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A new sound of an old instrument.
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<ul class="post-list"><li><span class="post-meta">Oct 15, 2014</span>
<h3>
<a class="post-link" href="/2014/10/15/newsblur-ios-v45-iphone-6-and-ios-8-full-bleed/">
NewsBlur iOS v4.5: iPhone 6 and iOS 8, full bleed images, alt text, and more
</a>
</h3>
<div class="post-content e-content" itemprop="articleBody">
<p>This weeks update to the <a href="http://www.newsblur.com/ios">official NewsBlur iOS app</a> brings a whole lot of oft-requested features and improvements. Heres whats new this month:</p>
<p>&lt;table cellspacing=”0” cellpadding=”0” border=”0”&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt; <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.newsblur.com/blog/ios%204.5%20-%20full%20bleed.png" alt="" />&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt; <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.newsblur.com/blog/ios%204.5%20-%20alt%20text.png" alt="" />&lt;/td&gt; &lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/table&gt;</p>
<ul>
<li>iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are now fully supported</li>
<li>iOS 8 is also now fully supported (as well as iOS 7)</li>
<li>Moving between the feed list, story list, and story detail is now much faster</li>
<li>Images are now “full bleed”, extending to the entire width of the screen</li>
<li>New preference for hiding feeds after they are read</li>
<li>Long press images in a story to read the alt text</li>
<li>Long press images in a story to save it to your camera roll</li>
<li>Long press images in a story to zoom into it</li>
<li>Long press links in a story to get an actions menu (safari, instapaper, bookmark, etc)</li>
<li>Fixed all iOS 8 issues (preference panes, profile popovers)</li>
<li>OvershareKit updated for iOS 8</li>
<li>Pull to refresh updated to match theme</li>
<li>Pull to refresh date is now localized</li>
</ul>
<p>Next to come will be a native iOS share dialog, saved story tag editing, search, and possibly some features requested by users like you. If you have a feature request, post it as an idea on <a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur">the NewsBlur forum on Get Satisfaction</a>.</p>
</div>
</li><li><span class="post-meta">Sep 22, 2014</span>
<h3>
<a class="post-link" href="/2014/09/22/newsblurs-2014-t-shirt-on-sale-for-this-week-only/">
NewsBlur&#39;s 2014 t-shirt on sale for this week only
</a>
</h3>
<div class="post-content e-content" itemprop="articleBody">
<p><a href="http://teespring.com/newsblur2014"><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.newsblur.com/blog/tshirt%202014.png" alt="" /></a></p>
<p>NewsBlur is more than just a website. Its a daily link to the far away world. This t-shirt captures the essence of NewsBlurs appeal. For those days when youre planing adventures and reading about whats happening where youre not, NewsBlur is your guide.</p>
<p><a href="http://teespring.com/newsblur2014">Buy the 2014 NewsBlur t-shirt for only $16.30</a>.</p>
<p>Unlike Teesprings preview, the graphics on this t-shirt are crisp. And this t-shirt is being sold at cost. Also know that this is a premium blend t-shirt. That means its a bit stretchy and will make you look pretty good in a t-shirt. It will look great today and for years to come. Well, at least one year to come. If you wear this t-shirt as often as Im planning to, it may only get a couple good years and then will have to come out only for special events. But then 2015s NewsBlur t-shirt will be there for you.</p>
<p>This years t-shirt is designed by <a href="http://meg-draws.com">Meg Robichaud</a>.</p>
</div>
</li><li><span class="post-meta">Aug 21, 2014</span>
<h3>
<a class="post-link" href="/2014/08/21/a-downtime-irony/">
A Downtime Irony
</a>
</h3>
<div class="post-content e-content" itemprop="articleBody">
<p>So many things can go wrong and often do, but I spend a good third of my time working on infrastructure, monitoring, and analytics so that they dont.</p>
<p>Heres what happened: At approximately 4:30pm PT feed fetching ceased. The feed fetchers were still working, which is why my monitors didnt fire and alert anybody. But I have a second large Mongo database server used exclusively for collecting data about feeds being fetched. There are approximately 75 servers dedicated to feed fetching. These analytics look at average fetch times on a per task server basis. I use these analytics to ensure that my task servers are humming along, as they each use a ton of network, cpu, and memory.</p>
<p>This Mongo analytics servers works in a curious way. If you right-click on a feed and go to Statistics youll see the feed fetch history for a feed, stretching back a hundred fetches if the feed has had any issues in fetching. I keep these statistics on an analytics server separate from the regular Mongo server. I do this so that if the mongo analytics server goes down, everything will operate normally.</p>
<p>But the mongo server didnt go down. It merely gave this error:</p>
<div class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>OperationError: Could not save document (Can't take a write lock while out of disk space)
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>Mongo continues serving read queries while not allowing write queries. I didnt plan for that! And it gets worse. The way MongoDB stores data is that is just keeps growing, even as you delete data. NewsBlur only saves the last few fetches, but deleting old fetches doesnt give you back any disk space. Every other database server I use has an autovacuum process that takes care of this maintenance work (PostgreSQL, Redis, Elasticsearch, but not MongoDB). Its unfortunate that this is yet another instance of MongoDB being the cause of downtime, even though the fault lies with me.</p>
<p>The server that is meant to only be used to ensure things are working correctly was itself the culprit for feeds no longer being fetched. This is the ironic part.</p>
<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.newsblur.com/blog/Big%20Sur.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<h6 id="newsblurs-developer-during-happier-times-wearing-the-2013-newsblur-t-shirt-in-big-sur">NewsBlurs developer during happier times wearing the 2013 NewsBlur t-shirt in Big Sur</h6>
<p>Now comes the painful part. On Wednesday morning (yesterday) I packed my car and headed down to Big Sur to go backpack camping for the first time. Ive car camped plenty of times, but I felt confident enough to pack my sleeping bag and tent into a big bag and head ten miles into the woods of coastal California.</p>
<p>I headed out, away from cellular service, at 4pm PT, half an hour before the analytics server ran out of disk space. And then returned nearly 24 hours later to a bevy of alarmed tweets, emails, direct messages, and a voicemail letting me know that things were haywire.</p>
<p>But the real problem is that I set a vacation reply on both my personal and work email accounts to say that Id be out until September 3rd. Now, I hired a firm to watch the servers while Im at Burning Man starting this Saturday. But I figured I could get away with leaving the servers for twenty four hours. And I neglected to tweet out that Id be gone for a day, so theories cropped up that I was injured, dead, or worse, ignoring the service.</p>
<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.newsblur.com/blog/Brittany%20in%20Big%20Sur.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<h6 id="brittany-newsblurs-developers-girlfriend-can-handle-any-situation-including-driving-a-hysterical-developer-three-hours-back-to-san-francisco-without-breaking-a-sweat">Brittany, NewsBlurs developers girlfriend, can handle any situation, including driving a hysterical developer three hours back to San Francisco without breaking a sweat.</h6>
<p>If youre wondering, I think about NewsBlur first thing in the morning and last thing at night when I check Twitter for mentions. Its my life and I would never just give up on it. I just got cocky after a year and a half of nearly uninterrupted service. NewsBlur requires next to no maintenance, apart from handling support requests and building new features (and occasionally fixing old ones). So I figured what harm could 24 hours of away time be? Boy was I wrong.</p>
<p>If you made it this far then you probably care about NewsBlurs future. I want to not only assure you that I will be building better monitoring to ensure this never happens again, but to also offer anybody who feels that they are not getting their moneys worth a refund. Even if you are months away from payment, if you arent completely satisfied and think NewsBlurs just about the best thing to happen to RSS since Brent Simmons released NetNewsWire back in 2004, then I want to give you your money back and let you keep your premium account until it expires.</p>
<p>I would like to also mention how much I appreciate the more light-hearted tweets that I read while on the frenetic three hour drive back to San Francisco from Big Sur. I do this for all of your happiness. If I did it for the money Id probably find a way to juice the data so that I could at least afford to hire an employee. This is a labor of love and your payment goes directly into supporting it.</p>
<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.newsblur.com/blog/Tent%20in%20Big%20Sur.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<h6 id="big-sur-is-where-a-good-many-new-ideas-are-thought">Big Sur is where a good many new ideas are thought.</h6>
</div>
</li><li><span class="post-meta">Jul 23, 2014</span>
<h3>
<a class="post-link" href="/2014/07/23/reeder-and-newsblur-sitting-in-a-tree/">
Reeder and NewsBlur, sitting in a tree...
</a>
</h3>
<div class="post-content e-content" itemprop="articleBody">
<p>…S-Y-N-C-I-N-G.</p>
<p>First comes feeds, then comes training, then comes social for those days when its raining.</p>
<p>Thats not it! Thats not all! Runs on <a href="http://reederapp.com/ios/">iOS</a> and <a href="http://reederapp.com/mac/">Mac</a>, so have a ball!</p>
<p><a href="http://reederapp.com/mac/"><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.newsblur.com/blog/reeder-mac.png" alt="" /></a><a href="http://reederapp.com/ios/"><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.newsblur.com/blog/reeder-ios.png" alt="" /></a></p>
<p>The worlds most popular RSS feed reader now supports the worlds best RSS feed reader backend. <a href="http://reederapp.com/">Download Reeder 2 for Mac and iOS</a>.</p>
</div>
</li><li><span class="post-meta">Jul 22, 2014</span>
<h3>
<a class="post-link" href="/2014/07/22/adjust-the-font-size-of-feed-and-story-titles/">
Adjust the font size of feed and story titles
</a>
</h3>
<div class="post-content e-content" itemprop="articleBody">
<p>It was only a few months ago back in April that I launched <a href="http://blog.newsblur.com/2021/06/21/2014-04-10-the-new-font-and-style-manager.html">the new font and style manager</a>. Today Im coming back to finish the job.</p>
<p>The style manager now has a new control for choosing the font size of feed titles and story titles.</p>
<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.newsblur.com/blog/feed_size_style.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>Choose from extra small to extra large. These new font sizes not only give you extra customization, but they allow you to have bigger touch sizes for folks using touch screen monitors.</p>
<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.newsblur.com/blog/feed_size_xl.png" alt="" /> <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.newsblur.com/blog/feed_size_xs.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>If you spot anywhere else that youd like to see additional customization, please shout out to the <a href="http://twitter.com/newsblur">@newsblur account on Twitter</a> or post an idea on <a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur">NewsBlurs Get Satisfaction support site</a>.</p>
<p>And please continue to talk about how much you use NewsBlur. <a href="https://twitter.com/newsblur/favorites">Every tweet that talks positively about NewsBlur</a> makes all of this work worthwhile.</p>
</div>
</li><li><span class="post-meta">Jun 27, 2014</span>
<h3>
<a class="post-link" href="/2014/06/27/read-what-youve-read-recently-with-the-new/">
Read what you&#39;ve read recently with the new recently read stories feed
</a>
</h3>
<div class="post-content e-content" itemprop="articleBody">
<p>Like it says on the tin, you can now go back and see what youve read with the Recently Read Stories feed. Its on the bottom of your feed list, just above the saved stories.</p>
<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.newsblur.com/blog/read%20stories.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>This feed records all of the stories youve read in feeds, shared blurblogs, and even in feeds youre not subscribed to. It does not record stories that are marked read as part of a mark all/previous as read action.</p>
</div>
</li><li><span class="post-meta">Jun 17, 2014</span>
<h3>
<a class="post-link" href="/2014/06/17/temporarily-mute-sites/">
Temporarily mute sites
</a>
</h3>
<div class="post-content e-content" itemprop="articleBody">
<p>You can now temporarily turn off sites by going to Manage &gt; Mute Sites. This is for those feeds you want to keep but ignore for a while.</p>
<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.newsblur.com/blog/mute_sites.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>I use this to mute craigslist feeds that I no longer want to see in my unread stories list, but I want to keep just in case I need to perform a specific craigslist search without having to go through the whole process of recreating the RSS feed.</p>
<p>Its also useful for subscribing to high volume sites and only reading them when you want to know whats happening but without having to remember to re-subscribe. Such a simple feature but with a ton of utility.</p>
</div>
</li><li><span class="post-meta">Jun 3, 2014</span>
<h3>
<a class="post-link" href="/2014/06/03/use-the-new-saved-stories-view-to-find-saved/">
Use the new Saved Stories view to find saved stories by site
</a>
</h3>
<div class="post-content e-content" itemprop="articleBody">
<p>After launching <a href="http://blog.newsblur.com/2021/06/21/2014-01-14-saved-story-tagging.html">Saved Story Tagging</a> earlier this year, I realized that there is an inherent categorization to every saved story: the site. But instead of just allowing you to search by site, I created a new view that you can now use to see stories saved by site.</p>
<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.newsblur.com/blog/saved_stories_view.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>The neat thing about this new view is that it works for folders, too. If you click on a containing folder, youll see the saved stories from all of the sites inside that folder. And thanks to last months full text search, you can search all of these saved stories.</p>
<p>And you should expect that these features will eventually make their way to iOS and Android.</p>
</div>
</li><li><span class="post-meta">Apr 29, 2014</span>
<h3>
<a class="post-link" href="/2014/04/29/full-text-search-across-all-of-your-subscriptions-and/">
Full text search across all of your subscriptions and folders
</a>
</h3>
<div class="post-content e-content" itemprop="articleBody">
<p>Last Summer <a href="http://blog.newsblur.com/2021/06/21/2013-07-30-simple-search-for-feeds-saved-stories-and-blurblogs.html">Simple Search was launched</a>, giving you the ability to search a single feed at a time. Obviously not ideal, but it was far less effort than the big enchilada: full text search across every site you subscribe to. It took a few months to come back to attack the full problem, but that means I could also take the time to do it right.</p>
<p>Full text search works just like the old simple search did. Open a folder or site and search at the top of the screen. Results come back instantly as you type. And this will automatically search in story titles, full text content, authors, and tags.</p>
<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.newsblur.com/blog/search%20screenshot.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Because youre searching for a story, hidden stories are also shown in the results, albeit with a red unread mark (as shown above). Also, in order to handle the demands of full text search, the first time you perform a search the system will index all of your feeds, which can take a couple minutes. Its a one time process and you will see a progress bar that will update automatically when finished.</p>
<p>Since this was one of the most requested features since day one, Im now looking to decide on the next big feature. Theres a few big ones to hit: an organizer that surfaces inactive feeds that no longer get read, a discovery platform that helps you find users, stories, and feeds related to what you like and what you may not even know you like yet, and porting many of these web-only features to Android and iOS.</p>
</div>
</li><li><span class="post-meta">Apr 24, 2014</span>
<h3>
<a class="post-link" href="/2014/04/24/unread-is-a-new-ios-app-with-newsblur-support/">
Unread is a new iOS app with NewsBlur support
</a>
</h3>
<div class="post-content e-content" itemprop="articleBody">
<p>NewsBlur has a <a href="http://www.newsblur.com/api">free and open API</a> that all of the native mobile apps and website are built on. But the API is not just for official apps. Numerous third-party developers have built apps on the API and today Im proud to announce a new native iOS app has launched with NewsBlur support.</p>
<p><a href="http://jaredsinclair.com/unread/"><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.newsblur.com/blog/unread_app_logo.png" alt="" /></a></p>
<p><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.newsblur.com/blog/unread_app_screenshot.jpeg" alt="" /></p>
<p><a href="http://jaredsinclair.com/unread/">Unread</a>, by <a href="https://twitter.com/jaredsinclair">Jared Sinclair</a>, is a unique RSS reader, with a focus on simplicity and cleanliness. Sinclair built Unread because he wanted to see a different kind of reading experience, one where he could focus more on reading well written stories than consuming lots of content. Unread app has a different feel than any other news reader Ive seen and I think many of the choices made by Sinclair work in a quiet harmony.</p>
<p>In Sinclairs own words:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Most RSS apps are patterned after email. Noisy parades of dots, dates, and tags trample over their screens. Their source lists look like overflowing inboxes instead of stately tables of contents. Toolbars bristling with options obscure the text. Putting it bluntly, using these apps feels like work.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>NewsBlurs native iOS app certainly does fit this description. And if you want an incredibly well-made alternative, look no further than Unread, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/unread-an-rss-reader/id754143884">available on the App Store</a>.</p>
<style>
.NB-unread-app-post p {
clear: none;
}
.NB-unread-app-post blockquote {
color: #606060;
}
</style>
</div>
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