Vemedio Blog

Instacast 1.4.4 Available

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:00:00 +0100

While the minor version number change might not look significant, Version 1.4.4 is a bigger update, that moves some advances from the HD version over to the iPhone app and fixes some major issues.

First, let me tell you about the feature changes. I removed the annoying welcome alert view and replaced it with a much more friendly welcome screen like the one on the iPad. This way a new user is not confronted with an empty user interface and a lot of disabled buttons.
I also changed the sharing services implementation and added 'Read later' support for Readability. While the settings for services look a bit empty now, that will change in the future when there are much more sharing options shipping with Instacast.
Then I added a bunch of optimizations, like a preview page before subscribing when importing from a URL. This makes it much more consistent with the other import methods of the directory and gives you the convinience of making sure you subscribe to the right feed.
There are a couple of edge case podcast feeds which add podcast items that do not have any playable media attached to it, e.g. for announcing stuff, etc. Instacast won't import these episodes anymore, because it is a podcast client and not a news reader. If you want a news reader, I recomment Reeder.
I also added support for podcast artwork specific to an episode and also display it now on the lock screen, along with chapter specific images as well.
Plus Instacast is now allowing 2 downloads at the same time, like the iPad version.

Another big issue that should be solved is 'Continous Playback'. It didn't really work before and I couldn't find out why. Thanks to @mattfarrugia who found an article over on Stackoverflow.com, I found the solution. I even got rid of the local notification at the end of the show. I am really glad about that. If you're still having issues in some edge cases, please contact me.

Also fixed some crashes, some of which users reported and a lot that have not been reported. I found them through the new 'Crash & Diagnostics' function, I added. Basically everytime the app crashes, it sends a crash report to Hockeyapp which aggregate and analyze them for me. If you don't want me to have a look at your problems, you can disable this in the settings.

I think that's it basically. Let me know what you think and message me on Twitter.

Instacast among Best Apps 2011

Fri, 9 Dec 2011 08:00:00 +0100

Apple has announced its annual list of Best Apps 'Rewind 2011' and Instacast and Instacast HD are among the best apps in the News category.

Instacast HD 1.0 Recap

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 08:00:00 +0100

Yesterday after a couple of month working on Instacast HD, I finally took the courage and launched it. The feedback I got up until now has been phenomenal. You guys seem to love it and giving it ✭✭✭✭✭ on the App Store (hint). In fact the success was far greater than I could ever hoped for. Instacast HD took the #1 spot of the News category in a lot of countries and even conquered the Top 100 with being on #5 in Germany. And I thought this wasn't possible anymore with so many apps in the App Store. Seems I was wrong.

I am also pretty happy that there are no apparent major issues with the 1.0, which is awesome. I already answered every Instacast support ticket that came in yesterday. The main issue seems to be that iCloud is sometimes not working correctly. I am investigating that. Otherwise everything seems to work great.

Being freed from support I could use the time yesterday to gracefully scale the cloud architecture Instacast connects to when browsing the podcast directory and getting push notifications. So far this worked quite well. I optimized the hell out of it and it still works great. There hasn't been any downtime or server explosion. I am now able to say, that Instacast will manage to send you push notifications not later than 30 minutes after an episode has become available on high-priority feeds (feeds that more than 5 people are subscribed to) and not later than 2,5 hours on every other feed. I will try to hold these numbers with putting priority on the 30 minutes mark for high-priority feeds.

Some followers on Twitter asked me if it was possible to bring Push Notifications to the iPhone. As much as I'd love to, I can't promise anything. The cloud architecture is already absorbing a lot of money and as I am a one man show and need to get direct revenue on any project I do, I don't see how this is possible right now on the iPhone. It is simply not economical right now. This does not mean that it will never come to the iPhone, I am not saying that. Maybe in time as I optimize it more, there will be a point when I'll be comfortable doing that.

Again thank you so much for your support and keep on spreading the word.

Instacast HD - A podcast universe in high definition

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:00:00 +0100

I am very happy to announce that Instacast HD is finally available on the App Store. After the tremendous success of Instacast for the iPhone, a lot of customers asked me about a version for the iPad. At first I thought nay, who takes his iPad on the way to listen to podcasts when an iPhone in your pocket is so much more convenient? Then the idea grew on me. I thought about for what somebody would actually prefer to use the iPad. What's great about the iPad is its big screen and the comfort you have browsing the internet, reading books or articles and watching movies on it. So I focused on exactly these three point: Big honking fullscreen video, comfortable to read show notes and incredible web integration. Let me give you a little tour.

On the left you have the main toolbar. Next to it is the subscription list. It contains thumbnails of all podcasts you subscribed to. Select a podcast and it gives you the episode show notes on the right. On the top you have the usual episode actions you already know from the iPhone version of Instacast. With the button on the top right, you start playback. Below the show notes you can slide the knob to any archived episode and you can also have a table like list view.

If you tap on a link in the show notes, a browser sheet slides in from the right. There you can read linked articles, open them in Safari, send them via email, tweet them or save them for later reading.

When you start playing an episode, a small "Now Playing" area pops up from the bottom and lets you know what's currently playing along with some time information. If you tap on this area and you are playing an audio podcast, you get a little playback controller in a popover. It contains all audio playback controls you already know from Instacast for the iPhone.

If you're playing a video podcast, it brings you right into the fullscreen video player.

This player lets you control the video with minimal interaction. Change the screen brightness in low light situations or stream the video to your Apple TV via AirPlay. Playback controls are positioned in a way that you don't have to touch the middle area where the video is playing, keeping the important parts of your screen fingerprint-free. Hide the player and continue playing only the audio portion of the video while surfing the show notes or browsing the web.

On top of that Instacast HD has some additional features.

With the integrated Download Manager you can pause downloading, resume later and re-prioritize downloads. If the connection drops, Instacast will resume downloading later as soon as the internet connection is available again.

With Push Notifications Instacast HD can notify you automatically as soon as a new episode is being published by the author. Get the notification, tap it and Instacast refreshes and automatically downloads the episode and boom, you're ready to play.

And with iCloud Sync Instacast HD can sync your podcast subscriptions wirelessly via iCloud. Have your subscriptions in sync all the time both on your iPhone and on your iPad. There is no setup, just enable it and you're done.

Instacast is available in English and German and needs iOS 5. It's available on the App Store for $4.99.

Improving Support

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 08:00:00 +0100

Support over the last few days (in some cases weeks) was not that good. Please forgive me. I needed a lot more time to make everything ready for the launch of our next app (more about that in the coming days). Today I finally had the time to answer some support tickets and over the next few days, I will try badly to handle more. However there might be the launch of the new app soon and I will be busy managing servers etc. I will do my best.

To make the support process a little more transparent, I added a small 'Support Status' widget to the contact page of our website. It should give you a good indication how long it might take to answer your email.

And if you just have a quick question, you can always ping me on Twitter.

Instacast and iCloud

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:00:00 +0200

I am pleased to announce that now with version 1.4 Instacast is fully integrated with iCloud. This means, you can now finally synchronize your podcasts and playback information with multiple devices or have a backup in case your iPhone destroys itself suddenly. All you have to do is have an iCloud account and turn on "iCloud Sync" in the Instacast settings.

So how does it work?

As you might already know, if you change a document on one device, this change is uploaded to the cloud and pushed wirelessly to all your devices and thus synchronizing the content. Instacast is using this mechanism to write out the state of the application, not the whole database though. This document is then pushed to your other devices and as soon as Instacast gets the iCloud notification, it synchronizes its application state with the one of the other device.

So what does Instacast synchronize?

First there is the ordered list of your podcast subscriptions. Then there are the played and starred markers of any episode you've ever seen and last there is the playback information, consisting of the currently playing episode, the current playlist and the current playback position. With these three things, Instacast is able to completely reconstruct the application state on all your devices.

When does it synchronize?

The application state is constantly changing, e.g. when you refresh your podcasts, when you change the order of your podcast list, when you start listening to a new episode, etc. And when you play an episode, the position changes every second. Your internet connection would be occupied constantly if there wasn't an intelligent mechanism that aggregates small changes and only synchronizes at important times. These times are e.g when you pause playback, when you lock the screen, when you send Instacast to the background, when you do nothing for a moment and so on. The great thing about it is, that you don't need to push a sync button. The minor downside is that you can't expect it to be in sync all the time, if you look at more devices simultaniously. Writing out the information, uploading it to the cloud and pushing it to all your devices may take some time.

What happens when there is a conflict?

From time to time, it may happen that there is a conflict during synchronization, which means that there are more then two different versions of the same application state, e.g. when you change the application state of Instacast on more than one device at the same time, or when both devices are offline for a while and both have changes that need to be pushed. In this case, Instacast will try to merge the changes together and resolves the conflict. Let's say you add a podcast on two devices at the same time, then the result will be that both new subscriptions will be on both devices, after the changes have been merged and pushed back. If you mark and episode as played on one device and another episode on the other, both episodes should be marked as played on both devices after a certain time. But the best thing with synchronization always is to avoid conflicts all together. Try not to use more than one device at the same time. Give it some time to synchronize before you switch devices.

To sum it up

iCloud and the synching technology behind it is brand new, I don't expect it to work 100% all the time. I did my best to eliminate any disasterous issues, but there is much that could go wrong, either on Apple's side or in Instacast itself. If you encounter any weird issue, please let me know.

What's new in Instacast 1.4

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 08:00:00 +0200

Today is October 12, 2011. Today Apple will make iOS 5 available to the public. I am running it for a few weeks now and I am loving it so far. There is only one minor quirk. More about that later. Today I want to tell you about a new version of Instacast which I labeled 1.4.

A lot of Instacast users were running the developer betas of iOS 5 since WWDC this year. To be precise around 10% of all users. And since GM the percentage went up to 20%. Which tells me that you guys are daring to install iOS 5 on your iPhone or iPod touch. I expect a steep adoption curve. The current version of Instacast available on the App Store is 1.3.6. This version is pretty stable and it should work nearly perfectly for everybody on iOS 5, however naturally it lacks iOS 5 specific features. This is where version 1.4 comes into play. It is currently in review at Apple and should be available if not today, but in a few days.

Between version 1.3.6 and version 1.4 I changed a lot of internals and added some neat features. For one the whole playback engine had to be changed again, since Apple has been working very hard internally on the media APIs. With Instacast 1.4 now you can watch anything you like on AirPlay via the Apple TV and I added 'Now Playing' information to the lock screen. And if you have multiple iOS 5 devices you can sync the applications states between devices using iCloud. More about that in another blog post.

As I mentioned in 'The Case of iOS Background Audio' Apple seems to have changed the background behavior of apps. Previously when you locked the screen, the front most application continued to work and could do its thing. Now in iOS 5, the app seems to transition into the background and thus freezes the app if it is not using any of the background modes, like playing audio, using the GPS, doing VOIP etc. This means for you if you put your iPhone into the dock, set the refresh option to every hour, Instacast would have downloaded all episodes and be ready in the morning - in iOS 5 not so much anymore. I am currently investigating this, but I think there won't be an easy solution and that this behavior needs to be abondoned in the future.

That's said, if you have any feedback, please let me know.

Snowtape for iPhone and iCloud

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 08:00:00 +0200

If you are a user of Snowtape for iPhone you might remember all the issues I had in getting it approved to the App Store. In summary it is not possible to get any recorded music out of your iPhone. It is not permitted to sync it to a different device nor is it permitted to upload it to the internet. And now the saga continues...

Last night, I got an interesting email from Apple about their upcoming iCloud services and their policies. The gist is that a user can choose to backup his stuff including application data to iCloud. This is all great. For this to work reliably and fast 3rd party developers are required to design their applications in a way that iCloud is not hammered with data that would easily be reproducable in different ways, e.g. by downloading it from its original source.

The message from Apple basically pointed out that Snowtape for iPhone stores the music in a location that would automatically be backed up to iCloud. As I understand there is no way for an application to opt out of iCloud backups but opt in to iTunes backups and as I understand it moving the music data to a storage location that is not backuped to iCloud also prevents it from being backuped to iTunes as well.

I can totally understand Apple and why they issue these policies and to be honest as an iPhone owner myself, I would not want it differently. In the case of Snowtape for iPhone it totally sucks, since it means that if you have to reinstall your phone in the future or accidently remove it from your device, you loose all your music. There is no way for us to backup the data in a different way.

As sad as it is, this seems to be another issue why I think Snowtape for iPhone has reached the end of the road. The whole concept does not seem to have a place in the iOS universe. In the next coming months I will think about if and how the concept of Snowtape can be changed to make a better and future proof product that still delights you.

By the way, Instacast works great with iCloud. I will have a post up soon.

The Case of iOS Background Audio

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 08:00:00 +0200

As a developer of media application on OSX and iOS, I am always developing on the cutting edge of what hardware can do and what not. And sometimes I am running into difficulties making a feature run solid and reliable. In media applications, there are a lot of issues you have to face and solve and most of the time the Apple media API documentation explains things not nearly enough. So most of the time I am stuck testing out application behavior on various devices and OS versions. In the case of Continuous Playback in Instacast, I released the feature without the proper deep testing, because initially on my iPhone 4 the feature was running well and I did not think that I would have so much trouble with it. But now after having some feedback from my customers I found out that there is a lot of stuff I've overlooked and that complicates the matter a lot.

So what's the problem? iOS supports playing audio even when an app is running in the background. But, and this is not in the documentation as far as I can see, initializing playback in the background is not supported (according to Apple technical support). That means it is impossible for a 3rd party app on iOS to run in the background and start playing a new song. However in iOS 4 initializing playback of audio files that are stored locally seems to work, but only if you use a lower-level playback component called AVPlayer. In Instacast 1.3 I switched to MPMoviePlayerController to make Video AirPlay possible, but this also broke the Continuous Playback feature completely. Continuous Playback from the background also does not work with streaming content and video material.

The situation in iOS 5 is much worse. As of iOS 5 Beta 3 the backgrounding behavior of 3rd party apps has changed. Now, as soon as you lock the device screen, the application is transitioned into background mode, even if the app is the front most one. This means Continuous Playback in iOS 5 only works if Instacast is the active application and if the device screen is not locked. This basically means, that the feature is unusable and does not make any sense at all.

So what are my next actions? Currently Continuous Playback in Instacast 1.3.1 is not reliable. If it wants to start streaming audio and video and the app is not the front most one, playback won't start and you only get a black screen. Over the last two days I was working on a fix that does not make the feature totally unusable:

Video episodes won't get played continuously and must be started manually every time.
If the app won't be able to start the next episode, playback is stopped altogether.
I submitted bug reports to Apple for the stuff that has been changed in iOS 5. Let's hope they consider reverting the behavior.
I am also considering to give you an optional local notification when Continuous Playback failed to start the new episode.

As a golden rule in iOS 4 you won't have any trouble if you keep Instacast the front most app when you're on a podcast listening marathon. Then there shouldn't be any problems. As an iOS 5 user should not lock your device screen, however I don't know if this advice is very usable.

Maybe you have some other ideas. Give me your feedback on Twitter.

Instacast and Push Notifications Update

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:00:00 +0200

Three weeks ago I did a little survey about Instacast and Push Notifications because I felt the need to have some market research done before I jump into action. And the results are quite interesting.

The first question was, if you would like to have Push Notification support altogether, or if you can live without it. And only about 50% said, that Push Notifications is a must-have feature and the other 50% don't even want it at all. Of those 50% who would like to have Push Notification support, also 50% would pay at least $5 a year to get it. Now saying that you would pay and actually paying are two different things, so that I would say that around 15%-20% of all Instacast customers would pay for a push notification service.

The result is that, yes there is an option to have full Push Notification support that would actually pay for itself. But I must also account for the fact that having In-App-Purchase subscription in an iOS app and selling this app on the US market has some additional risks. You might have heard about the patent lawsuit wave that's affecting 3rd party developers lately. I am not that inclined to make myself a target to the patent trolls.

So I am still investigating options that would make it possible to have a free Push Notification service, like limiting notifications to the Top 500 listened podcasts or something like that. This investigation is not over yet, but I would like to thank you for your participation in the survey. I have a much more clear understanding now about how to prioritize this feature compared to others.