[mrgreenbeans]

My biggest feature request would be the ability to add/edit the icons used for the feeds.

I really like this idea. It could also be cool to allow people to submit banners for sites (the ones that show up in the summary and article views). I'll present it to the team and see what they think.

I'm thinking instead of having you change the icon just for you, having you "suggest" what should be used for the feed altogether so other users can benefit as well. With that comes some overhead on our part in terms of reviewing those changes, etc, but I think it could be pretty cool!

A good place to post suggestions is over at our support site so other people can vote on them and we can discuss them further. Check it out over at Community-powered support for Trileet. This would be a good one to include over there.

Thanks!

[rlanza1054]

Hi, I post over at the stupid community support forum but could not see my posting after I spent the time writing it up. I have a major problem.

Mr. Greenbeans, I need your help!

I recently had to doctor my phone and doing that process I completely erased my Palm Profile. In doing that it lost all my purchases that I had made.

Palm's support said I had to go to each vendor and ask for help.

So here I am!

How do I download Newsroom again without having to pay for it again.

I paid and I have the invoice for it, the invoice number is XXXX ( I guess that should be done in private.

How do I fix this.

If I do download it and get charged again, I'm only going to call the credit card company and tell them I was double billed.

What is the solution!

I have 5 other purchases that I have to deal with and your my favorite so I am working with you first.

Rob

[squeff]

Hi, I post over at the stupid community support forum but could not see my posting after I spent the time writing it up. I have a major problem.

Mr. Greenbeans, I need your help!

I recently had to doctor my phone and doing that process I completely erased my Palm Profile. In doing that it lost all my purchases that I had made.

Palm's support said I had to go to each vendor and ask for help.

So here I am!

How do I download Newsroom again without having to pay for it again.

I paid and I have the invoice for it, the invoice number is XXXX ( I guess that should be done in private.

How do I fix this.

If I do download it and get charged again, I'm only going to call the credit card company and tell them I was double billed.

What is the solution!

I have 5 other purchases that I have to deal with and your my favorite so I am working with you first.

Rob

In theory, if you keep the same Palm Profile, your purchases are tracked by Palm. Even if you get a replacement Pre or even switch to a Pixi.

Sounds like something killed your Palm profile, not on your phone, but on Palm's end. This should not happen and Palm should take responsibility for it.

However, if this simply a case of you needing to restore your phone, all you need to do is register with the same e-mail address and password and (theoretically) all should be well.

Here's the thing: if Palm lost your information, then the individual developers can't help you. They have no means of providing you the software since Palm controls everything. I know this because I went through a lengthy dialog with both Palm and Trillet (the developer of NewsRoom) on this topic.

In short, Palm lied to you.

So, what to do. Call Palm back and tell them that since they control the catalog and, more importantly, billing, they need to fix this, either by helping you restore your Palm profile or by authorizing a free download (or giving you a refund when you re-purchase).

[Stihl]

Really liking the sleekness of the app, although it is a huge shame that you will not be supporting google sync (even when it comes to fetching feeds); that said, the feed search engine is one of the best I've experienced. Once you iron out the kinks I'm sure this thing will be pretty rocking, especially if it takes off on android as well. There are a few small niggle that could be improved upon, mostly dealing with customization, but I see the vision you have for the product and I likes it.

Buy this app you luddites, it, like the forbesii app, is fantastic--it's actually intuitive.

[mulcher]

It's a great app. I just wish so many feeds didn't require you to read the original web page to get the whole article

[mrgreenbeans]

It's a great app. I just wish so many feeds didn't require you to read the original web page to get the whole article

mulcher - Which feeds in particular? Many feeds are enhanced using our proprietary content extraction. If the feeds themselves have a fair amount of content (more than a few sentence summary), we've opted to leave those alone. However, we can turn on full article extraction on a case-by-case basis.

[squeff]

It's a great app. I just wish so many feeds didn't require you to read the original web page to get the whole article

Are you talking about sites that are designed in such a way that the full content is hidden (e.g., "After the jump...")?

I do find myself annoyed by sites that don't just give me the whole article, since NewsRoom actually does a good job of handling it. I also don't like sites that place the article on multiple pages, which means that NewsRoom can only pick up stuff on the first page.

At first, I was skeptical of NewsRoom's ability, since every feed I tried gave me the exact same information in NewsRoom as GoogleReader/Scoop/Feeds. But, then, I started to find a few sites that actually did have more available content in NewsRoom.

[Kyusaku]

It's a great app. I just wish so many feeds didn't require you to read the original web page to get the whole article

The funny thing is Engadget's own app has this issue. There are some articles that require accessing the full site to see the full article.

[mrgreenbeans]

Are you talking about sites that are designed in such a way that the full content is hidden (e.g., "After the jump...")?

Ya, these are the kinds of sites that give just enough of a blurb that they get beyond our threshold for content expansion.

At first, I was skeptical of NewsRoom's ability, since every feed I tried gave me the exact same information in NewsRoom as GoogleReader/Scoop/Feeds. But, then, I started to find a few sites that actually did have more available content in NewsRoom.

It's in a lot of the top-tier providers like CNN, NYT, Yahoo Top Stories, etc where this is most obvious. A lot of blogs have teasers just big enough that we feel it would be too aggressive to apply this technique to. If enough people have interest, we can certainly look at turning on content expansion since we can force it on a feed-by-feed basis as well.

[mrgreenbeans]

The funny thing is Engadget's own app has this issue. There are some articles that require accessing the full site to see the full article.

Ya, Engadget's (and Gizmodo's) site does not lend itself well to our content extraction. These are two that we really wanted to support to avoid the "after the jump" stuff in the feed. However, the tech works well on a huge majority (like 95+%) of sites out there and in most cases we just need to turn it on. If there are other sites besides these two that you would like us to try it on, just let us know at newsroom@trileet.com.

[squeff]

It's in a lot of the top-tier providers like CNN, NYT, Yahoo Top Stories, etc where this is most obvious. A lot of blogs have teasers just big enough that we feel it would be too aggressive to apply this technique to. If enough people have interest, we can certainly look at turning on content expansion since we can force it on a feed-by-feed basis as well.

Actually, it's places like CNN where I see no difference. I've compared how articles appear and, in my tests, there seemed little to no difference.

I've found it works best with "tier 2" feeds (not "top stories"), such as a particular column at washingtonpost.com. With a "traditional" reader (like Google), I get nothing but the article's title. With NewsRoom, I get the full article. (Actually, I don't, since WashingtonPost tends to put articles on multiple pages). Snopes is another place where I get much more in NewsRoom.

I happen to think you've found the right balance, although it's nice to know that you have the ability to handle things on a case-by-case basis.

[mrgreenbeans]

You are absolutely right squeff.. it is all about striking the right balance.

Out of curiosity, which CNN feed gives you complete articles in google reader? The one I use is at CNN.com and it just has 1-2 sentences. That's the same feed we use in NewsRoom, only it gets expanded to complete articles.

Same thing with NYT (NYT > Home Page) and Yahoo News (Yahoo! News: Top Stories). If you have full articles in google reader for these sites, I'm assuming it's coming from a different feed than what we are using. If you can point to where those are, we can add them to NewsRoom to save us the trouble of expanding these feeds on our end.

Thanks!

[squeff]

Out of curiosity, which CNN feed gives you complete articles in google reader? The one I use is at CNN.com and it just has 1-2 sentences. That's the same feed we use in NewsRoom, only it gets expanded to complete articles.

My mistake. I was doing the comparison based on the mobile version of Google Reader, which can be set to show a "mobile" version of the full article. More-or-less, the same information...

...however, the key difference is that NewsRoom downloads, while GR requires a data connection.

[mulcher]

Check out geardiary.com. That's one where you get hardly anything on the 'details' page

[matty3054]

anyone else having the issue where your preferences in News Room just go back to the preset ones even after you change them?

I turned background auto-updates off to save my battery life a bit but I've noticed that within a few hours, it's somehow turned back on by itself.

That's my biggest gripe and I love it otherwise. But I can't keep this app on my phone if ot keeps reverting back to the preset preferences. I can't afford any extra drain on my battery from this - not to mention my other preferences revert back as well. But that auto update is the one dealbreaker to me.

Any tips or ideas?

[squeff]

anyone else having the issue where your preferences in News Room just go back to the preset ones even after you change them?

I turned background auto-updates off to save my battery life a bit but I've noticed that within a few hours, it's somehow turned back on by itself.

That's my biggest gripe and I love it otherwise. But I can't keep this app on my phone if ot keeps reverting back to the preset preferences. I can't afford any extra drain on my battery from this - not to mention my other preferences revert back as well. But that auto update is the one dealbreaker to me.

Any tips or ideas?

Yes, I lose my preferences about every other day.

It started with the new version of WebOS, I think, where apps are stored differently. Just a guess.

[rlanza1054]

Yes, Eric (MrGreenBeans) knows of the issue. He's looking for people to pin point exactly what they are doing when they lose the the settings.

I seem to get it when I have the 'update feeds in background' option turned on and when I go from online to offine when I am quiting the app.

If someone can confirm this with Erir that would be great and then we can get it fixed.

Also, try posting this problem on his support website, or sending his the issue from the Pre in the Help under the Menu... click on Send Diagnostics and then enter the problem in the email when that comes up.

Rob

[squeff]

I seem to get it when I have the 'update feeds in background' option turned on and when I go from online to offine when I am quiting the app.

Can you say more about this? I'd like to try to recreate this scenario.

[rlanza1054]

Can you say more about this? I'd like to try to recreate this scenario.

I wrote Eric a very detailed private email about this and he cannot recreate the problem just yet. I'm hoping that someone else can.

I also found the other day, my preferences where switched back to default, but that could have been my mistake.

I have now left on 'upgrade in background' and the problem seems to be gone and I'm not able to create it with this option turned on.

As I had told Eric, I turned off the Background option because I had a feeling it was draining my battery. So I just did the manual thing. My choice.

With that off, if I attempted (and it doesn't always happen) load up Newsroom when I'm offline (like when I get on the subway, underground) it comes up with all the feeds missing.

I tried to replicate this using the Airplane mode, and can do it but no always, it seems to be random, but I can get it after about 2 or 3 tries.

I quit Newsroom while it's updating and then turn on Airplane mode to replicate going offline.

And then I reload it, and as I said in 2 or 3 tries the feeds are missing and I have to reinstall from scratch all my feeds.

Rob

PS I know that the drPodder developer (drnull) found a bug with WebOS and database files getting corrupted. He reported this bug to Palm and it was confirmed, but I don't think it has been fixed.

If you contact him, he might be able to provide details on this bug, I'm not a programmer so I'm not sure exactly what the bug is. But if you don't want to contact him, he mentions it in his homebrew thread (drpodder) about his app. Not sure what page it's on at this point, it was months ago.

[gabbott]

I just picked up newsroom today and really like it. The navigation is fantastic and really lends itself to gestures.

One thing that I think would be nice to have as an option is when you go into a feed to see the articles (the page where you can swipe left and right to see the different articles), is to have the ability to change to a view where it is more condensed and you can see multiple articles per page and then select them that way.

Anyway, just want to say great app from what I see so far!