We have decided to remove our applications from the App Store. As a small development firm, we do not have the resources to continue delivering our compelling news application.
For those who have downloaded our applications, they will continue to work, and if you ever need to reinstall the applications, you will be able to from the backup that iTunes makes when you synchronize your phone to your computer.
We have removed SF Bay News from the iPhone App Store. We received another Cease and Desist from the Bay Are News Group. Their claim is that linking to their rss feeds, infringes on their terms of service, since we sell SF Bay News for $0.99.
Since we are a small development company we don’t have the resources to fight this, so we have decided to remove the application from the store. Unfortunately, this just the consumer, as it limits the ways that they can access the content that they want.
I believe that they reason that they issued the Cease and Desist now, is because they are about to release a iPhone application for the San Jose Mercury News. Ironically, four months ago, the Bay Area News Group contacted us because they were looking for help developing their iPhone application. I am assuming that they are about to release their own application and they don’t want to have any competition.
Our hope is to have a fix that will allow our users get access to the content that they want.
We have posted a submitted version 1.2.2 of SF Bay News to the iTunes App Store. This update doesn’t add any new features, but unfortunately it does remove the San Jose Mercury News feeds.
We received a Cease and Desist from the Bay Area News Group asking us to remove the links to their rss feeds. Since we are a small development company, we don’t have the resources to fight this in the legal system and have decided to update the application to remove the feeds.
We feel that this is an unfortunate situation for our customers, as this reduces the amount of content that is available. We will be looking at ways for our customers to be able to get access to the content that they want to view.
We will keep you informed as developments happen.
Our latest iPhone/iPod Touch application are now available in the iTunes app store. We have made the features that are available in SF Bay News available for the Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle Areas. Chicago News, LA News and Seattle News are now available for download from the store.
These applications are also available for download for free. If you like the applications, you can upgrade them from within the applications themselves. This will allow you to try the applications and get the full versions with out downloading a separate lite and full version.
Our 1.2.1 update to SF Bay News has been posted to the Apple iPhone app store. This update adds the East Bay Express to the list of news sources.
The 1.2 update to SF Bay News has been approved by Apple, and is now available in the iPhone app store. This version fixes some minor bugs and addes the following news sources:
Our server team spend some time and significantly improved performance for loading the Twitter feeds for the various news sources in the SF Bay News iPhone application. Now the list loads significantly faster. Since this change was done completly on our servers, the application installed on your iPhone doesn’t have to be updated.
We wanted to improve the look of SF Bay News in our last update. We worked with Elliot Ling at The Design Lab for all of our graphics. We had some ideas for the graphics that we wanted to use in our application, and he was able to run with them and create some great art for our application.
We would recommend The Design Lab for your graphic design work.
Here are some samples of the work for SF Bay News:
The lite version of SF Bay News has been posted on the iPhone App store. This app has the same features as the full version, but you are limited in the number of favorites that you can save. Also, the lite version will only show the first 10 items in a news feed.
You can download the lite version of the app here [itunes link]. The full version can be found here
The 1.1 update to SF Bay News is now available. This update adds a significant number of news sources. In addition to the new news sources, you are also able to share articles on Facebook. SF Bay News also adds offline viewing using Read It Later.
More details are available on the product page.
Twitter Updates