A new version is now available for download with lots of improvements to get your teeth into.
- In addition to good old Twitter, you can now use Yatca with any microblogging service built around a Laconica server. This includes identi.ca, TWiT.tv and many others – including private corporate servers. Simply choose the service you want at the top of the Yatca Options screen. The only issue with non-Twitter services is that TwitPic’s dependence on Twitter for authentication means that you can’t upload photos. But we are working on a solution.
- The filtering introduced in the last version has been reworked. Previously, for a given category of update or reply (e.g. ‘Updates sent by me’) you could only choose between having it merged into your main message list or keeping it in a separate non-merged folder. You can now choose between ‘Merged’, ‘Non-merged’ and ‘Discarded’.
- A further improvement in the area of filtering is that instead of a folder for each filter category there are now just two folders. Anything that gets filtered into the ‘Merged Items’ folder will appear in your main message list and anything filtered into the ‘Non-merged Items’ will not. It is easy to associate a shortcut key with a search that will quickly open the ‘Non-merged Items’ folder from within the main message list.
- Paging is now used when downloading updates and replies from the server. This fixes the “request entity too large” problem that occasionally affected users with lots of friends who did not regularly refresh their friends timeline.
- Yatca now has a homescreen icon which gives you something more obvious to look out for when switching applications. It also means that you can open Yatca from the icon to quickly update your status. Lastly, it means that you can uninstall Yatca by just deleting the icon.
- When replying to somebody, the recipient’s @username is now shown before the text. Previously, this was just silently prepended to the text before uploading to Twitter. But it freaked some people out that they couldn’t actually see it so now they can.
- The retweeting function has been improved and it is now possible to review and edit the text of the retweet before sending. Also, if the length exceeds 140 characters, the last three characters are replaced with the ellipsis instead of just truncating.
- A new setting way down at the bottom of the Yatca Options allows you to choose wether you want to see screen names (droozr) or full names (John Smith). We prefer full names so that remains the default 😉
- There are times when you get so far behind that all you want to do is mark all unread tweets as read and get rid of that useful (but occasionally annoying) notification icon at the top of the screen. Well now you can, thanks to the ‘Mark All Items Read’ command.
As ever though, it’s not all good news. We still haven’t been able to sort out the photo upload problems that affect models with a 3 megapixel camera (Storm and 8900). Providing direct support for the camera is surprisingly tricky. And even if all the wrinkles could be ironed out it would still be fairly limited; RIM do not currently provide the means for an application to control things like zoom, flash, etc. So we’ve decided that today’s release of Yatca will actually be the last to include direct support for the camera. We’ll move instead towards providing an image browsing capability to allow you to select a photo taken with the Camera application proper.
One last word of warning before you rush off to install the new version…we’ve had to change the ‘shape’ of some of the objects that we store in the device memory. This means that when you install the new version it will blow away all Yatca updates, replies and settings already stored on your device. This is unfortunate but unavoidable.
Tags: blackberry, blackberry bold, blackberry storm, identica, laconica, twitter, yatca
Yatca 
Monday, 30th March, 2009 at 5:56 pm |
Thanks for the update. I know I’m happy with the option for the screen names instead of real name. Thanks for making a great app better, in my opinion anyway 😀
Monday, 30th March, 2009 at 5:57 pm |
Now the BlackBerry menu displays “update Yatca status” instead of Twitter status. Can this be changed back to Twitter status?
I preferred NOT having to see the “@user” text when replying. I already was viewing the user’s tweet, so clicking reply displayed a window on top of the tweet, there was NO CONFUSION over who was being replied to.
I have a Bold with Rogers on a supported OS, I only tried using the camera once, and it froze Yatca and my Bold needed a reboot. How about removing the camera / photo option completely?
Monday, 30th March, 2009 at 6:11 pm |
@Lewis I’m afraid it will definitely be staying now as “Update Yatca Status”. The reason I changed it is that it is more accurate when you consider that the user might be using identi.ca (or indeed mb.company.internal). Naturally, I could have dynamically changed the menu text based on what MB service was selected but, hey, life is short and there are bigger fish to fry 🙂
I understand where you’re coming from regarding the @user when replying. One of the reasons I used a popup window there instead of a full screen was to have the context and thereby avoid confusion. Unfortunately though, and with respect, there absolutely was confusion. I noticed that there were quite a few replies coming from Yatca which began with “@user @user”. This suggested strongly that users didn’t ‘trust’ that Yatca was adding the @user before the reply.
I’m very surprised to hear that it actually froze your Bold. Did you try pressing the red ‘hang up’ key on the phone to return to the home screen?
Monday, 30th March, 2009 at 6:36 pm |
I understand the “Yatca status update”, after I took a few seconds to think about it.
As for photos: I could take a photo, but the upload would freeze it. If I pressed hangup, I could get back to the homescreen, but Yatca was still frozen in the backgroup. Using Application Switcher, Yatca was identified by a DOS-style icon. I could switch back to it, still frozen, and back out. I did a soft-reboot (ALT-Right_Shift-DEL) to clear it up. I haven’t attempted to use the pictures since.
Just wondering: is 1.2 still available OTA?
Monday, 30th March, 2009 at 6:41 pm |
@Lewis Sounds like you were seeing a TwitPic go-slow there. Just so you know (if you ever risk the photo option again) it will eventually time out. 120 seconds from memory – maybe more.
Sorry, no, I don’t have the resources at the moment to have two or more versions on the go so only 1.3.2 is available. Can I ask why you wanted it?
Monday, 30th March, 2009 at 6:48 pm |
Truthfully, the addition of the @user in the reply pop-up window is just too annoying for me. I really liked the original method.
Just a fickle user. Too sad, I know.
However: Yatca is still the BEST Twitter Client for BlackBerry.
I will see if I can pull the 1.2 version from a co-worker’s Curve 8900. If not, it’s not a big deal. I will suffer with my petty annoyance. 😉
Monday, 30th March, 2009 at 6:57 pm |
@Lewis Wow! Surrendering all the other improvements just to lose the @user. You’re a man who knows what he likes.
Tuesday, 31st March, 2009 at 4:05 pm |
@Lewis You know what mate, you’re right. The @user thing is really annoying me now too. So I reckon I’ll make that controllable in the next version, though defaulting to visible.
Monday, 30th March, 2009 at 6:22 pm |
This blog’s great!! Thanks :).
Monday, 30th March, 2009 at 6:49 pm |
Thanks for update.
I hope there’s a shortcut “U”, just like the one in message.
I can use “U” to read next Unread tweet.
Monday, 30th March, 2009 at 6:53 pm |
@winson There isn’t! I’ll get around to shortcuts eventually. Thanks for the suggestion.
Monday, 30th March, 2009 at 8:23 pm |
A work-around to this (and what I already use) is setting up the ALT-filters of the Search command in the Messages list.
RIM defaults are ALT-P for phone calls, ALT-S for SMS, etc.
You could create a Search and filter it down to unread Yatca messages.
Monday, 30th March, 2009 at 7:01 pm |
Are you going to come out with a Storm specific version? When you load your friends timeline, or replies to you etc, it pulls up the info, but if you tap on the screen to denote replying to that specific person and then hit reply, it usually doesnt pick the person you wanted to. You have to do this several times. Is there a fix for this in the works?
Monday, 30th March, 2009 at 7:06 pm |
@Erich No plans for a Storm-specific version at this time.
I must be misunderstanding something because the problem you’re describing sounds to me like there’s something wrong with the calibration of the touchscreen. Can you go through that again?
Monday, 30th March, 2009 at 9:06 pm |
@Yatca:
Streamlining the folders down to Merged and Non-merged only, I believe, removes robust functionality from the prior version.
With all the extra folder options from v.1.2, I could easily separate all the Twitter Chatter. But now it’s just two choices: stuff in the Messages, stuff not in the Messages. And for me, since I collect all categories into Messages, doesn’t really do anything for the way I am using yatca.
For instance, I wanted to see what my most recent update was, and I am unable to easily find it, because I can’t select the folder for “updates from me” (or whatever it was).
Again, not an app-killer, but enough to make me want to downgrade.
Is there an easy method to have both sets of folders? Merged & Non-Merged along side the others (my updates, replies @others, replies @me, etc.).
And I don’t want to come across as a complainer! Not at all! Just providing feedback since using the newer 1.3, comparing to my experience with 1.2.
Thanks again for all your work on making the BEST Twitter Client for BlackBerry.
Monday, 30th March, 2009 at 10:51 pm |
@Lewis Thanks for taking the time for writing that up and don’t worry – it’s all well taken input and much appreciated.
I acknowledge that the way it worked before would suit one group of users better. I think of this group as being comprised of experienced and relatively tech-savvy BlackBerry power users. The way it works now however is a lot easier to get your head around and my feeling is that this suits the other, much larger group of users better. If you look through the comments on this blog and even more so on other BlackBerry forums and blogs you’ll see that way too many users found the previous arrangement too complicated and frustrating. Remember that most users do not have every category merged into their message list. This changes things quite a bit because they simply couldn’t find stuff very easily with all those folders going on. For example, with the previous version you couldn’t run a search to find all non-merged, unread items (this one came up over and over again!). They would instead have to run separate searches on each non-merged folder. This was a big turn off for many.
Regarding the idea of having it both ways, I investigated that but the problem was performance. Loading those folders is actually quite expensive! It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility however that there might one day be an option to switch Yatca between ‘regular mode’ and ‘power user mode’ with lots of extra options and more fine-grained filtering. That won’t be today or tomorrow though.
Tuesday, 31st March, 2009 at 9:56 am |
When I visit the website on my Bold to download 1.3.2, upon clicking it shows on the screen as 1.2.1 and then if i click download anyway it says “Replace 1.2.1 with version 1.2.1” Tried clearing my cache with no result, is the internal numbering just off or have I a local fault?
Tuesday, 31st March, 2009 at 10:10 am |
@Steven Yeah…I’ve noticed that myself when testing and one or two users reported it after yesterday’s release. I’m not sure what causes it but it appears to be some sort of device browser glitch. If you hit the URL from a desktop browser to view the raw contents of the .jad file you’ll see that it is indeed 1.3.2. It’s as though the device browser handles .jad files as a special case so that even when you clear out the cache it still reports the version number from the last time around. If you go ahead and install it however it will actually be the latest version.
Tuesday, 31st March, 2009 at 11:04 am |
Yup, all came through fine.. even if I’ll look forward to that proposed future ‘advanced’ mode to remove the @name from replies and multi folder options .. can’t please all of the people and all that 😉
Tuesday, 31st March, 2009 at 3:40 pm |
@Yatca Is it possible to get an auto delete function? After a message is read it will be deleted after xxx time?
Also I don’t get a “red” star when I get a new message.. Is this normal or do I need to edit my yatca alert profile?
Is it possible to change the mark all wording? say “Mark Yatca Items Read”?? When I first saw it I thought it was for my entire message folder..
Lastly.. Could an option for sending a tweet via sms or email be added? I have a lot of friends who dont use twitter and I sometimes see a great article I wish I could send them.
As everyone else is saying… I love this app.. You really seem to have a solid understanding of what we need. Thanks again..
Tuesday, 31st March, 2009 at 3:58 pm |
@Scuba629 Thanks for the input and glad you like the app.
I had previously said I would do an auto-delete function. But now I’m thinking that it will get deleted eventually anyway (because the list never grows beyond 1,000 items) so now I’m not sure. It’s on my ‘to-do-maybe’ list.
The lack of a red star is unfortunately a BlackBerry issue so I can’t do anything about it. The Messages app correctly recognises when an update or reply added by Yatca is unread (because if puts it in bold) but for some reason it doesn’t reflect this with a little red star. I have raised this on RIM’s community support forum so it will hopefully be fixed in a future OS version.
Funny you mention the wording on the ‘Mark All Items Read’ command…I originally had it as ‘Mark All Yatca Items Read’ for exactly the reason you’ve said. It was a bit long however and I hoped that by having it in the Yatca command group it would be clear. Looks like I should have gone with my gut! Will change this.
Yes also to forwarding a tweet as an SMS or email. I very much need to be able to do that myself so it’s already on my to-do list!
Tuesday, 31st March, 2009 at 7:26 pm |
@Yatca I like to “try” to keep my message box tidy and when I get about 50-100 tweets every couple of hours it gets hard. Sometimes I forget my cell phone and come home to a huge mess of waiting items. To sort though all of that is a pain. 🙂 If you move away from the auto delete idea maybe you could give us a way to change the max items(1000) to what we might work for us.
No red star sucks but nothing you can do about it. 🙂
As always looking forward to your new release. 🙂 Keep up the good work.
Tuesday, 31st March, 2009 at 7:28 pm |
Mate I seem to have hit the issue with the meta tag not matching error even when I try to use BIS. The previous version was working.
Do you want to send me the one with the reponse popup and it may help you to correct it.
A few of my friends also seem to have this issue.
Cheers.
– G
Wednesday, 1st April, 2009 at 8:51 am |
@iyertalks Sure, will mail you later on. Sorry for the slow response btw.
Wednesday, 1st April, 2009 at 8:47 am |
I’m using the BB storm. Currently there’s no way (that I know of) “to associate a shortcut key with a search that will quickly open the ‘Non-merged Items’ folder from within the main message list.”
I have a suggestion: Could there be an option on the configuration page to view the ‘Non-merged Items’ folder instead of just getting the Yatca Status Update page when clicking on the Yatca Icon? I think this will be effective given the “Update Yatca Status” is now on the main menu.
Thanks.
Wednesday, 1st April, 2009 at 9:03 am |
@Jurnell Ha ha, very true – I somehow forgot that the concept of a shortcut key doesn’t really apply when there are no keys at all! Does the Storm have programmable utility buttons on the side that you could associate with a search?
Regarding the idea of a command to open the ‘Non-merged Items’ folder, I spent quite a bit of time last week trying to do exactly this. RIM provide an API (software mechanism) to enable any application to ask the Messages application to open a particular folder. I had thought therefore that it would be a snap to implement this feature. Unfortunately though, the API only seems to work with built-in folders and refuses to open any folders created by 3rd-party applications.
Wednesday, 1st April, 2009 at 9:43 am |
The quick launch side buttons can only be associated with apps it seems. In the options there’s a pre-populated list of “apps” one could set to a quick launch. No custom searches.
Well these may be a few ugly work arounds. Rather than complaining I’ll try to help out some:
1)How about opening the ‘Inbox’ folder of the messages App then navigating to the Yatca->Non-Merged Items in a separate step? This what is done but the user when using the GUI (View Folders) for access any of Yatca’s subfolders.
2)With the MIDP 2.0 API are you about to create symbolic links? That way MAYBE you could create a link to a 3rd party folder from a the ‘Inbox’. If all goes well, the link would appear as another subfolder of ‘Inbox.’ With that said, I wonder if the API restriction/bug pertains to 3rd party created sub-folders themselves or the 3rd party folders that contain them. hmmm….
3)How about un-merging the Inboxes? I’m assuming in the API that you allow for merged messages that are separate folder wise by providing a list of folders to included. I deduced that b/c you can view the Inboxes without the merged yatca messages via the ‘View Folders’ menu item and selecting the ‘Inbox.’ So the “merging” in memory. Well… In every API, an append/add function also has an remove companion function as well. Try merging the ‘Inbox’ and ‘Non-Merged Items’ folders then remove the ‘Inbox’ Folders.
That was my 2 cents. Hopefully this helps…
Wednesday, 1st April, 2009 at 10:50 am |
@Jurnell Thanks again. Just to go through your ideas one by one…
1. Interesting idea. You’re suggesting that Yatca send keystrokes to the Messages application to simulate what the user would do? Possibly difficult to get working consistently across different OS versions due to subtle differences in the order and labelling of menu items? Wouldn’t it also be difficult to get working on non-English language devices? I’ve never tried anything like that (on the BlackBerry) though so I will certainly put it on the to-investigate list.
2. Yatca is a CLDC application rather than a MIDP application. So even if such APIs existed, Yatca couldn’t use them because there is a sort of API apartheid on the BlackBerry.
3. I’m afraid I’m not getting what you’re suggesting there, or even what advantage there would be to unmerging the inbox. You might be slightly misunderstanding the concept of folders as they relate to the Messages application. Every item that is accessible through the Messages app (even those visible in the main message list) actually exists within a folder. It’s just that some folders are set to merge and others not. A 3rd party app can only add messages to its own folders and one of the parameters supplied when creating a folder tells the Messages app whether or not to merge the folder into the main message list. Once a folder has been created it isn’t possible to change the ‘mergedness’ of it.
Wednesday, 1st April, 2009 at 7:28 pm |
Ok. I looked at the API.
1a) I wasn’t suggesting sending mock keypress events (even though that would be cool, good thinking!). Without knowing the actually textual name of the menu item, you can invoke some of the default menu items. Take a look at net.rim.blackberry.api.menuitem at the ApplicationMenuItem class. This is where, you used to add menu items. ApplicationMenuItemRegistry can be used to retrieve the instance IDs for the application in focus hence, maybe you could retrieve/invoke the menu item to view and select a folder.
1b) I was trying to find a way to invoke the Search app only setting the Folder to search being ‘Non-Merged Items.’ (b/c you can do this in the GUI). The Application Search Argurments are only ‘name’ and ‘text.’ Where Name would be the contact’s name I think. Kinda sucks that you can’t search by any other properties.
2) Ahh. I see.
3) Man, I was very off base.
Wednesday, 1st April, 2009 at 7:58 pm |
@Jurnell Thanks again. I’ll certainly investigate 1a. I had already investigate 1b but, as you have found, it seems that the Invoke class has the catch up with some other developments in the API. It’s not just the Search app arguments that are a bit basic – the Messages app arguments are too.
Wednesday, 1st April, 2009 at 7:54 pm |
Is there a way to have the Yatca folders as a completely separate folder?
Like how my E-mail accounts all have a icon i can click on and only see messages for that account.
Wednesday, 1st April, 2009 at 8:00 pm |
@James That would be the Holy Grail for Yatca in many ways but unforunately the APIs don’t (yet) support it.
Thursday, 2nd April, 2009 at 1:59 pm |
@yatca Thanks, just noticed that you already said that in the post above mine. Awesome app, hopefully your able to do that soon!
Monday, 6th April, 2009 at 4:06 pm |
A great update to an already incredible application. And I finally got it working on my Storm.
Tuesday, 7th April, 2009 at 2:32 pm |
Great job on this build. Most stable so far! I’m almost completely weened off of that “other twitter for blackberry” client. Keep up the great work!
Wish you didn’t have to cut the camera support, it may not be the best but I love having the option there…
Tuesday, 7th April, 2009 at 4:12 pm |
@Daniel Thanks! I’m not dropping camera support completely – I’m just dropping direct support for the camera, i.e. where you take the photo within Yatca itself rather than using the Camera application. That means it won’t be quite as slick, but the upside is that it should be a lot more reliable and offer greater functionality such as control over flash, zoom, etc.
Tuesday, 7th April, 2009 at 3:49 pm |
I am using the latest version of Yatca and don’t see my @replies in the inbox. I have the Replies to You option set to Merged, but replies aren’t showing in the inbox. I do have the Updates from Friends set to discarded. I am running TweetDeck on my computer at the same time. Would that cause an issue?
Tuesday, 7th April, 2009 at 4:18 pm |
@jeremykitching No, running another Twitter client won’t cause any problem. The current version of Yatca (and all previous versions) has a bug which means that it does not correctly identify a reply as such unless it is a reply to a specific tweet from you. It other words, if a friend replies to something you’ve said that will be picked up but if a friend simply tweets “@username blah blah blah” that will not be treated as a reply by Yatca. I have already fixed this and it will be included in the next version.
Wednesday, 8th April, 2009 at 8:57 am |
Hey!
First off, KILLER APP!! I like the UI since its the only one to have an actual counter! I only have three issues. Not sure if they were covered, but just giving my 2 cents. Keep in mind, I have a Storm running .114 hybrid OS.
1. Possibly adding a “keep as new” option for tweets that I want to revisit later. I mean, it is in a message folder. Why not show it some love by not just hitting and quiting a tweet? Let it know. “Baby, I’ll be back.”
2. Having an actual number beyond 99+ for tweets. Is that the limit it can handle? Or just knowing you have that much more will just make you say “fudge it?”
3.I’m sure its coming, but icons in the future of tweeters?
I’ve used Twitterberry, YATCA and now SocialScope. I stopped using Twitterberry due to the lack of functionability. SocialScope is cool, but there are some things it doesn’t do that YATCA does and vice versa, which is why I still use both.
Just to give you a brief history, I consider myself a power user (I have 2 berries, one personal the other for work). The work one gets recharged 3 times a day!! The other goes a day and a half without recharging (keep in mind the battery on these phones are the best I’ve seen from a stock BB) but I DESTROY my work Berry every few hours. I have YATCA on both, but only have a limited number of apps running on my personal berry.
Any help I can provide to improve this app for other Storm and Berry users, feel free to ask. I’ a Geek that way when I have something I believe in. 😉
Keep up the hotness!!
Thursday, 9th April, 2009 at 11:32 am |
@L Bo Thanks for the feedback! I’ll go through your items one by one.
1. The “I’ll be back” feature is a nice idea – I’ve put it on the list. My only issue with it is that I’m trying to keep the UI relatively clean and every additional option on the status reading panel just clutters it up a bit more.
2. Sorry about the 99+ thing (and later 999+) but this is actually something that the Messages app does and I have no control over it. I don’t know what their rationale is. I could maybe understand it if they were doing it from 999+ but displaying 652 takes up roughly as much space as 99+. Very weird.
3. Yeah, profile pics is on the list and has been since the first version. In truth, I’m not a big fan of the idea which is probably why I’ve been slow to do it :-). OK, it would make the UI look a bit more interesting but it adds quite a bit to the amount of data used, especially if you follow somebody like @stephenfry who tends to change his profile pic like he changes his socks. I will do it some day (and make it configurable so that people like me can turn it off!).
Thursday, 9th April, 2009 at 10:59 am |
I noticed that this is not the first time you mention this topic. Why have you decided to touch it again?
Thursday, 9th April, 2009 at 11:39 am |
@Ex Back Huh???