Just a note to say I’m still working on full support for OverDrive books in Bookmark following the iOS 5 changes for Windows users. It’s coming along but not yet ready for wider testing. I wish I could devote more time to it but unfortunately Bookmark doesn’t pay all the bills and my job is very busy right now.

Sorry for it taking so long! I feel your pain and I’ll do my best to have 1.6 ready for beta testing in a couple of weeks.

I have several three-month Audible memberships to give away. The first three (non-spam) commenters get one. You’ll also get a promo code for a free copy of Bookmark. Because of restrictions of the membership, this is for Audible in the U.S. only.

Update 12/22/2011: We have the winners!  Thanks for playing.

I was thrilled to receive an email today saying that Bookmark is on a short list of nominees for the AppleVis iOS App Hall of Fame which recognizes apps that work well for vision-impaired users. Until I was contacted about a year ago by a vision-impaired Bookmark user (and since than many others), I wasn’t very sensitive to how Bookmark performs when using VoiceOver. Since then, I test it every couple of months to make sure it’s working well.

If you use Bookmark with VoiceOver and would like it to win a spot in the top 8 apps, please vote here: http://www.applevis.com/blog/introducing-applevis-ios-app-hall-fame

P.S. Bookmark is always a work in progress. If you use VoiceOver and find inconsistencies, please let me know at barry@bookmarkapp.com.

While you can always create bookmarks with custom titles and notes, sometimes you just want a quick way to note where you left off or something you’ll note later. You can create these “quick bookmarks” easily by holding down the bookmark button for about two seconds. You’ll hear a tone and see the number of bookmarks increase. The title defaults to the current date and time, although you can customize this in Settings > Default bookmark title.

Pro Tip #1: To feel a bookmark being saved using this technique, go to Settings > Sound Settings and turn Vibrate on for the Chime sound.

Pro Tip #2: If you want this behavior to be the default, turn “Quick Bookmarking On” in Settings. When that’s on, a short tap creates a quick bookmark and a long tap brings up the normal bookmark screen.

Version 1.5.1 of Bookmark was approved last night. It addresses a bug on iOS 4 that caused incorrect tracks to play. I’m now turning my attention to the WMA issue for Windows users and some crashes seen on the iPod Touch 2nd generation. If you’re having problems with Bookmark on the iPod Touch 2nd gen, please let me know at barry@bookmarkapp.com.

UPDATE Dec. 7: I submitted version 1.5.1 to Apple today. Approval normally takes 4-7 days.

Just quick note that I’m aware of a bug that affects Bookmark for some users on iOS 4. The symptoms are Bookmark playing the wrong track (often music) and displaying a garbage track number like “Track -2432435432 of 1″. I’m 99% certain it’s fixed in version 1.5.1 and am testing with the help of several users who are experiencing the bug. I’ll update this post after testing and when it’s submitted to Apple for approval.

Sorry for the inconvenience in the meantime.

Update 11/23/2011: Looks like this only works for MP3 audiobooks, not WMA. From my tests, it looks like OverDrive is creating a playlist for WMA books but the files aren’t showing when you browse the playlist in the Music app, hence they can’t show up in Bookmark. I’m still investigating and hope to have some better news soon.

Update #2 11/23/2011: I’m able to repeat the problem and the deeper I look, it seems to lie between OverDrive Media Console and iTunes 10.5. I’m still seeing if Bookmark might be able to workaround it in the next update.

Some customers enjoy listening to OverDrive audiobooks using Bookmark. With the recent changes in iOS 5 that affect audiobook playback on Windows, OverDrive has begun to add books to playlists instead of the iTunes “Books” category. Since Bookmark looks just in “Books” by default, this means OverDrive books won’t appear.

But all is not lost! With a few quick steps, you can get Bookmark seeing any books OverDrive has added to your iTunes library.

1. In Bookmark, go to Settings and enable “Expanded book search”: 
2. In iTunes, click the arrow to the left of your iOS device: 
3. Select the playlist that contains the OverDrive book you want to listen to: 
4. Right-click one or more tracks, click “Get Info”, then select the “Info” tab.
5. Set the Genre to “Audiobook”. If this option isn’t already there, just type it in. Other genres you can use are “Audiobooks” and “Speech”. 

We’re continuing to improve Bookmark to make it easier to listen to the tracks you want to hear. Check back for updates or join our mailing list so you don’t miss out on any Bookmark news.

I’ve received many emails about audiobooks not playing on iOS 5 for some users. The problems affect both the Music app and Bookmark and it appears to only affect users who upgraded from iOS 4.3 to 5.0 and are using iTunes on Windows. Since Bookmark uses the Music app “under the hood”, any tracks that won’t play in Music also won’t play in Bookmark.

I’ve submitted a bug report to Apple and I sincerely hope they are working on it. While there isn’t any single fix I’m aware of, here are some things to try:

1. The problem only seems to affect MP3 and WMA, not AAC-encoded tracks. To re-encode as AAC, right-click one or more tracks in iTunes then select “Create AAC Version”. It will create a .m4a track in the same folder as the .mp3. Annoyingly, you will still have to drag it into iTunes to add it. Right-click the original and click “Show in Windows Explorer”, then drag the .m4a file into iTunes. For good measure you might want to remove the old MP3′s to avoid confusion.
2. Because this only seems to affect tracks in “Books”, move tracks from “Books” to “Music” in iTunes then in Bookmark, go to Settings and enable “Expanded book search”. To move to music, select one or more tracks, right-click, click “Get Info”, then “Options”, then set Media Kind to “Music” and click “OK”. Expanded book search will look for any track whose genre is “Audiobooks”, “Audiobook”, or “Speech”. It’s set off by default because this makes the launch process a little slower.
3. Some people have found downgrading to 4.3 then back to 5.0.1 to work.

As always, I’ll keep on top of this and let you know what I learn.

Download it here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bookmark/id326290323?mt=8

As always, this is a free upgrade for customers who purchased earlier versions. It requires iOS 4.0 or higher. I’ll walk you through some of the changes.

• Faster startup: Up to 70 times faster in tests for large libraries. It’s also more stable with large libraries. See a demo of the speed increase here.
• More readable text: All fonts are larger using more readable colors. Also, lists use two lines for titles where space is available.
• New bookmark screen: This features a title textbox that grows as you type as well as time editing. Because more features require more space, it’s now a separate screen instead of an overlay. Remember, for the fastest bookmarking, just hold down the bookmark button and it will make a “quick bookmark” using a default title. No other taps required.
• New sleep timer screen: The part of the system for which I received the most “how does this work” emails was the sleep timer. The new design is simpler and lets you easily set the time you prefer and add five minutes.
• Bookmarks may be played in order: A the bottom of the bookmarks list is a set of controls to play/pause a bookmark or play the bookmark before or after. This lets you easily review what you’ve saved.
• Podcast release dates: These are both displayed and used for sorting.
• Sound settings: In the Settings menu you can now customize the volume and optionally add a vibration for the sound effects used in Bookmark. I find it useful to turn on vibration so I can feel the time ribbon times without having to look. It’s also useful for registering quick bookmarks.
• Share by Twitter or Facebook: You’ve always been able to share info by email. You can now share on these social networks.
• Optional expanded book search: In the Settings menu, you can enable “expanded book search” which will cause Bookmark to look for audiobooks (defined by genres “Audiobook”, “Audiobooks”, or “Speech”) anywhere in the iTunes library, not just the “Books” section. This is useful by not requiring you to organize all tracks in iTunes to ensure everything is in Books. It’s disabled by default because it slows down the library search at startup slightly.
• Various bug fixes and consistency improvements: Time management, including “Jump to Latest Time” and the time of last played track are improved over 1.2.5.

While waiting for approval, here’s a sneak peek at one of Bookmark 1.5′s main improvements. Its launches faster, especially for users with large audiobook libraries. In this video, the same library of 1004 tracks launches over 70 times faster than in version 1.2.5 on the same iPhone 4S.