It’s a new year but before leaving 2022 behind here’s some of my favourite’s from the last 12 months, one dominated by some cracking TV shows. So in no particular order…
The Rest is Politics A new for 2022 podcast from Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell has fast become my favourite pod. Good rapport between the odd couple and a variety of topics from around the political world and some cracking guests. Admittedly helped by the UK having increasingly bat shit crazy politicians.
Industry Stepped up a level in season 2 – great soundtrack, loads of backstabbing and a move into politics alongside the financial industry.
Everything Everywhere All At Once My favourite movie from last year. Clever, funny and far more inventive than any of the multiverse offerings from the big studio’s. Hope it gets the recognition it deserves at the award shows.
Glass Onion Only just out, but I really enjoyed the follow-up to Knives Out. Could be watched stand alone too.
Knotwords Zack Gage can do no wrong. Fill in a crossword puzzle without clues, only letters. Simple and another daily habit game.
We Own This City Can still hardly believe this was based on a true story. Another classic from David Simon – Jon Bernthal also owned every scene he was in.
The Responder I’m not a massive fan of Martin Freeman, but he was immense in this show based in Liverpool. Small cast but really delivered over a few episodes.
Bad Sisters Binged this in a couple of days and loved it. Sharon Horgan really can do no wrong and this is a great black comedy. Shout out to Claes Bang who was an excellent prick throughout.
Peacemaker A gem of a show, a bit like The Boys in that it’s adult superhero show…and it’s funny. The titles alone are worth a watch but my favourite parts were the banter between the various characters.
Derry Girls Stuck the landing – a superb comedy that finished on a high.
For All Mankind Still loving this – season three was pretty ambitious and they pulled it off.
Apple Watch Ultra Thanks to my fat wrists, this doesn’t look huge on me. Love the flat and slightly larger screen, bigger battery life and the overall look of the watch. Do I do any of the extreme sports that Apple market the Ultra around? No. But it’s the best version of the Apple Watch so far and that’s good enough for me – and I like the orange pop.
Karen Pirie One of the better ITV drama’s of recent years – great story based on a Val McDermid book, but it was the performance of Lauren Lyle that kept me interested. Deserves a second series.
Black Adam Lots of people said this was a dud but I’m here to tell you…they were right. What a waste of time and money this was. I would say it was a waste of talent too, but there was little of that on screen apart from Pierce Brosnan – the rest were all very forgettable.
The Boys Superhero satire at it’s best – a real refresher in amongst the Marvel shows.
Playdate It’s by no means perfect – the screen needs the ideal light to be playable, but what’s not to love about a small handheld device that’s yellow and has a crank. First season of games very hit and miss, but a couple have been nice to play through.
Severance I slept on this until last week – I’d dismissed it as some work place dystopian sci-fi but it’s so much more. Really asks “Who are you?” but the tension that builds throughout the series is so well done and the twists and characters threads that unfold are so good. Could have done with some more answers in the final episode but thats being picky.
This Is Going to Hurt Funny, raw, emotional – you’ll come for Ben Wishaw’s performance but it’s Ambika Mod as Shruti that will live long in the memory.
Plex Meta Manager I love Plex and have used it for years to manage my home media library. PMM takes it one step further, making your playlists far more dynamic. Great community behind it – it’s geeky and can be a bit tricky to setup but it makes my media library feel alive. Need to blog about this and my Plex setup someday.
Wordle Blew up in late 2021 but I’ve kept playing it through 2022 alongside some friends. It’s a nice start to the day, gets the brain engaged and what other games have so quickly spawned companion versions – Heardle, Framed, GuessTheGame. Ended the year with a 3.8 average.
The Bear Set in a sandwich shop in Chicago, this is stressful but funny and a must-see. Great cast, you root for the characters, flaws and all. Cousin!
The Capture Second series was a real step up on the first – a good take on where deep fakes could take us.
Andor I put off watching this as it was a prequel to a prequel – do we need this? What an idiot – it was fantastic and by far the best Star Wars TV series so far. Darker and deeper than other Star Wars titles. A nice follow-up is this episode of Soundtracking where Edith Bowman talks to Andor show creator Tony Gilroy.
Steam Deck Pre-ordered when it was announced and sold it to a friend within days of getting it. When would I use it? What would I game on it? A few months later I bought his Steam Deck pre-order and never looked back. Great for the smaller indie titles on Steam alongside playing AAA’s wherever I am, but I also use Emudeck on it and have a library of classic games that only take a few seconds to launch. I love this handheld and while a higher res screen would have been nice, the compromise in battery life wouldn’t have been.
Top Gun Maverick Better than it deserved to be – watched it 3 or 4 times this year and enjoyed it all the more.
The Batman Gritty 70’s detective movie featuring Batman – what’s not to like?
The English Fresh take on a western, Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer are fantastic.
Slow Horses Another show I slept on and binged it over 48 hours. Great cast, good plot and there’s a second series already broadcast and a third filmed.
Vampire Survivors I blasted this on the Steam Deck – saw a headline the other day that said the thing holding back the Steam Deck was the lack of exclusives. Clickbait headline, but everyone who has a Steam Deck should play Vampire Survivors. Simple (even basic) graphics , but its gameplay is so moreish that it’s hard to put down.
I recently wrote about being 10 years on a Mac. It’s been a remarkably stable time with access to a lot of great software and hardware. However there’s no getting away from it – Apple have been stagnating when it comes to Mac’s.
Going back 10 years and there was a marked difference between buying a Mac and buying a PC. Apple owned the software and hardware process and there were very few product lines compared to the hundreds of PC’s available and the crapware that afflicted every PC from Dell to HP, Dan to Acer. They all did it and it stunk. No virus or malware issues either. And for me the difference in how the hardware was designed was massive.
PC or Mac from 2006. Which would you have rather had?
This was also the time of the Mac vs PC adverts that went on for a few years. How times have changed.
This week saw Microsoft and Apple launch new desktop and laptop products. The difference between then couldn’t be more stark and shows that Microsoft have got their mojo back…and Apple are looking a little lost.
The problem for Apple is iOS. It’s a great problem to have, but Mac and iOS are two very different platforms that share quite a bit in common. iOS is the rising platform, dominant in sales and very much the future of computing. Mac is much loved amongst the Apple community but sales in the desktop and laptop market are going down. Global PC sales have declined for eight consecutive quarters. End users aren’t upgrading their PC’s as often – my desktop and laptop are over 5 and 4 years old respectively and still going strong.
However iOS is Apple’s touch driven environment and Mac’s have been left behind in that regards. Is it the right approach? Well Microsoft don’t think so and having messed up so much in the past on mobile they’ve bet on having a unified operating system. So Windows 10 works anywhere, mouse or touch driven, so you can take advantage of your hardware depending on the situation you are in. They are also hitting their stride when it comes to hardware. A few years ago the Surface Pro was a nice device but version 4 is great and with the Surface Book and now the Surface Studio there’s a real wow around Microsoft’s hardware from a design perspective.
Microsofts Surface Studio
Microsoft are courting creatives. IBM have rolled out Macs across the enterprise. Microsofts new devices are not cheap unlike Windows products of the past. Good design costs money and the small creative market are willing to pay to get the best devices. Software is not really locked to platforms. Adobe allow you to work on Mac or PC and the experience on both is pretty much identical. The Mac App Store hasn’t done the Mac platform any favours. Equally the emerging VR market is a Windows exclusive right now. Apple hardware isn’t powerful enough to drive any of the VR platforms and they’ve yet to show their hand when it comes to AR or VR apart from Tim Cook verbally favouring AR.
Whats frustrating for me is that Apple look to be slowing down. Stagnating. The Mac market is getting smaller so is the ideal market to innovate in. In contrast last weeks announcements were pretty snooze worthy. Pricey laptops, confusing naming strategy coupled with a lovely new Touch Bar. The laptops aren’t using the latest chips and the RAM looks stingy. Add to that a greater than three years old Mac Pro, and ageing iMac and Mini. What’s going on?
Worse for us in the UK is that all Mac prices rose last week thanks to Brexit. While I can understand the rise for the new MacBook Pro’s and the iMac’s, it’s a disgrace that the ancient Mac pro rose by £500. Poor decision Apple or don’t you care? Seeing as the Mac Pro website still references Aperture, a product that Apple killed over 12 months ago, I’m thinking they don’t care.
Or has Apple got too big? The video above from Steve Jobs is prophetic and could describe todays Apple. This years iPhone is undoubtedly a great phone but it’s safe. Compare it to the Xiaomi Mi Mix which is a gorgeous new Android device and shows some true innovation with regards design and materials.
Xiaomi Mi Mix – stunning new Android phone
Apple for me right now feels conservative. Undoubtedly making bundles of cash but hedging bets and not as exciting as they once were. However the likes of Microsoft, Google and Samsung have some great products out there. As a tech lover I’m spoiled for choice. Earlier in the week a colleague said they were worried at Apples approach. I’m personally not worried as it’s easy to move platform so I’ll always have access to the best hardware and software…but that should give cause for concern for Apple. Over time if people start to move away, especially developers and creatives, then it could be the start of a slow decline. Hopefully Apple will prove me wrong in 2017. They need to find their mojo again.
As happens every so often with the blog I’ve been quiet for a while. Busy at work, busy with other things but also 4 or 5 posts in draft that I will never finish and are stopping me from publishing more. So it’s time for some quick updates and a mass deletion of drafts.
I picked up an iPhone 6 and have been enjoying it so far. It is bigger but not as ridiculous as the iPhone 6+. The sculpted edges that meld with the glass are a constant joy, the plastic bits on the back to allow signals through not so much. I’m enjoying the extra battery life, the screen is gorgeous and the camera as always has improved nicely. The power button moving to the side rather than the top is more troublesome than I thought. Muscle memory always takes me to the top to switch it off but I also can’t change the volume without hitting the power button. So fecking annoying. A great phone overall.
iOS8 is a bit of a clusterfuck. Buggiest iOS release so far including the 8.0.1 release that removed cellular from the iPhone 6 and had to be pulled. Took a couple of days for Apple to fix but a very poor start. I had loads of wifi problems with the iPad that were finally fixed with the 8.1.1 release. HealthKit still looks to be flaky, HomeKit has delivered virtually nothing and there are still many app’s that haven’t been updated for the iPhone 6 or 6+ new screen resolutions. Only plus point is the many updated app’s now supporting widgets, extensions and touch ID. Lovely. Seen some significant changes to app’s I use daily and maybe 2015 will see some HomeKit movement…and maybe a return to AirPlay working smoothly?
Yosemite brought a new look and feel to the Mac alongside some nice integration with iOS devices. I went for a clean start on the iMac which thanks to Dropbox was far smoother than expected. I’ve only installed app’s I need and it has been quick and smooth in day to day operation. Annoying the iMac doesn’t support much of the handoff features but the Macbook Air does and has been quite handy. Best new feature is receiving calls and texts on any device. Really easy and convenient…but is it not beyond the wit of man (ok, Apple) that they couldn’t know which device I’m on and only ring/text that one? One change I have made is the switch to Safari and the dropping of Chrome. Better battery life on the laptop and I love the new favourites view in Safari across all my devices.
Plex on the Xbox One was a nice surprise and is now client of choice for my Plex library. Before the year ends I want to complete ripping all DVD’s and pack them off to the attic like I did with my cd’s a few years back. This also means I’m in the market for some external storage. No USB3 on any of my devices and firewire no longer on any new devices I may purchase pushes me to NAS or Thunderbolt. Been burnt with NAS before so edging towards a Thunderbolt drive possibly from OWC. Decisions, decisions.
Next year (early March) will see me switching from the Honda Civic to an Audi A3. Tested an A3 and a Mini and while both were nice the A3 was that little bit more comfortable to drive.
One of the teams I was working with this year saw some success in the company awards scheme, so much so I was in London at the start of November for an awards ceremony and at the start of December I’ve a few days in Washington DC for another awards ceremony. This will be my third trip to the USA and my first to Washington and while short I’m looking forward to making the most of it.
Haven’t been the healthiest of late which I’m putting down to work. Letting things get to me, not taking breaks like I should have seen a couple of issues snowball together. I stop for the Christmas break on December 16th and I’m looking forward to switching off. Time to think about what I’m doing and what changes I must make.
Final rant – why are so many game releases broken on day one. Paying £45-£55 for a game is bad enough but multi gigabyte day one patches and constant online issues sometimes weeks after launch are unacceptable. DriveClub and Halo Master Chief Collection – guilty as charged.
Splurge over, hopefully a more regular service will now resume.
As I read this from Christopher Mims I kept thinking that somehow he has lost out on an exclusive over the last 12 months. Or someone stole his toys. To say:
All in, 2013 was an embarrassment for the entire tech industry and the engine that powers it—Silicon Valley.
is just crazy talk. Read John Gruber’s or Om Malik’s response for a more balanced view of what the last 12 months has meant.
2013 was a lost year for tech journalism would be far more accurate.
The last couple of weeks have seen some interesting adverts being released by three big tech companies.
Nokia – what were you thinking? So your tablet works for both work and home life and you think a mullet is an effective way of highlighting this? Reminds me of the weird ad’s that Sony used for the PS3. The only play seems to be let’s do something different to let people know we are still around. Worst tech advert of the year? No.
What the fuck? Buy a Galaxy Gear and you too can be a stalker? Were the actors paid to be deliberately wooden? I know Samsung spend a lot on adverts, but where is the quality control?
Finally, Apple.
Cheesy video but sets the right tone for Christmas. After watching these three ad’s which product would you rather own?
So tomorrow Google will shut down Google Reader. I’m sure for many this is a non event but for me it’s been an essential tool for years that I will really miss. However this isn’t the end for RSS feeds as has been reported. Instead there’s been a surge in new services and app’s taking advantage of Google leaving the market.
Farewell Google Reader
Before looking at alternatives the first thing to do is back up your subscriptions via Google Takeout. With that step complete you can then try out the many alternatives that have sprung up oner the last few months. Here’s my thoughts on the few I’ve tried over the last few weeks.
Feed Wrangler Feed Wrangler takes a different approach than the many other Google Reader clones. Feed Wrangler is a website where you can import and view your feeds and the developer has also released app’s for iOS and also an API so that app’s like ReadKit and Mr Reader can be used to sync your feeds. Once your feeds have imported you will notice that there are is no folder or tag support. Your reach your articles by visiting Unread, All Feeds or Starred. I found this quite disorientating as I’m used to browsing the many feeds I subscribe to via folders/tags.
Feed Wrangler Smart Streams
Feed Wrangler’s most powerful feature is Smart Streams and that did allow me to create a folder structure that I’m used to. Create a new Smart Stream and once it is named you can select from all feeds or a select few to display in a Stream. The trick with Streams is that a search term can also be applied, so you could have a stream based on all your feeds that pulls out posts on Glastonbury or E3. While only search terms are supported right now, it would be great to see date ranges or authors supported so you can pull out articles easily from the past – Olympics from August 2012 for example. It’s also easy to add a Stream that pulls out your essential reads – those feeds that you don’t want to miss but when you’ve had a busy few days and faced with 2000 articles to read you want to quickly read those important ones only. Smart Streams is great for that.
News article within Feed Wrangler
Feed Wranglers presentation of articles is nice and clean. The UI doesn’t get in the way and the articles are presented well. Speed on the web app is good enough and there is similar keyboard shortcuts for Google Reader refugee’s. The iOS app’s are fairly basic right now but do enough although I’ve been mainly using other clients with Feed Wrangler so I don’t think this is reason alone to move to Feed Wrangler. Pocket, Pinboard and Instapaper are also supported as Read Later services.
Feed Wrangler costs $19 a year bought from the website or as an in-app iOS purchase.
Feedbin Feedbin provides an almost straightforward clone of Google Reader. It’s a paid service ($2 a month or $19 a year) and once your feeds have imported you will be immediately familiar with the web app and it’s layout.
Feedbin Layout
It supports keyboard shortcuts so you can easily navigate through folders and feeds. You can view articles in a couple of different ways but out of all the new services I tried I found Feedbin’s rendering of articles the worst by quite a margin.
Sharing is very flexible as you can set up sharing to the service of your choice via URL’s. While this allows for great flexibility (and there’s a good list of URL’s on Github) in many cases it is no better than bookmarklets so it feels less integrated.
With Feedbin’s API in place app’s like Mr Reader and Readkit give you a far better reading experience than the web app but I found the overall performance of Feedbin slow compared to other services.
Feedly Feedly has been around for a while and was always an alternative to Google Reader but only if you wanted to use Feedly’s website or mobile applications. It also chased the magazine market in presenting feeds in a far more visual manner like Flipboard than what users in Google Reader are used to. However with the demise of Google reader they stepped up their offerings, focussing on features that Google Reader users will really appreciate and also providing a sync service for other applications to rely on.
Article view in Feedly
Getting your feeds into Feedly is really easy. Sign in with your Google credentials and feeds are sucked into Feedly as well as your Reader Favourites. Folders are respected so you will instantly feel at home in the web application. Keyboard shortcuts are mostly the same as in Reader but a few are different and annoyingly so.
In the web app there are a variety of views for your feeds and nicely they can be set differently for each folder. The views are Magazine, Cards (like Pinboard), Full and finally ‘Title Only View (Google Reader)’. Yes, thats what it’s called just in case you are in any doubt on the inspiration for that view. Presentation of articles is nice and clean and there is some minor customisation options allowing you to change link colours and overall theme colour.
Feedly does show adverts on it’s home page called Today but I’ve found the display of content on that page hit and miss however you can change your default page so you never need to see Today.
Feedly’s maturity as a service is best seen when it comes to adding and managing feeds as it’s all done via drag and drop and works really well – far better than any of the other new services.
The Feedly app’s on iOS are OK. They work well enough but I just don’t like the styling of the app’s. They’ve went their own route when it comes to displaying of feeds within a folder and it just feels wrong. The overall app isn’t smooth either. However with the addition of Feedly API there are now many alternatives for viewing Feedly on iOS or Android including Press, Reeder and Mr Reader.
The advantage Feedly has is size and hence scope. It supports almost all of the large sharing services, has great flexibility via IFTTT support and has developed tremendously over the last three or four months. It’s a free service and for many has become the easy alternative to Google reader.
Newsblur Newsblur like Feed Wrangler is trying to offer more than a traditional RSS reader normally would. It’s been around for over two years now and while initial versions were slow and the design wasn’t the best, the developer of the service has really stepped on the accelerator over the last few months to support the influx of users from Google Reader.
Newsblur Web App
Importing from Google was easy and it supports folders so already familiar to Google Reader users. Keyboard shortcuts feel familiar and the web app has lots of shortcuts to mark content as read and also easily see how many articles are unread etc. Newsblur really offers a lot more than other RSS readers. On importing from Google Reader feeds that are no longer available or cannot be reached currently are marked with a yellow exclamation mark, with Newsblur offering options for dealing with the problem.
Newsblur presents options to fix unreachable feeds
I found articles were presented really well in Newsblur and also it works really quickly. Content is prefetched so I found articles were displayed quickly and accurately when moving through my feed list.
Article edits can be displayed in Newsblur
One feature not seen elsewhere is that article edits can be displayed to allow you to see how a site edits articles over time. Techcrunch has an amazing amount of edits for example – getting content out first still seems to count the most for some of these sites. Against each feed Newsblur can show a number of stats – tag counts, post frequency, subscribers etc. Not entirely necessary but nice to see.
Feed stats
You can also configure how each feed should be presented, so you could view a site in it’s original view if it’s been nicely designed and for those that are less visually appealing you can view just the story only in a simple text view. You can tweak fonts and font sizes and also configure Newsblur to open sites in new tabs. There’s also great support for sharing services with all the favourites nicely integrated and Newsblur also has it’s own social sharing service – Blurblogs.
Signing up to Newsblur will give you a site on the web that you can share stories to. People can comment on your shared stories and share on from that site. You can also follow other Newsblur users and follow their shares and you can see all your own activity in an activity list in Newsblur.
Train feeds to focus on only certain content
Newsblur differentiates from other services again by offering Intelligence Training. This feature allows you to select an author, tag or word from an article or feed and give it a thumbs up or down. Once this is done any article that matches a thumbs down will be hidden from view. You can still toggle the feed to view the hidden content but it’s another great way of weeding out good content from bad, especially for noisy sites like Techcrunch, Engadget or The Verge.
Newsblur subscribers can make use of iPhone and iPad apps which support all the features of the web app. There’s also an Android app too. The only feature I missed was offline syncing but that is coming in a future release. About the only other feature I can see that is missing is search but it took Google Reader a while to add that so that’s something I can pass on.
One final point is that Readkit on the Mac now supports syncing with Newsblur. Currently it doesn’t support training or much of the focus mode features but that is promised in future updates.
Newsblur is free for up to 64 feeds and is $24 for a year for unlimited feeds. I think it’s a great service and well worth consideration.
Digg Reader Digg Reader is probably the newest RSS service and in many ways it shows. Launched just a few days ago you pull in your Google Reader feeds by logging in with your Google credentials. It took a while to import and display properly but I’m putting that down to the service being hammered as Digg is still a big name and there’s not long now until Google shutter Reader.
Digg supports folders and so the presentation is very similar to Google Reader. Although articles are displayed cleanly I found it difficult to see what was new, what was unread etc. The site though was fast and considering it’s only been three months since the Google announcement it’s impressive to see what has been built.
Sharing options are limited though which is not a great surprise as Digg will want to build out their Reader around Digg and Instapaper which they now own.
Digg’s iOS app’s are fast and present articles cleanly. However there are no Android options at the moment and no third party support. If you like the Digg app’s you are in luck but if not there are really no options at the moment.
Digg Reader is free and although it’s early days I can’t really recommend it.
Wither Reeder Readkit on the MacOne surprise of the impending closure of Google Reader is how it’s affected the applications I use day to day. I never used the Google Reader website instead doing all my feed reading through Reeder for iOS and Mac and Press on Android. Press has been updated with Feedly support but surprisingly Reeder is falling behind the competition. iPad and Mac versions will be withdrawn from sale tomorrow while the iPhone version has went free with added sync support for Feed Wrangler, Feedbin, Feedly and Fever. The developer has decided to focus on new versions rather than update old app’s. While understandably the Google Reader change and subsequent lack of one standard replacement causes extra work it’s left a rather large gap in my feed reading process. Step in Readkit. This Mac only app was previously good for catching up on Instapaper and Pocket articles but version 2 brought in RSS support for Newsblur and Feedly with an update just a few days ago to include Feed Wrangler and Feedbin.
This has replace Reeder on the Mac and while it doesn’t have all of Reeder’s features and isn’t as fast as Reeder when syncing, it’s a far better experience than using the web apps of most of the services mentioned above. It’s only £2.99 from the App Store which really is a bargain.
On iOS I’m now using Mr Reader and Newsblur’s own app.
Conclusion
So which service replaces Google Reader? For most Feedly is the strongest option and it’s free so it’s a no brainer to move to that service. For me I much prefer Newsblur so that will be my RSS service of choice although I will keep an eye on Feed Wrangler as improvements to Smart Streams could be really big.
While it’s disappointing to see a service I use daily being shutdown it’s great to see some true innovation now that firms are competing on a more level playing field. Farewell Google Reader.
I was asked recently what podcasts I listen to, so in alphabetical order…
Above & Beyond: Group Therapy (iTunes link) – Weekly 2 hour mix show, highlighting the finest in trance. Great for getting through boring tasks at work. We all have them!
Accidental Tech Podcast (iTunes link) – Relatively new technology (especially Apple) podcast featuring Marco Arment, Casey Liss and John Siracusa. Can go deep on topics but really enjoyable so far.
All About Android (iTunes video link) – Weekly show that features news and app’s from the world of Android. Great way of keeping up to date.
CMD+Space (iTunes link) – A tech interview show from Myke Hurley. Had a great run of guests making this a really enjoyable show – Myke has real skill at getting the most out of his guests too.
The Crossover (iTunes link) – Hosted by Dan Benjamin and featuring a variety of hosts from 5by5 discussing…anything. Great episodes so far.
Fighting Talk (iTunes link) – Colin Murray hosts, 4 guests from the world of sport and 50 minutes of comedy gold.
Foundation (iTunes video link) – Kevin Rose interviews founders, entrepreneurs and business leaders in the tech community. Roughly a monthly release cycle, Rose has had access to some great people over the years.
Frame Rate (iTunes video link) – How to watch Internet TV and what’s worth watching right now. Tom Merritt and Brian Brushwood are great hosts.
Mac Power Users (iTunes link) – Hosts Katie Floyd and David Sparks take one topic each week and discuss it in detail. Mac focussed and some great software links and tips to get the best out of your Mac.
MacBites (iTunes link) – MacBites is hosted by Elaine Giles and Mike Thomas and is that rare beast – a UK podcast! Informative but great fun at the same time – I love it. Weekly but with frequent breaks, their absence kicked me into doing DigitalOutbox.
Macbreak Weekly (iTunes video link) – A once classic podcast when Merlin Mann took part, stil watchable thanks to Andy Ihnatko and Rene Ritchie. Can go long…too long.
The New Disrupters (iTunes link) – Hosted by Glenn Fleishman this podcast focusses on how the economy is changing and each week he interviews a disrupter who is taking advantage of the new economy.
On The Verge (iTunes video link) – Monthly video magazine from The Verge, part gadget reviews, part chat show with great guests.
Shift Run Stop (iTunes link) – Much loved and much missed, a geek/comedy podcast hosted by Leila Johnston and Roo Reynolds. Tech, gaming, geek culture, UK based and two delightful hosts. And fun.
The Talk Show (iTunes link) – Hosted by John Gruber each week he discusses mostly Apple related subjects with a guest or two. Miss the old days with just him and Dan Benjamin.
This Week in Google (iTunes video link) – Jeff Jarvis and Gina Trapani discuss Google and cloud computing in general. Jeff is great – really refreshing voice.
This Week in TECH (iTunes video link) – Can go long and is very much dependant on the guests but is generally a good round up on the weeks tech news.
Top Shelf (iTunes video link) – David Pierce from The Verge looks at a variety of tech and gadget issues. New but good so far.
So thats what I currently subscribe too. I dip into others as they are linked or mentioned elsewhere and of course I couldn’t write a post on podcasts without mentioning DigitalOutbox in which you can hear my good self and friends ramble on about the weeks tech news but with a distinctly UK focus.
I love finding new great podcasts so if you think there is something I would like please leave a link in the comments.
The Pebble was the first campaign I backed on Kickstarter. It was April 2012 and the Pebble was a breath of fresh air. A watch that would talk to your phone, iOS or Android, that was updatable, not too large, had a good battery life and was affordable at around $100. There wasn’t much not to like so I backed it without much hesitation. It was geeky but I love geek toys!
Despite missing a couple of delivery dates the Pebble team have delivered on their oversubscribed Kickstarter and on Thursday my watch finally arrived. Kudus to the team as they have kept everyone up to date on progress their problems and issues of scale that I’m sure they didn’t expect just under a year ago. So after a couple of days how does the Pebble deliver?
The Good
The watch itself is light and feels good in the hand. It has one button the right hand side and three buttons on the left. The buttons are used to navigate around the menus, dismiss notifications, turn on the backlight etc. The buttons need a firm press to operate which I’d expect to ease over time but gives confidence that the watch is well made.
Pebble notification
The Pebble has to well made as it’s waterproof hence the contact power connector. Powered via USB the cable attaches via magnets and powers the Pebble quickly. Battery is rated at 7 days and as I haven’t had it that long it’s hard to know if it’s accurate – it’s still going strong after three days so the signs are good.
The Pebble is easy to connect to your phone on iOS or Android. Via Bluetooth you pair the phone with the Pebble and…thats it really. On iOS you need to make sure that Notifications are enabled and setup properly. For me it’s worked well but it’s a bit of a pain and not the best setup experience. That’s not Pebble’s fault – iOS is more locked down than Android so you won’t get everything you expect. It can also disable if the devices go out of range which I’ve seen once. Pebble have a useful page to help with iOS setup. The music app worked really well – skip tracks, pause – all good.
On Android the Pebble app works differently in that everything routes through the app and it runs permanently. More seems to flow through on Android but it does feel a bit of a hack to get the most out of Pebble.
Speaking of hacks to get all iOS notifications then you can jailbreak your iPhone and from Cydia install BTNotificationEnabler by Conrad Kramer. So instead of just Messages, Phone and Music you will get Tweets, mails – everything. It’s an impressive hack and with the recent evasi0n jailbreak it’s an easy method of improving the Pebble on iOS.
The Not So Good
The screen is clear but duller than I expected. The backlight helps but switches off quickly. It’s also quite blue with the backlight on but thats not a biggie. The viewing angle is narrower than I’d expected but really is fine, just not great.
The strap is a bit industrial but as it’s a standard size it’s easily replaced. Also industrial is the Pebble itself. While not massive like some of the GPS walking/running watches it’s quite tall. Certainly on my wrist I found it quite uncomfortable especially under a work shirt finding it awkward to see the full notification and then clear it.
Pebble Icon
Pebble gets it update via the software installed on the phone. With an update every couple of weeks planned by the Pebble team you can be sure of a watch that will only get better. That doesn’t get away from the fact that at the moment it’s use is limited. The one feature that really appealed to me was RunKeeper support which unfortunately isn’t yet available. In fact from the Pebble front page it’s only notifications and Music that is available.
The menu on the Pebble itself is at best utilitarian but is in need of updating. Clock faces are listed in the top menu alongside Music and Settings. The faces really need their own menu as adding a new clock face clutters up the menu.
One last software issue is that there is no battery indicator. While the watch lasts for seven days without an indicator you have no real option but to charge more often than is probably necessary. Seemingly the battery only appears when it needs charged, but thats no use if you are away for a couple of days and it appears on the second day. For Pebble to succeed it has to be trusted and I can see a future update enabling a visibile battery indicator, or at least a way of checking it in the menus.
Verdict
The Pebble is a great watch. It has so much potential and for a first product the team should be rightly proud. However now that they are shipping hardware in volume they need to focus on delivering app’s and polishing the software. Without that users will quickly tire and the danger is an Apple, Google or Samsung will come along and almost instantly kill their product.
For me the Pebble in it’s current form has parallels to the first iPhone. It was clearly a wonderful phone but without 3G and app’s it wasn’t enough for me to buy…and thats how I feel about the Pebble. Right now the form factor and usability coupled with the lack of app’s means it’s not for me so I’ve sold mine on eBay. However I wouldn’t rule out picking up a future Pebble or smart watch from another provider. Imagine a watch that could do everything that the Pebble does coupled with a Fitbit and a slightly better screen. Add in a touch screen and I’d be first in line. It will be interesting to see where the wearables sector grows to over the next 2-3 years and whether it’s a market just not for geeks. Is the smartphone good enough for the majority of users?
By far Twitter is my most used and most loved social network. It’s simple, fast and let’s me talk to people easily. The 140 character limit, unchanged since day one of the service, is still it’s biggest plus point. With no room to ramble information is passed and consumed at a far denser rate than anywhere else. It also leads to the best snarks online.
Launched almost six years ago the first Twitter was pretty bare bones. Web only, driven by texting and with a simple follow model it started slowly and didn’t really take off for another year. Like most social networks I signed up, played with it for a few days and then promptly deleted my account and left. Empty experience, most friends weren’t interested and I just didn’t get it. A few months later I re-registered and loved it. It had seen growth in the tech community, there were loads of people worth following and it had become a useful service for me.
Twitter’s feature growth was driven by it’s early adopters. Hashtags, retweeting and @ replies were officially supported by Twitter long after they had become mainstream amongst users. Third party developers drove Twitters growth via some great clients. Twitterrific was one of the first on the Mac and then the iPhone. Twitter was much more usable on a phone (computer too) via an application compared to the website. Over the last three years there’s been quite the third party market in Twitter clients with many adding features that Twitter doesn’t support – searching, archiving, muting (user, client but by far the best – hashtag) and timeline syncing across devices. All the while Twitter has been focussing on growth which makes for a richer network and brings with it the opportunity to monetise. It’s the chase of the dollar that brings with it some fear.
For many years people pondered how Twitter was going to monetise it’s service. Providing a service like Twitter isn’t cheap nor easy. How many fail whales did we see in 2008? It’s now pretty much rock solid despite it’s growth and that robustness has come at the costs of millions and millions of VC dollars. VC dollars that it now has to pay back.
More specifically, developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no.
If you are an existing developer of client apps, you can continue to serve your user base, but we will be holding you to high standards to ensure you do not violate users’ privacy, that you provide consistency in the user experience, and that you rigorously adhere to all areas of our Terms of Service. We have spoken with the major client applications in the Twitter ecosystem about these needs on an ongoing basis, and will continue to ensure a high bar is maintained.
As we point out above, we need to move to a less fragmented world, where every user can experience Twitter in a consistent way
Ultimately, we want to make sure that the Twitter experience is straightforward and easy to understand — whether you’re on Twitter.com or elsewhere on the web.
We’re building tools for publishers and investing more and more in our own apps to ensure that you have a great experience everywhere you experience Twitter, no matter what device you’re using. You need to be able to see expanded Tweets and other features that make Twitter more engaging and easier to use. These are the features that bring people closer to the things they care about. These are the features that make Twitter Twitter.
I don’t need to see expanded tweets thanks very much and I’m sure the point of this post isn’t to tell third party dev’s that they need to show expanded tweets and Twitter cards. It’s adverts. It’s potentially cut down access to API’s. For me it feels like winter is coming.
What makes Twitter Twitter is the interaction with other people. Talking, sharing and learning. It works on so many levels and has brought many people together. It breaks news quicker than any other network and for many has become a key tool…even a part of their life. Now it looks like Twitter is trying to close down on what others can do with their data. That’s the bit that annoys me though. It’s my tweets. It’s my data yet I can do so very little with it.
So many people have put so much into Twitter yet can’t get any of that data back out. Over time Twitter have added more and more restrictions to their initially fully open API. The majority of users can’t see their full Twitter history. Searching across that amazingly rich data set is a joke. Why can’t I export my tweets? Why hasn’t Twitter addressed the spam issues that plague the network? These are all features the majority of users would benefit from but instead we have seen new features recently to view stories on Twitter and make it easier to drive traffic to other sites.
Twitter has opened up it’s service, invited everyone along and is now trying to own it all for themselves. It feels similar to Apple, Flickr and Facebook’s motives but Twitter for years traded on it’s open access policies. The change in tone is jarring.
I do hope this is just a badly worded blog post that is ambiguous in it’s message but I really doubt it. Already LinkedIn have removed ability to view tweets on their site and they directly referenced the Twitter post from today. When the post says “in the coming weeks, we will be introducing stricter guidelines around how the Twitter API is used.” what does that mean for TweetBot, Twitterrific et all?
If it is all about the money bring in a paid for service. This tweet from Aral Balkan sums up my feelings in 140 characters.
I’d rather pay to be Twitter’s customer than get it for free and be the product they sell to their real customers: advertisers.
Twitter isn’t too big that it can’t fail. Myspace and RIM are two examples of companies that only a few short years ago were leaders in their own space. Be careful Twitter. Your next few steps could make or break your company. I dearly hope it’s not the latter.
Instapaper is one of my favourite iOS app’s. If you haven’t heard of it before it allows you to store articles and longer form content for reading back later on your iOS device, or on the website. It also cleans up the content, stripping out adverts, sidebars etc allowing you to focus on the content. I love it.
Instapaper newly updated for retinae iPad. Click for lots of pixels!
The app and service is produced and maintained by Marco Arment and he blogs openly and honestly about Instapaper and how it has eveolved over the last few years. Once Instapaper got some traction competitors to the service were launched. On iOS and Android you can use ReadItLater which has similar features to Instapaper but is supported across more platforms. Another service is Readability which has been around for a few years but only recently launched an iOS application. They initially were a browser plugin service that Apple also included in Safari to clean up content similarly to Instapaper. A few weeks ago they launched their own iOS app which was similar to Instapaper but without the friends and recommended reading features. However the app looked, in my opinion, gorgeous and featured some great typography to customise your reading experience. Marco blogged about it – Learning from competition.
He admitted Readability had stolen a march in the looks front and made Instapaper look tired. It also fired him up, hence the quick response with Instapaper 4.1 launching yesterday. Competition is good, certainly from a consumer perspective. Bing was good for Google, Google+ is good for Facebook. So how did Readability feel about it?
Timothy Meaney is a strategist at Arc90, the team behind Readability. While he’s every entitlement to feel a bit pissy about features being copied, it’s a font choice. Nothing more. It’s styling – nothing more. To tweet copycat is pretty childish. What’s more, looking back to 2009 when Readability first started, Arc90 had a blog post describing the service. The best part is this quote:
Our latest experiment was partly inspired by Marco Arment’s awesome Instapaper application (and equally awesome Instapaper iPhone app). We hope you enjoy this little tool. If you find any issues, feel free to comment on our blog.
So it’s OK for Readability to be inspired…but competitors are copycats. Good job guys. To be fair Meaney did apologise:
It’s all good. Competition is good. I apologize for kicking up dirt, Marco’s the man. Good night everyone!
Still, Readability beaing dickish about this will live long in the memory. Looks like I’ll be sticking with Instapaper and recommending it ahead of Readability from now on.
