What's up at Producteev?: To a great 2013! More team members, new version, and California love

producteev:

Hi everyone,

Even though we’ve been a bit quiet on our blog since we’ve announced our acquisition by Jive a little over a month ago, we’ve been really hard at work.

Just thought I would update you guys on what’s going on.

BRAND NEW VERSION

Omg

Well, we’ve rolled up our sleeves…

This update from Producteev is still vaporware well into Q2. I’m looking for a new task management system. Anyone have a suggestion?

Sheeple are Getting Their S4s Today

Everywhere I go I’m bombarded with more Samsung S4 marketing mush and excited sheeple gushing over their new S4s. In a few more days I figure I’ll start seeing all the posts complaining about the bugs and the busted apps that shipped with it from Samsung, and how there’s hardly any storage left on the 16GB model, because TouchWiz takes up 6-8GB of storage by itself. 

Fucking sheeple. After Samsung’s catastrophic ICS update to my Captivate Glide that virtually bricked it, and then choosing not to fix an 8 month old clipboard bug that forces my S3 to reboot at random, I’m done with Samsung. 

If HTC had put a real camera and a MicroSD slot in the One, it would’ve saved the company. Maybe they’ll be smart enough to refresh the device later this year with a Snapdragon 800, a real camera, and an SD slot. Unlikely, but THAT would ACTUALLY save the company.

I’m waiting for LG’s event in May to see if they’ll ship the Optimus G Pro with 4.2.2. If that doesn’t happen, I’ll wait to see what Google has to say during I/O and maybe a Motorola X Phone is in my future.

But as far as phones are concerned, I’m done with Samsung, and HTC needs to get their head out of their collective ass to get my money.

Why I’m Dumping Spotify for Rdio (for Now)

So I was a big Spotify fan. I tried to get my friends to use it, and I fucking evangelized it. Even after they took away the ability for me to choose to save my songs to my SD card. 

I did the same trick that all of us did. I downloaded the old .apk, installed it, set my SD location, and then updated the app from the Play Store after downloading some songs to verify that they’re going to the same place.

Apparently once you upgrade to Android 4.2.x or recent versions of the app, the old trick doesn’t work anymore. Therefore, I was screwed when I flashed my phone to CyanogenMod 10.1 yesterday.

So I decided that if Spotify was going to wage a war against my SD card, I wasn’t going to support them financially anymore. Their Android App leaves a lot to be desired in its design, and I am not going to waste hours doing the hokey pokey to get my files saved to the right place by using even more apps. It’s rubbish. I’m over it. 

I signed up for Rdio, and the interface is better. When you fire up the Android app, it ENCOURAGES you to save your music to the external card. So that’s what I did with absolutely no drama. I don’t think it will sound better, and it is going to take some getting used to, but I can control where I save my music which is very important to me.

Too bad, Spotify. You lost a big fan.

Tumblr for Tablets

So Tumblr finally blessed the tablet owners of the world with a version of the app for us. It’s really just a big version of the smartphone app and it works well enough. It’s not perfect, but it works a lot better than Shortblogger, because my keyboard app actually works with it and all of my text isn’t underlined. It’s the little things.

But if you spent a bunch of money on Tumblr apps for your tablet, you might want to still consider trying out the native app. It’s worth a shot.

Discovered More Broken Stuff After ICS Upgrade

So there is plenty wrong with my Captivate Glide after Samsung botched the ICS upgrade. The keyboard no longer lights up, the phone app freezes and crashes, Bluetooth crashes, apps that were previously stable crash at random, and the phone locks up at random.

I had to reboot the phone three times yesterday, which is a new record for this phone. I felt like I had my BlackBerry Torch again and it was fucking miserable.

Today I discovered that the Email app is broken and I can’t read any email on my Exchange account. It downloads the messages, but you can’t see or open them, and the app gives random connection errors.

I really hope that Samsung knows that they need to fix and re-release the update as soon as possible, because this is a really big botch-up, and how they handle this will determine whether my next phone will be a Samsung or not.

Samsung Captivate Glide ICS Update Removed from Website

If you didn’t know, the ICS update for the Samsung Captivate Glide was pulled off of the Samsung website. The update that they initially released disabled the backlight on the keyboard completely, caused the phone app to start crashing, and in my case, caused Bluetooth crashes when pairing with my VW Passat.

I spoke with AT&T support, who were clueless, and I spoke with Samsung support, who didn’t even realize that the update has been pulled from the website. Since Samsung pulled the update, it means you can expect a fix (hopefully) in the near future. They don’t need more bad press right now.

ShortBlogger Update Joy? Not So Much.

So I just installed the new version of ShortBlogger on my Nexus 7, and I’m already thoroughly disappointed. The 403 errors are gone, but I still can’t see any messages. Furthermore, everything is underlined, and now it doesn’t matter if I use voice recognition or not. These are major things that are keeping me from purchasing the app, which I would prefer to do. And it’s a damned shame because everything in the app seems to work perfectly well. It looks great on my tablet, it’s really usable and it doesn’t suck a lot of system resources.

Hopefully the developer can get his butt in gear and fix the rest of these problems so that I can actually plunk down some money on this app. But for now I’m going to have to pass until the next update comes out.

ShortBlogger for Android on the Nexus 7

I found ShortBlogger for Android and installed it, and as of right now it’s the closest thing to a functioning Tumblr app that I found for tablets. It makes browsing your dashboard easy, and it has all of the basic Tumblr functionality that you’d expect.

Then things go very, very wrong. Every time I tried to type anything, it got underlined. I actually had to compose this entire post using voice recognition to get around this problem. I tried to save my first post is a draft but I was not able to get back to it because you can’t view drafts. Every time you try to load your drafts you get a 403 error. You also can’t view any of your messages for the same reason.

The sad thing about this app is that all of the basic functionality is covered, but all of these bugs and problems get in the way. Right now it’s still the best solution because I can actually compose a post without scrolling left and right and having to resize the window.
Like most tablet apps this is just a really, really large version of that app meant for phone. I really hope that the developers take the time to optimize this app to work with Jelly Bean tablets. So if you have a Nexus 7 the verdict is that the app works, but it has more than just a few problems and functionality deficits.

Tumblr for Android Tablets

I just want to say that my Tumblr experience on my Nexus 7 has been largely disappointing so far. Blogging from the browser is clumsy and requires too much left-to-right scrolling. Using Swype’s voice recognition makes it a lot easier to write and edit your post, but the logistics of moving around the dashboard are awkward at best. For this post I’ve actually resorted to email.

The Tumblr app for Android has been a major disappointment for Android users, and the Tumblr folks could take the opportunity to make a great app for Jelly Bean, starting with the Nexus 7 tablet, and get a major update ready for the phones that will start getting Jelly Bean in the near future. I’m just sayin’.