ReadMore advances again!

This morning, I submitted v1.4 of ReadMore to the App Store. The last release was back in August. I’m sure many of you have been wondering what’s been up and what’s coming next…so, here’s the scoop.

As I’ve mentioned before, Navel Labs has been a side project for me. Every once in a while, I’ll partner with phenomenal people to help pull features off, but the final call falls on me. A few months ago I left traditional full time employment (at a marvelous Cleveland startup) and went back into contracting. I made the transition so that I could give these apps some better attention and get more involved in the mobile app scene. The dust has finally settled and I’m back to focusing on ReadMore’s next steps!

First, I want to make clear that future versions of ReadMore will require iOS 4.0 and greater. As I’ve kept in contact with customers here and there, I’m not aware of anyone still on iOS 3.x so I hope this won’t be too much of a problem. To move forward with the new features and match development costs with the value to you, I need to depend on the later OS versions. If you have an older version of iOS, you will still be able to use the app as is, but iTunes won’t download future updates for you.

So, here’s what’s in the new version that’s waiting in the store right now:

• Lots of under the hood improvements, stabilizations, and user interface cleanups (like using commas for numbers in the thousands)

• You can now give books a start page! Mark off portions of books or anthologies as their own records.

• Page numbers can now be negative. This was a surprisingly popular request. It’s most commonly used on long introductions and prefaces but can be used any way you need it to.

• Wood grain toolbar is BACK by unexpectedly popular demand. Thanks to Benedikt Imminger (tinylab.deviantart.com) for the help with the hi-res and (future) iPad versions.
• I’m exploring better and more useful ways of prediction. Now the app uses only the last two weeks of reading momentum to calculate. If you haven’t read anything in the last two weeks, it doesn’t even try since it’s pretty indeterminate at that point.

If you find some weird prediction behavior, let me know.

I’ll be writing about future features soon. Thanks for your patience!