Introducing Manifesto 1.0
As many of you are aware, I’ve been working on an iPhone application in the little spare time that I have.
The day has finally come. Today I submitted Manifesto 1.0 to the iTunes App Store.
What is Manifesto?
In its simplest terms, its the app that I’ve wanted on the iPhone since I got it last year. Its an RSS Reader. More than that, its hopefully a ‘News’ reader to people who aren’t familiar with RSS.
Download it from the App Store here.
What sets Manifesto apart?
The main goal as I was building Manifesto was to make it an extremely efficient news reader and not just a rehash of whats out there. Most people have a bunch of feeds that are updated several times a day and it can often be extremely tedious to figure out which articles are important and which are not. Manifesto makes that process easy with its aggregate view of new articles and also with quick flagging.
The second, and maybe more important, goal of Manifesto was to make it the best offline news reader. Manifesto makes viewing your news offline seamless.
What is in Manifesto 1.0?
Aggregate Views
At a glance see all of your new or flagged articles. There is no need to go through feed by feed to see what’s new or important.
Quick Flag
You’ve never flagged your important articles so quick. Just tap on the left margin of an article to flag or unflag it. Its never been quicker.
Flagged Article Caching
Now that you’ve marked an article as flagged, wouldn’t it be great to have that article’s web page saved for offline viewing? Manifesto, by default, caches an article as soon as you flag it.
Flip Web
Never leave Manifesto to view the web page for an article. With the touch of a button the article flips over to reveal its web page.
Share
Think an article is great and want your friends to check it out? With 2 taps you can email the link to your friends.
Bulk Operations
Mark all as read. Mark all as flagged. It doesn’t get any easier.
Easy Add
Easy and simple to add new feeds to your collection.
- Auto-discovery: Use a website address like apple.com. Manifesto automatically detects the location of the site’s feed
- Google Reader Import: Have a bunch of feeds in Google Reader? Manifesto will let you import all or just a few of your feeds
- Feed URL: For those hard to find feeds, just enter in the full URL
Supported Feed Formats
All versions of RSS, RDF and Atom.
What is next for Manifesto?
This is going to be a constantly updating and evolving product. I have a few ideas that I’ll be working into upcoming versions but I’d also like to include your ideas too. The best way to give feedback is by leaving a comment here. I’ll be constantly checking!
As for new features:
- People have a lot of feeds and need a way to search and organize them. There will be some really awesome improvements to this.
- There are some great feed syncing services out there and I know people would love for Manifesto to sync with them. Manifesto was built with this in mind.
- Even better offline functionality.
Stay tuned and definitely submit feedback!
- Justin
August 8th, 2008 at 8:37 am
In a stunning coincidence I have also released an iTunes related program called Manifesto, which was also announced Aug 5 and released Aug 6. Luckily for us the two things have nothing to do with each other. Mine is an iTunes visualizer plug-in.
I was looking on Google to see if anyone had linked to it and ran across your page. Very odd. Best of luck with your iPhone app.
August 21st, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Looks awesome! Can’t wait to try it.
August 27th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
please add ability to organize feeds into custom folders like the recently released newsstand feed reader does.
August 27th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
I’d say the absolutely most important thing- would be the ability to sync with Google Reader. Byline has this functionality- though it’s lacking in too many ways to make it usable. NetNewsWire is great- but then I have to use the desktop app when I’m at home. Sync with Google Reader and I’d happily pay $20+.
Thanks for the hard work!
August 27th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
wow this app seems to out-feature all the others one right now, from its description. syncing with Google reader and offline mode are really thoughtful features. can’t wait to try it out. congrats!
August 27th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Also please add the ability to reorder the list of feeds in the main page. this should have been part of the initial release and is just UI 101. Thanks.
August 27th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
sorry, but one more change request. please allow the option of displaying the “aggregate” new articles view by most recent articles across all feeds. right now, you have things sorted by feed source, then date/time within. I DO NOT want to scroll through the individual feed sources to find the most recent one. you emphasize the “aggregate” view but you missed the mark by the default method by which you organize articles by feed source. i’m sure most of us only want to see the new screen organized by latest articles…..and within the preview lines, just display the feed source so we know which feed it originated from.
August 28th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Sorry, I found a bug.
I added this feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/RecentlyAddedIphoneApplications-PinchMedia
however the date for all of the articles show as 12/31/69 which is incorrect. Please look into and fix this. Thanks!!!
August 28th, 2008 at 1:52 am
Hello,
for some reason, feedburner powered feeds show just top part of the post, and you have to go to web view to see the rest - is it possible to avoid this?
August 28th, 2008 at 5:04 am
Very nice first Version, but with a few bugs:
- When using “Mark all as flagged” in the News section, it doesn’t just flag the articles currently displayed but absolutely ALL articles - I doubt that was the intended function.
- I have some feeds that do not get updated correctly: Manifesto fetches the new items, then I mark them as read. If I now refresh to fetch new items, it in fact loads the next older 20 or more items. So with every refresh I get 20+ more new items per feed. That shouldn’t happen as usually one isn’t really interested in those old articles. Feeds who behave like this are for instance: heise.de (when added as Website Address) or http://www.taz.de/1/politik/rss.xml (added as Feed Adress)
Hope that those can be fixed!
August 28th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Well, here’s a few features that would be great to be included:
- optionally limiting the number of old items to keep, for example to 50 per feed, excluding those which are flagged. I just added all my feeds and then connected to iTunes - and the backup has gotten significantly slower (+ several minutes). I suspect this is caused by the amount of feed data that is backuped. If that really is the case, limiting the number of old items stored would help.
- Some feeds don’t display any content and require to visit the website. Therefore it would be absolutely nice to assign a behavior per feed: either behave normal and display the feed content - or behave differently and directly open the article website. It would be best to apply this setting per feed and not globally.
August 28th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Like it so far, one thing as minor as it may be would be a decent font for the articles. I know it;s nit picking but would look a lot cleaner with a nice sans serif font. Keep up the good work, thanks.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
I’m pretty impressed. However, I note that the default feed from daringfireball.net does not display correctly, showing that each article has no content. If I load the same feed in Safari, it has content. I’d also second the requests above for a “recent across all feeds” view, and the ability to sort feeds into folders and into order onscreen. I’d also love to see two-way syncing with Google Reader, if that’s feasible - at least two-way feed syncing, even if not item syncing.
However, I have to say this app is off to a great start. If you continue in the same vein, this could dominate the iPhone RSS reader market. Well done, and thanks!
August 29th, 2008 at 6:50 am
Loving the new app so far. I really appreciate the built in browser. It’s so nice to not have to jump back and forth between Safari and the newsreader. Most of my concerns have been addressed in the other comments here, so I’ll just reinforce what others have said:
1) Need the option for larger font sizes in the articles lists and the summaries. They’re just too small. The list of feeds is easy enough to read.
2) Need an option to delete all read articles immediately. My backup times have increased dramatically since installing Manifesto, and I’m sure it’s because all the articles are getting backed up.
3) Allow me to edit the feed names. I prefer to keep things short and some of the defaut feed names are contcatenated.
4) Also would like to be able to reorganize the order of the feeds and possibly create folders for different categories.
5) The unread articles badge on the springboard doesn’t always update properly. Most times I need to relaunch and quit Manifesto a second time to get the badge to update.
Otherwise, I think it’s a fantastic 1.0 product. Thanks, and I look forward to future versions.
August 29th, 2008 at 7:29 am
a few feeds are getting appended with a date of 12/31/69.(Fixed in 1.0.1) This is causing all the news stories under this feed to keep reloading even though I mark them all as read.(Fixed in 1.0.1) I guess the app thinks they are new each time. Otherwise awesome app. Looking forward to the bug fixed and enhancements.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:07 am
This is a very good thirst step as this RSS reader has the potential to do exactly what I need. There are some annoying things do:
1. Newest articles are now at the bottom so you always need to scroll(Fixed in 1.0.1)
2. Dates are all messed up and I only see 1/01/70(Fixed in 1.0.1)
3. When flagged read with the next sync the all re-appear and now I have 572 unread items!!!!! The overview is completely gone in this wat and makes the app unusable
4. Limit the number of downloaded articles is also very necessary to avoid a large amount of data being stored and also to keep a clear overview
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:50 am
Mayor,
I’ve related my problem in a review at the App Store.
The program keeps crashing at the same point when adding new blogs. It happens particularly when adding some blogspot feeds.(Fixed in 1.0.2)
I did manage to add a blogspot feed by including it on Google Reader and then adding directly through the ‘Google Reader’ option, but it’s quite a hassle.
If you need more info let me know. I will be glad to change my review upon resolution of the problem.
Thanks.
September 4th, 2008 at 5:13 am
Hi from Italy. I’ve deleted all the other rss apps I installed on my iphone. I really love Manifesto, even if it’s a 1.0 release. My thoughts:
1- wrong articles date (all dates are 1/01/70) and order displaying.(Fixed in 1.0.1)
2- it doesn’t correctly update the read articles, and it flags as “unread” a lot of articles I’ve already read.
3- a way to delete multiple articles (ehm….actually I can delete no article….is it possible?)(Fixed in 1.0.2)
Thank you. You’ve done a great job.
September 8th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Congrats on the great review from iLounge. It’s well deserved.
September 20th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Justin,
I have some more crash reports to send you, but I can’t seem to find your email. Let me know and I’ll send them your way.
Butch
November 27th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Hi Justin,
good to have you back and congrats from here. Welcome to the club, mate!
December 12th, 2008 at 12:50 am
Hi Justin
Great product, I bought it last night. A few suggestions / questions”
- Some feeds that work find on Google Reader don’t view properly on Manifesto. In particular, some articles from feeds like the HUffington Post (which works fine on Google Reader) only display the “Digg this / stumbleupon/reddit” Icons and none of the article text - I can recreate and send a screenshot if you like?
- It would be great to be able to reorder the feeds. Folders would be cool too, but reordering would be fantastic to start with.
- Font size options would be great as well, if possible.
Cheers again for a great, simple and easy to use product!
~NK
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:48 pm
This is by far the best rss reader for the iphone. Since i got it, it almost seems pointless to go online in my computer, because i can’t think much more to read about. There’s some small improvements i would love.
1.The organization improvement for the feeds would be nice, i’d like to put folders of different themes and fill them with different feeds.
2. It would be nice if it suported the push (auto-fetch) capabilities of the iphone
3. Integration with google reader. Be able to sync unreaded feeds or mark as readed on google the ones i have read.
great app, man.
December 27th, 2008 at 10:02 am
I would like to add my vote for two way Google Reader syncing. Specifically I would like be able to see any articles that I flag on my iPhone up in Google reader so I can check them out there too. Also sync up which articles I have read on my phone with Google.
Overall Manifesto is a great App! Great job!
December 31st, 2008 at 5:26 pm
[…] good reader options: I like Manifesto for the iPhone (thanks Andy Ihnatko!)–it’s easy to use, beautiful, and you can import […]
January 5th, 2009 at 9:21 am
I’ve just bought the app, after using NetNewsWire, and getting annoyed at not being to add feeds on the iPhone. It looks really nice so far.
One slight thing to add to the options, would be the choice of the International date format dd/mm/yy instead of the US format mm/dd/yy. Just a little thing, but something I’d like to have.