DEVELOPERS BLOG

This Week in BlackBerry World: FeedMinder

BLACKBERRY WORLD / 12.14.15 / BVE

bbw

This week we would like to highlight a great app that pulls all your feeds together in one place. FeedMinder brings the functionality of the social feeds app on BBOS to BlackBerry 10. With an amazing, native UI and support for RSS, Twitter and other social feeds, this app is a must for anyone who wants to keep up with all their feeds using one handy app.

Features Include: Multi-post to Facebook, Twitter and BBM, “reader mode” to focus on content only, hub notifications, import/export support and so much more!

To get more information about this great app, we asked the developer, Andy Cundill, a few questions.

“Twitter and RSS Feed Reader, Aggregator, Organizer”
FeedMinder

Where did the idea come from?

The idea was to allow users to pull all their news feeds together in one place like the Social Feeds app did on BBOS. Users needn’t care whether some of the news happens to come from Twitter and other parts from RSS and Atom feeds – it’s simply news brought together and organized by the user in a way that makes sense to them.

A feed catalog means most users simply browse and discover their favorite news networks without any understanding of RSS, and without ever typing in a URL.

Users then wanted to be able to filter out ads from the articles and to display the content in a readable way on their BlackBerry, so I added a Reader Mode to do just that.

They also wanted to make it easier to share news across their networks so I also integrated with BBM, and Facebook to allow simultaneous sharing to those (and their Twitter) networks.

Users wanted to be able to describe (via simple rules) when to be notified of new articles that were important to them, for example when their home town got mentioned, when something came up for sale on kijiji, or whenever their favorite sports team was mentioned. And some users wanted those notifications to appear in the BlackBerry Hub.

Some users wanted a light theme, others a dark theme, pull to refresh, swipe to delete, mark-read/unread, off-line support, pocket integration… and so the app has grown!

How long did it take to develop the app?

The first version took around 6 months of evenings and weekends to develop back in early 2013. Since then, I’ve been updating every few months, adding the most popular features based on loads of great feedback from my users.

Who are your ideal customers?

Anybody! There is such a diverse range of feeds available for every interest out there. Pretty much every major news network has Twitter and/or RSS feeds publishing their latest headlines.

Why should customers buy your app?

FeedMinder saves users from hopping between multiple apps to get to their news. Users find it simple, convenient and addictive. Currently FeedMinder users open the app a quarter million times monthly. It seems everybody uses it slightly different, and all the great user feedback and ideas have led the app to where it is today. There’s also an Android version for the Priv, or any other Android phone or tablet (called RSS Savvy). Here’s a 90 second demo video.


 

If you were looking for an app like this, look no further and get it now.

Together with this app we are recommending a few other applications available on BlackBerry World:

CineTV10: Your ultimate movie and TV show database
CineTV

QuickPost: Social Sharing for BlackBerry 10!
QuickPost

ClipMan Clipboard Manager: powerful Clipboard Manager Built for BlackBerry 10
ClipMan

MyAccountant: Expense & income tracker, personal finance manager
myaccountant

Missed the previous episodes? Check them out to discover more high-quality apps for your BlackBerry.

BVE

About BVE

Bryan Van Engelen has been with BlackBerry since 2010. He is part of the Developer Programs and Outreach team, focusing on customer and developer engagement and support. @bve21