Tweed 1.5: Bug Fixes and Video Beta

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Version 1.5 has been submitted and should be in the App Catalog soon.

Bugs

Load More showing gaps in home timeline ( see below)
Links causing app to freeze
Notifications not clearing on loading the timeline
Wrong (and really big) notification counts in dashboard

Forward Gesture/Compose is still broken — seems to be problem in webOS 1.4 update. (This seems broken in web browser application as well)

Features and Changes

basic/beta TwitVid integration for uploading video

Load More

Before 1.3, some users had gaps in their home timelines when clicking “Load More”. We tried to fix this in 1.3 and probably made things worse.

We are going back to the previous methods we had in 1.2. While users may still see gaps, the problem seems to on the Twitter side. In more expansive testing, it seems that the Twitter API occasionally return the wrong tweets for Load More. We are trying to find out more from Twitter

While we think the Load More behavior will be better, we don’t think this is fully resolved and might be outside our control.

Opening Links and Frozen App

This is a bit complicated. We thought our update to 1.3 fixed this. It did, for some users, it didn’t for others.

Apparently there are some bugs in Palm’s installer that have led to some files not being overridden, even though they changed. Upon testing, we’ve discovered version 1.3 installations that still have some of the 1.2 files.

We are hoping this update forces an overwrite of the files in question, but it may not for everyone. For those that still have trouble with links freezing the app:

try deleting Tweed first, then re-install — this should clear out old files
if it still doesn’t work, please email us at tweed-support@pivotallabs.com

Video Beta

We have integrated TwitVid uploads with Tweed. We consider this a beta and expect users to experience some problems. Honestly we wanted to let people experiment sooner than later.

The largest problem is upload stability — video files can be sizable and the upload may fail, especially over cell. We suggest using video with wifi only.

There are some webOS challenges unfortunately to making this integration more robust. The file upload mechanism in webOS doesn’t allow for resuming a failed upload: it is all or nothing. For larger files (like video), this is a bit fragile.

We are hoping Palm will provide other upload mechanisms that will allow us to make this more robust, but honestly, we are a bit stuck unless they make these changes.

We plan to make add features to Tweed to provide better feedback about progress and help make retries easier.

Free Version

As we announced some time ago, we are no longer continuing development on the free version of Tweed. We haven’t the resources to continue developing two versions of the application.

Unfortunately, webOS 1.4 has broken Tweed and this is something we weren’t expecting. However, we still aren’t in a position to support both versions (free version is no longer in US catalog), so users of 0.9.x won’t be getting an update. We are sorry for this and understand it will make Tweed unusable for many/most users of this version.

To make it easier for free users to upgrade to the paid version, we are going to reduce the price of Tweed from $2.99 to $0.99 for the next few weeks. As with all Palm apps, updates are free.

Tweed
Tweed

Tweed Update: v0.9.8

Christian Sepulveda

Thursday, July 9, 2009

A new version of Tweed is available! (v.0.9.8)

Bug Fixes

memory leak with notifications
timeline marker not being preserved when Load More is tapped
loading spinner hanging when minimizing during a load
preserve tweet position on refresh
tweets not always displaying after Load More
false notification reports
removed Refresh and Load More from conversation timeline
notifications stopped when swiping away dashboard with Tweed closed

Features

simplified notifications: when enabled, they check every 15 minutes, independent if Tweed is open or closed
configure notifications: selectively configure timelines
Tap header: option to jump to top/bottom of timeline
When loading a timeline, start with marker (if present)
load up to 200 tweets when a marker is present (100 tweets for searches)
notifications: display badge counter number of timelines with notifications
notifications: dashboard stack allows users to cycle through all notification timelines

Coming soon…

photo integration (via auto generated email) — this week
configure notifications for bookmarks

Let us know your feedback either @tweed on Twitter, tweed-support@pivotallabs.com or http://tinyurl.com/satisfaction-tweed

Tweed

Innovative Software vs. Commoditized Software

Christian Sepulveda

Monday, April 2, 2007

Most of software development can be considered from one of two perspectives:
Is it innovative or can it be considered a commodity?

Starting with the latter case, these software projects are a re-implementation
of software that has already been written numerous times. It is even possible
to buy existing applications and integrate with other components or implement
minor customizations. An example of commoditized software are shopping carts.
Years ago, in the early Internet, merchant websites and shopping cart
integration was expensive and required significant development; today I can
pay an extra $20 a month in web hosting for the same functionality.

For a commoditized software project, it makes sense to look at low cost
development options. These frequently employ overseas developers, thousands of
miles away in other time zones. With commodity software, the requirements are
well understood and many exemplary models exist. Communicating project
requirements and expectations is easier, so the risks are far lower.

Innovators don’t have such ease; requirements change often and are foggy at
best. Building from existing components is either unfeasible or requires too
much customization (the dreaded “integration tax”). This poses a great
challenge for an entrepreneur, as being first mover may be more of a risk than
an advantage. Large amounts of time and money can be expended while the
entrepreneur searches for her actual market opportunity or the proper way to seize it.

Incremental and iterative development can help mitigate these risks for the
innovator. With each iteration, the innovator has feedback that allows her to
tune and adapt requirements, converging on essential functionality and
de-emphasizing tangential functionality. For an entrepreneur with a limited
budget, efficient use of development resources is critical.

While iterative development can keep you focused, it is not enough. Close collaboration and
interaction with developers is also key. Building a rapport between product
visionaries and those executing this vision not only creates a common sense of
ownership, which leverages “collective brain power”, but it forces the
entrepreneur to clearly communicate her vision. Too often innovators have a
muddy understanding of their own ideas. (A technique called “high concept” is
another good tool for entrepreneurs and will be the subject of a future post.)

Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs treat their venture as commodity software,
as they attempt to outsource development to low cost programming body shops.
While I have a particular bias in this case, the real question for an
entrepreneur is: If it is so easy to outsource your innovation, is your idea
actually novel? Are there any barriers to market entry for a competitor? These
questions are important to address before any development investment is made,
regardless if the software is being treated like a commodity or an innovation.