Summary of Problems since 1/13

[James Kreul]

Based on the discussion threads, here are the problems and symptoms as
far as I can tell. Please feel free to add in replies.

Automatic refresh seems to have stopped working around Jan 13, or
later for some people. It's hard to tell if this is the case for
absolutely everyone, since comments reflect a limited sample, but the
problem seems to be widespread.

When uninstalled and re-installed, the following things happen.
Either:
A. You can only get one successful refresh cycle before refresh-all
doesn't work again. By successful I mean actually updating a
podcast. If there is nothing to update, it seems like you can see the
refresh-all cycling through for multiple attempts (if you keep trying)
until there is something to update.
B. Once you play something or put something in the queue, refresh-all
won't work again.

Once frozen, the refresh-all has the following symptoms:
When Listen does seem to attempt to refresh on its own (after data
signal is re-established, for example), the refresh symbol does appear
briefly in the notification bar, but nothing else happens (the podcast
names do not appear on the screen during the refresh attempt).
When pressing the manual refresh-all button, the refresh symbol only
blinks in the notification bar.

One can refresh individual podcasts using Listen, and downloading/
playing new episodes still works.

Podcast updates are reaching the Google Reader Listen Subscription
folder, but the folder is hard to sync up with Listen itself.

It has become difficult to add new podcast subscriptions using
Listen. The only way I could find to add a new subscription (which is
when I first came across problems myself, Friday) is to add it using
Google Reader and put it in the Listen Subscription folder. (After
adding one subscription successfully after a re-install and refreshing
Listen once, the refresh-all of course froze again.)

It is also difficult to remove subscriptions using Listen. It simply
does not seem to sync up with the Listen Subscription folder.

Any other symptoms out there, that haven't been covered here or in
multiple posts?

[kmacdowe]

I can confirm most of this behavoir.

[Will]

Glad I'm not the only one having these issues. Maybe that means
they're actually working on it. It started a few days ago? Any mention
of a fix? Ready to switch to Doggcatcher if this keeps up.

[javadayaz]

I think a new version is coming...

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[Neil]

I have had the same issue. I am able to get one to two full refreshes
if I do a force stop and clear data on my Samsung Captivate but it
fails again after that. Hope this helps.

Thanks.

[Nick Caldwell]

Great descriptions, that is exactly what is happening to mine. I
thought my phone was broken at first so I came here to see if it was
happening to anyone else. I guess we just have to wait for the Listen
team to get a fix out. Please Listen team, help us! Also while you are
at it, a few of those feature enhancements would be nice too (sleep
timer and speed adjustment). Otherwise, I guess it just makes us
appreciate how much I like and use listen when it isn't working for a
few days.

Nick

[Daniel Markus]

Same issues here on two devices (HTC Hero 2.1, HTC Legend 2.2). What
works is to manually refresh the subscriptions by checking them one
for another and hitting "Refresh" there in the subsription menu. Did
that with my most important feeds, but that is not really an option
with lots of feeds.

We really need a fix!

Daniel

[Da LionK][ng]

Same for me. Does not work for 4 days now. Have the exact same
symptoms.

[Will Knott]

Missing Symptom - Listened

Before the Jan 13 failure, if you marked an item as listened or played
and completed listening to a podcast, then its entry in Google Reader
would be "marked as read".

This syncing action is also no longer occurring.
Its probably related to the over all syncing / refreshing issue, but
it should be something that is quick to monitor for testing purposes
by the Labs Listeners.

[LHM]

I have the refresh problem too... It's very annoying.

[Andrew DeFaria]

Actually it is still an option with a lot of feeds - it's just a pain in the butt!

[Andrew DeFaria]

[zilvonias]

I'm experiencing behavior A: refreshing no longer works even after
reinstall.

[Steelight]

I just wanted to add a logcat to the symptoms list:

E/Listen ( 3862): Running UpdateTask
D/Listen ( 3862): HttpRequest connectionsInPool:1 GET
http://www.google.com/reader/api/0/token
E/Listen ( 3862): Reader token had invalid length: //<22 letters
here>

[Mike]

I would add that when I go into each of my subcriptions they appear to
be unsubcribed. I have the option to subcribe to them each time I
return to them. Google reader stays up to date.

[Stuart]

It doesn't seem to be purging the files from the phone once they've
been listened to, although I'll have to check that in a few days once
I get to 20 items

[James Kreul]

Thanks for the logcat (I don't even know what any of that means, but
I'm sure it will be helpful for the developers.)

Just wanted to confirm what others in this thread have pointed out.
Unlike other reports on the market and in other threads here,
uninstall / re-install simply doesn't work in the long run. People
are posting that it is a fix before the problems kick in again. It
does not seem to matter how you uninstall (using Manage Applications
or the Market), eventually the refresh-all will freeze again.

On Jan 17, 12:44 pm, Steelight <steeli...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I just wanted to add a logcat to the symptoms list:
>
> E/Listen  ( 3862): Running UpdateTask

> D/Listen  ( 3862): HttpRequest connectionsInPool:1 GEThttp://www.google.com/reader/api/0/token

[kev.]

On the bright side I'm finally caught up on the podcasts on my
milestone. :)

kev.

[James Kreul]

I wonder if Steellight could elaborate on or translate what this
earlier logcat might mean. What kind of message does it give after a
successful refresh (after a re-install, or after a manual single
subscription refresh, for example)?

I'm beginning to agree with those who suspect this has very little to
do with Listen itself (not that I know anything about anything). What
I do know is this:

Simply looking at Google Reader and seeing which podcasts have updated
in the Listen Subscriptions folder is an easy way to avoid hitting
refresh for every subscription on Listen individually. The podcasts
are reaching Google Reader, the Listen Subscriptions folder is
updating, and Listen can (manually) communicate with the Listen
Subscriptions folder.

I've also noticed that Google Reader accurately reports what I've been
doing with Listen, like the "recently kept unread" list on the right
side of the web interface home screen.

Using Google Reader to subscribe to new podcasts (putting them in the
Listen Subscriptions folder manually) actually syncs up with Listen
relatively quickly (within a half-hour, based on my most recent
experiment).

So the question seems to be: what is it that's happening after one (or
a few) successful auto-refresh that triggers the invalid token
mentioned by Steelight? It's not that there is no communication
between Reader and Listen on the phones, its just that certain kinds
of communication are getting messed up somehow.

Comments for the more tech savvy (please be kind about my ignorance)?

On Jan 17, 12:44 pm, Steelight <steeli...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I just wanted to add a logcat to the symptoms list:
>
> E/Listen  ( 3862): Running UpdateTask

> D/Listen  ( 3862): HttpRequest connectionsInPool:1 GEThttp://www.google.com/reader/api/0/token

[Michael Minutillo]

At a guess (and I have nothing to base this on other than a hunch) I'd guess that the refresh all code looks something like this:

RefreshAll()

try:

  if needToUpdateReaderWithListenedItems:

     UpdateReaderWithListenedItems() <-- Here

  foreach subscription s:

    updateFeed(s)

  update lastUpdated timestamp

catch:

  log error

and update feeds looks like this:

updateFeed(subscription):

try:

  getLatestEpisodes()

  updateFreshItems()

  etc...

catch:

  mark subscription as errored

What's happening is that if the update of google reader fails (marked as "here" above) which it currently does for some reason** it causes the rest of the update to fail without ever trying to read the individual subscriptions. This is also why the individual feed updates continue to work (unless reader stores the url for these locally which is possible). Those don't try to update Google Reader, they just read data from them. If I am right then this would work after a re-install because the list of what has been listened to would be cleared and the affected code would not be run as there is nothing to update reader with but once you've listened to a single podcast then the next update all will fail (as seems to be the case)

**As another guess I'd say that the update token is different from a read-only token for google reader, or at least they are validated by different processes, which is why reads seem to work just fine but updates fail. If this is the case then you also wouldn't be able to add new feeds (which some people have reported). 

If this is the case then the fix is probably "technically" very simple. There's likely more to it than just the technology though. 

A) This is a labs project. The developers that work on it probably have very limited time that they can spend on Listen at the moment.

B) [this one is in the realm of crazy] Assume that Google is baking some music streaming services into a future version of Android (see http://ausdroid.net/2011/01/17/new-music-streaming-feature-to-come-in-android-2-4/ ) and that this will include podcasting support. This probably means that Listen as a Labs project has moved on quite significantly from the last release but now has requirements on the 2.4 version of Android. No-one expected that the current version of Listen would require an update until the 2.4 release got out of the door (everyones focus right now). So someone needs to jump out of a tight deadline project (2.4), get the 1.1.3 release of Listen, fix it, test it, and get it out to the market place. 

C) This first sprung up (for me) on a Friday. Assuming no-one had time to fix it (or was aware of it) on Friday afternoon and they actually don't work on the weekend and they observe Martin Luther King day in the U.S. (the Monday), it's possible that no-one on the team has even seen the issue yet.

Personally I have faith that the dev team are not simply ignoring this mailing list or the product and I advise having patience for another 24 hours or so. Just my 2c.

Regards,

--
Michael M. Minutillo
Indiscriminate Information Sponge
http://wolfbyte-net.blogspot.com

http://twitter.com/wolfbyte

[bern_viking]

Hohum

Last night i treid to refresh and the sync symbol appeared and stayed
on for 10-15 minutes.

Nothing happened, though.

But kinda progress.

Ah well, back to manually refreshing feeds... How very much 2008!

[MICHAEL KANE]

Good effort. This work-around is working for me. I check for new
subscriptions on Google Reader and refresh the appropriate Listen feed
individually.

On Jan 17, 6:54 am, Daniel Markus <daniel.marku...@googlemail.com>
wrote:

[bormotov]

+1

E/Listen ( <pid>): "Reader token had invalid length": <token>

On 17 янв, 20:44, Steelight <steeli...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I just wanted to add a logcat to the symptoms list:
>
> E/Listen  ( 3862): Running UpdateTask

> D/Listen  ( 3862): HttpRequest connectionsInPool:1 GEThttp://www.google.com/reader/api/0/token

[Steve Hueners]

Same works here. Enter 'My Subscriptions' > enter a given feed > tap 'Menu' > tap Refresh.

[maestromarv]

Exactly the same symptoms on my UK Desire 2.2, including re-install.

[Philip Kay]

I can confirm the same behaviour as well.

[sk8geek]

I'm finding refresh doesn't work even if I go into each subscription
and manually refresh. The episodes are listed in the listen folder in
iGoogle, but not appearing on my phone (Desire, Android 2.2).

I wonder if this has anything to do with two factor authentication
being rolled out?

[Andrew DeFaria]

You might try turning off the two factor authentication...

[Steven J Lilley]

thanks. Not got two factor auth on my account. I was speculating about the cause of the problem.

On 18 February 2011 13:04, Andrew DeFaria <adef...@gmail.com> wrote:

You might try turning off the two factor authentication...

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--
Steven Lilley
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,
If the women don't get you the whiskey must.

[Graham Williams]

This has just started happening for me too - Listen (on Android) no
longer syncs, and in fact with Reader (not through Android) I see new
episodes are available for my one of my subscriptions, but on Listen
(on Android) the list of all episodes does not list the latest 3
episodes...... I've uninstalled Reader (on Android) and uninstalled
and reinstalled Listen too many times to count now. I can't get the
new episodes. I have even wiped out my Listen Subscriptions and
resubscribed - only to see the same behaviour. Manual refresh of
individual subscriptions is no longer working.

I thought the world had stopped podcasting...... Listen is probably my
most used app, until now :-(