The softaholic blog

At least!, after a many days of laziness and nasty managed C++ debugging sessions version 2.0 of iNews is ready, featuring:

Now its time for users to propose new features!, so don’t miss your oportunity to participate in the project.

Many days passed since I updated this blog, so I guess it’s time to say something just to keep the stuff hot.

Not much time for coding since last version (1.5) was released. Actually the only feature being developed is the “hotplug” iPod hardware detection library and its integration with the application itself. Development of this is beoming very slow because of the following reasons:

• Not much time for coding/testing, things which in this particular case need many time because of the plug-wait-debug nature of the task.
• This part of the code is being developed in Managed C++, which makes Windows API more accessible. As everybody knows C++ is harder to develop with, and also Managed extensions for it can become a __real __nightmare.

So, this is all for the moment.

After some hours of plain/train coding I finally made a stable (that means “barely working” for me) version of iNews: 1.5.

This version has a better error handling and some user interface tweaks. I hope this version to be stable enough to last until version 2.0 appears with a brand new iPod hardware integration and some other features. Remember: comment’s are welcome!

After some testing I discovered an embarrasing bug in the “Synchronize” button that renders virtually impossible any useful usage of the program.

During the next days I’ll try to fix this bug and make the software a little more robust and bug-free, while keeping an eye in a cool iPod identification/detection code.

As mentioned before, iNews is in a very early stage of development and it still lacks many features and improvements. Let’s write down all the incoming stuff:

• Automatic detection of connected iPod hardware, including multiple device handling.
• Better and easier to use user interface.
• Better error handling for those who don’t like to face .NET exception messages (not me :P).
• PodCast & image support.

Comments & suggestions are welcome!.

• iNews is actually fully written in C# and compiled for the Windows .NET Framework version 1.1. Not tested yet in other .NET implementations, so I’ll appreciate some feedback from any monkey out there.
• XML parsing is done using the MSXML engine port bundled in the System.XML namespace of the .NET Framework libs.
• No direct communication with iPod hardware is made; all info is written through the windows filesystem services.

You won’t believe it, but only a few minutes after the creation and first post publication of this blog, the first version of iNews is built and ready to download!

This is a very basic version of the software which actually contains more bugs than features…

uhm;

let’s go on with the features:

• Drag’n'drop RSS feed registration (just drag the link of your favourite feed to the feed list and you’re done!).
• Automatic generation of Notes file set for you iPod containing your daily information needs.
• Don’t over-inform yourself: choose how many feeds & items you want to be moved into your iPod.

Stop reading & start downloading iNews with the links at the right side of this webpage.

iNews makes your iPod (any model supporting Notes) even more useful downloading your favourite RSS news feeds to your iPod, organizing them to keep the latest headlines just one touch away from you.

What else? well… iNews is free software running under Windows (any version with .NET framework 1.1 installed)