Following on from my last update - all the key work on the back end server is pretty much complete now (at least for the first release). I've spent the last month or so looking at performance and caching of content to make the system as fast to use as possible.
I've then moved on to redevelop the client app.
I'm changing from a native Android app to use Abode's Phonegap (Apache Cordova). This uses HTML/Javascript under the covers. The main benefit of this is that it allows me to code the app once - and then deploy it on a range of different mobile devices (anything that saves me time is most definitely 'a good thing'!)
I've been developing the app on Android - and just tried a quick deploy on iOS to see how it looks - and it's looking great!
I'm still a few weeks of testing and tweaking away from a release - but thought I'd give you a preview of some of the up and coming new features!
Running on iPad - new 'Suggestions Screen'
If you look at the bottom of this page - we now suggest 3 other stories that have similar content to the one you're viewing. Click on any of these to view (and then see another 3 similar news items, and so on - I've found it's a great way to browse around all the content we accumulate)
Endless Lists
At the bottom of the list of items - we now have a 'More' button. So once you reach the bottom - you don't have to stop - just load the next set of items, and keep going
Running on iPhone - new Category View
You can filter the news items by broad category. I hope to do more sophisticated filtering in future - but that's for a later release...
Search
Search across all news items - this, combined with the 'Suggestions' once you view an item is a great way to access all the content you are interested in
New Feed Sources View
You can now see a list of all the news feed sources we use for Feedhammer. We can add/remove any of these dynamically using our back end admin console. We are careful not to flood the app with too many sources for now - but will bring more online as we improve the personalisation and filtering options
Listen to Podcasts Directly
This is a great addition - for any podcast you can now play the content directly from the app. We may add a feature where you can keep playing and control the podcast while continuing to browse the app.
Android Update
All these great new features will also be replicated in a new Android app too!
Watch this space - more updates to follow soon as we get closer to the switch over!
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