iPhone World

So there are still some things I want to get added to µGrowl, but have been slow at working on it mainly because all of you seem to be quite content with its current state. For those that haven’t been following the forums, the main addition was to be integration with a torrent site or two. This has proven to be fruitless as site layouts are constantly changing and maintaining such a thing would be a nightmare. So that has all been scrapped.

Don’t cry just yet though, while there won’t be full-on integration, there will be RSS support. This may not seem like much, and you may wonder why I’d bother since µTorrent can already do RSS, so I’ll tell you. The biggest weakness in the µTorrent WebUI (in my opinion) is the lack of ability to view any of the feeds in µTorrent. If you have feeds that are not set to auto download, you must use µTorrent itself to get them going. With the RSS addition, it won’t be quite perfect, as feeds in µTorrent will not display in µGrowl. Rather the idea would be to add the feeds separately (or only) to µGrowl. It is not in this release, but I have already worked out adding a .torrent file via µGrowl. See where I’m going with this? After the next update, there will be little need to ever look at µTorrent itself. Some other little things will be coming also, like confirmation when removing things.

Soooo. Now that you know what is NOT in this release, let me tell you what is. Don’t get too excited because it’s nothing major. A bug was discovered that would prevent Windows from shutting down if µGrowl is running. A number of folks had reported this in the forums, and I am happy to announce that it has been fixed.

Head on over to the µGrowl page to grab the latest version!

So it’s been quite a while since the last post I know. The problem is I always have more to say on a topic than I have time to write it. Postings will hopefully be resuming opting for a brief write up if that’s all I can manage, with later edits to get out everything there is to say.

Now on with the post!

Facebook published an update today that claims to add push and contact synching. This is great news as both of these are long overdue. Unfortunately, after installing the update, both features seem to be MIA. There is no prompt to allow push notifications when launching the app, it doesn’t appear in the notification settings, or in the app options (all 2 of them). Likewise there is no option that I can find to sync contacts anywhere. All in all it looks as if there are no changes whatsoever in this update.

I call FAIL.

Not wanting to admit defeat I uninstalled the Facebook app and re-downloaded it. After signing back in I was finally greeted by the push approval dialog, as well as being able to locate the options in the settings app now. The notification settings allow you to choose to receive alerts for Messages, Wall posts, Friend requests & confirmations, tags, events, and comments so if you are getting flooded with notifications you can tweak it a bit.

It was not immediately apparent that synching was now available as it only shows up if you are viewing your friends list. There are a number of apps available for synchronizing your contacts with Facebook, I believe all of which are not free so this is a nice addition also. It is fool-proof to use and “just works”, but does not offer as many features as some of the 3rd party apps, such as displaying and resolving conflicts, or providing the option to manually match contacts to friends.

There also seems to be an addition that is not mentioned in the updates, which is the ability to change the feed you are viewing. Any feeds you have defined within the site are available in the app.

µGrowl has finally moved out of beta and in to 1.0. Especially for those of you still on 0.9.3, there are loads of new features here!

Be aware that it seems the WebUI in the new beta of uTorrent causes some notifications to not work correctly.

New in 1.0

• Ability to start / stop / remove / remove+delete any torrent in the list
• remove and remove+delete do so with no confirmation.
• Ability to start with Windows finally!
• Ability to add a new torrent by URL
• Selectable columns include status, upload/download speed, % done, ratio, seeds & peers, total downloaded/uploaded, ETA, and label.
• Columns can be clicked to sort and all columns sort perfectly
• Columns can be rearranged but the positions are not saved
• Torrents with a ratio of 1 or greater can be shown in bold
• Automatic check for updates, which can be disabled in the settings
• Automatic check for important notices, also can be disabled
• Tweaked the status coloring
• Fixed a bug causing the window to be resizable only once per execution
• Fixed a bug causing the window to be visible when minimized to the tray
• Fixed a number of other bugs that now escape me

Still to come:

• The ability to add a .torrent file directly (as you can with the WebUI)
• The ability to send comments and feedback from within µGrowl
• Compatibility with the upcoming release of uTorrent
• Your request here

So everyone head over to the µGrowl page and download the 1.0 release!

Version 0.9.9 Beta of µGrowl has just been released. This one has some major UI changes and enhancements. Read the official write-up and download the newest version at the µGrowl page. It is now at 0.9.9 Beta as I hope this will be the final beta release, and may already prove stable enough to become 1.0.

-The screenshot still shows 0.9.3, I know, yours won’t

Changes in 0.9.9 Beta

• Complete UI redesign.
• Added Snarl support.
• Added a list of all currently active torrents.
• Added µTorrent bandwidth usage on status bar.
• Counts for total, active, downloading & seeding are displayed.
• Errors now displayed for authentication or connection failures.
• Window is now resizable.
• Settings have been moved off of the main window.
• Removed from Alt-Tab list when minimized.
• Close button now minimizes to the tray.
• Fixed bug preventing the server settings from being saved in some cases.
• View menu now has option to turn on debug messages. Not much at this point.
• Support link added to the help menu.

Features yet to come

• Ability to start, stop, remove & delete torrents from within µGrowl
• Ability to control µTorrent max bandwidth usage from µGrowl
• Ability to add torrents right from µGrowl
• Toggle to display all torrents, not just active
• Control run at startup
• Your request here?

Head over to the µGrowl page to download.

The interest in µGrowl is much higher than I thought it would have been. Once again I want to say that this is provided at no charge. If you feel µGrowl is worth a few bucks, even if you feel it is worth a quarter, please consider making a donation.

Nobody can deny the fact that the Facebook app has been quite lacking for some time. After waiting forever for an update, Joe Hewitt announced 3.0 was finally complete and submitted. After waiting in queue to get its allocated 10 minutes or so of review time, it finally showed up in the AppStore tonight yesterday (believe it or not I started typing this paragraph yesterday).

By now I’d imagine most everyone has already updated but I still have to at least give it a mention. The  functionality boost from 2.3 to 3.0 is the difference between Windows 3.1 and XP. Better notifications, notes, events, pages, chat, it’s all there. Long overdue is also the ability to now manually refresh posts, ‘like’ posts, and even the ability to apply your filters to the news feed. Along with all of this, icons can be added for profiles and pages that you might frequent.

The icons can also be rearranged the same way as the springboard icons, just hold one for a few seconds. This is cool, but if you’re like me it’ll take a while to get used to NOT pressing the home button when you are finished rearranging and closing the app. Doh!

All in all, this is an awesome update. Personally, given the bugs and lack of functionality, I would have considered everything prior to 3.0 to be beta. Now we wait for 3.1 on which work started immediately after submitting 3.0. The only change coming in 3.1 I can say for sure is that it will finally bring push notifications to Facebook.

A few people seem to dislike the new version. What do you all think? After only 5 minutes I could never go back to pre-3.0.

New Features

- Landscape mode
- See your upcoming Events and RSVP
- See your friends’ birthdays
- See Pages and post updates and photos to Pages you administer
- Write Notes and read your friends’ Notes
- Upload videos from an iPhone 3GS
- Upload photos to any album
- Complete photo management (create albums, delete albums, delete photos, delete photo tags)
- Change your Profile Picture
- Zoom into photos
- Like posts and photos
- See the same News Feed as the Facebook website
- Visit links in a built-in web browser
- See all of your friends’ friends and Pages
- See mutual friends
- Easily search for people and Pages
- Make friend requests
- Become a fan of Pages
- Quickly call or text your friends
- Create shortcuts to your favorite friends and Pages
- Friends sorted by first or last name according to your settings
- Chat friends sorted alphabetically