Due to some DNS troubles both the website and the backend of Paper Pile and News Wall for iPad & iPhone have been unreachable for some hours. The error is fixed now. I apologize for the time the apps have not been usable.

The Domain Name System is responsible for IP address / hostname translations. When the app tries to contact the backend it connects to the host danielkbx.com. A DNS server translates the name “danielkbx.com” to the IP address 188.40.86.71. Without a working DNS service the app cannot resolve the IP address and therefore a connection is not possible.

Some user suggested some changes on News Wall user interface. After testing it on my devices I am sure this is a good idea. I made screenshots of an iPhone showing the new arrangement both in portrait and landscape mode.

You will notice that the size of each article was decreased so you can see more articles on a single screen. Furthermore, writing the title of an item “into” to image of the articles again saves even more space. In my opinion, readability does not suffer. Please tell me what you think about this little change. If there are no complains I will submit this as an update on Wednesday. Of course, this update will include some other bug fixes. So tell me, if there is something that could be done better.

Apple just approved News Wall Free. It uses iAd at the bottom and therefore relies on iOS4. That’s the reason for not being usable on iPad. Once iPad gets its iOS4 update, News Wall Free will support iPad as well.
In general, News Wall Free works the same way as News Wall. However, you can only use one account per external service like Twitter, Instapaper and Read It Later. Furthermore, News Wall Free will not get Google Reader Integration with the next update.

Apple just approved News Wall 1.0.1 which fixes a little but annoying bug which causes a connection error message on iPad. When automatic reload is enabled, the app starts reloading articles immediately when it gets active. Sometimes this fails due to name resolving problems. After the update, News Wall waits for 2 seconds before refreshing feeds. by the way, it just feels better.

News Wall is now available at the App Store. Go and get it now for the introduction price of $1.99. It runs both on iPad and iPhone and will make your read your RSS feeds faster than ever.

After July, 12th the price will be $2.99.

After starting News Wall for the first time two feeds are already there. You can add as many RSS feeds as you like. First, open up the settings screen by tapping on the little (i) at the top right corner.

Now press the “Edit” button at the top of this screen. Besides deleting and re-ordering feeds, you now can add a new feed by pressing the “plus” button which is right handed at the top.

There are two ways to subscribe to a feed. First, just enter the URL of a webpage or a feed and press on “Validate”. Second, open the build-in Feed Browser by tapping on “Open Browser”.

When using the Feed Browser you navigate to the page you want to use. When a feed is found, the RSS icon get visible. By tapping on it you open the list of discovered feeds. Now you simply need to select the desired feed. That’s it.

The screenshots are taken from an iPad. The screens look different on an iPhone but they work exactly the same way. This applies both to the paid and the free version.

User’s are expierencing an error when automatic loading is enabled. After starting the app, News Wall cannot connect to its backend server.

This only happens on iPad. The update has already been submitted.

When you read an article it gets marked as read automatically. Every feed displays the number of unread articles. The sum of all articles statistics is shown at the top of your screen. When you tap on this black bar, the wall menu appears giving you the opportunity to mark all articles as read. This means really all articles.

Furthermore, you can mark all articles of a single RSS feed simply by tapping and hold on the feed itself. This open the feed menu where you – again – have the option to mark the articles as read. This works both on iPad and iPhone.

After using News Wall or News Wall Free for some days you probably will have hundreds of articles especially when you use high-volume RSS feeds like engadget.com, 9to5mac.com or gizmodo.com. It can be a lot of work to scroll back to the first article, primarily on iPhone. However, there already is a built-in “jump to the first article” feature: just double-tap the title bar of the feed you want to be moved to the front.

Of course, this works on your iPad as well. This applies both to the free and the paid version.

Sometimes you may want to refresh only one of your RSS feeds. This is much faster than refreshing all your feeds. Doing so is really easy. Tap and hold on the one article of the feed you want to refresh to open up a menu. This menu contains a refresh button.

Feed menu on iPhone

Feed menu on iPad

Please notice that News Wall’s backend system caches feeds for 2 minutes. You will not receive new articles within this time. This applies both to the free and the paid (iPhone & iPad) version.