Category: Site News

Today will be my final “day in the office” for 2017 and this post is the final one for the year.

And what a year it has been.

I cannot thank you enough for all the support and visits you have made to the site over the course of the past 12 months.  2017 marks the 14th year that ClintonFitch.com has existed in some form or fashion with the past 5 years focused on Android and Chrome OS.  It will go down as one of the best years ever.

In total, 952 articles were posted on the site this year and more unique visitors came to the site in 2017 than ever.  Compared to 2016, this year saw a 37% increase in overall visitors.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

An updated version of the ClintonFitch.com site app for Android is now rolling out to the Google Play Store.  The update, version 10.05 for those keeping score at home, brings mostly behind-the-scene changes to improve the overall feel and function of the app.

One new feature in this build is the ability to pull down on your device’s screen to refresh the news feed.  This was something that has been needed for a while and now you don’t have to exit the app or wait for the app to refresh itself using background services.  In order to work with Oreo better, this feature needed to be added.

The overall look of the ClintonFitch.com app has been tweaked with a new color scheme and font changes that should make it more readable on smaller devices.

This evening I have pushed out an update to the ClintonFitch.com app to the Google Play Store.  The updated version is build 5.0.0 for those keeping score at home and is the first major tweak to the UI since I launched the app back in January.  Now when you open up the app, all of the articles are in a card format instead of a list format.  This makes viewing a bit easier and significantly reduces the amount of scrolling you have to do to get to older posts.  This should make things a bit easier for those of you who have the app loaded on a tablet or large screen phone.

After a few weeks in development, the first ClintonFitch.com app is now available in the Google Play Store.  The app is a web wrapper style app that brings you all of the content of the site conveniently within an app on your Android phone.  No more having to open up Chrome to navigate to the site!

The ClintonFitch.com app is designed to make readers lives easier. Completely free, the app is updated continually with the information from the site, giving users one-tap to get to those posts without having to open up their browser and navigating to the site.

If you have visited ClintonFitch.com over the course of the past few hours, you will notice a change is afoot.  That change is an all new, lightweight and clean Material Design look to the site.  This change has actually been in the works for several weeks now as I have been working on a theme that is based on the excellent WordPress theme built by Brad Williams.  As with any site, any time you make a major change to the look and feel there are a lot of considerations that have to be taken into account:  User experience, adverts, content flow and of course mobile look & feel.  In this update, I think I’ve found the right balance but ultimately it is you, the readers, that have to make that decision.  Feedback, as you would guess, is most welcome.

I am very pleased to announce that Tricia Stream is joining me here at ClintonFitch.com.  For those who followed AlliOSNews before I ended my iOS wilderness wandering, you will know Tricia.  For those of you who don’t know her, let me give an little introduction.  Tricia’s comments below are in [Bold].

Tricia is an award winning blogger and author who is passionate about prematurity (she’s the mom of twin preemie boys – Search and Destroy) and has a flare for technology.  [Jazz hands.] Tricia has been honored numerous times for her work with Blogher but is also the author of an upcoming children’s book as well as being part of various other publications on prematurity and mental health.  She lives in the heart of Silicon Valley and often reminds me of how she is amazed at how poor a signal she gets there on her iPhone.  Yes, Tricia carries an iPhone.  In fact, Tricia is pretty much Apple through-and-through.  So why is she writing for a through-and-through Windows site?  Simple. Apps.

[Actually although my first household computer was an Apple IIgs, I was a Windows girl from the day I turned 13 until I joined the corporate world. My 13th birthday gift was a glorious 386 computer with accompanying 14.4 modem and wooden desk that lived in my room. It’s where I started earning my nerd stripes. (That may have been the last my parents saw of the teenage me.) It wasn’t until I started my career that I started using Apple again. I know. I did it backwards.]

Tricia’s approach to technology has always been from the mother/real user perspective.  In fact her posts here will be under the title of “TechMom Tuesday”, where she will post every few weeks on Microsoft related apps and services that she leverages in her day-to-day.  It will give a different perspective than my own as I always approach the apps and services from Microsoft from a Windows and Windows Phone perspective.  Tricia will approach it from an Apple perspective to let you know how those apps and services perform across the spectrum. [Full disclosure: It’s not solely from an Apple perspective so much as an, “I really need this to work because this is what’s happening in my life” perspective.” I use technology because I’m TechMom. I share it with you because I can’t keep my mouth shut.]

Please welcome Tricia to the site!  You can follow her on her blog Stream of the Conscious as well as on Twitter.

[Come back on Tuesday where I tell you all about getting locked out of my super high-tech car.]