Soda Red Blog http://www.sodared.com/ Getting all your data bubbles in one place. en-us Copyright 2012 Soda Red Electra Labs' Hifi http://www.feedvalidator.org/docs/rss2.html Soda Red http://static-sr.elabscdn.net/resources/images/logos/logo_sodared_200__A94EC83204.png http://www.sodared.com/ 200 97 Getting all your data bubbles in one place. Updates Here and There http://www.sodared.com/blog/view/+updates_here_and_there/ 2012-02-23T22:20:08+0000 Since the last major update to Twitter, a few new bugs have came to light that should now be fixed with regards to sending reply tweets and direct messages. Ugh.. However, these should now be all fixed!

You may have also noticed that the RSS and News articles are now a little prettier with image thumbnails in the overviews if the website supports them. The News also has additional Science and Spotlight sections for your reading pleasure. The Stocks also has a friendly Google News search in the Links

You may have also noticed a ♬ appearing next to some of your RSS article titles. This lets you know that the article has an associated audio file. For now I've added a link so you can open/download the audio and soon I'll finalize the embedded player for your listening pleasure. This is also the start of full Podcast support.

There are several other fixes and updates but the above are the high-lights.

After I finish the embedded audio player, I need to spend some quality time with Facebook. Last night I completely disabled the Messages drop down. Facebook has changed their service in such a way that it pretty much breaks everything related to how Soda Red can interact with those messages.

In related news, big changes are also coming for all service drop downs across the boards.

Stay tuned!

]]> Native Retweets for Twitter http://www.sodared.com/blog/view/+native_retweets_for_twitter/ 2012-02-11T20:29:35+0000 Continuing on in my Twitter service updates, you'll now see native RTs with the original author's image, name and image!

I've also been experimenting with Twitter's conversation view of a "tweet" -- sometimes when you click the Show link next to a tweet, you'll see the full conversation. This is not officially supported by Twitter so your mileage may vary. Hopefully they'll stabilize it soon.

Lastly, the image thumbnails mentioned last night now will note the site that's hosting the media (instagr.am, youtube.com, etc.) below the image itself. That'll help clue you in on where you'll go when clicking the thumb.

Facebook will get some love now. I'm tired of working on Twitter stuff.

]]> Privacy Policy, Terms and FAQ updates http://www.sodared.com/blog/view/+privacy_policy_terms_and_faq_updates/ 2012-02-11T12:08:32+0000 This morning I took a couple of hours to revise the Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions and FAQ. They're simpler and easier to understand. I encourage you to take a few minutes and review them.

If you have any questions, just let me know!

]]> Image Thumbnails and Expanded Links for Twitter http://www.sodared.com/blog/view/+image_thumbnails_and_expanded_links_for_twitter/ 2012-02-11T1:57:11+0000 We now have inline thumbnails again and I added a bunch of new ones to boot!

I've also started expanding all links for Twitter (not wrapping them in http://t.co links) because I needed them expanded for the thumbnails and also because it seems a little boring looking at one t.co link after another.

]]> Twitter Direct Messages Re-enabled http://www.sodared.com/blog/view/+twitter_direct_messages_re_enabled/ 2012-02-08T9:33:54+0000 You can now read and write Direct Messages on Twitter once again, yay!

The only downside is that you'll need to re-authorize Soda Red to access your Twitter account. This change was on Twitter's side and not much we can do other than jump through these hoops.

Ever forward!

]]> Request Timeouts http://www.sodared.com/blog/view/+request_timeouts/ 2012-02-07T9:16:03+0000 There were a few issues with a recent bit of code to handle timeouts and hopefully these now should be resolved.

Previously when you clicked an AJAX link (the ones that don't refresh the browser but only update a certain section of content) Soda Red would wait an extraordinary amount of time before giving up. The clicks would more or less silently fail without giving you an indication that something went wrong.

This is all bad because other links would either not respond to clicks or would respond unpredictably.

I've now reeled this timeout back to only 10 seconds before giving up and will also insert a small, red message letting you know. You can also click the AJAX links one after the other and they'll be queued and processed accordingly.

If this causes problems for any one, please let me know.

]]> Major Sharing Overhaul! http://www.sodared.com/blog/view/+major_sharing_overhaul/ 2012-01-25T22:45:15+0000 After a couple of hard week's coding, I'm pleased to say that the Share panel has went through a complete overhaul and upgrade.

There's a few more fields to contend with but the upside is that you'll now have much more control over how shared items look in Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. We have thumbnail options and descriptions for the first two and a link short-ner for the last one.

Tip: click the red heading for each service to collapse the relevant set of fields.

In other news, Facebook has unfortunately changed the way Soda Red can pull Notifications so I've disabled that menu link. Twitter has also done the same for Direct Messages so that's disabled as well. These are both high on my list to fix so stay tuned.

In other, other news I've got a lot more goodies planned and in the works.

]]> Holy Load Times Batman http://www.sodared.com/blog/view/+holy_load_times_batman/ 2012-01-06T10:22:53+0000 It's been awhile!

I've needed to take some time away from Soda Red to get another project up and running again. But I've recently picked up the torch on this and made a major change last night.

Previously all the services were loaded in the background and this resulted in a snappier interface. However, the more I've used the site I realized that sometimes I would be waiting and waiting for Soda Red to load when I only wanted to see the weather.

I've reconfigured the site to only load the last viewed service at the start. Then as you visit the others they will auto-load if you've haven't already visited them.

The end result - Soda Red will now initially load in a fraction of the previous times. Woo-hoo!

The main point being, we need apps that give us something to work with right away. I'm too impatient for anything else.

More to come...

]]> Soda Red's Still Alive http://www.sodared.com/blog/view/+soda_reds_still_alive/ 2011-07-19T9:40:25+0000 I've just had another project that's been taking up my time over the last few weeks.

I'll get back to work soon!

]]> Phase 1 of Facebook update complete! http://www.sodared.com/blog/view/+phase_1_of_facebook_update_complete/ 2011-05-29T10:35:55+0000 Plenty more to come ...

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