Birdfeed Features

  • Manage multiple accounts.
  • Post images from your choice of service (yfrog, TwitPic, or Posterous).
  • Search Twitter (including support for saved searches, trends, and hashtag lookup, and nearby search).
  • Post shortened URLs using Bit.ly and Tr.im integration.
  • Post URLs from Safari using Birdfeed's bookmarklet support.
  • Save posted links for later reading using Instapaper integration.
  • Re-post tweets using your choice of "retweet" style (quote, RT, or via).
  • Load older tweets using infinite scrolling.
  • Navigate reply chains.
  • Find out more about other users using integration with third-party Twitter services such as Favrd, FollowCost and Overlapr.
  • Log in using a secure connection.
  • Forward tweets or links using the in-app Mail sheet (iPhone OS 3.0 only).

Birdfeed Bug: Restores from Backup

It has recently come to our attention that users are seeing crashes after installing Birdfeed on a new phone using an iTunes backup from an old phone. For users experiencing this problem, Birdfeed will start up at the Accounts screen and crash when the user taps an account to log into it.

This problem is rooted in a quirk of the iPhone Keychain we were, sadly, unaware of: a backed-up keychain can only be restored to the iPhone or iPod touch on which it was created (as explained in this Apple Knowledge Base article). Therefore, when a backup of Birdfeed is restored to a new phone, the account list is restored but the accompanying credentials from the Keychain are not. Unfortunately, Birdfeed doesn’t anticipate this situation as well as it should, and the result is this crash.

Fortunately, there’s an easy workaround: simply tap the “Edit” button in the accounts view and then tap the red circular button next to the account name to delete the account. Then just create re-create the account.

We are currently doing a careful examination and redesign of our accounts code as part of the next Birdfeed update, and this problem (and many others) will be addressed as part of the effort. As always, apologies for the inconvenience.

Posted by buzzandersen on July 20, 2009