Search For Email, and then Listen!

Here it is, the latest and greatest version of Reader+ for Gmail, 1.14:

v1.14

May 18, 2015

1. Added search capability to app so that you can search for the Gmail messages that you want to listen to.
2. Corrected issue with controls not responding on the lock screen under some circumstance.s
3. Corrected state of play/pause control under some circumstances (after restoring app).
4. Corrected issue in which app would never let you listen to trash or spam emails (in case you actually want to do that).
5. Fixed bug in which some emails having single-digit timestamps in the hours field would not get sorted properly. 

6. Friendly audio reminders to buy the upgraded version modified slightly and changed to keep track of the last one that the user listened to.

And you can download it FREE here:

https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=959397919&mt=8

As mentioned previously, I think this might be my last version for a while, although I'll still do any bug fixes if they happen to come up. For now I'm learning about Unity... going to see if I can put together a game of some sort.

Even Gmail Audio is Boring?

I think most people generally dislike email. A lot of the email that I get is just newsletters and crap, the kind of stuff that I usually just delete without reading. Although sometimes I'm sure some of those emails could contain some useful info... perhaps a useful stock tip or something, or some good advice about how to better market my app. That was the primary reason why I created Reader for Gmail: I wanted an app that could read out all of my email to me while I was out jogging somewhere, and the apps and built-in functionality of my iPhone at the time just didn't cut it.

Now that the app is basically done though, I've found that I don't use it as much as I thought I would. Maybe just once or twice a week. You see, for the most part, those emails are still boring! Quite often I've got a few good podcasts lined up that I like to listen to, or one or two good audio books (currently reading the true story "Foxcatcher" by Mark Schultz... highly recommend!) or maybe just would rather pound the pavement while rocking out to The Offspring. I suspect most other people are probably the same, maybe even more so, as they would not feel the same "developer-compulsion" that I have to test the app and make sure that it is functioning as intended.

Over 4000 people have downloaded the app, and based on stats from appFigures over 1000 have upgraded in recent days, so I guess that's not too bad in terms of retaining users. I'm guessing probably over 2000 still have the app installed on their devices. But looking at the stats in Google's Developer Console (I can track how much the app gets used, but not who is actually using or what they are listening to!) it looks like usually only a few people are using the app per day. I think most people are like, "Hey this app is kind of neat, I like it! But I don't actually use it hardly ever, 'cause email is just kind of boring you know?!?"

I still plan on doing maintenance-type stuff for the app, but have no major plans for big improvements. Yeah, the UI might be sup-par for some people, but I don't really care. The thing works well as it is I think, and I can't really think of any other changes I could make that would magically increase sales or downloads to any large extent.

I plan on starting a new blog soon for a game idea that I've been kicking around. Yes I know, 500+ games get released every single day for iOS... but still I want to try.

A Gmail Player For The Masses

The reviews from SmoothReviews are slowly starting to trickle in, and most of them are quite positive. I think I've had 7 or 8 so far, most of them 4's and 5's with just one 3 and nothing below 3. Apparently I need to get 5 reviews in a given country for a given version of the app to get a ranking for that particular country's App Store, so this SmoothReviews thing is going to take a bit of time.

A new version of Reader+ for Gmail (1.12) was released a few days ago, with these changes:

v1.12

April 27, 2015

1. Added blue circle to the left of each email in the email table view to indicate if it is an unread message (i.e. unread using a fully capable Gmail client application). 

2. Added settings option to read only "unread" emails (i.e. emails that have not yet been read by a fully capable Gmail client application). 

3. Re-built using iOS 8.3.

The full revision history can be found here:

https://sites.google.com/site/simpsonshelpfulsoftware/home/gmail-reader

This past week an awesome new feature was added to make the app kick ass even more: 

SEARCH!!!

Now there will be a simple text input field and search button to allow you to search through ALL of your Gmail messages in just a few seconds. The Gmail API and the SPEED of Google Search are really quite impressive. So if you need to review that epic 10 page email that your boss sent to you a few weeks back, now you can just search for it, click on the result, and start listening!

SmoothReviews

For the past week I've been testing and reviewing apps from other developers. Am I doing this out of the goodness of my heart? Not at all! I'm expecting other developers to provide reviews for Reader+ for Gmail in return. There is a website called SmoothReviews: smoothreviews.com that allows you to upload a link to your own app, and provides you with a number of apps to review. For each app that you review, someone else will eventually review your app. No guarantees that they will like it or give it a good review, but I'm interested to find out if any sort of reviews at all will increase my downloads / visibility in the App Store. So far I've reviewed 4 apps, and have not received any reviews for Reader+ for Gmail yet... :-(

Wait a sec, I just clicked around the SmoothReviews website and discovered that my app link wasn't properly uploaded! That explains the lack of reviews so far I guess :-P. Apparently there is more than one way to specify an App Store link to an app, and SmoothReviews requires a certain format with a country code and the app name in the link. Took about 20 minutes to figure that one out, so hopefully now the reviews will start trickling in!

If you happen to go to SmoothReviews, click this link:

http://smoothreviews.com/?referred_by=2061

Apparently this referral will snag me an extra app upload slot, which might come in handy someday.

Version 1.11

Version 1.11 of Reader+ for Gmail was approved today, Yay! Knock on wood, but my last 3 or 4 submissions to the App Store have been successful. OK, now I've jinxed my next submission for sure.

This version has the following new changes:

1. Next track, previous track, and play/pause buttons are now responsive on the lockscreen.

2. On settings window, can dismiss the keypad for changing the number of emails to download by clicking on empty space. 

3. On the main window, if an email is being read, there is a button in the top right corner called "Current Email" to take you to the playback window for the email currently being read.

4. On the main window, if an email is being read, the "Start Reading Gmail" button changes to a "Stop Reading Gmail" button.

The complete version history can be found on my website here:

https://sites.google.com/site/simpsonshelpfulsoftware/home/gmail-reader

To download / update the app, the App Store link is still:

https://itunesconnect.apple.com/WebObjects/iTunesConnect.woa/ra/ng/app/959397919

Downloads Returning to Normal and What to do for New Emails?

On April 11, the downloads peeked at a little over 100, but yesterday they were back down to 20, and now today I expect they will be back at a normal level, probably 5 to 10. I'm guessing that Apple must have "featured" Reader+ for Gmail for a limited amount of time, to see how it would perform with the new changes. Not well enough I guess! During the past few days I got 180 downloads and one in-app purchase; nothing that a trillion dollar company would care greatly about.

Today I finished the changes for displaying and reading just new Gmail messages, if the user chooses that option. But I'm unsure what to do about marking a message as "read" after it has been listened to. Typically any message that I listen to with Reader+ for Gmail, I would not want that message to be marked as "read" since I prefer to handle that task (and a more careful read of important messages) on my computer using the real Gmail interface in Google Chrome. Also, if I were to provide a user option for marking "listened" messages in Reader+ for Gmail as "read", then I think I would need to include write access in the list of permissions that the user sees when they first log in with the app. Personally, I think the fact that the permissions are currently set to be "read-only" would be comforting to users, because it provides them with some security that the app won't do anything stupid, like accidentally delete one of their email messages.

I'd be interested to know what other users think though... if anyone is out there and has an opinion, and actually reads this, please feel free to leave a comment below! :-)

New Version = More Downloads?

A couple of days ago version 1.10 of Reader+ for Gmail got approved. As far as revisions go, this one was fairly minor, just a new icon and a re-compilation of all the code for iOS 8.2. I was hoping that this would improve the number of downloads which has recently been suffering at something like about 3 to 6 per day.

This morning the results from the first full day of 1.10 came in: 65 downloads! I had read somewhere that the AppStore promotes apps more that use the most recent versions of iOS... possibly this is true, or possibly not, but I figured it was worth a shot. Although the new app icon is definitely better, I have a hard time believing that it would be solely responsible for a 10x increase in the download rate, so I think definitely using iOS 8.2 (rather than the previous iOS 7.1) has increased the AppStore ranking of Reader+ for Gmail.

We'll see what happens in the next few days as far as downloads go...

In actual development work, today I started adding an option for only reading out "new" Gmail messages, and indicating the new messages with a blue circle icon, similar to what some other mail apps use.