I’m sorry to announce that we will be shutting down Skystone Reader by May 1, 2018. At this point we’re simply unable to keep up with maintenance and support for the product, and it seems the web and technology in general have gone in vastly different directions than when we first started it 4 years ago, making the product all but obsolete.
We’d like to thank everyone who supported us, and wish you all the best!
The Summer 2015 release of the Skystone Reader Windows Store App for Windows 8.1 devices enhances the app to include background updates. With this update, the app will periodically check and download new feed leads even when you’re doing something else, so newly-added feeds are ready for you next time you open the app, even if you’re no longer connected to the Internet. You can also now read and save feeds while offline. The next time you reconnect to the Internet everything will automatically sync up.
Note: only RSS Feed information is downloaded for offline use – any embedded images, videos, and links will not be available unless you have an Internet connection. If offline link caching is something you’d be interested in seeing in a future release (i.e. the ability to read full articles even when offline), please submit a feature request from within the app.
If you aren’t already using the Windows 8.1 App Store version of our app, install it now.
Happy reading!
Skystone Reader’s Windows 8.1 app is now available in the Windows App Store. Just follow this link to install it for free!
The Windows 8.1 tablet and Windows 8 phone apps have been submitted to the app stores, and are awaiting verification. We expect both versions to be publically available in the Windows app stores by June 1.
As always, we’ll notify you here when they are ready!
Windows Phone App Promotional Image:
Windows Store Promotional Image:
Just wrapped up development of the Windows Store version of Skystone Reader. We will be doing a week or two of BETA testing, and then all versions will e published to the Windows store and we will be live!
We’ve spent a considerable amount of time debating whether and how to serve ads in Skystone Software apps. I’ve decided that all apps will have a free ad-supported version, and each app will offer an upgrade option for a nominal one-time fee. Premium accounts will have ads removed from all app properties. For Skystone Reader, this means that the upgrade will remove ads from the Web version as well as the Windows Phone and Windows 8 App Store versions of the app. You will be able to upgrade from within the app itself, and it should be pretty seamless and painless.
We didn’t want to include ads in the free versions because ads are evil. However, as much as we want to share, we have development and hosting costs to consider. So we compromised and built our own ad delivery engine for Skystone Software apps. Free versions of our apps will have ads, but they will be served up to you in the least offensive and obtrusive manner possible. For details on what this means, please check out the Skystone Reader Ad Policy. Bottom line is that we continue to make the commitment not to track anything you do, and we extend that to our ads.
As always, thanks for your support, and happy reading!
We’re happy to announce that the Windows Phone version of Skystone Reader is completed and in BETA testing. We hope to release it to the app store within a month or two.
This release includes changes that utilize Microsoft Live accounts for authentication instead of a home-grown token-based method. The theme has also been modified to use a new color scheme that more closely matches the app’s RSS icon.
Just released a big fix to Skystone Reader that corrects an issue preventing feeds from updating if one feed generates a server error when trying to pull down updates. Also fixed some minor internal code that should speed up the feed update feature a bit more while I was at it.
Happy feeding!
Skystone Reader is officially out of BETA testing!
Now that we’ve reached this milestone (and it’s a big one: we built and tested a fully-functional RSS reader in less time than established and funded companies did), we’ve decided to keep things small and release it to the public as an invite-only membership-based service.
What does that mean? It means that you have to ask for an invite to join up, and we’ll dole out a certain number of key codes a month. (Follow us on Twitter for more info).
We made this decision because we’re going up against big giant companies with this product, and even though we designed and developed our software in half the time they did and are confident that we’re better, we can’t compete with the infrastructure and support of companies like Digg.
So, if you’re interested, follow us on Twitter and send a Direct Message asking nicely for an invite. If we send you one, you’re in.
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