…well there you go
Tech Stuff
OK, so now I think podcasting is dead, sort of.
Sep 4th
Have you ever had one of those incidents where you look in the mirror one morning and suddenly realize that you’re a bit fat? I’ve had a few of those. It just sneaks up on you, it’s not something you notice on a day to day basis. In a similar way I’m beginning to think that something like that is happening to podcasting. I woke up one morning and realised it was fat.
You might have read my previous post about the idea of running a podcast forever, but I’m a lot more wound up by stuff than that.
To begin with I’d like to adress the issue of video shows. They’re very hard to do you know. In all my years of podcasting I’ve never attempted it because of the time and resources necessary to produce a weekly video show forever. Since it was decided to no longer live by this ongoing torment method of production we can start to look at the viability of video content again. For starters it’s a lot easier to make a series than it is to make a long running show. If we were to make six episodes of something we could put much more effort in to those six episodes. But now lets not stop there. We’re breaking the rules remember? How about we mix video and audio together. That’s right, I’m talking about having a show that has video and audio episodes. I know you’re just supposed to pick one format and go with it but hey, I don’t care.
Everything must be free forever. Sorry but I’m not really up for that. There are two ways you can make money in this business. You can sell advertising to businesses, or you can sell content to consumers. I really truly believe that people are happy to pay for content as long as they know they are getting value for money. That value can come in many forms. It could be the number of episodes of a show that you get for your pound. It could also be the effort that has gone in to creating something. Really what I’m saying is that as long as people aren’t having the piss taken out of them (Pirates 4) then you can sell content to happy people. I like happy people. Traditionally podcasts are all available forever. That doesn’t really work if you want to sell content. However it’s important to have your work out there so people can start to enjoy it. I’ve found that getting the balance between what’s free and what isn’t is very important. Take Movies You Should See as an example. On our RSS feed the last 25 episodes are always there, so the first time you listen you’ve already got just short of 25 hours of content available to you. On top of that you can subscribe to the feed and get every episode that comes out from that day on for free. What you don’t realise is that we’re really tempting you. We know that one day you’re going to want to listen to a new episode of the show and there won’t be one available. Then you’ll find your way into the store and buy a Year 1 box set, 44 episodes at £9.99 and be very happy with it. At least we’ve had no complaints so far.
So far then we’re eliminating long running shows, shows that are one of either audio or video, and committing to reasonably priced content with most of it being free. Not bad. All of this makes you realise something. The new media company of 2010 is nothing like the new media company of 2005. I feel like things are moving on and it’s time to move along with it. Let’s talk apps.
Without noticing it we’re suddenly living in a world of apps. I think it’s about time we had an iPhone/iPad/Android app. We’ve got all these great little mobile devices and no easy way to get Simply Syndicated content onto them when you’re out and about. That’s certainly something we could achieve with an app. Apps for the forum would be awesome too.
This is all still in idea form, but I think it’s time for a reboot of serious podcasting. That’s what I mean when I say podcasting is dead. It is to us, because it’s not enough any more. There will always be podcasting in some form or other, but I think the gap between professional and amateur is going to really open up.
Ideas For Shows
Aug 23rd
It’s been a few weeks since I announced that Simply Syndicated was moving to a series based method of production. It’s a little bit longer since the bollocks show came to an end. So what of these series? Exactly what am I working on at the moment? I’ll share it with you now, you see, subscription donations to our network have significantly dropped off. There are literally four or five people who donate to the network. It hasn’t always been like that, there used to be loads of you. It’s easy to blame lots of things in these situations, but I’m settling on lack of output. We aren’t as good value for money as we used to be.
For some reason I don’t understand, the summer is a really bad season for media production. Historically our downloads drop off through late May to late August and then start climbing again. It has been like that for five years. Even television isn’t immune. Why do you think they don’t start big new shows in the summer? A couple of years ago American television experienced it’s lowest rated day in television history, in July.
So without further a do it’s time to tell you about what could be known as our autumn line up.
The following shows are things I’m personally working on and is by no means a complete list.
1. Daily show (liking the title What’s All This Then, but hesitate to do another show with a question for a title)
That’s “a” daily show. Nothing to do with The Daily Show. This will be a daily (duh) podcast comprised mainly of audio, but not exclusively. Broadcast live, I intend to keep the show to the 30-45 minute mark. The show will be “safe for work” and feature a mix of news, music, talk, chat, interviews, comedy stuff and whatever else I feel like.
2. TechSupportRich
The podcast that goes with the blog, kind of. techsupportrich.com has become my own personal space on the net rather than a tech blog. It just so happens that I write about tech stuff. The podcast will be exclusively tech related. The show will be a mix of audio and video, and feature different types of episodes throughout the week. There will be an audio version of any longer blog posts that I do, which will be broken down into product reviews and personal opinion. There will be a weekly tech news roundup, quite short, probably on Fridays. There will also be a screencast portion of the show featuring tutorials and different software. The videos will probably be available on YouTube and for download from our store in HD. Finally an actual tech support show. This will be once a week at the most depending on the response. If you’ve got a tech question then ask me. When I’ve got enough to do a show, I’ll do a show.
Phew.
3. Modelling With Rich (working title, not to be confused with Modelling For Rich, that’s a different thing all together)
Want to know how to build models? Thought so. Now you can learn along with me in my video show about models. I’ll be building them and showing you how to do it. I’ll also be reviewing things and maybe taking the camera to a few model shows. I’ll even talk to some train builders. Need a better camera for that. (http://www.musicalmousemat.com – great entertainment at great prices)
So there’s just a little taster. I’ll announce more as it happens. There are other things in production. Mike is working on a new series of Albums You Should Hear and I hear that Mr Tristram has a few ideas circling around.
My Adventures In Rooting My Android Phone: Part 4
Aug 16th
Don’t network operators just really mess things up all the time? If it wasn’t for them, your phone would be exactly as the manufacturer intended it to be. So far we’ve seen very few companies get away with forcing carriers to sell their phones without the obligatory bloatware that they like to put on there. Those companies are Apple and Google.
Google made a half hearted attempt at it with the Nexus One. Basically an HTC Desire with slightly different buttons, the Nexus One promised to give users the full “Google Experience” which it turned out, a lot of people wanted. They promised that as soon as they released OS updates, they would be made available for the Nexus. They were mostly telling the truth. If you bought an unlocked, open, from Google, Nexus One then that’s what you got. However if you bought it from Vodafone, you still got all the bother of waiting for them to release updates.
The same is true for most phones. If you buy them sim free and unlocked, then you’ll probably get software updates as soon as they’re released. Buy from a carrier and you’ll wait for the O2 screen saver to be added to it.
Without a doubt Apple are the best at doing this. It’s fair to say that they can be the way they are with carriers because it’s the iPhone and presently the hottest phone around, still. With their touch devices they announce a time and date for the updates to be available and we all get it on that day. No matter which country or carrier.
The network operators don’t give themselves an easy ride either. Perhaps we’d understand a bit more if they did things to our phones that actually make them better in some way. Instead they want to just put their branding all over the device in the hope that I’m such an O2 fanboy I’ll just need to tell everyone that I’m using them. Recently Vodafone’s Nexus One owners have revolted against their recent Froyo update that came with lots of Vodafone’s own pointless software.
The reason I’m saying all this today is that O2, the network I use, have announced that their Froyo update for the HTC Desire will take at least another six to eight weeks to be available. Being that there’s an O2 HTC Desire sat on the desk in front of me I can tell you precisely what O2 did to it before they let me have it. First of all, when I turn the phone on there’s an image of the O2 logo. Second, there’s an O2 wallpaper in the wallpaper menu. Third…well there is no third. HTC released their official update for the Desire about two weeks ago, that’s when O2 got their hands on it (probably). Are they seriously saying that it’s going to take them ten weeks to add a launch screen and a wallpaper? It certainly does to me. It doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence does it? I mean, I reckon I could learn how to add those things to a ROM and make it in less time than that.
So where does all this end? I’d love to see a marketing report from one of the operators that explains exactly what they gain by having a wallpaper added to a phone. Do they think that I’ll use the O2 wallpaper, other people will see it and then go buy an O2 phone? Clearly they aren’t going to stop it any time soon. As it goes they’re all making enough money so they’ve not really got an incentive to change.
To give a better answer, this ends with rooting your phone. I’ve been using Froyo for weeks so I’m not really bothered when O2 release their version of it. There’s really no reason to stick with the official versions of things any more. Phones are becoming more like PCs in a lot of ways. Not just in the functionality provided by the availability of apps, but in the way that you can choose what OS your PC runs. Windows? Linux? OS X? You’ve got a choice and really you have that same choice with your phone, it’s just that the networks don’t want you to know that.
Now I like Evernote, but I also like Springpad. I wonder which is best.
Aug 11th
Time for the battle of the online note management thingys. I’m sure the people who run these services have a proper name for them but I don’t know what it is. Anyway, I’m talking about one very useful area of cloud services, notes.
For years we’ve had note taking applications. The trouble with them is that they tended to live on one device. I can use Stickies on the Mac, but they’re only on the Mac. I have a Notes app on my iPod but they only live there too. Sometimes I’m using my Windows laptop which has a completely different system again, or I’m using my Android phone which obviously isn’t compatible with any of the other devices I’ve mentioned. If only there was a way I could use any of these devices to access a store of notes that live online and sync automatically to any device running the right software. Well, worry no more. We have Evernote and Springpad.
Both of these services work around the same idea. You have an online account that you use to store, edit and view notes. Those notes could be text, photos, audio recordings or a collection of all three. Notes can also contain geographical data so I can record where I was when I made a note. As good as that is, it’s not the best part. I can access these notes anywhere from any device.
Both services offer iOS and Android apps that work fantastically. Evernote also offers apps for Blackberry, Palm Pre and Windows Mobile. Take a photo and you have a button that lets you upload it to Evernote. Scan a barcode and Springpad will find the product and make a note of it. Evernote even offers desktop clients for OS X and Windows, which allows you to sync notes between your desktop and laptop as well as your phone. At the moment Springpad doesn’t offer a desktop client, it just has a web interface which isn’t bad, but so does Evernote.
Where Springpad sets itself apart from Evernote is the way in which you can organise your notes. Instead of just having a long list of notes, Springpad lets you create check lists, to do lists, products, bookmarks and more. They even have their own little app store that lets you find new services to plugin. Of course both services are basically doing the same thing.
Evernote offer a free service which will suit most users, but they also offer a premium service. This is defined by the amount of data they allow you to upload each month. The extra service costs $5 per month or $45 per year and ups the data allowance from 40mb to 500mb. There are some other bells and whistles too so I encourage you to check out http://www.evernote.com.
So far there’s very little in it for me between these two services. Unless there are any major changes I can see myself using both of them for different tasks. You can find Evernote at www.evernote.com and Springpad at www.springpadit.com.
craigbevanmusic.com
Aug 2nd
Here’s a look at Craig’s new music video, shot by Tristan. Remember Tristan? Anyway, here’s the video. You’ll want to take a look at http://www.craigbevanmusic.com to buy the album, it’s brilliant.
The XBox 360 S
Jul 30th
I have been the proud owner of an Xbox 360 since about a year after their initial launch. I waited for the first price drop and managed to get the premium bundle with a couple of games for £309. If I remember correctly, that was something like a £100 drop in price. I felt good about it at the time, and to be honest, I didn’t really regret it as I saw the price fall lower and lower over the next four years. Besides most consoles have only been around for five years or so before they get replaced by the new model. What’s the point in waiting four years for something to become cheap only for it to also become obsolete a year later.
However Microsoft and Sony have both said that they expect the current console line up to be good for ten years. That leaves us with another four or five years to go. Suddenly my four year old machine is starting to look a little long in the tooth. It also has a couple of other points against it. When you put a disc in, you are not guaranteed that the Xbox will actually read it. And lets not forget the noise. At an air show many years ago I got the chance to be about as close as it’s safe to get to Concorde when it was warming up the engines for take off. That was loud, but nothing compared to the Xbox 360. More >
My Adventures In Rooting My Android Phone: Part 3
Jul 26th
To Sense or not to Sense, that is something you’ve really got to think about. I’ll go over things briefly so new people can catch up. Android has a user interface, obviously. The problem with it is (or can be) that it’s a bit like an interface designed by Google. Very functional and not much else, although in all honesty Android is the nicest UI on any Google product. However some phone makers like to put their own stamp on their devices and alter the stock Android UI. Motorola have one called Motoblur and HTC have one called Sense. Sony have one too but I don’t know what it’s called.
The first time I heard that phone makers could do this I expected to see a whole range of absolutely useless UIs, however it didn’t work out like that. Motoblur is actually quite good from what I hear, and Sony’s offering isn’t too bad either. But it is HTC Sense UI that seems to be by far the most popular.
Of all the ROMs I have tried so far, none of them had Sense, instead opting for the stock Android fare. Like I say, it isn’t too bad, just functional. That’s all well and good but there’s a whole world of ROMs that are based around the Sense UI that offer features that you just don’t get anywhere else.
Don’t get me wrong, Sense isn’t perfect. There are a few problems. First of all if you don’t like bloatware (that’s pre-installed software that you wouldn’t ever consider installing yourself) then you’re going to be upset, Sense is absolutely loaded with it. To be fair HTC seem to have done this with the most honorable intentions. The HTC interface is there to help people who might not be as tech savvy as the rest of us. For somebody with relatively little technical knowledge, everything is there already. Twitter, Facebook and Flickr integration is damn near perfect in the current 2.1 version. A new user doesn’t have to worry about finding a Twitter app or suffer the hell that is the Android Facebook app, it’s all there when your phone starts up for the first time. Unfortunately HTC assumes we do other things besides social networking and insists on giving us apps to handle it. They assume, like Apple does, that we all have a stock portfolio that we need to constantly monitor. At least with the iPhone you can put the Stocks app in a folder and forget about it. The HTC Stocks app runs constantly whether you use it or not, and you can’t get rid of it.
The as yet unreleased 2.2 version adds to the bloatware with Plurk integration. That’s right, Plurk! I know you were sat there wishing for just such an app and now you have it. Luckily these custom ROMs tend to do away with this sort of thing. Put it this way, if the one you’ve got doesn’t dump the bloat then find one that does. There are plenty of good ones.
At the moment I’m trying Pays-ROM which you can download here. So far it looks like it has all the best features of the new Sense UI with none of the Stocks or Plurk apps. There’s the 720p video recording, the stock Android Contacts app which I prefer to the Sense equivalent. It has HTCs Flashlight app that uses the camera flash, and the HTC Wi-Fi hotspot app that turns your phone into a Mi-Fi like device.
With the addition of Launcher Pro this seems to be a brilliant set up. I hope I can stay with it for at least a few weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes.
My Adventures In Rooting My Android Phone: Part 2
Jul 20th
I’m now a couple of days in to this phone hacking stuff, and I have to point out that I still have no regrets about doing it. My original aim was to end up using the leaked version of the HTC Sense software but things haven’t worked out like that.
It was just before Craig’s album launch party on Sunday night. I was getting ready to have a go at streaming the gig via my phone. In early testing I just couldn’t get it to work. Any video I managed to stream over the internet was very choppy and came without audio. A quick run of the SpeedTest app showed me that I was getting 1.8MB down and 0.01MB up. Clearly that isn’t right as I was on my home Wi-Fi, and I know just how wrong it was because previous speed tests had produced 6.6MB down and 1.2MB up.
After a bit of searching online I discovered that there was a problem with the way I had partitioned my memory card. You need to partition your memory card so that the phone can install apps to a section of the card. That isn’t a feature of Froyo, it’s a feature of ROMs, one which saves you a lot of trouble as with Android you have only been able to install apps to the phone’s internal memory. Unfortunately for me, it is also possible to partition some of your memory card to act as RAM for the phone. In older phones it speeds things up and lets you run apps that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to. In the Desire however, it just causes problems. That meant re-partitioning the card and that means losing everything that’s on it. More >
My Adventures In Rooting My Android Phone: Part 1
Jul 17th
I was trying to come up with some sort of vast, dramatic story about what I’ve done and why. But I get the feeling that all you’d really like to know is the answer to two questions. What is rooting your phone? and What do you get out of it? Well, I’ll try to tell you.
When we’re in the world of computers, having “root access” is all about having access to everything. You’re more likely than not the Administrator of your home computer, and that lets you do anything you like. Installing and uninstalling apps, formatting discs, changing system setting and stuff like that. By contrast, you probably aren’t the Administrator of your computer at work. You’ll just be a simple user that can only use the apps that the IT department see fit to give you. It’s all a matter of security.
Because of the great opportunity to really mess things up, you don’t have Administrator or Root access to your phone. Besides, it simply isn’t nessesary for most people to do what they want to with their phone. Root access is generally what you need when you want to do something with your phone that either your service provider or handset maker don’t want you to do. I suppose the most talked about case of this is people hacking their iPhone so they could install apps in the days before the app store, or unlocking the phone to work on any network.
Android phones don’t have quite the same restrictions, but the principle is the same. I had to gain root access to my phone so that I could do things with it that O2 and HTC don’t really want me doing.
So what are these things? Good question. After all I can already install any app I like and I moved to O2 to get this phone so I certainly don’t need to unlock the network. Not even iPhone users are suffering the same restriction that once caused the great unlocking community. Well, I want to install different ROMs on my phone.
What’s a ROM? Think of it basically as the operating system of your phone. That’s not entirely what it is, but that’s all the explanation you really need. Rather than hacking the current operating system, I’m hacking the phone and replacing the operating system with something completely different.
There are a couple of reasons for doing that. First of all the Android development goes very quickly and you can find yourself stuck with a handset running old software. Sometimes phones get updated by the handset maker, but more often than not they get updated by your network, and they tend to take an age over it. In my case my HTC Desire is running Android 2.1, the latest version of the OS is 2.2. HTC say they’ll be releasing an update sometime before the end of September, probably. Even after they do I’ll have to wait for O2 to load it up with their wallpapers and other crap before I can update my phone. You might be suffering even more if you’ve got a slightly older phone that’s running 1.6. With a rooted phone you can load any OS you want, including versions of the very latest.
Not only can you get the latest versions of the OS, you can choose which ROM you go for. For example HTC have their own UI that they put on top of Android with their own apps and widgets. It’s actually not bad, but it might not be for everyone. If you don’t like it you can download a ROM that doesn’t use the Sense UI. Maybe you’d like an OS that’s stripped of everything except the most basic software, you can do that too. The possibilities are endless.
The majority of ROMs are free (which is to say I haven’t found one asking for money yet) and gaining root access to the phone is as easy as could be. I used an app called Unrovoke 3. All I had to do was download the version for my phone, set it running on my Mac (there are also PC and Linux versions) and connect my phone to the computer. Thirty seconds later my phone was rooted and ready to accept new ROMs. A quick search on the Market found ROM Manager, another free app, which lets you download new ROMs and switch between them when you feel like it.
After playing around with a few different ROMs I have eventually settled on what seems to be a leaked version of the HTC Sense ROM that will be out officially for my phone some time in the future. Something which has given me the ability to have seemingly endless storage for apps, HD Video recording, Wi-Fi Hotspot functionality and a much snappier experience when generally using my phone.
All in all it seems to have been worth it so far, but this is day 1 and I’m still reinstalling apps. There’s plenty of time for something to go wrong. One very important piece of information you need to know before you try this is that you will absolutely 100% invalidate the warranty of your phone. Make no mistake about it, if you brick your phone it’s your problem. Do this and you lose the ability to ever complain to your network about a handset problem. That said, I haven’t broken mine…yet.
What would be the best bitrate?
Jul 15th
If you read my last post you’ll have realised that I’m on the lookout for new things to go in our store. Whilst thinking about it I realised that there are loads of great episodes of shows that aren’t available on our rss feeds any more. They would go great in the store and people would get the chance to hear some quality content that is otherwise unavailable.
As always, Your with the conent we sell, I like to make it at a higher quality than it was when we offered it for free. Traditionally that means raising the bit rate of the mp3 file that you download. The first two years of Movies You Should See was sold at a bitrate of 328kbps, which was far too high. Then year there came out at a bit rate of 256kbps, which I think is still too high, but it’s the same as a music track that you’d get from iTunes.
It’s important to remember that all our content is spoken word rather than music so it doesn’t need to be as high a bit rate. Because of this we’ve been selling SHaFT at 128kbps. In the six months we’ve been selling it has never been a single complaint about the quality of the audio.
When I put lots of new content in the store over the next few days I intend to have it at the same rate of compression as SHaFT, as I think it provides a compromise between sounds quality and file size that offers good value for money.
I’d love to know what you all think about this issue. Is the compression rate of SHaFT acceptable? Do you even care? It might just be me that gets obsessed about this sort of thing.
