A Podcast A Day Keeps Boredom At Bay

When I was 13, me and a close friend of mine used to listen to Ricky Gervais' famous podcast, with Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington. I'd consider us to be one of the earlier adopters of podcasting, although certainly not the earliest. The Ricky Gervais Show was one of those podcast series that helped bring podcasts to the mainstream, but for the last few years I had completely lost touch with them. Before I stopped listening, I observed The Bugle for a long time, The Russell Brand show, till it hit an unfortunate scandal, and I could never forget the numerous IGN gaming podcasts through the week. I'm glad to say that in the recent weeks, my podcast affections have returned. Podcasting has come a lot further since Ricky Gervais proudly touted about having the most popular podcast on the web, but it's not changed by leaps and bounds.

On the one hand, it's a much more popular format, so much so that I can have enough podcast to fill my 90 minutes of commute every day. It's weird, because about 2 or so months ago I was trialling Spotify and other music discovery apps, to try and keep myself discovering new music I liked, because my commute was filled with tired crap, and a huge collection of overplayed songs from my earlier years. Now I don't have to care about music, because I've got enough podcast to fill all that time. Apologies if this is not news to you, but the amount of interesting podcast available out there was news to me!  It shouldn't be a surprise really - we've had 24/7 radio for years, and if they can fill the airwaves with that endless drivel, there was bound to be enough content amateurly produced once the format was available and simple to use. Podcasting arrived full fledged at some point. I'm not sure when it happened, but it has, and there's so much of it!

One thing the format could definitely use is more video adoption. I'm supposing YouTube harbours most of the online video content because of its underlying utility as a social network, as opposed to being simply for video consumption. However, since many podcasts seem to post their videos on their YouTube channel anyway, there definitely seems to be some work we can do to bring some collaboration between these formats. Could we foresee a future where podcasting has social plugged in? Who is even meant to work on these standards - leaders in RSS or someone like Apple who manufactures to most widely used platforms for podcasting? I haven't really thought much about this yet, and I don't really understand a lot of the technicalities involved - but I'd love to talk to someone who does know about this stuff.

Anyway, I'm glad I decided to come back to listening to podcasts. I'm really tempted to start my own, but I wouldn't know where to start, or with whom. There are probably many factors that led to me listening to less, but one important one is that there's no prominent podcast app plugged straight into Android; I'm guessing because Google doesn't really provide such a service. Furthermore, since the sunsetting of Google Reader the company seems to be leaning further away from doing this, rather than the other way round. It would be great to see them build something, not least because I'm sure YouTube and Google+ collaboration might bring about some of that built in social functionality.

Podcasts I'm currently subscribed to:

Answer Me This

The Vergecast

The Verge Mobile Show

The Bugle

Engadget

Lifehacker

Freakonomics Radio

The Android app I ended up going for was Pocketcasts. At €3.13, I'd consider it premium for what it does, and it's not flawless, so I'm keeping my eyes open for alternatives.

Facebook Home: Day One

I've installed Facebook Home for a field test today; here are some of my initial thoughts after a couple of hours of use.

Initially, Home felt needlessly disruptive. I'm used to seeing a highly customized Android experience, with rooted access widgets, launchers, customer icons etc. With time I got accustomed to this apperating system (courtesy: wired.com), and am starting to warm to having the social network come before any other interaction. Facebook could really do with some stream management though. As a Google+ user, I'm spoiled with great ability to distinguish which posts I want to access when, but Facebook has always found this hard. While they use lists, these are simply not as solid as Google's circles, which make it easy to manage what I see in the stream. Of course on Facebook, everything is based around being "friends", while Google+ respects that friends are just one part of my online social activity.

This small issue aside, I can't say enough about the build quality of Home. It's smooth, it's slick, it's reasonably fast, although it got a little laggy on the train where data is scarce. All in all, I'm super impressed. My favorite thing about Android is the ability to customize, but I can appreciate that most people don't have time to waste adjusting and tweaking their mobile. I've long wondered why companies don't spend more time developing different launchers, and finally put it down to technical road blocks. Maybe Android isn't as open as I thought. Wrong - Facebook have done an awesome job at refreshing your phone, and if you love Facebook, you've no choice but to go Android now.

3 Things To Do With Your New Android Phone That Will Help You Get Over Your iPhone

This post comes from watching a friend of mine buy his first Android device (a Nexus 4, after much deliberation) which reminded me of the time I made the switch. Coming to Android from an iPhone can be hard, especially since in many ways Apple are still ahead of the curve. However, with time, there is much to love on Android that can't be done with iOS, and this is where your new phone comes into it's own. These three things should make you happier with your decision, and avoid that awkward month where your phone feels daft and clunky, where you iPhone felt soft and smooth.

1. Find your love of widgets.

Preloaded on most Android devices is some generic clock, perhaps a Flipboard or Facebook and something else fairly simple like a Google search bar. There are fine, but they aren't yours. If you just leave the widgets that came on the home screen, you will not feel the love. Widgets come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, so one of the first things to do with your new phone is find the ones you need. Apps you need instant access to. Tool, settings, notes you need right there in your face.

Minimalistic Text: Let's you put a small box of text somewhere, horizontal or vertical, with all sorts of formatting options too. You can have it read things like time, battery status, date etc. I have a line to tell me what Wi-Fi network I am currently connected to. This is a pretty useful widget.

Power Toggles: This widgets give you some quick access toggles, and although a lot of phones come with some sort of toggle widget as stick, this has been my favorite to use so far.

Circle Battery Widget: Not for everyone, but with my device's short, one day battery, I like to know on immediate glance what kind of shape my battery level is in. I need this reminder right in front of me to make sure I plug in when needed.

2. Get ROMs and forget about the App Store

After years of being spoilt by the App Store's super easy usability  the Play Store can be a bit daunting for game hunting. However, this is because your Android has a lot more capability than an iPhone, and it's not easy to show off here. Android phones can play ROMs, and all you need is a decent emulator.

John GBC: I loved my Gameboy as a child, so this is go to games console for me. John GBC is inexpensive, and opens up a huge back catalog of classic games. Once you're playing Pokemon or Mario on your phone, you will really start to feel the freedom that comes with Android.

Word to the wise: Downloading ROMs of games you haven't purchased is illegal. There, I've told you. Whatever you choose to do with that information is on you now. Having said that, if Nintendo hunts you down for a game that hasn't been on store shelves for over a decade, then well, the world has really gone to shit hasn't it.

3. Get an icon pack and customize your look

All you really want here is the MetroStation Icon Pack. It's free, and quite customizable, so it should be all you need to get into a bit of customization on your icons. You're no longer a subject to your phone's strict UI. You can have it looks however you want now. Icons may not seem like a big deal, but they are one of the simpler things to do in terms of customization, and it's something not at all possible on your iPhone. If you love it, and want more, you can try some of the following medium/advanced steps...

Medium/Advanced

Get a different launcher. The launcher is essentially the UI that you see when booting the phone, so launchers can give you the feeling of a completely different phone, with tonnes more customization options. I use Nova Launcher.

Root it, and do awesome stuff. There's a lot of option possible once you have root access, that I won't even start going into. With Android being so open source, there's a big developer community building custom ROMs, so there's lots of fun stuff to try.

Torrent files straight to your phone. Don't download copyright stuff though cos that's evil etc. Think about those poor musicians who can't afford private jets anymore.

Rooted and Booted

My phone has been rooted, and the first course of action was to install the LMT Launcher that gives the phone pie controls. I've wanted this for a while, so I'm super excited that it's up and running. Moving round my phone feels super fast now, and after playing with a few other gripes (turning of Tag Buddy in the Gallery, for example) everything feels much faster than the out of store product.

But damn it's annoying how much effort this requires! It's great that Android it so customizable, but we've got a long way to go before most of the general public can appreciate these advantages. PC users were never able to clasp this - apps like GeekTool are used by a select minority because of the painful time investment in creating aesthetic desktops. But with mobile, I hope that this problem can be solved.

On mobile, there shouldn't really be as many barriers. Custom ROMs aren't exactly required either - a lot is achieved with launchers. What we do need however is a collection of launchers that don't offer customization and flexibility, but instead force settings and icon choices on the phone. Most people will be happy with this, and it will encourage people to see a new personality in Android. You can choose your own case for your phone, and if you get Android you can choose your own style of OS too. And while I know little about the challenges that may be ahead of designing a launcher this way, I suspect it will be a well rewarded effort.

Having to install Kies and drivers so that the computer can see my phone. Tiresome...

whoops, my phone never showed up in Odin. Weird. Need to keep reading.

Preparing to root my Galaxy SIII for the first time - super nervous...