of Yummy but a lot has been going on behind the scenes. First, a couple of things that have not happened.

Yummy Browser has now been in Apple’s review queue for ten days and, unfortunately, is still not available for download. This is the longest I’ve had to wait for a a response from Apple, even including the initial version back in August. Given that the last couple of updates to Yummy have gone through in a few hours I am a little surprised. I’m hoping that publicly whinging works as well as it did for Owen Goss and his game, Dapple.

Secondly a user reported a problem where “blank” tags appeared in the “View by Tags” screen of version 2.1 of Yummy. I have been unable to reproduce this myself and have not got any further information. If you have seen this bug and would like to help me track it down and eliminate it, please let me know.

Back to things that did happen.

I made a few changes to Yummy that you’ll see in the coming months. As ever, there are some internal changes that I won’t bore you with. But I have also altered how the bookmark lists looks:

As you can see, there’s part of the URL and an icon indicating that a bookmark is private. I’m trying to balance the restricted amount of space with genuinely useful information. I considered, for example, adding a tiny preview or a favicon but in the end decided that they’d look neat in screenshots and videos but would take up valuable screen real-estate and not have enough utility to be worth the effort involved implementing them. What do you think? Is that the right call?

Finally, it’s always nice to hear from people who use Yummy. There have been some good suggestions on my Uservoice page, but this time I want to mention some reviews. Yummy only just fell out of Paul Boag’s top five iPhone applications and was also listed as one of klmontgomery‘s favourite apps.

Twitter has also been a great source of feedback. I like being able to say that Yummy is “100% anti-KRAPPS Certified app.” It has also been declared “iPhone app of the day” and “Cracking!

Anyway, that’s the end of this brief immodest interlude and the last of this weeks blogs. See you next week.

Categories
support trivia

Bookmarking to Delicious from Twitter

A few people have asked if I can provide a way that they can save links they see in tweets to Delicious using Yummy. And the answer to that is… partly. Yummy already has a bookmarklet that you can use in Safari to add bookmarks, and developers can use the same mechanism in their applications. Of course whether people implement that side is not up to me.

That, however, is not the whole story. My current favourite Twitter client for the iPhone is TwitterFon and that is Open Source, which means that I can make changes. The look like this.

You start with your list of tweets:

When you drill down on a tweet with a link, you get to the web view screen. And at the bottom right, much like in Yummy, is an action button where you can do things with the current page. In my tweaked version it looks like this:

Clearly this is not a “production ready” patch. I have not put in any code so that the button is not displayed if you don’t have Yummy for example. If you have the developer tools and would like to apply the patch, here’s the code:


Index: WebViewController.m
===================================================================
--- WebViewController.m (revision 1677)
+++ WebViewController.m (working copy)
@@ -136,7 +136,7 @@
delegate:self
cancelButtonTitle:@"Cancel"
destructiveButtonTitle:nil
- otherButtonTitles:@"Open with Safari", @"Email This Link", nil];
+ otherButtonTitles:@"Open with Safari", @"Email This Link", @"Send to Yummy", nil];
[as showInView:self.navigationController.parentViewController.view];
[as release];

@@ -146,18 +146,29 @@
{
if (as.cancelButtonIndex == buttonIndex) return;

- if (buttonIndex == 0) {
- [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:currentURL];
+ NSString* sendTo;
+ NSString *body;
+
+ switch (buttonIndex) {
+ case 0:
+ [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:currentURL];
+ break;
+ case 1:
+ body = @"nnSent from TwitterFon";
+
+ sendTo = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"mailto:?subject=%@&body=%@%@",
+ [titleLabel.text encodeAsURIComponent],
+ currentURL,
+ [body encodeAsURIComponent]];
+ [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:sendTo]];
+ break;
+ case 2:
+ sendTo = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"yummy://post?title=%@&url=%@",
+ [titleLabel.text encodeAsURIComponent],
+ currentURL];
+ [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:sendTo]];
+ break;
}
- else {
- NSString *body = @"nnSent from TwitterFon";
-
- NSString *mailTo = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"mailto:?subject=%@&body=%@%@",
- [titleLabel.text encodeAsURIComponent],
- currentURL,
- [body encodeAsURIComponent]];
- [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:mailTo]];
- }
}

- (void)alertView:(UIAlertView *)alertView clickedButtonAtIndex:(NSInteger)buttonIndex
Categories
news

Yummy 2.1.1

I just uploaded a minor update to Yummy to Apple. It should be available in the next few days. It fixes a problem where adding or editing a bookmark would occasionally cause Yummy to crash. No data was lost (syncing would bring the bookmark back again) but obviously it wasn’t right.

Categories
news trivia

Give Away

If you are on Twitter and were online last night, you may have seen that @KRAPPS and @148Apps were giving away a few copies of Yummy. (I had no idea that they’d do the promotion on the same day!) If you’re reading this because you won or heard of Yummy from there, Hello and welcome. If you didn’t win, well I’m sure those won’t be the last promotions we’ll hold and, of course, you can always pick up a copy in iTunes.

I was a little worried that KRAPPS would think that Yummy was only as good as another fart app, but I need not have worried. They said, “you have a winner and a 100% anti-KRAPPS Certified app.” Thanks guys.

While we’re talking about “give aways,” I thought that this might be a good time to pre-announce Yummy Browser, Yummy’s little brother. It will be available very shortly from the iTunes App Store as a free download.

Yummy Browser is built from the same code-base as the full version of Yummy and is ideal for people who only need to view their bookmarks on their phone. It’s also great if you like the idea of Yummy but would like to try before you buy a copy.

More news and details when it completes its route through Apple’s review process.

Categories
support trivia

Number of Bookmarks

One question I get a lot is “How many bookmarks can Yummy handle?” The short answer is there’s no absolute number that I can tell you but I can give you some heuristics and anecdotes. The short answer is “a lot.”

I typically do my testing with between three hundred and two thousand bookmarks, depending exactly on what I’m doing. If you are in that range you’ll be fine. I have recently been testing with nearly four thousand bookmarks and over three thousand tags, which means that version 2.1 of Yummy works acceptably well in that range. I also heard from a user with six thousand bookmarks.

At the higher end of the spectrum, you will generally find that Yummy works just fine albeit a little slowly. I’m always working to make Yummy faster and more efficient, but ultimately the iPhone has limited memory and a slow CPU. Having said that, the vast majority of users will never notice.