Either You Succeed or Explain

Looking for an iPhone RSS Reader

I am an RSS addict (used to work with Bloglines, switched for Google Reader). I consume most of my news and articles through RSS. Once I got my hands on an iPhone, it was only natural that I would search for a decent RSS Reader. I got some recommendations and tried several apps. I couldn't try the paid apps, since there are no trial versions, so I had to follow screenshots and reviews.

Google Reader provides an internet application for reading feeds. I use it. My main rant is that it is just too slow, takes too long to navigate, and just consumes too much of my time. 

Before I'll give my "shopping list", here's a little background regarding my RSS reading habits.

I have about 200 feeds. Naturally, I never get to most of them. I would classify my feeds in the following categories:

• "Read immediately" feeds: I usually read those every couple of hours. They include mostly monitor feeds to forums. This is an important tool for web marketing: once a question pops up in a forum, I want to answer it first. 
• "Read daily" feeds: I read those in the morning. Sometimes in the evening. Includes about 10+ feeds in various areas of interest, plus...
• "Services" feeds: feeds from services I use and need to stay on top of updates.
• "Read when you have time" feeds: I get to those less often, if I really need to take a break from what I'm doing or over evenings/weekends.
• "Weekend" feeds: mostly leisure feeds like cooking, comics, etc.
• "Keep an eye on" feeds: there are many feeds which are not updated that often. They should be out of the way, unless something new comes up.
• "Dinosaurs": the ones I never read anymore but can't be bothered to remove.

The feeds are organized in folders by topics like TechNews, Gadgets, Productivity, Fun Stuff, etc. I'm not going to reorganize them, I really like it the way it is.

During my extensive years of RSS-reading (I started using a feed reader about 6+ years ago), I perfected the ability to quickly skim through articles and quickly understand if I'm interested. The "mark as read" feature is one of the most important tasks of a good reader. It should be done with minimal effort from the user side and be part of the natural flow of reading the feed. I should not be forced to manually "mark as read". 

Let's start by laying down some base requirements.

Must Have

• Sync with Google Reader.
• Very quick. Especially to load.
• Automatic and natural "mark as read" which works as you skim through the feed.
• Load images (resized).
• Work in portrait and landscape.
• Support folders.
• Built-in browser which works in landscape mode.
• Simple navigation - in and out of feeds/folders.
• Very simple "mark as unread" for those article I will want to read from my laptop.
• Remember last position when open.

Nice to Have

• Read it Later integration. I use it, but not that much (it's more like "read it never").
• Customize the UI: allow me to rearrange my feeds or select more important feeds just for iPhone viewing.
• Show me article preview inline: I would like to read it almost as I read it in the full version of Google Reader, but with smaller articles. Giving just the headline is usually not enough. Let me customize that.
• Push notifications (like Boxcar).
• Progressive or conditional sync. I don't want to wait until all my feeds are synced.

Must not Have (or don't care)

• Ads. I want to pay for a decent app.
• Show all the feeds in a given folder together: I don't read all the feeds at the same time.
• Favorite, share, note - it might have those, but I don't use them. I keep the interesting articles as "unread".
• Edit feeds (add, remove, move) - I do that from my laptop.
• Offline mode: I spend most of my time connected. I have Read it Later for offline reading. 
• Eye candies are not required: I like it simple. It should look good, but not extravagant. 

Now, I had a great idea for an awesome reader, so here goes. I love TweetDeck. I love the column view, going in-and-out, organizing columns, adding, etc. It just works. I want something similar, for my feeds.

In this app, you cannot have just one deck of columns, you will have multiple decks. You start from you dashboard and select a deck. Each deck contains columns. Each column can show articles from a specific feed or folder (perhaps multiple feeds/folders). There may be other type of columns like "likes" and "shares" (I don't really use those), even search results.

By default, each deck is a folder. However, you may rearrange and create new decks (without affecting the data in Google Reader). For example, I will have decks for "Immediate", "Daily", "Weekly", etc.

Ideally, one should be able to control, for each deck or column, how often it is updated (limiting the sync means faster loading) and some display properties like whether to preview full articles or headlines only. 

One thing I would add on top of TweetDecks' UI is the ability to "expand in place" like the Google Reader web UI provides. Click on an item preview to expand it to a larger preview in place. A different icon or click can show the full item in a separate screen.

There are two important points to notice here:

• The organization of feeds on my laptop is not necessarily the same on my phone. Navigation is much easier on my laptop. 
• Having columns means you get "at a glance" view of what's updates. You can zoom into a column, skim through it by swiping down. Then, swipe left and return to the previous column. You can spend a less than a minute figuring out what's new and more on with your life.

Well, if you have any recommendations for an RSS reader that might just fit me, let me know. If you intend to built my ideal reader, please do it quickly. My money is waiting for you. I would gladly pay $10 for such an app. Any takers?

The Big Brother is Listening

Google's Nexus One phone really puzzles me. It makes all the technological sense in the world but it seems like a business model disaster. From one hand, Google is cannibalizing its' own market: two months ago the Motorola Droid was the hottest thing and now its' junk. From the other hand: it does not work tightly with the Telcos like Apple and sells the device unlocked.  

So how does Google plan to monetize Android and Nexus One? 

My guess is that Google will just keep on cultivating its' major revenue stream: advertising. 

The answer is tucked inside Google Voice (GV). The Android is tightly integrated with the service. Some analysts believe VoIP services will replace the conventional voice services of Telcos. Apple is fighting it, banning VoIP applications from using 3G networks on the iPhone and keeping on good terms with the operators. Google is strongly promoting it through Android. 

Think about it: GV has a cool feature of transforming your voice mail into text. The whole "speech to text" seems to take center stage in the latest Android versions, enabling "speaking into text boxes". How long will it take for Google to start eavesdropping on your conversations and offer you related services?  

Here's a not too unrealistic scenario: your wife will call you and ask you to buy some wine on your way home. Boom! You get a text message with a special offer from a nearby store. You tell your phone "make it so" and the location is added automatically to your Google Maps so you can easily get there and SHOP. 

If your reaction is: "no way, that's way too intrusive even for the big G", I just want to divert your attention to a somewhat obscure and hardly used service called Gmail. Yes, Gmail serves ads in the context of your email. Yes, there was a huge debate about it when the service first came out and there were many naysayers. That didn't stop it from becoming one of the most popular mail service today. 

What's the difference between reading your email and listening to your conversations?  It is pretty much the same. Legally, there might be an issue here, as this might be classified as "phone tapping". Read the fine print in the GV user agreement. You might just be giving them permission to do that anyway.

PS. It all becomes in another page in the dossier Google holds on all of us, but let's leave the conspiracy theories for another post. 

Cheapskates Always Pay Twice (or: rethinking PayPal)

I wrote several posts regarding my experience with PayPal in the past and I feel obliged to write this post. There are many reports over the internet describing the pain and agony PayPal merchants go through. Sure, some of them are bogus and were written by competitors. This one is not.

Jacob Gorban of Apparent Software is a colleague of mine, running a Micro ISV specializing in Mac software. He decided to do a small promotion which caused a "spike" of sales. This triggered the PayPal anti-fraud mechanism that decided to lock the account "for his protection". Eventually, he couldn't even accept payments of legitimate customers. 

From there is was a slippery slope which included hours of waiting for customer care, faxing and emailing. Frustrated customers and lost funds. The bottom line: he lost business and some of the money got locked in his account for the next 6 months. Where I come from we say: "he paid with his health". 

You should read the full post. It is fascinating. Fortunately for him, the post got some well deserved attention (there were so many hits that he had to upgrade his server at some point) over the blogosphere which raised the attention of PayPal. Eventually, the matter was resolved. 

Personally, I am not surprised. I tried getting answers from their customer service before and it was a total nightmare (like calling the US customer service line, asking to be forwarded to international support and then being asked for your social security number) that resulted in no answers. Yes, I pay less commission when using PayPal, but is it worth it?  

My mother used to say that "cheapskates always pay twice". I tend to embrace this and pay more for higher quality and better service simply because it saves me time and money in the future. I prefer using a Mac because I know it makes me more productive. I prefer hosting on SliceHost because I know I'll get excellent service and the resources they promise. I prefer renting an apartment with a private parking space (very expensive in Tel Aviv). 

In fact, that's the point of nWire. You can work without it. However, it will save you time if you choose to use it. So, what's worth more?  How's $60 compared to your time?  

After doing some real-world calculations, my conclusion is that the difference between using an e-commerce provider (like Avangate or FastSpring) and working with PayPal directly is about 2.5%. This is after considering the "extra fees" like money transfer charges and currency conversion rates. Is it worth it?

And there goes November...

Yes,November is gone without a single post. Sad. Why, you ask?  well, as the name of my blog suggests, all I can do now is explain. 

So, first reason is, of course, time. Yes,  I'm busy. No surprise there.

Second, I was mostly engaged with marketing the new release. I usually get most of my blogging ideas while coding, so this meant a dry spell for me. 

Third, I did start writing several posts but gave up on them in the middle. Sometimes I attack subjects which require too much research and I simply don't have the time and energy to complete the research around it.

Finally, twitter. I often find myself just expressing my idea in 140 characters and letting it go, just like that. It is possible that blogging for non-professional bloggers is phasing out. On one hand, people are getting sucked more into the microblogging world. On the other hand, blogging becomes a more established profession as it replaces (or at least joins) the written press. I read articles from Lifehacker every week in my newspaper (The Marker) and TechCrunch is often quoted as a very credible source. Blogging for non-professional seems like a dying trend. 

Well, I still have plenty to say and I'm back into coding, so I hope to pick it up soon.

Shalom PayPal, Welcome to Israel

Yesterday, The PayPal Blog announced that they have a new addition to the PayPal Israel team: Oded Zehavi. First, I want to congratulate Mr. Zehavi on this new position and offer my sincere and best wishes. 

As a PayPal user and merchant, I do have some suggestions to Mr. Zehavi. I tried leaving a comment on the blog post but it was rejected. So, here are some pointers to get your started. 

1. Nurture your existing community

There is already a nice user base of PayPal merchants in Israel. Most of us are not completely happy with the service and we have a lot to say. Before you embark on a massive campaign aimed at extending your users base: stop and listen. This will make it easier for you to retain the new customers you will gain. 

PayPal is an extremely uncommunicative company. Getting quality answers to questions is nearly impossible. Especially if you reside in a country that doesn't have a local PayPal representative. Your only choice is to contact the North American support and they usually fail to answer questions related to your specific location. More than once I got misleading information and had to re-iterate my questions (each iteration usually takes at least 3 business days). Phone support is a true joke: you get to the international support and they ask you for an American social security number. 

Well, I know this can improve and I hope it will.

2. We want more features

For starters, I want Website Payments Pro. I want to sell using PayPal without forcing my users to open a PayPal account. On the face of it, Website Payments Standard should provide this service. De facto, this depends on Geography. For example, I have a customer from Brazil which was forced to open a PayPal account.

Israeli vendors need a simple and cheap way to work with credit cards. PayPal is it. Let us take advantage of the platform you already have. 

3. Israeli bank accounts support

This should have been number one, but you already know that. Customers in Israel are forced to transfer their received payments through a Visa branded credit card. This is awkward and unnecessary. Enough said.

I'm sure I'll have more questions and comments. However, if you will follow my first advice, the dialog will become much simpler. For sure.