As announced News Wall 2.0 is currently rolling-out to App Stores around the world. Enjoy the experience with the great new user interface, feed search and really fast downloads.

The update is available as free and paid version for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

News Wall major update 2.0 will be available for download December 9. It brings a revamped interface, much faster downloads, feed search and much more. Both the free and the paid version do work on iPhone and iPad now.

I am really excited what you will think of it.

Major update 2.0 of News Wall for iPhone and iPad has been submitted to Apple’s review team. Even though it is the first update of the app it deserves being a major update. Here are the most important changes:

• new article style combining images and text
• advanced article reading view with next/previous buttons
• completely rewritten feed fetching core
• really fast feed loading
• improved feed reading so nearly every feed can be used
• search feeds by keywords

News Wall Free now runs both on the iPhone and the iPad. It displays ads and has some limitations when it comes to social sharing.

The update will hit the App Store during the next day. Feel free to contact me (you can do this directly in the app now).

Apple just approved Paper Pile’s update to version 1.3.2. Running on iOS 4.2 the app crashes when trying to fetch new stories. This update fixes the issue.

During the next weeks, Paper Pile will get a new feed fetching core which is incredible fast. It will debut as part of the next News Wall update in a few days.

After updating your iPad to iOS 4.2 you’ll notice that Paper Pile crashes when updating feeds. This happens because of a bug at the XML-RPC framework the app uses. I’ll fix this and submit the update to Apple as soon as possible. I apologize for the time you cannot use Paper Pile.

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.

First, you need to get a nice sound sample. There are some websites providing clicks and dings and dongs and swuuushes. I love www.oringz.com because the sounds are great and free (it’s always nice to tell author what you gonna do with his work). Place the mp3 file somewhere in your project so it will get in your bundle.

Now to the coding part. Add another framework called “AVFoundation” to your project. It includes the class we will use. Now you need to decide where you want to invoke the playback. I mostly take the main view controller where I import the AVFoundation headers:

#import <AVFoundation/AVFoundation.h>

An instance variable holds the sounds so we do not need to re-create it every time we want to play it:

AVAudioPlayer *newMessageAudioPlayer;

To actually play the sound, we need a little method doing the dirty work:

-(void)playNewMessagesNotification {
	if (newMessageAudioPlayer == nil) {
		NSURL *audioFile = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"notification1" ofType:@"caf"]];
		newMessageAudioPlayer = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:audioFile error:NULL];
	}
	[newMessageAudioPlayer play];
}

The dirty work done here isn’t dirty at all. It checks if the audio player does exist and of not it creates it by passing a NSURL holding the mp3 filename from the bundle. After creating (or not creating) the player itself it simply starts the playback.

Finally we need to clean up. There are two things to consider. Of course, the instance variable needs to be releases when the class itself gets deallocated. And you should be aware of the memory the sound occupies when hanging around as instance variable. Lucky us, we can easily release the sound in cases of low memory since the play method re-creates it if necessary. So add this to the view controllers didReceiveMemoryWarning method:

[newMessageAudioPlayer release];
newMessageAudioPlayer = nil;

News Wall is a news feed reader for iPad and iPhone with an extraordinary different interface. It has been designed to support skimming so users can focus solely on the content. Both the paid app and a free version including ads support fast app switching and the Retina Display.

What is it all about

News Wall reads RSS feed so you have the choice which content you want to use. Every feed is displayed as a scrollable row containing the feed’s items side-by-side. These rows can be collapsed so the display space is used in the most efficient way.

Share what you like

While reading your news you can easily share them via Twitter or e-mail. Furthermore, articles can be saved using Instapaper and Read It Later.
Of course, URL shortening via Bit.ly is supported as well. You even can hook up your own Bit.ly account so you keep track of the clicks.

Be prepared

News Wall runs both on iPhone and iPad requiring iOS 3.2 or higher. It supports Fast App Switching on iOS4 and the Retina Display of the iPhone 4.

Feature Overview

• Read and manage RSS feeds
• User interface optimized for fast reading and skimming
• Auto-discovery of feed address, integrated search to find feeds
• Instapaper support
• Read It Later support
• Twitter support
• Bit.ly URL shortening support
• No Internet connection needed to read on the move

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Stay tuned

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