Saturday, April 18, 2009

iTicker v1.0 Released!

iTicker

iTicker is a dynamically updating ticker of sports scores, news headlines, or any other RSS feed that you would like displayed right on your iPhone 3G's springboard!

I got the idea from the appulo.us updated apps ticker that they have available on Cydia. It is my first app/widget, please enjoy it and thanks for checking it out!

Download Now!

How does it work?

First your iPhone must be jailbroken and have WinterBoard and openSSH installed. These are both available thru Cydia. After downloading iTicker from the link above unzip the contents. SSH into your iPhone and browse to the /Library/Themes folder. Upload the iTicker folder into this directory. Now resping your iPhone and open up WinterBoard. You will see iTicker in the list of available options, simply click on it so it is checked and then return to your springboard!

Can I customize it to show my own RSS feed?

Yes! Right now the default is set to display sports scores of MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL. iTicker uses basic JavaScript and CSS in order to function properly. Simply edit the HTML file and look for the following code:

cssfeed.addFeed("Sports Scores", "http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=5hrDg6Ir3hGzle_u6icw5g&_render=rss") //Specify "label" plus URL to RSS feed

You can replace "Sports Scores" with whatever you like and then enter the URL of the RSS feed you want to use, it's as simple as that.

Can I customize the text or position of iTicker?

If you would like customize the look and feel of the widget you can edit the CSS to your liking. Currently the CSS controls the text styles and positioning of iTicker.

Screenshot:


















Here you can see how iTicker displays on this jailbroken phone. Just above the dock and below the last row of icons on the Springboard.

I really enjoyed developing iTicker. Like anything it was frustrating at times but after working out all the kinks I'm happy with the finished product. I would like to develop a plugin for the MultiBarLockscreen next however my skills are somewhat limited so we will see how that goes, keep checking back. Thanks for looking and I hope you enjoy iTicker. If you have any questions, comments or suggesstions please leave them in the comments and I'll be happy to answer them whenever I have some free time. If you like iTicker and want to throw a few bucks my way for the hard work please feel free :) However iTicker will always be free. Thanks again!



15 comments:

  1. this nice but is there a way so that i only get one teams score?

    ReplyDelete
  2. You'll need to find the RSS feed for just that one team if it even exists. I am not sure if they do for single teams. I only have them for MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, NCAA and WNBA which I will post a list of this week.

    ReplyDelete
  3. is there any way you can make this a little more idiot proof by adding the customization in the settings

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey it works great.
    But does this waste my battery?

    ReplyDelete
  5. waste..... well, if the battery use is worth to you, then it isn't wasted! (: But yeah, I guess since it reloads the feeds it'll use battery.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Honestly I haven't noticed any significant drops in battery usage. The feed is only set to reload every few minutes and that takes all of 3 seconds so it isn't constantly pulling information or anything like that.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Awesome app, great work! Is there a way to change the update rate of the feed? I have added my own sports feed that is updated every 2 minutes, but i noticed there is a 20-30 minute lag with the actual feed from the one displayed on iTicker? Tried to find the value in the jscript, but came up empty handed :(

    ReplyDelete
  8. Did the site go down that is hosting the feeds? Mine just stopped working. I used your hard work and incorporated it with the Tap Widget so that I have scores for my teams showing on my lockscreen.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Site should be back up and running, the next update will have the feeds moved to dedicated servers to prevent them from going down again.

    ReplyDelete
  10. This is my main reason for installing Winterboard, big memory and resource sacrifice yes, but very well worth it. I have three news feeds already piped and I also tweak the html file for my liking. Actually I've learned a lot from this widget. I strongly urge you to continue with this project since there aren't any other rss feed app out there that is so powerfully rewarding as iTicker but yet so light.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thank you for your kind words. I am always looking for ways to improve i-Ticker. It is very simple code, the main thing I'm looking to improve is making it into an actual app so it can be edited without having to SSH into the phone. Refresh rate could be part of the memory hog when retrieving feeds you may want to tinker with that as the default is set to 5 minutes (300 seconds).

    ReplyDelete
  12. is there any way to change the color of the text?

    ReplyDelete
  13. I could not get the iticker to show up on my iphone 4. has anyone else had this problem?

    ReplyDelete
  14. I have a problem with iTicker sadly in that it shows up under my homescreen so I only get to see it for a split second when pressing the home button to exit an app. I have no idea how to work round this...anybody?

    ReplyDelete
  15. I too have tried to install this awesome widget but plaged with same problems that it shows under the homescreen wallpaper. I even avoided to install a theme thinking perhaps that was the problem. This is a fantastic tool but hendered by something apperently alot of users have encountered, if creator can fix much will be appretiated not just by me but many others.

    ReplyDelete

Powered By Blogger