When upgrades seem like downgrades

I've been a big fan of of the Silvio Rizzi's Reeder for iPhone, iPad & Mac for what feels like ages now. It's one of my core and most often used apps for catching up with tech and sports news on a daily basis. I'll admint, I'm an RSS guy and I'm proud. Don't get me wrong, I love curated feed apps such as Flipboard and Zite which add tremendous value to the reading experience.  But when it comes to really scanning all your news items, it's got to be an RSS reader. Reeder's interface and experience reveals a clean, functional and Mac simple-like experience in reading and sharing news feeds. It achieves a uniform experience this across the entire iOS and Mac range which is a rare feat. It's an app I wish existed on Android (although gReader Pro is very good in its own right).

The iPhone version is what I use most while on the move. Up to version 2.x it offered a quick way to read news but to share with Instapaper and most importantly Twitter followers, using my custom URL which is I set up on bit.ly.  Real nice bit of flexibility.

I've had version 3.x running for probably for 2 weeks, and while this post is not there to overly criticize the developer (who does a great job and is clearly thinking of evolving the product), the new version has left me somewhat disgruntled in terms of the overall balance of gains in new functionality versus ones which have been changed or upgraded for that matter. My main grips fall into 2 areas affecting functionality and user experience.

The functionality gripe is simple. The bit.ly support for custom URL sharing in Twitter is gone (at least for now). And the custom Twitter messaging has been replaced by the generic iOS Twitter integration dialogue:

Reeder v3.0 for iPhone - sharing to Twitter.
No visible shortened link
and no way to do it

The other odd grip relates to the design led animation to move from one article to another. It essentially mimicks moving from one piece of paper to another as if they were joined together. It's an interesting touch, but not to my liking. Again, the sort of thing which for some of us, takes away from the overall experience and enables us to moan that v3 feels like a backward step in places. You only need to look at some of the review on the Apps Store to see that I'm not alone.  

Anyway, if you are new to Reeder and have always wondered if its worth the 3 bucks (separately for iOS devices and Mac), there are other posts which provided a more rounded introduction than my moans.  I mean, I still use it daily, so that's saying something about the competition.

Getting a handle on URL shortening

In the ubiquitous world of broswers, smartphones and tablets, we increasingly access and share content with social media using a variety of software clients (apps). For me, I use Reeder on Mac and iOS, FlipBoard, Zite, TweetBot on iOS, Osfoora for Mac and when on the Win7 desktop at work, I have TweetDeck for keeping a track of stuff.

I've noticed a number of  popular bloggers have their own customised URL shorteners and it seemed right for me to get into it. Of course, you need to do your homework in relation to

• Buying a short URL domain - I used Domainr for searching and seeing what's available
• Check for custom shortener support within the apps you use (I use Bit.ly and CloudApp Pro)

Getting the short URL may cost you. You may need to get creative. Added to that is the extension is country specific and as you will realise, country domain registrars require supporting paper work to complete such domain purchase requests. I initially looked at a .mo URL and found it has documentation evidence requirements to support the registration out of the country of Macao.

Apps such as FlipBoard or Zite, aggregate content and understandably want everyone to know that.  Hence, you can't customise URL for sharing articles out on your Facebook or Twitter timeline. Your typical RSS feeds or stuff you create gives you a free reign.

All you do is configure your URL shortener service to point to your domain, wait for the transfer to complete and then you're all set. Go into your client (in this case, Tweetbot, TweetDeck or Reader - on each device) and it's all good.  Your URL brand is now alive.

Be aware there's a wide variety of URL shortening providers and the apps vary in what they will support — hence the rather unexpected subscription I needed to make for CloudApp Pro to support my custom URL in Osfoora for Mac. The problem of course is choice.