Viigo Feedback Roundup
We’ve been getting some excellent feedback from customers using Viigo in the last few days, and we wanted to say thank-you for the help. We genuinely appreciate the information you’re giving us, and we are listening carefully: Many of the suggestions you are providing are going to be appearing in the product as soon as we can get them in.
We’ve assembled a subset of the comments in this Virtual Speach post as a way to answer back to all of our customers and give people an idea where we’re heading:
“Now if I could just Cache on the MicroSD for offline use it would be perfect.”
External Media is an important part of where we’re going with the Viigo platform… stay tuned for this feature in an upcoming release.
“Prior to owning a BlackBerry and using Viigo I had a Windows Mobile phone and I used NewsBreak. NewsBreak has a feature that after an automatic update you’d receive notification of new items. I would love to see such a feature with Viigo.”
Notification is a tricky issue, but we agree an important feature. We’re working on this, but we want to make it compelling. We don’t want to add it in a way that is annoying or frustrating for people. Suggestions would be welcome here …
“I’d like to have opening links directly from within viigo ala freerange webreader. Opening it in the browser can be a chore sometimes…“
We agree… this is an area where FreeRange has done a nice job, but we are working on what we think is a very compelling solution that includes links and a much improved use experience.
“…Also, when on a suretype device, you should follow suretype conventions for next/previous article etc shortcuts. I was spent a whole day trying to figure out the shortcuts, and in the end thankfully found the shortcuts document in your website.”
Good point! We’ll fix this as soon as possible.
“Is there a way to mark unread items as read without opening it? Love the service.”
You can do that now: In the Item List, select an item you want to mark as read (or unread) without opening it. If you bring up the menu, you’ll see the “Mark Read” or “Mark Unread” commands (depending on the current state of the item).
“Hey I am just sending in some suggestions, I know I have my settings to update every 2 hours and it doesn’t seem to be doing so…“
There are a number of reasons this can happen: it could be local coverage or network issues with your service provider, or it could be that your update period happen to fall on a peak load moment for our servers, in which case the updater may time out and try again a bit later without causing too much fuss. In the latter case, while these situations are rare, we acknowledge this is not acceptable long term. Our rate of subscriber growth lately has been rather impressive, and we’re working hard to keep up with this growth and to evolve the system to be able to handle much larger loads in the future.
“… Also what about an option to look for numbers like a 411? Just some thoughts thanks….”
Stay tuned for more on this soon.
“Hi there — I really enjoy using your product there are just a couple of things I am having issues with. I am using Viigo on a blackberry 8300.
You need a page down key. Using the trackball causes the page you are reading to jump all over the place. This mainly happens while images are loading and it seems that the screen is jumping to the next link in an article. the bb browser does the same thing but you can hit the space key to go down a page.”
This is an issue we acknowledge, and we are addressing this pretty aggressively. Because we use RIM’s built-in browser control on the BlackBerry we have limited control currently, but improvements are on the way.
“The other problem I have is that the first column of text sometime gets pushed off the screen. This happens when there are in-line images that tend to be large. It only happens on some feeds though.”
We’ll look into this as well. Thanks!!!
“I would like a function to mark all as read in a single channel.”
There is a way to do this, currently, although you have to open the channel first. Simply scroll to the very top of the item list (or press ‘t’ to jump to the top), open the menu, and select “Mark Prior Opened.” If you’re asking for a way to do without opening the channel first, we’ll investigate. The reason why we would be reluctant is because we don’t like to clutter menus.
“I also would like the space bar to page through a single article in addition to using the scroll wheel.”
Agreed, we need to do this. It’s coming.
“Hi, I’d like to be able to actually click on web links from within viigo.. They show as a clickable link but nothing happens when I click on them I have to open the article in the browser first and that’s a pain sometimes.. Please fix/add this feature. Thank you.”
We are definitely working on this one… we agree it is very important.
“…I also noticed that I was unable to select any text or email links within the RSS hence I had to open in the browser to respond. It would be useful to be able to select text or email links. “
We agree, thanks for the input. We’ll add this.
“Finally, I thought it may be useful to have more services to cater for the UK market such as weather channels as the current channels service the US.”
We have started an initiative to better cater to a more broad range of geographies, and you’ll start to see the results of that soon.
“Add the following feeds:
· New Scientist
· The Register
· Crackberry.com
· Slashdot”
Slashdot and Crackberry.com are already in the library! (however, as I’m writing this I realize that Slashdot is under “Science” and it should be under “Technology” – we’ll fix that) Crackberry.com can be found under BlogsàMobile.
We’ll add the other channels as well. However, did you know you could simply go “Add ChannelàAdd Your Own ChannelàAdd From Web Page” and enter “www.theregister.co.uk” and Viigo will go find the RSS feeds associated with that page.
“Support for Nokia E61”
Symbian is a really important platform for our future… bear with us, its coming.
“The cities are very limited in the weather channel. I live in Georgia and there is no city close to me to chose from.“
Better weather support is imminent!
“I love the program for my 8800. It’s the first time I’ve really had a need for rss. The only suggestion is to be able to program the times for the updates. And the max number of articles for each channel. And to have some channels download the whole articles for when you’re on a plane.”
There are changes coming in the next couple of releases to address most of what you’re requesting here. Content management is one of the strengths of the platform, and something we’re improving on a continuous basis.
“The total articles indicator at the top left of the screen was good.”
We’re definitely looking into good ways of accomplishing this, lots of people are requesting it.
“ A selection of colors would be good ( that green is hideous ). The ability to “”follow”" a weblink would be great.”
The guy responsible for the green (that would be me) is getting a lot of flack from all sides. Consider it fixed for the next release.
“First, let me thank you all for putting together a great product! I’ve been an avid Viigo user since the days of NewsClip. Your product stands head and shoulders above the competition. The ability to read items offline vs. going to a website like bloglines is bar far your biggest and best differentiator.
I noticed your note on the bulletin regarding feedback, hence this email. Below is a list of opportunity items I would love for you to tackle. I ranked the list in priority order (items that are more important to me will make it to the top):
Email – This is my biggest frustration with the product. The ability to send feeds via email is great. The two biggest downfalls of the email functionality are: A)send to multiple addresses, and B) Selecting the right “”to”" address when a person in my address book has more than one email address. I know that this is a known issue. I also know that some of this issue stems from the API into BlackBerry’s address book. However, there has to be a better way. Maybe using BlackBerry’s email client instead of the Viggo template would remote this issue. Of course, it stops you from adding the signature at the bottom (powered by Viigo) and the altered subject line. I’m not sure of the solution, but this is by far my biggest frustration. I want to send feeds to anyone in my address book no matter how many people or which email address.”
You are correct; the email issue is related to BlackBerry bugs we’ve communicated to RIM about. We’ll probably end up doing what you’re proposing here, as the bug has existed since BlackBerry 3.8, and it doesn’t seem like a high priority to them.
“Feed Headers/Titles – I would like the ability to rename the header/title for each feed. For example, I use Yahoo’s word of the day feed (http://xml.education.yahoo.com/rss/wotd). When I subscribe to this feed via Viigo, the title on my BB says ‘Yahoo! Education: Word of the’ and it doesn’t fit the rest. Why not give the ability to rename the feed to ‘Word of the Day.’ I don’t need the ‘Yahoo! Education:’ text. It just takes up space. I have a lot of examples (such as ‘Yahoo! News: Top Stories’), but you get the idea.”
We agree, we’ll add this feature.
“Feed Rendering – I have a really weird situation with a few of my feeds. For some reason, the feed only loads the title of the article, and not the abstract.”
We’ll investigate this… thanks.
“Adding Feeds – I like what you have done with the ‘Add Channel’ section. You recommend some good feeds. However, I usually know what feed I want and I want to just add it. In NewsClip, I could do this within one or two clicks. In Viigo, I have to go to “”Add Channel -> Add your own channel -> Add RSS Channel”" and then enter the feed info. Not really a big deal, but something I noticed. I could easily live with how it is done today, but thought I would mention it anyway.”
This will no doubt create an internal debate on where we should place things in the Channel Library… placement of different things is always contentious. We try to balance number of clicks with how often we think people are going to use the feature. Promote things that are used more often higher, and demote things that we think are used less frequently. But we see your point… we’ll look at it again.
“Please note that I am very happy with the Viigo application. As with anything in this world, it is always easy to point out flaws. It’s also good to know what can be improved on. You have a great application and I see it getting even better as time goes on. Thanks a ton for all of the work you have done.”
Thanks for this feedback… we appreciate the good AND the constructive, and it always helps morale and drive to hear stuff like this. We are working very hard on this product.
“User adjustable font scaling.”
This one is often requested, and we’ll add it.
Thanks again for all of this feedback, and we hope responding on our blog provides value for everybody. Have fun using Viigo!!!