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I watched the documentary Chop & Steele last night. I first became aware of Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett through the K-Strass morning news pranks: Through that, I then learned about their Found Footage Festival live shows. Chop & Steele mostly follows the story of Gray TV’s copyright lawsuit against The Found Footage Festival. But a secondary storyline follows Nick and Joe as they…
On episode 533 of ATP, the hosts discussed standing desks: Casey expressed his initial plan to buy one from IKEA, and Marco stressed the importance of height presets. About a year ago, I bought an IKEA IDÅSEN standing desk, based largely on its price point, 10-year warranty, and this BTOD review, which made it abundantly clear that height presets were not a feature: While the paddle system used…
I’m a longtime user and big fan of MailMate, a keyboard and Markdown-centric email client for the Mac. Nearly everything about it fits the way my brain works. But there’s one thing about MailMate that’s always bothered me. I sort my inbox in reverse chronological order, with newest messages at the top. When I delete a message, MailMate then selects the next-most-recent message:…
In early 2016, Apple added support for SSL-secured podcast feeds.1 I wanted to get a sense of how many shows are taking advantage of this, so I grabbed a list of the top 200 podcasts in iTunes (US), along with their feed URLs. A few observations: Only 11 of the top 200 shows (5.5%) use HTTPS for their podcast XML. The remaining 189 feeds use plain old HTTP. Libsyn seems to offer HTTPS versions of…
Starting with iOS 6, Apple introduced Smart App Banners. If you’re an iPhone person, you’ve probably seen these things at the top of mobile websites, prompting you to download a corresponding app. They link right to the iTunes app store. I recently learned that iTunes Smart App Banners aren’t just for apps. They work for podcasts listed in the iTunes directory, and they deep link…
I spent this past weekend at the Third Coast public radio conference in Chicago. In many of the sessions, and hallway conversations, and up-way-too-late-at-a-public-radio-conference-mostly-drunk rants, you could feel a sense of renewed excitement around podcasting, and the wave of independence and entrepreneurship we’re seeing in this space. Then, this morning in my inbox, via Seth’s…
CBC Radio has comissioned 10 episodes of Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids, based on the tiny little reading series I started back in 2007. That means a 10-city tour. It’s really difficult to explain how excited I am about this.
Paul Adams, writing about the future of the CBC for iPolitics: Right now, CBC treats its website as if it were an industrial by-product of the broadcast networks, like a slaughterhouse that sells off the bones for fertilizer and the hooves for glue. It’s an afterthought. From where I sit, this feels accurate.
I just finished watching this episode of Andrew Norton‘s This is Radio, all about Roman Mars’s 99% Invisible: Really lovely. Looking forward to watching the other installments.
Remember that time I wasn’t allowed to bring my Brompton folding bicycle inside the CBC? After raising a big fuss, I was eventually allowed to bring my bike inside, with the stipulation that it must be kept in a bag. I bought a Brompton cover from our neighbourhood Brompton dealer, Switchback Cyclery, and all has been well since. Today, Peter sent word that there’s a new BBC series…
Years ago, we bought a Tivoli Model One radio for our kitchen. At first, the tuning was rock-solid. But recently, the radio started drifting. Over time, the tuning knob got very touchy. Even if I was able to successfully tune a station, the LED would glow bright for a moment, then quickly fade. Left long enough, any station would degrade into static. Frustrating, to be sure. I emailed…
Last week, I was part of a panel discussion at my alma mater (and sometimes employer) Ryerson University, talking about “Radio in a Digital Age” alongside Steve “Dangle” Glynn, Raina Douris, and moderator/former-prof/sometimes-boss Lori Beckstead. The video’s online now: Lori sent out a few questions in advance of the panel, and I used them to prepare a few notes (most of which I forgot). So…
Patrick Stewart’s WNYC pledge drive spots seem custom-made for people (like me) who: a) enjoy public radio b) grew up loving Star Trek: The Next Generation. I’m willing to bet there’s a fair amount of overlap in that particular Venn diagram. Listen to all four spots over at PRX. (Via Stephen Quinn)
Two interesting stories from the world of American public radio last week. First, the creation of Radiotopia, a new podcast network: With $200,000 in funding from the Knight Foundation, PRX will attempt to create a new model for what they call “digital-first audio programming.” The seven shows will make up a collective, helping to market one another, providing guidance on technical issues, and…
Speaking of audio (not) going viral, in episode 76 of Unprofessional, Marco Arment makes an important point about podcast listenership: [47:46] Podcasts are a very different kind of medium than most other things on the web. Most “new media” is all about getting this flood of hits, and things “going viral” (or whatever that means), and just getting tons of drive-by hit traffic. Podcasts don’t…
As anyone who’s been to Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids probably knows, I’m fascinated by the relationships we have with our former selves. Most often, when a person gets up on stage to read juvenilia at GRTTWaK, there’s a distance. A distance between who they were, and who they are now. At a really basic level, I think that’s the tension that makes a GRTTWaK…
If you work in or care about public radio, podcasting, or online audio, I strongly recommend Stan Alcorn’s terrific piece Is This Thing On? Why Audio Never Goes Viral. In it, Alcorn digs into some of the reasons audio is a second-class citizen online: the web is a primarily visual medium, audio content is difficult to index, search, and skim through, etc. But he also drops some telling data…
One year ago, I decided to take my iPhone data-only. No voice plan. No texting plan. Just sweet, sweet data. I don’t like paying for things that I don’t use, and I rarely use the telephone part of my iPhone. That is, I don’t make many voice calls over the cell network. So I figured I could save some money. I looked around for data-only smartphone plans in Canada, but…
Exactly one year ago today, October 22, Jenna and I booked a one-way transatlantic crossing aboard the Queen Mary 2. Originally, the idea was more joke than anything else. “Wouldn’t it be funny?” we’d ask each other. But the truth was, after almost a year living in France, we needed to get home to Toronto somehow. We presumed we’d fly. That is, until we looked at the cost of…
Update September 19, 2013: Success! Thanks to a terrific, sympathetic manager or two (or three), our building’s “no bikes inside” policy will be re-written to accommodate folding bikes like my Brompton. The new rule: I have to keep my bike in a bag. Fair enough. There are a handful of things about our national public broadcaster (disclosure: my employer) that bother me. A few infuriate. But…
This past week, I borrowed John Maeda’s The Laws of Simplicity from the Toronto Public Library. It’s a slim book, but it gave me a lot to chew on. While discussing his sixth law (Context), Maeda says: I was once advised by my teacher Nicholas Negroponte to become a light bulb instead of a laser beam, at an age and time in my career when I was all focus. His point was that you can either brighten a…
So, Sobeys is getting out of the movie business by selling 24 of its Empire Theatres locations to Cineplex. I started working part-time at the Empire Theatres in Bedford, Nova Scotia in the spring of 1999 for $5.50 an hour. I know this because I still have one of my first paystubs: I worked at Empire Theatres for three and half years, until the end of 2002. By then, I was making the princely sum…
A year ago this evening, I was enjoying dinner with Tristan at Joseph Leonard in the West Village. I had a steak, many tiny French pickles, and perhaps one too many Hendrick’s and tonics. I was in New York to take part in ITP Summer Camp at NYU. Tristan was in New York to get out of Toronto for a few days, and to help me celebrate my birthday. A year ago this evening, I turned 30.
Jason Fried wrote about what he calls the “Two i’s” – important and interesting: For a long time I’ve felt like the only thing worth working on is the next most important thing. Why spend time working on something that’s less important if there’s something more important that needs work? I’ve changed my mind on this. I think it’s always good to be working on two things: The next most important…
So the other day, on the walk back from the grocery store, I listened to this past week’s On The Media. It began with a question: is the Golden Age of content sustainable, or just a supernova, a dying star burning exceptionally bright? Then, thirty-one minutes and forty-five seconds later, a small bit of instrumental music underneath an extro and sponsor read. The tune sounded familiar, but…
About six weeks ago, without any apparent warning, CBC Radio One’s audio streams switched from MP3 audio to AAC. This left a number of people unable to listen to streaming audio, namely those with internet radio receivers that don’t support AAC. Luckily, a commenter named Brian let me know that Radio One MP3 streams still exist: The trick is to change the “H” to an “L” in the URLs.…
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of laughing at our former selves. So then, I rather enjoyed John Tierney’s NYT piece about new research into people’s self-perceptions: “Middle-aged people — like me — often look back on our teenage selves with some mixture of amusement and chagrin,” said one of the authors, Daniel T. Gilbert, a psychologist at Harvard. “What we never seem to…
Apparently, CBC management is thinking about a “loyalty” program: [T]he CBC is considering adding game-like challenges on its websites, offering reward points to keep people engaged with the broadcaster’s programming, an approach known in the retail business as “gamification.” Setting aside my belief that most “loyalty” programs are creepy, I find this announcement troubling on a deeper level.…
If you ever find yourself in France for a year, and you want some serious bang for your entertainment buck, I suggest you look no further than an unlimited movie subscription from your local cinema. At the end of January, Jenna and I signed up for something called UGC Illimité 2. For a flat rate (€35.50/month, plus a one-time setup fee of €30), membership entitles a primary cardholder plus one…
Now they do. I’ve been thinking a lot about radio and live chat ever since I started listening to shows on Dan Benjamin’s 5by5 network. You see, many of the shows on 5by5 are recorded live. If you’re so inclined, you can tune into these shows and listen along in real time as they’re recorded. What’s more, 5by5 has an IRC channel, so in addition to live streaming…
Late last month, Kickstarter quietly removed its “Open Hardware” category, and added a broader “Hardware” category. At the same time, Kickstarter re-categorized every single “Open Hardware” project (past and present) into this new “Hardware” category. I reached out to Kickstarter about this. “This is not a policy change, just a name change,” a representative told me. “The hardware projects that…
Late last week, I wrote about how Kickstarter was quietly removing projects from their site, despite claiming otherwise. The removed projects were replaced with a simple message stating: “Sorry, this project is no longer available.” To date, at least 14 projects have been taken down in this way (Kicktraq has a good list). Most of the takedowns seem to be related to intellectual property disputes.…
“Transparency is vital on Kickstarter.” Or so says their FAQ. But if you look closely enough, Kickstarter isn’t living up to its own transparency promises. It seems that Kickstarter has quietly removed several projects from its site, despite claiming that they never do this. Again, from their FAQ: How long does a project remain on Kickstarter? Forever! Projects are not closed or taken down,…
A few months ago, I wrote a bit about Kickstarter, and how they hide (or at the very least, make it very difficult to find) failed projects. I believe that when it comes to crowdfunding, there’s much to learn from past projects — both successes and failures. And I’m not the only one who feels this way. Early on in The Crowdfunding Bible, Scott Steinberg writes: Whatever your approach…
Felix Salmon, pointing to Jeanne Pi’s recent Kickstarter analysis: [Y]our chances of raising $10,000 on Kickstarter are just 9% if you have 10 Facebook friends, rising to 20% if you have 100 friends, and 40% if you have 1,000 friends. Clearly, your existing network matters. As Seth Godin says “Kickstarter is the last step, not the first one.” (via Bert)
Last week, I wrote a bit about a design decision I’d noticed on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter. Basically, Kickstarter projects that fail to meet their funding goals are: Hidden from search engines by way of “noindex” robot meta tags Not included in Kickstarter’s own Discover interface The post got a fair bit of attention. It made it to the front page of Hacker News, was republished…
(TL;DR: Kickstarter does not want you to see failed projects. Failed Kickstarter campaign pages include robot meta tags to keep search engines from indexing them. Plus, Kickstarter’s front page and “Discover” interface never show failed projects. Ever.) Update @ 17:30 CET: In response to some great feedback over at Hacker News, I’ve made a few edits below to clarify a few points.…
In the U.S., Comcast is experimenting with “use-based pricing” (which sounds an awful lot like usage-based billing). The NYT reports: In the test markets, 300 gigabytes will be the monthly allotment of data for a basic broadband Internet customer. From there, Comcast will try charging a premium for additional data. In one of the tests, customers will be able to buy more data access in what Comcast…
I’ll admit that up until yesterday, I was unaware of the CBC Television program The Big Decision. (Aside: I predict that within five years, every single CBC Television program will be based around Dragons’ Den personalities.) Anyway, I didn’t know about The Big Decision, but after following some tweet or another, I found myself on the show’s website, and decided to check it…
Today, Flipboard added audio playback controls and a new Audio category to its app: The section is searchable but comes with recommended SoundCloud users, as well as popular shows from NPR (National Public Radio) and PRI (Public Radio International). I’ve played with the new Flipboard for a while, and it’s yet another example of why segmentation matters, and how for public radio, the…
It’s been on my “to watch” list for quite a while, and today I finally got around to watching Jad Abumrad’s presentation at MaxFunCon 2010. In it, Jad uses many examples from Radiolab (and borrows heavily from Walter Murch) to create a model that explains the relationship between words, music, various types of sound effects, and their relative levels of abstraction. Needless to say, if…
Cyrus has a piece up at Ars Technica about Boxfish, a search engine for closed captions scraped from broadcast television: Boxfish captures all closed-captioning information, indexes it, then makes that data searchable in a Twitter-style interface. All in real-time. If this technique sounds familiar, perhaps it’s because Google did something very similar way back in 2005: The service, Google…
One of the great luxuries of a sabbatical year in France is time. I have time now like I’ve never had it before. Time to go for a stroll, time to sit in a cafe for hours on end practicing French… Most notably though, I now have time to make coffee in a very fussy way. Back in January, based on a recommendation from the fine folks at Cafe Mokxa, Jenna and I bought an Aeropress.
I don’t often get my CBC budget cut analysis from the sports section, but maybe I should. From Bruce Dowbiggin’s take on the recent cuts: CBC’s core business, its relevance to the public, would probably be in the following order: 1. News and current affairs; 2. Radio; 3. Sports; 4. Light entertainment. The problem with the current CBC is that its executive structure has the order…
Update July 18, 2013: CBC Music has posted an official list of streams (thx, Colan) === CBC just launched a new music service, imaginatively titled CBC Music. It offers access to 40 web radio stations, a vast array of music and blog posts by CBC personalities through a website and via mobile apps. Rather than listen to these stations via a website or mobile app, I’d prefer to listen via VLC.
I love it when I experience great customer service. It seems to happen so infrequently that I feel compelled to share whenever it does. Every once in a while, you deal with people who stand behind their company or product so much that you can’t not tell people about it. For example, when the Australian Boot Company replaced my 2-year old boots in 2009. Or when they did it again a year later.
Bank wire transfers suck. They suck in (at least) three ways: Banks charge a fee for every transfer (my bank, TD, charges $30-80 per transfer) Banks’ international exchange rates are terrible Sometimes, your money needs to pass through an intermediary bank, which may charge additional fees Ugh. So then, when when Jenna and I decided to move to France, I started looking around for…
I love podcasts. I listen to a lot of podcasts. And almost exclusively, I use my iPhone to listen to podcasts. But heres’s the thing: subscribing to and downloading new podcasts to my iPhone is fiddly. Syncing with iTunes on my Mac is fiddly. Downloading new episodes a-la-carte via the iTunes app on iOS is fiddly. Which is why I was absolutely delighted to learn about Instacast. It’s a…
I’ll begin by saying we were warned. Several people made it very plain to us: setting up a French bank account is complicated, and takes longer than you’d think. So then, the point of this blog post is a) to verify that setting up a French bank account is indeed complicated and time-consuming, and b) to vent about that. Making an appointment The first thing worth mentioning is that you…
Earlier this week, I found myself in Lyon’s 7th arrondissement, at a bar called l’Antisèche. I was there for L’UkeDunum, a new-ish monthly gathering of Lyonnais ukulele players (or, as they call themselves, ukulélistes). I’d been in touch with the organizers, Cécile and Guillaume, earlier in the week via email. In broken French, I told them I wanted to attend their jam, but that…