When supporting our regular users as well as beta testers, we often ask them to send us log files. In order to make that process easier, we’ve put together this post as reference for how to do it.

NOTE: We are working on a new feature to allow you to send us your feedback and log files from within the application. Once that becomes available, you won’t need to go through these steps.

1) Enable Additional Data Logging

Press the right soft key for Menu > YomoMedia > Log…

This will present the default log page. On the log page, press the right soft key for Menu > Additional Logging. When the checkmark is shown next to Additional Logging, the client will create a detailed log file automatically. This is the file we will ask you send to us for troubleshooting. It is stored in the file system of the device. Continue to the next step to create a new log file.

2) Troubleshooting with Log Files

If you are experiencing performance issues with YomoMedia, make sure Additional Logging is enabled as shown above. Then perform the same steps to re-create the problem. (For example, update your feeds, play a podcast, etc.). Once you experience the issue again, it will now be tracked in the log file.

3) Retrieving Log Files

To retrieve a log file (or files), go to the File Manager application from your home screen. Navigate to \Storage Card\Program Files\YomoMedia\Data\logs\

There you should see one or more files with a name like this: YoMoLog_04_27_08_50_37.txt. Either email from your device, or copy this file to your desktop (via ActiveSync or Bluetooth) and email from there. Send it to feedback@yomomedia.com with a note about your issue. We will use the log to help us diagnose what is occurring.

We’re wrapping up some exciting new features and are looking for a small group of beta testers to take the Windows Mobile app for a spin. If you’re interested, email us.

The new features include Google Reader integration, the ability to search for feeds on the phone and some really nice interface enhancements.

Yesterday, I posted about the evolution of our web interface. Today, I want to review some of the changes we’ve gone through with the mobile interface. When we started this project almost 3 years ago, we had no idea how many iterations we would go through. Let me just say that there have been a lot.

When we first started, we just used basic wireframes to test functionality. We weren’t really thinking about how the app would look in the end. We simply needed something to work. These are what the original screens looked like…pretty primitive.

Initial Home Screen

Initial Feed List

Audio Download with Early Icons

Article View

And then we began exploring icon options.  We knew these weren’t going to be the finals but we had to start somewhere. The idea of a bundle icon was tied into the Yomo logo. We eventually decided against this.

New Icons

Alternat Home Screen With New Icons

We started refining the icons and spent a lot of time creating ones that read well and also were easily understood. It always seemed that we were never quite happy with them and we kept refining…over and over.

Updated Bundle Icons

We weren’t happy with the way you had to navigate through the interface so we started to think about a “carousel” style. We also brought in the fav icons from the different feeds for easier identification.

Early Version of Carousel

Refined Carousel

And this is where we are today. Almost 3 years later and countless revisions to the design not to mention feature updates. It’s been a long road but we have a lot of very happy people around the world who use the app daily. And that’s a great feeling. We’ll be adding more functionality and have a few ideas for some great new features. Stay tuned.

All Feeds

Article View

Audio/Video Podcasts

Now Playing

The other day, I was thinking about how long we’ve been working on Yomomedia and realized that we’ve gone through a lot of changes in the past 2 1/2+ years. So, I started looking through some old files, original docs, write ups of what Yomomedia was going to be, initial sketches, competitive matrices, etc.

It’s amazing how many iterations we’ve gone through, how many things made it into the application and how many never saw the light of day. Overall, we’re still pretty close to the original vision, not a lot has changed around that although how things are presented and how things look have changed drastically. I thought it would be fun to take a look at where we started and where we’ve come to.

In this post, I’ll just focus on the web application and tomorrow, I’ll go through the mobile app. They’ve both been through a lot of changes.

Very early sketch of homepage

Another initial sketch

Getting a little more complete

More Content Focused

Variation of Content Focused Homepage

In the end, we thought we would skip the content on the homepage and focus on the app and how to use it. We thought it was more important to use that valuable real estate to educate so we came up with this. It gives a visitor 5 different ways to learn about the service as well as one click to test drive it:

Focusing on How It All Works

And then after a few changes to that and about a year went by, it morphed into this. We made it as simple as possible to download the mobile app:

And This Is Where We Are Today

Now, that’s just the home page and we had many, many revisions of each of those. The actual web application was a lot more involved.  We started with detailed sketches of functionality, database schemas, must-haves, nice-to-haves and a lot more. The original web application looked something like this:

Home Page with Application

And then evolved into this:

Revised Application Interface

Revised Application Interface

Cleaner Version

And this is where we are today:

Today's Web Application Interface

Now Playing

Grouped View

And that’s where we’re at today. I’m sure it will change over the next few months as we add more features and find better ways of doing things. If nothing else, it’s a constant, iterative process. Check back tomorrow for the evolution of the Windows Mobile app.

It seems like we get asked for new features just about every day and while we’d love to implement them all, we just can’t. One issue is a matter of resources. We’re a small team doing this on the side.  We all have day jobs. With that said, I think we’ve done a pretty darn good job of building a great application/service that we’re very proud of.  Something that rivals or surpasses anything out there. The other issue is that if we put in everything that everyone was asking for, we’d end up with some big, bloated application that was too difficult to use.  We’re trying to keep things simple but still highly functional and that’s not always easy.

We do listen to every suggestion (and there are a lot of great ones) and some are definitely on the list of “features to add”. But it may take a little time to get them implemented. Bear with us. Keep providing feedback, keep asking for things. Just know that we can’t be everything to everybody and we’re not trying to be. We’re just trying to build the best app that we know how to build.

Samsung recently announced the winners of their Application Store Developer Challenge 2009.  We’re excited and honored to learn of our selection as a Silver award winner.  We’ve worked very hard for the past 2.5  years trying to create the best Windows Mobile news/podcast reader on the market and it’s nice to receive this recognition for our efforts.

We’d like to thank Samsung for hosting the competition. We’d also like to thank our loyal users all over the world who use Yomomedia everyday. Because of them, we’re committed to making the best application possible and will continue to look for new and innovative ways to do so.

Congratulations to the other winners as well:

Ompass World Cities, Mobipedia, Blackjack Masters, Real Football 2010, Mobile Compass, Pop’n Tock, GPS’ed: Mapping, Navi Computer, Can You Remember, Skreeky, 10 Games for Betting, SBSH GoNews, FireHawk, Ziller Survival, HealthyKid, Live Currency and LightsOff.

Did you know you can Tweet directly from the YomoMedia mobile app now. You can tweet the article you’re reading or a completely personal tweet. It’s easy.  At the bottom of every article, you’ll see a Tweet This link. Go ahead, give it a try.

Our apologies for any inconvenience with your missing feeds this morning.  There was a slight glitch in updating one of the databases.  All should be back to normal now.

Looks like we might be having some database issues.  Some users are reporting that their feeds are missing on the web app.  We’re looking into it now and will post as soon as we know anything.

A request came in from our Get Satisfaction site asking how to add a feed to a bundle on YomoMedia.com. Here are step-by-step instructions.

This assumes a bundle has been created, and you have an RSS feed link you want to add to it. Our example is MacBreak Weekly, a featured podcast on Twit.tv

1) XML Feed URL
Copy the RSS feed url to the clipboard. You can right-click the RSS link, or view the feed url in your browser, and copy the link from the address bar. The location of the feed url is different from one site to another. Look for the RSS badge, and follow that to find feed links.

RSS feeds are indicated by this icon

For our feed, the url looks like this: feed://leoville.tv/podcasts/mbw.xml

2) Add Feed to YomoMedia
Log in to YomoMedia.com, and in the upper left of the browser, click the New Feed button. Paste the XML url into the field and click the ADD button.

3) Put Feed Into a Bundle
YomoMedia will automatically load the feed on the right-hand side of your browser. At the top right, across from the feed title, click the small gear icon. A menu will appear showing your bundles. Click any bundle name to put the feed into it. TIP: You can put a feed into more than one bundle at the same time. Just click more bundle names.

4) Download Feed to Device
Your feed will automatically be set for download to your device at the next feed update. On your device, you may manually update your subscriptions to download your new feed right away. TIP: You can update specific bundles only, to save download time. Once updated, your new feed should appear on your device in the bundle you selected in step 3.

5) Download Media to Device
NOTE: The text of feed summaries are downloaded automatically, but the media files are not always so, depending on how you have configured the YomoMedia client on your device (this is to save on data charges). The podcast itself (audio or video media) may need to be downloaded manually. Select one of the podcasts, and click the item to display the feed detail.

Feed listing with a Podcast selected

On the feed detail screen is a DOWNLOAD button for the media file. Select and click it to download the podcast.

Feed detail screen before media download

Once the podcast is fully downloaded, the button will change to PLAY. Your content is now on your device, ready for playback anytime.

Feed detail screen after media download

Media file playing on smartphone