Categories
giveaway

Festive Spirit — Half Price Sale

Just for the holiday period I have reduced the price of Rootn Tootn and Yummy by half. You can now get the same app goodness for only 99c, 69p, €0.89 or your local equivalent. It may take a few hours for the new price to percolate across all of Apple’s servers so if you don’t see the new price, don’t panic!

Categories
news

Yummy 2.7.4

Well, it’s taken more than a year to be available, but Delicious finally updated their API so that clients can use spaces in tags. And that’s what this new version of Yummy, submitted to the App Store yesterday, is all about.

In short, if you use Delicious tags are now delimited by commas, just like on the website, rather than spaces as has been the case in Yummy until now. If you use Pinboard, nothing should have changed.

Because it’s a change, I’ve also added a hint on the tag entry screen so you know what character to use.

If you have already downloaded bookmarks and Yummy has (incorrectly) split your tags into individual words, then I’m afraid that you’ll have to log out and back in again. This will download all your bookmarks again, but this time they should have the correct tags.

I apologise that this has taken so long to come about but, as I’ve said to everyone who has contacted me about this issue, this was a problem with the API and not strictly a problem in Yummy.

There are also a couple of other smaller changes in this release. Firstly, there’s a bug fix. Occasionally Yummy got the count of the number of tags wrong. Annoying but not disastrous. That should be fixed in this version.

Finally, until now when you logged out of Yummy, it kept all the old details up to the point where you start syncing with the new account. I felt that this was a fail-safe; an extra opportunity to cancel. But I’ve had a few emails from people saying that they like to log out to prevent other users from seeing and editing their bookmarks.

In 2.7.4, Yummy now allows this by wiping out all the previous account information when you confirm you want to log out.

At this stage I think it’s unlikely that Apple will approve the update this side of Christmas but it should hopefully be a nice New Year gift for everyone.

Update: Released on December 20.

Categories
reviews

Smart App Banner review

As part of a wider discussion about “How to Monetize Your WordPress Web App,” wpmu.org mention — and seem quite happy with — my Smart App Banner WordPress plugin. Follow the link to read more about it.

While I’m talking about it, it’s worth noting that it looks as though it’s the most downloaded Smart App Banner plugin in the WordPress Plugin Directory. This, and the generous donations from some users, makes me very happy.

Categories
news

Yummy 2.7.3

I have just submitted a small update to Yummy that is currently with Apple and will, hopefully, be released some time in the next week.

It has a single bug fix: if you leave the app when you’re on the tags screen Yummy will sometimes crash. This should never have resulted in data loss so, while I never like to release crashing code, I would hazard that most people never noticed.

Update: Yummy was approved on the 4th December, pretty much in record time — thank you Apple!

Categories
news

Changes in Europe

You may have noticed some changes on the App Store last week:

Apple has increased the prices of apps sold through its iTunes App Store in Europe because of exchange rate changes, it said on Friday. The minimum price for an app in the Euro zone rose to €0.89 ($1.15) from €0.79.

That means that the following prices apply to our apps:

  • Yummy: €1.79
  • Rootn Tootn: €1.79
  • www.cut: €0.89

In a handful of other countries you can also pay in your local currency rather than US Dollars.

Categories
news

Rootn Tootn version 1.1

I have just submitted the first feature update of Rootn Tootn to Apple for review. Hopefully it will be available for download from the App Store in the next week or so.

The theme for version 1.1 is “stuff that I didn’t have time for last time.” In addition to a lot of small tweaks, there are three big features: statistics, data export and accessibility.

Version 1.0 allowed you to record and view lots of information but there was no way to see it all in context. With this update you will be able to see some statistics, showing what happened on average over the last week and for all time.

This is what it looks like:

Rootn Tootn Statistics screen

At the top there’s a graph showing averages for each day of the last week. The bars show the number of events (feeds, changes); the line shows the average duration. Press and hold on a day to see the actual numbers.

Below the graph are text summaries of the average number of events and the average duration per day for all time and just for the last week. I thought that these would be the most interesting and useful statistics but, of course, you might have other ideas of things you’d like to see.

This brings me to the second feature: data export. You can export all the data that Rootn Tootn records as simple CSV (comma separated variable) files that can be imported into most text editing and spreadsheet apps, or even Dropbox so you can open in a “full” application on your Mac or PC.

While I’m sure that you can think of other benefits, the two main ones I see are: you can analyse the figures in arbitrary ways that I can’t imagine. And secondly, I don’t want you to feel that Rootn Tootn is holding your data hostage. If you want to get extract it and use it elsewhere, you should be able to do so.

The final thing is something I’m not sure I should describe as a “feature,” but is pretty neat nevertheless: accessibility. That’s the name that Apple use to describe the feature, but what does it really mean? In short, it means that partially sighted people can work with apps just as well as those with perfect eyesight. It works by “speaking” the user interface. You can read more about how it works in general here.

What I would say is that I have good (albeit corrected) eyesight so I’m not completely confident that I have correctly made every part of the app fully accessible. Please let me know if you find an area that needs work.

So that’s Rootn Tootn 1.1: easier to use, better visualisation of your data and the ability to export it.

Update: Apple approved it on 30 October.

Categories
support

Delicious API Update

Tomorrow Delicious are going to make some changes to their API. The API is how Yummy talks to Delicious’ servers so it’s pretty important! I don’t anticipate any problems, however I won’t see the changes until you do so I can’t be completely sure.

I will be keeping an eye on things and, as ever, please send me a support email if you see anything funny yourself.

Categories
news

Yummy 2.7.2

In my rush to get Yummy 2.7.1 out I missed a couple of things: one feature and one bug. I fixed that in 2.7.2 and added a small bonus.

The bug I have already written about on Twitter. Basically, if you are still running iOS 5 but do not have Twitter enabled then Yummy is liable to crash when you open a bookmark or the web preview screen. While Apple approve the real fix, if you enable Twitter support (even if you don’t use it) you can work around the problem.

Secondly, in using the new iOS 6 share sheets, I accidentally removed the “Open in Safari” option. In 2.7.2 that’s back. As is a new option, allowing you to open links in Google’s Chrome, too.

With luck this will hit the App Store some time in the next week.

Update (12 October 2012): Yummy 2.7.2. was approved last night and it available for download now.

Categories
news

Yummy 2.7.1

I have just submitted an update to Yummy to Apple for review. Hopefully it should make it to the App Store some time in the next week. As with the recent updates to Rootn Tootn and www.cut, this revision is all about supporting iOS 6 and the new screen size on the iPhone 5 and fifth generation iPod touch.

The changes for Yummy were both more difficult and more extensive, much bigger than you might expect given the 0.0.1 version number increment. The “harder” I’m sure you don’t care about but the “more extensive” I hope you do. The most visible change is that the three little buttons at the bottom of the bookmark and web preview screens are gone, replaced with the iOS 6 standard “Activity View.” It looks like the attached picture.

Yummy 2.7.1 share sheet

The options available will depend on your device, but it should be the same or better than before.

(A quick aside to answer a question that I’ve been asked a few times now: no, I can’t add Yummy to the Activity view of other applications.)

Yummy 2.7 allowed you to use the new, built-in-to-iOS post-to-Twitter functionality. Yummy 2.7.1 extends that to the new post-to-Facebook dialog. You’ll find that the “Log into Facebook” button is no longer in the Settings screen. Instead you’ll need to configure the system-wide Facebook settings.

If you’re not running iOS 6 yet, things will mostly work as before.

However, there may be some Yummy users who will not be able to take advantage of these new features.

In order to build in any iOS 6 functionality I had to use the most up-to-date developer tools from Apple. This has meant dropping support for devices running versions of iOS less than 4.3. In practice this means all original iPhones, all iPhone 3G’s (not the 3GS which does support iOS 6) and their equivalent iPod touches. As I said last month, I am sorry if this affects you but there is nothing I can do if I am to keep Yummy current. Of course, version 2.7 won’t suddenly stop working.

The other casualty is Facebook support in devices that are not running iOS 6. This was a decision made more out of practicality than necessity. The post-to-Facebook functionality has taken a disproportionate amount of time to maintain compared with its utility or usage. By switching to the built-in functionality I can spend more time on more unique and useful features. The main device that this affects is the original iPad, though there may be others.

All software involves trade-offs but I think Yummy 2.7.1 will be a big improvement for the vast majority of users. I hope you like it.

Update 1 October, 2012: Apple just approved the update. It should be available on the App Store shortly.

Categories
news

www.cut 3.1.2

Another day, another point update from Wandle Software… This time for for www.cut. As with the recent change for Rootn Tootn, www.cut 3.1.2 is all about the new iPhone and iPod touch. It features support for the new screen size and a couple of small bug fixes, including an update to the “get title” library that I use.

www.cut for iPhone 5

The bad news is that, as with all updates to iOS apps, you’ll have to wait until Apple have reviewed and approved it. At this stage I would guess that it won’t be for Day One of the iPhone 5 but, hopefully, it will be shortly afterwards. Keep an eye on your App Store app (or Twitter) to find when it makes it into the wild.

Update: As of the 20th September, it’s on the App Store.