Categories
news trivia

Yummy 2.3 Preview

Here’s a video showing some of the new features coming in Yummy 2.3:

With luck it will be hitting the App Store shortly.

Categories
giveaway news trivia

First Run Anniversary

Today marks one year since Yummy first ran on an actual iPhone rather than in the Simulator on my MacBook.

This was the icon in the original version

This was basically the first point where I thought I might actually make it available on the App Store. As such, it was almost feature complete at this stage. You could view bookmarks by date, drill down to see all the meta data, add, edit and delete bookmarks. It was pretty limited compared with the current version but still does some things that apps still available on the App Store can’t do.

The date view looks kind of familiar still, but not all of it was working a year ago

The screen that’s changed the most of the bookmark viewer. I originally had it with a web preview which worked nicely in the Simulator but not so well with an EDGE connection.

As promised, to mark the occasion I am giving away a few copies to lucky people with a US iTunes account (sorry, this is Apple’s limitation not mine). There are five codes this time in total, three below, one on Twitter (already taken) and another on FaceBook.

L9YXFJLR4HMA
4PFWMEFLMRMX
3KWW3MFNH6Y4

If you don’t manage to snag one remember that there will be three other opportunities later this month.

Categories
news

Yummy Browser 2.3 Submitted

I staggered the announcement to add a little dramatic tension but along with the Yummy 2.3 update announced yesterday I also sent an update to Yummy Browser to Apple.

New features in this version:

  • Animated bookmark name, so long links are visible without making the text un-readably small

So yes, the bump in the version number is a little misleading though, as you can probably guess, it’s so that Yummy and Yummy Browser normally have the same version number.

I will let you know when it hits the App Store. It seems that the queue is around two weeks currently though, as ever, you never can quite tell.

Categories
news

Yummy 2.3 Submitted

I have just submitted a new version of Yummy to Apple. Hopefully it will be available on the App Store in the next week or two.

Key features in this version are:

  • Add tags to a new bookmark by selecting from a list of existing tags
  • ReadItLater support. Now you can push your bookmarks to ReadItLater in exactly the same way that it currently works with Instapaper
  • Send bookmarks to Twitter using SimplyTweet
  • Shorten bookmarks using bit.ly, Tr.im or Cli.gs as well as is.gd
  • More precisely remember the screen that was visible when restarting
  • If you enter the URL, you can ask Yummy to go to the website and get the title. This is useful when you add a bookmark from Safari (by manually typing ‘yummy:’ in front of the URL) or from Twitterrific (where you can’t see the title)
  • Changes to the way the initial download of bookmarks is handled to help avoid the dreaded Error 999

If you’re keeping track, at the time of writing, these are numbers 1, 2 and 4 in the list of user feedback on UserVoice and SimplyTweet support came from a user my email.

Of course there are the usual bug fixes and refinements (you now get a “Progress” screen when posting to Instapaper rather than just locking up the UI).

Categories
reviews trivia

Another review

Congratulations to the guys at Apps Addicts for launching their new iPhone application site. A review of Yummy was some of the content available. It’s mainly positive but I’m not sure they entirely got the point of delicious.com!

It seems to be ideally designed for bookmark pack rats: those who bookmark a ton of links and then sort through them later. If this describes you, then this app might help you stay organized while you’re on the go.

That’s exactly what Yummy, and delicious.com itself, is for.

It seems that they didn’t let Yummy download all their bookmarks, as it kept asking for their password. I wrote about this back in June. (The next version of Yummy will download all your bookmarks before letting you into the rest of the application to prevent this kind of confusion.)

Categories
giveaway trivia

First Anniversary

I’ve been working on Yummy (and Yummy Browser) for over a year now. I can’t remember the exact day I started but I do have a record of a number of key milestones from August last year.

To commemorate this momentous occasion (okay, enough hyperbole for this post) I am going to give away copies of Yummy on each of the following anniversaries:

  1. First run on a real iPhone
  2. Beta 1
  3. Beta 2
  4. Sent to Apple for approval

With a bit of digging you’ll be able to find the date of the last one. The others, well, you’ll have to stay tuned, add to your RSS reader, follow or add as a friend, as I’m going to post the promo codes here on this blog, on Twitter and the new Facebook page. Of course everyone wins a free copy of Yummy Browser…

I should note that prizes will be Promo Codes that, at the time of writing, are only redeemable in the US iTunes store. Good luck! And if you get a promo code, please consider writing a good review on iTunes!

Categories
howto support

Error 999

Maybe it’s a case of having more users or maybe it’s Yahoo, the owners of the Delicious.com service, adjusting some parameter, but recently I’ve been seeing an increase in the number of people seeing “Error 999” when they start a refresh of their bookmarks in Yummy.

So what does it mean? What am I going to do to fix it? What can you do when you get it? And what can you do to prevent it? That’s what I hope to answer with this blog.

Status Code 999 is Yahoos “generic” error message. It typically means that you’ve been trying to refresh too frequently though there are a number of other causes.

Unfortunately, since the error comes straight from Yahoo, there is nothing I can do in Yummy to fix this, at least not directly.

I believe the number one cause of it is users not allowing Yummy to finish downloading all their bookmarks. This forces Yummy to download every bookmark every time you launch it, something that Yahoo tries to discourage. Once it has completed its initial download, Yummy will only ask for the bookmarks that have changed.

This makes the only significant preventative measure: if Yummy is refreshing its cache, don’t exit unless you really need to.

The next version of Yummy will make it harder to exit half way through the initial download of bookmarks. Details of this will be coming soon.

If you do get Error 999, the first thing to try is just waiting a while and trying again. This usually works. “A while” does vary. I would leave it an hour or two at the very least.

Another thing worth trying is switching to WiFi if you’re currently on your cell/mobile network or vice versa. The fact that you’re coming from a different internet address often makes a difference.

Categories
news trivia

How old are you?

You may think that’s an odd question to ask users of an application that allows you to synchronise your Delicious.com bookmarks with your iPhone. I’d agree but Apple seems to think otherwise.

If you’ve not been following the news, here’s a brief summary. In the 3.0 release of the iPhone OS Apple added “Parental Controls” to third party applications, meaning that every application had to be rated as one of four categories: 4+, 9+, 12+ or 17+. Parents can then limit their kids downloads to age appropriate applications. A great idea in principle.

The devil, however, is in the detail.

It turns out that some applications, such as Instapaper, are being rejected because they have the “incorrect” rating. Instapaper, in case you’re not aware of it, allows you to download text-oriented web pages for offline reading (incidentally, you can also send bookmarks to Instapaper from Yummy). The author rated it 12+, which I believe is pretty conservative. The “correct” rating, according to Apple, is 17+ because it “allows unfiltered access to the internet.”

One important question, as @jdg noted on Twitter, “Why are we choosing our rating at all? It’s Apples platform. They review the apps. Why don’t *they* choose the rating?”

Of course, I’m not just a disinterested observer here. If “unfiltered access to the internet” forces an app to be rated 17+, then Yummy certainly falls into this category (as it has a web viewer). Yummy Browser, might warrant a lower rating as there is no web preview. Clearly a higher rating could affect sales; I’m not happy about this.

But let’s, for the minute, assume that the rating is the right thing. How would it work?

If I go into the Parental Controls screen I can limit users from accessing certain features of the iPhone.

There’s only one switch for Safari: on or off. I can’t say “Only allow age-suitable content” as, clearly, that would be incredibly hard, if not impossible, to implement. Or put another way: Safari has no age rating attached to it, unlike applications that are available in on App Store.

So, since we’re speculating here, we should be able to think of at least two ways forward that, if not desirable, would at least be consistent:

  1. Yummy (or Instapaper or any other appropriate app) allows “unfiltered access to the Internet” if and only if Safari is enabled (if you can get the same information in Safari, there’s no good reason why you shouldn’t also get it in the application)
  2. The Parental Controller panel in the Settings application has an option for Yummy that enables or disables the web preview component

Unfortunately neither is an option unless you’re in the Apple development team. There is no option to query the parental settings for Safari or add new settings to that part of the Settings application.

So, what’s the solution? Unfortunately Apple is the only gatekeeper here so I have few options if I want to keep Yummy available for sale. I could just risk pushing through an update without updating the rating but, from what we’re seeing, this is just likely to get rejected and end up delaying the whole process — a weak and ineffectual protest that adversely affects my users is not a good option I feel.

Instead I’m just going to have to comply with the rules, however absurd, and just tell you why I’m doing it.

Categories
news trivia

Facebook

Having bored everyone on Twitter to tears with all the latest happenings in the world of Yummy it is now the turn of people who hang out on Facebook instead. You can find Yummy’s page on Facebook here.

I’ve made a start by uploading a few screen shots and a couple of videos, but the whole point of “social media” is that it’s a two way street so it’s over to you now.

Just to be clear, this Facebook page is not intended to be a replacement for this blog, the UserVoice page or my Twitter feed. It’s just another way of keeping in touch.

Categories
trivia

How many Delicious.com bookmarks do you have?

I’ve been very surprised how many bookmarks some users of Yummy have. What I’d like to find out, with your help, is how many a “typical” user has.

Thank you.