We first talked about Supertop’s Castro, a podcast client for iPhone, when it came out in December, noting how the app fit well with iOS 7’s aesthetic and implemented cool features such as fast search and a peculiar scrubber. Today, Supertop has released Castro 1.1, a major update that further refines the app’s design and introduces new functionalities for playback controls.
Posts tagged with "podcasts"
Castro 1.1 Brings UI Tweaks, Sleep Timer
Pocket Casts 4.5→
My favorite podcast client for iOS 7, Pocket Casts by Shifty Jelly, was updated over the weekend to version 4.5, which added Chromecast support and some welcome additions to the app’s built-in Charts view.
When browsing podcasts in the app’s directory, you can now see Trending shows and change countries for Top Charts. Pocket Casts still has a general worldwide view, but now you can also filter charts by country; for me, this means I can easily find other Italian shows besides the excellent ones provided by the EasyPodcast network (pictured above; EasyApple is the best Italian podcast about Apple, hands down).
Pocket Casts continues to be a solid client that I particularly enjoy because it’s also available on the iPad. It’s $3.99 on the App Store.
Introducing Directional Podcast
Thanks to Jory Raphael for the awesome artwork.
In recording The Prompt every week, my friend Myke Hurley and I realized that we love talking about games. We love games and the community of game makers and players behind them. We’ve been playing games since we were kids, and whenever we touched upon the topic of mobile gaming, Nintendo’s history and current games, Sony and Microsoft, indie games, and everything in between on The Prompt, we felt that we could go on for hours with our discussions. Eventually, we knew that we needed a separate venue to properly dedicate ourselves to the topic.
Which brings us to today: Myke and I are announcing Directional, a podcast about games, gamers, game makers, and surrounding culture. Here’s how we like to describe Directional’s focus:
We reflect about past trajectories and current directions, old games and new hits. Directional focuses on the games that are paving the way, the games that laid the foundations and just how dedicated games consoles exist in the smartphone age.
I’m extremely excited and grateful for this opportunity, and I look forward to beginning this second podcasting adventure with Myke next week. The Prompt has been an amazing and rewarding success for us, and, again, I hope that Directional will distinguish itself for quality and opinion, not just what’s trending.
Directional will be a weekly show on 5by5, with the first episode airing next week. We have some great stuff planned, and I can’t wait to share what we’ve been working on. I think you’ll also like our music.
We don’t have a webpage or RSS feed yet, but you can follow @DirectionalShow on Twitter for updates.
Mac Power Users 175→
Mac Power Users is one of my favorite tech podcasts, so when Katie and David asked me if I wanted to do a second episode with them, I immediately accepted.
We talked about iPad workflows, iOS automation, the future of iOS, photo management, and more. There are lots of links to apps and tools I use on a daily basis in the show notes, and I’m glad that the episode turned out well. You can listen here.
Let Me Share This Podcast With You→
Joe Rosensteel:
Many of the things holding podcast-listening back are things that I see podcasters lament on Twitter. There is a lot of consternation over SoundCloud from some people, and a warm embrace from others. Their program is in beta, and appears to have some quirks. People want searchable, legible, text versions of hour-long podcasts to spread links about the really good stuff. Even the ability to jump to a specific moment in playback as part of a URL has been bandied about.
The entire article is great and I agree with Joe’s points. There are several factors at play: iTunes’ stagnation for podcast producers (but, hey, at least it works), the lack of podcast-specific standards for annotations/players/show notes (podcasts themselves are delivered using another technology, RSS), and a fragmentation of independent producers, networks, and large publications that deliver podcast-like content but don’t care about interoperability with “open formats” , “clients”, and other “technologies” that could move the podcast medium forward.
Honestly, when I’m asked about my podcast by friends and family, I just point them to iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app. That’s the easiest way in, and it gives an idea of the power of lock-in, ease of use and access, and discovery (“Just go to iTunes and search for The Prompt, mom”).
RSS helped spark the diffusion of podcasting and, now that it’s still relatively new, I wouldn’t mind seeing more efforts towards a standardization of features like show notes, transcriptions, and episode bookmarks. I don’t know how it could be done, but it needs to happen, it needs to be open for everyone to use, and developers shouldn’t have to hard-code their own custom solutions from scratch.
There’s so much potential in improving the presentation of podcast content, it’s depressing to see how primitive the basic technology is. It works, and it lets us do this stuff on a weekly basis, but it could – should – be better.
Until someone improves the technology behind podcasts, though, I’ll just have to recommend iTunes.
Technical Difficulties: Scanning→
The work that Gabe, Erik, and potatowire have been doing with Technical Difficulties is top-notch: here’s a podcast that’s useful, enjoyable, and innovative in how show notes cleverly complement the audio segment.
The episode about scanning is good. I’ve probably learned more in 22 minutes and through the show notes than I have in over a year of reading blog posts on the Internet.
Podcasting On iOS→
When I told some friends that I was “podcasting” on iOS, they assumed that all I was doing was recording myself on iOS and doing the post-production later on a Mac. Not so! In fact, we actually do the entire end-to-end audio production purely on iOS.
Fraser Speirs details his workflow for producing episodes of Out of School without a Mac. The fact that several episodes have been created using an iPhone and iPad with a portable podcasting setup is pretty incredible.
Also of note (towards the end): one of the benefits of the A7 processor.
iOS 7 and Podcast Apps→
Chris Gonzales on the state of podcast apps on iOS 7:
The point is, I don’t think I would necessarily call any of the current podcast apps the “best one” right now. They’re all going through a phase of change and experimentation, like a kind of adolescence — all the kids are going through it, and there’s no telling what the mature results will be like until the awkward phase is over. A painful analogy? Maybe, but I’m sticking with it.
I agree. Podcasts are more popular than ever, and iOS 7’s new technologies lower the barrier to entry considerably for developers. It’ll be interesting to see what Apple is planning for the Podcasts app.
Mac Power Users #156: Editorial with Federico Viticci→
David and Katie are joined by Federico Viticci of Macstories.net to talk about writing on the iPad and the newest text editor with built in automation functions, Editorial.
Mac Power Users is one of my favorite podcasts. Thanks to David and Katie for letting me talk about Editorial and my book.