Greed Update: Notifications

I just put out another update to Greed, and this one supports a few items that people have been asking for.

Notifications:

Aside from the ability to mark all items in a feed as read, this was the most-requested feature. You can set Greed to notify you when any feed is updated, or only for specific feeds.

If you want to be notified whenever any feed is updated, go into the settings from the main screen and make sure that "Notify on any feed" is selected.

If you only want to be notified when specific feeds are updated, make sure the above setting is turned off. Then, go into the Feed list (main screen->Feeds), and long-touch a feed item. A context menu will appear with an item labeled "Notify on updates". To turn updates for a given feed off, long-touch an item in the Feed list, and select "Stop notifying."

You can set Greed to start checking for new feed items when the phone boots, by selecting "Start on Boot" in the settings. The "Poll Interval" option controls how often Greed checks for new feed items. As with anything like this, more conservative settings are easier on the battery. If you set it to check for updates every minute, it will work your device harder and use more battery power. Unless you're a real hound for news updates, I would suggest an interval of at least 30 minutes (the default).

Mark all as read:

This feature has been in Greed for a while, but people didn't seem to notice it due to its location in the UI. You can long-touch a feed in the Feed list and select "mark feed as read" from the context menu. As of this update, you can also select the "Mark all as read" item from the options menu from within the article list.

At this point, I'm not sure it's possible to mark all of the items in a folder as read. If it is possible, I'll add that feature in the next update.

Caching almost made it into this update. The feature is actually there, but it's turned off for now. Once I stabilize it, an update will appear with the ability to cache feeds and read them offline. If nothing else, I'll make it an option you can set in the preferences.

Other updates:

• The Folders list now displays a count of unread items for each Folder.
• A few efficiency improvements.

Donations:

In Greed's "About" box, you'll notice some information about donating. I'm experimenting with this idea to see if it's a viable way to of supporting Greed's (and other apps') future development.

I like this approach more than just making applications you have to pay for in order to use. The reason is mainly because in order to make a paid application, you can't just put a price tag on it and expect people to pay for it. You usually have to spend a couple of weeks making modifications to an app to create a "free version" and a "paid version". This usually takes the form of limiting features, and building nag screens or other enticements into the free version to incite people to pay you for the app. It complicates the application, and results in one version that's annoying to use, and another one you have to pay for. Then, you have to think about "piracy" and other BS.

I'd rather just build an app the way I want, and keep improving it if I can tell it's worth the effort to do so.