Jesse – Viigo, Product Manager

Best regards,

Jim

I have chatted with the dev team about your NYT feed issues, and we should have a fix in for this early next week on the server.

I’ll let you know once it’s live.

All the best,

Mark Ruddock
CEO
Viigo

I just recently discovered RSS readers for my Curve and started with Viigo, as it seems very popular. I was quite content until I discovered Viigo cannot access the full article via its own browser with any and all NY Times feeds. A mssg is returned, “Unable to fetch the full article. The publisher may have deleted the article. Please try again later. Too many redirections.”

I contacted Viigo support and was replied to the same day. I was told the publisher is indeed redirecting too many times, and the only solution was to access the articles via the BB browser.

I then tried FreeRange and found it does not suffer from this issue. Since the NY Times is my first and primary daily read, I have discontinued using Viigo for now.

I tried to downgrade from Viigo beta 3.0.246 to Viigo final but at this time both ota links download the 3.0.246 beta.

I’m posting here in the hopes that you see this Mark and might be so kind as to reply. myscreenname@mac.com

FreeRange – I’ll check that out.

I certainly don’t know what design choices went into Viigo’s approach of “making decisions

for you”. I imagine the code is simpler and lighter weight, at least in some areas. Having

worked in software development for a *long* time, I’ve lived with the trade-offs involved

in providing choices versus making “executive decisions” for users. You will never please

everyone, and sometimes attempting to yields a complex mess that, in the end, pleases

virtually nobody. Finding just the right balance is a challenge.

I know where you’re coming from with the “pretty girl” analogy, but I don’t see it here. If

Viigo were devoid of utility, or really crappy, it might be different, but in my book

they’ve simply made design decisions that please some and annoy others. But I also believe

that Viigo has paid more attention to user experience than the other products have.

User experience is more than just flash and style. It’s about everything from “out of the

box” first experience to extensive use over many months. Viigo’s design suggests to me that

the developers are aware of this notion.

I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the audience that “loves Viigo” so much. I visit

Pinstack, Blackberry Forums and Crackberry fairly often, and find that there’s a pretty

solid core of users there that focus on utility and function as well as the more esoteric

aspects of user experience. These people have the choice between iPhone and Blackberry, and

most choose Blackberry — consciously making the choice to give up the “pretty girl” in

favor of one that is, at once, attractive and more functional for their purposes. These

same people seem to favor Viigo over the other products — and they, like us, have a choice

– nobody is persuading or forcing them to “love Viigo”. These folks really are somewhat

obsessed about functionality, comparing notes endlessly about different versions of the OS

to find the version with the best battery life, earpiece volume, bluetooth range, GPS start

up time, memory management, etc. In the end, when these same people are asked to recommend

an RSS client, Viigo seems to be the predominant recommendation.

Form and function aren’t mutually exclusive. If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend “Zen

and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig. It’s a combination of a story and

a treatise on classicism vs romanticism. At first, Pirsig seems to argue in favor of a

purely classical approach to rational functionality, but in the end, he develops a

compelling argument that illustrates the need for us to be able to embrace both viewpoints

concurrently, emphasizing one more than the other as needed for each situation. The

language in the book is a bit “70’s”, but the book is, in its own way, brilliant. Highly

recommended.

The guys who put out Viigo really seem to understand this. Viigo is pretty enough, and

pleasant enough, to grab your attention quickly. It’s smooth enough to be pleasant even

after months of use. I, and seemingly a majority of users, find the functionality to be

just right – and having it delivered in a handsome package just polishes the experience.

That’s not to say it’s right for everyone. Few products are. I would like more options

along the lines that FreeRange offers, but I don’t find Viigo’s chosen settings to be

onerous. I like to tinker, so I hope a future release offers more options, but the choices

they’ve made are good enough so that I find the overall experience very positive. That’s

just me, and clearly your preferences are different.

Being successful in a marketplace like this is brutal and highly competitive. Unless you’re

shooting in the dark, you have to identify your target market segment, and figure out how

to differentiate yourself to dominate that segment. I believe that Viigo has figured out

how to dominate a larger, and probably more lucrative, market segment than the other RSS

clients. If you’re part of that segment, you’ll appreciate that, and if you’re not, you

won’t. That’s not particularly good or bad – it just “is”.

I would, however, take issue with the ideas floated that Viigo is “inferior” or that its

audience is not discerning. I just don’t buy that at all. I see a very professional product

offering that is polished, functional and fun to use. It won’t suit everyone, and I can

easily imagine that it was never intended to be everything to everyone. But the “love” for

Viigo that you describe reflects their attention to their target market and their product

execution.

BTW: I’m not a naive undiscerning nitwit… I’m a CIO with close to 3 decades experience in

architecture, software development, product design and production (in everything from

startups to Fortune 100’s), and doing what it takes to attract and hold the attention of a

target audience. My opinion is still just an opinion, but I have a bit of experience on

which to base it. I understand the tradeoffs in product design and development, and have

lived through them many times. I think that Viigo has really hit the sweet spot, and the

“love” you see for the product reflects that.

- Jon

In FreeRange, I can tell the article is called “Mixology.mobi – Figure out How to Mix Drinks.”

Viigo decided that I don’t need to actually know more than an handful of letters in an article name, so they picked a large and unchangeable (but perhaps pretty) font.

I mention this because I think I see it… As Jon points out… it’s about style. I’m surmising that people like Viigo because it has style. And people don’t much care about the substance.

Viigo is like the girl/boy that’s so pretty that they won’t talk to you. They know that they’re pretty and, if you want to be seen with him/her, you have to put up with arrogance. And the conversation lacks.

Yup, I think that’s it. Pretty face. But lacking when compared to the less attractive, but more capable, people out there.

For me, Viigo is someone you date. But FreeRange is the one you marry.

In any case, I find that your response lacks the answer to my question. Why is this considered to be one of the best (if not THE best) product for Blackberry?

You make good points (although I disagree, but, as you say, these things are subjective). But they don’t answer the question.

Oh, any by the way, you can scroll line-by-line in FreeRange with the setting “Scroll text by page (instead of line by line)” under “Display.” You see, instead of Viigo deciding what’s best for everyone, FreeRange gives the user the choice.

I think that’s my issue: Viigo deices what’s best for everyone. There is no sign that Tango is going to be more configurable. I mentioned a few things in my post that would be great configuration options.

My other issue, which I think is more significant, is that I’ve found a bunch of feeds that Viigo either doesn’t update on a regular basis (I have 2 that haven’t been updated in days despite there being many new articles) or that won’t show full articles (”too many redirections” error). These feeds work well in FreeRange, so it’s not like they CAN’T work.

As for it looking nicer… I agree that it has an overall nice feel (and Tango feels better). But, I believe, this is because they show graphic headers and have attractive banner ads. As someone else pointed out, however, reading an actual feed isn’t so pretty. FreeRange displays graphics and text in a MUCH more readable way. There is no graphic with 1-2 characters running down the side. They let the user select a text size. Viigo forces you into one text size.

Keep in mind that the Tango work is focused on adding new features. Which should be great. But the information I’ve been provided says that they aren’t reworking the old stuff. But given that the old stuff is so perfect, apparently (OK, that’s sarcasm), maybe they shouldn’t.

So, I ask again… why is this product loved so much?

I any case, I currently use both. That way, I can work around Viigo’s bugs by using FreeRange for the feeds that Viigo chokes on. And I can use Viigo to overcome FreeRange’s 10 feed limit.

I just wish I had one product.

This all said, I’ll say that $40/year is crazy. I’d gladly pay a single $40 for FreeRange, but not every year.

What a lead-off paragraph — in early Usenet days, this would be borderline “flame bait”…. Saying “some of use prefer FreeRange or Newsgator. Why? Because they are better products.” You pack quite a bit of implication in a small amount of text, and it hardly comes across as objective. A shame to wade into this in a combative sarcastic fashion.

Before addressing any of your specific points, I think you might want to re-read your own post for the most salient part. In your own words, you say “Sorry to be so negative, but it amazed me how much worse Viigo is than FreeRange, but how much people love it.”

OK – you’ve made it clear that you don’t understand why so many people “love” Viigo, but you’ve acknowledged “how much people love it”.

Before you jump all over me in a response, you might want to pause and think about that. Viigo is doing something pretty wonderful here — even in the first version, they managed to take an already-defined format and service, and make it far more appealing to a wide segment of the market. Creating a product and brand loyalty is part art, and part science. Viigo seems to be mastering that in a way that’s a bit analogous to the way that the iPod breathed new life into pocket music players. You can argue individual opinions about the iPod user interface and features, but in the end, you can’t dispute the outrageous brand and loyalty they have created.

People love Viigo for a lot of reasons. In the end, it’s the overall user experience, which has a lot of components. The folks who put out Viigo just “get it”.

No question that FreeRange may have more settable options and a couple of features that would be nice in Viigo, but the experience just isn’t there.

I compared the three newsreaders last year, and wound up taking NewsGator Go and Freerange off my blackberry, leaving Viigo as the tool of choice. Reading your post, I thought I should give them another try – maybe I had missed something. So I just downloaded an reinstalled the two of them side-by-side with Viigo.

Newsgator Go is almost instantly disqualified in my book: there is no background download of article abstracts. I have to open a topic and then wait for the abstracts to download. I checked settings to see if I had missed an option and couldn’t find anything that pertained. If I missed it, please let me know. Right now, I’m in an area with a spotty connection — since the articles aren’t downloaded in the background, I’m finding that I can open a topic folder – and just get a data error as it attempts to download articles. Bad, bad, bad! I just opened “The Online”, and have to watch a “downloading articles” message while Newsgator contacts the server and starts downloading. That’s NOT what I want in my newsreader…

I’m glad that FreeRange at least runs a background download task. I like having the option to specify download intervals. FreeRange appears to offer a LOT of options that the user can set — being something of a techie, I like that.

I’m finding that the full-page-at-a-time scrolling in FreeRange is horribly annoying. I imagine it’s good for quick scrolling, but it’s dreadful from a reading perspective. As you read down an article, you have to watch as the line that was at the bottom of your screen is followed by a flash and the next line appear at the TOP of your screen as you scroll down. I personally find this jarring and unpleasant — I haven’t found a way to shut this off yet — please let me know if you know of a way.

I liked that last (current) production version of Viigo for its total user experience. I like Tango that much more. the side-scrolling to get to the next layer down in nested menus is great. It’s an excellent visual metaphor, the smooth motion manages to convey a sense of polish and attention to detail that you’d normally see on an Apple product. It’s pleasant, visually appealing – and you pay barely any price at all for this bit of animation.

Also: is it my imagination, or do the Viigo abstracts have a bit more data than the Newsgator abstracts? Do they have the same abstract source?

Despite the various visual options in NewsGator and FreeRange, Viigo just looks SO much better to me. But that’s subjective.

Viigo listens to user input, and is accessible to the Blackberry community. Your comments can influence product evolution. Is there anyone around “representing” FreeRange or NewsGator who will take your input? Please let me know.

I’d like to see more formatting options in Viigo — and I don’t doubt that I WILL see them at some point. The product is evolving.

For now – Viigo is the master of user experience in blackberry RSS readers. The extra features in Tango are tantalizing, even if they’re not all implemented yet.

My impression is that Viigo is evolving – but at a controlled pace that incorporates consideration of the future services that will be available through the product. E-commerce is going to be an integral part of this it seems, with the ability to buy tickets (and more?) via Viigo. But instead of slapping this on as an afterthought, it looks like they’ve already given thought to the way it could be incorporated within the context of the new UI. Now THAT is the kind of “attention to detail” and user experience that, I believe, sets them apart.

You, yourself, noted “now much people love” Viigo. The simplest explanation is that Viigo pays more attention to the overall user experience than the others do, and delivers on those considerations. Despite the “features” of the other products, I just find them to appear clunky and a bit like shareware compared to Viigo.

BTW: if Viigo were as buggy, incomplete or inferior as you say, you and I wouldn’t see so many rave reviews of the product on every blackberry forum. I know that, if it were buggy or limited as you imply, I would be long gone by now. Instead, Viigo is one of the icons on my home screen, and I read it several times every day. It seems to be rock-solid and incredibly dependable.

Viigo’s cost, usability and user experience, combined with a growing body of features, make the product pretty much THE RSS newsreader for a blackberry.

- Jon

I guess it comes with the territory, but having the Berryreview graphic (and it’s a different Berryreview graphic to boot) on the top bar of any feed that doesn’t have a custom graphic is annoying (to me). I have become used to glancing there to see what feed I am reading, and it’s a bit weird to see the Berryreview name at the top of a National Hurricane Center forecast or a Ars Technica or Playstation.blog article.

Not fixed still is the size of the icon on the desktop. It seems recent versions the icon has grown to utilize every available pixel. However, what that means is that when a theme such as Dimension Today+ is in use (probably other themes too), the yellow highlight is practically indistinguishable. Could we get a Viigo desktop icon that’s a couple pixels smaller please???

And I’ll echo the comments about text wrapping. My gosh, what are you thinking Viigo developers when you force us to try to make out words that are in a column of text 1 or 2 characters wide beside a picture???

I am grateful for Viigo being FREE to nurture my growing RSS addiction, but I would GLADLY pay. I WILL NOT pay Freerange’s $40/year fee though, that is just OUTRAGEOUS.

Excellent point. FreeRange is free, up to 10 feeds. The only reason I keep hoping that Viigo would improve is because they don’t have the 10 feed limit. And, yes, $40/year is crazy!

So, what we have is that Viigo is the cheap product. But that’s very much different from it being a good product. From the way people talk about it, it seems like people feel that no better piece of software has ever been written (at least for the Blackberry).

So, I understand the popularity based on price.

Some say that Viigo is great because of its simplicity. The others (FreeRange, at least) keeps that simplicity, but offers more if you need it.

Viigo fails to display some feeds that the others do without problems. Mark and I have e-mail about this, but I don’t get the sense that it’s going to be remedied in Tango (hint: if you come out with Tango and it doesn’t work with all the feeds that FreeRange can, then how can you claim to have a better product?).

Viigo doesn’t render pages as well, as others have pointed out. The rendering in FreeRange is cleaner. And easier to read.

Viigo forces you to use the fonts THEY want you to use. FreeRange lets me pick a font size that I’m comfortable with. Tango is still missing this.

I could go on and on, but I find that pre-Tango to be a significantly inferior product to FreeRange (price aside, which is a valid point) and I’m always amazed when people praise it. As far as Tango, it’s adding podcasts, which is great. But the other stuff it’s adding feels more like bloat. And, at least with what’s been shown so far, appears to be a highly buggy product (the regular RSS feed stuff doesn’t work, which is odd since it’s the same as what’s in the old version) and one that corrects none of the deficiencies.

Mark: You need to ensure that it works with all feeds, renders better, and allows user confiugurability to suit the user… and not your developers.

Oh, and this doesn’t even raise my biggest issue: Viigo is often behind in bringing up feed data. I’ve done side-by-side with FreeRange and FreeRange consistently brings up new feed data before Viigo. I have some feeds in Viigo that haven’t updated in days, even though they update in 40 minutes in FreeRange.

I’ve done side-by-side comparisons of render quality and FreeRange consistently wins.

I’ve done side-by-side comparisons of ease of use (how much trackball scrolling I need to do, for example) and Viigo is consistently harder to use. For example, how in the heck do I scroll by an entire screen at a time?

Sorry to be so negative, but it amazed me how much worse Viigo is than FreeRange, but how much people love it. Maybe I’m missing something. Can someone explain it to me?

And, Mark, are you planning on improving the good old RSS stuff to render better and to actually work all the feeds that FreeRange does? Are you planning on ensuring that the user can get 30 minutes updates, if they really want? Or will this have to wait for some far distant release?

The fonts used for RSS feed list should also follow the system default setting as that is what the user is accustomed to. Right now, it is way too small to read.

My biggest gripe would have to be the “Full Article” feature. Some feeds span across a few pages. Right now, we can’t access the next page unless we launch Browser. IMHO I feel this should be addressed before making more fancier visuals or blobs that aren’t really useful.

This only happens on certain feeds (i.e. those specifically formatted by the publisher to display that way). Because the use the embedded BlackBerry browser control to display these, we don’t have as much control as we’d like in overriding these types of formatting decisions. We’re currently exploring using our own control, thereby giving us much more freedom not only in how things are displayed, but in also providing shortcut keys (such as space bar page down) that have long been requested by our users.

WRT screen real-estate, yep, it’s always a challenge … I’d be curious to know what type of device you have?

Mark Ruddock
CEO
Viigo

I’d like to confirm that when Viigo ships in September, the home screen will be fully customizable. You will be able to add and/or subtract any services you want. For the first beta, we decided to fix the services on the home screen for technical reasons.

We are also working hard on optimizing performance and memory utilization, so expect to see improvements in both of those as we move through the summer betas.

Mark Ruddock
CEO
Viigo

Feature creep is a disease with some software companies (hello Microsoft!) and I hope Viigo will not fall into this trap.

Needless to say, I downgraded back to Viigo from Tango.