Overcast podcast app and casts

Overcast

Podcast apps are a funny field - they offer lots of different options and ways of handling episodes and podcasts in a surprisingly minimal range of options - downloading, playlists, playback - that expand once you think about what you are doing. Over the years I've used a few. I started with one of the ones that came out before Apple created a separate app (Podcaster - and it is still going) and was happy with it, but it became unstable and when Apple introduced their app I switched to it (I like the skeumorphism) and it was fine until I started to get more and more that I listened to. I moved to Pocketcast and was happy with it - but also used Ecoute to listen to podcasts as I downloaded some podcasts via Apple which I shared with Carol, and at the moment it seems Apple is the only way to share downloads (I know about syncing on different devices, but that still requires multiple downloads). Then thropugh various sources I heard that Marco Armant who reated Instapaper and The Magazine (apps which I really liked) was working on Overcast.

And when it came out I downloaded it and soon paid the $7 (Aus) in app purchase.  And have now transferred to it (Pocketcast still on the ipad)

Why?

It's is a nice clean interface, minimal in terms of both the look and the options, though underneath it is powerful. There is a good search engine for new podcasts, a twitter recommendation option (though if you don't follow a lot of people who use Overcast the recommendations are a little skewed and show mainly tech ones), excellent playlist options (in terms of sorting, priority etc) and a stylish playing screen  with a realtime sound wave display which appears on a variety of screens to highlight which track is playing.

But what makes it really stand out? The audio engine. Marco has gone to base level to create a smart speed and 1.x playback options. Smart speed removes silences and pauses - deleting empty space - to reduce length and the fast playback option works amazingly well. I usually listen at at least 1.2, but for some can go to 1.4 or 1.5 with no real distorion: even 2x is listenable (though maybe too fast for the brain). Obviously I don't speed up music programs! There is also a booster option which makes some podcasts more audible  

Why pay for an app? Marco has put together an app purchase model which I think is very smart: the app is free. For that you get all functionality (except sleep timer and a few other options) but some reductions: you can only have one playlist and you can have the sound specials for 5 minutes at a time (didn't have it long enough as free to see whether you could reselect the option regularly). But as a trial it works well and as a free app for people who have basic podcast needs it is fine. I was more than happy to pay for it. And the amount for an app that gets used for  a high proportion of my waking life is worth paying for a good one.

Caveats: at the moment there is no streaming as iOS8 has a different mode which Marco is waiting for; the app is based on downloading in the background under wifi - I want more control due to bandwidth limitations and have found a work around, but at this stage the basic options are download everything as it becomes available or manually check for new episodes; the recommended page is very tech/sci based and US-centric, but hey, we find out own podcasts!

In the spirit of that sharing, this is my current podcast list, in some sort of order with a brief blurb.  I have not put in links - any good app or browser will find them from the name.I would stress that with many podcasts you have to like the voices of the people: there are a few I have tried to listen to but couldn't get past the sound even if I found what they were talking about interesting , and with others the characters and voices can carry you through dry patches. (I won't name names as it is a personal issue - I can imagine people who find Roman marss voice a distraction, of Marco Armant or Melvyn Bragg and his guests, to pick at random - the balance is for you to decide, which is why it's best to download a podcast before pulling down all the back issues)   

Tech-ish (very broadly)
ATP - Accidental Tech Podcast: three guys talking about the latest developments in apple, but also their own programmimng and writting. Can be long but very listenable, even when I don't really understand what they're going on about. I like the interplay between them so much that I have downloaded their car podcast (Neutral) as part of my archives. Not the most up-to-the-minute tech podcast but does enough for me.
Pragmatic - John Chidgey, an Australian engineer (always nice to hear local voices) talks through techish issues like daylight saving, weather forecasting, staff selection and more. Has a pragmatic approach.
Talk show - John Gruber chatting to someone on tech issues but also life. One of my don't download them all categories. Always interesting but a lot of time
Storming Mortal - found when looking through recommendations as Anze Tomic did an episode with Casey from ATP. A Slavenian interview show which delves more into the personal and the cultural differences. A fresh difference
Thank You For Calling - found because Tiffany Armant did a show on wedding photography. About customer service, but an interesing interviewer (Moises Chiullan) and wide range - downloaded the back issues
Exponential - interesting tech and business discussion. More cerebral in a way - have downloaded the back issues

Radiotopia
99% invisible - came across this and actually supported the latest season through kickstarter. Each week is an unusual or oblique look at design and architecture. Could do without some of the end credit stuff (won't mention Roman's kid) but that can be skipped through. The kickstarter led to the creation of a network - Radiotopia - which the following are all part of
Strangers - personal interview stories, well told - Lea Thau has a great voice
Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything - varied meditations on a range of things
The Truth - improvised playlets, surprisingly good
Fugitive waves - historical perspectived documentaries
Love + Radio - more personal stories
The memory palace - not really part of radiotopia but a monthly-ish brief meditation, story.


Current affairs
Start the week - chat show on current issues, books, films with a panel. Andrew Marr ran it until his stroke, I have been less impressed with the standins, they seem less adept, but still usually worth it & he is coming back.
Sunday extra - from Radio National. Short pieces on news, politics, event, arts perfect for a sunday morning and I pick the best eyes. Includes Backgraound Briefing (available   separately) which is excellent investigative current affairs.

Thought
General
Big ideas - from Radio National, one hour each week night of thought provoking radio: interviews, debates, documentaries. Not always rivetting but worth checking out.
Religions and ethics report - a new one for me from Radio National. The name says it all, but it is more on the philosophical rather than religous end
Philosophers zone - after the untimely death of Alan Saunders this weekly program is refinding its feet. Can be challenging
BBC docs - BBC world service documentaries, Documentary of the week and Radio 3 Documentary each have great downloads. The range means you might not listen to some, but regularly fascinating
Literaryish
BBC books - the World Book Club has a monthly group interview with an author about an older novel of theirs; Books and Authors alternates between Open Book (Mariel Frostrup), a discussion of recent releases, and A Good Read where 2 guests join Harriet Weaver to talk about a book they like. Fabulous range of people come on it.
Guardian books - another weekly book chat
In our time - Melvyn Bragg's amazing discussion of historical, scientific and philosophical issues (Hildegard on Bingen one week, the Sun the next). Sometimes get's a bit Monty Python
sciencey
Freakonomics - discussion on economics, science and society with a light hearted bent
More or less - BBC's statistics program. Alternates seasons of shorts and 30 minute episodes. Analyses stats in the news
Radiolab - enough said - amazing production, occasionally marred by too much geewhizzery
The Infinite Monkey Cage - Brain Cox and Robyn Ince have a panel discussion about science. Can be frustrating, Cox is Cox, but usually satisfying

Music
Sound Opinions - interesting mix of news, a longer item and a review. One that I cherry pick but listen to more than I don't
Song Exploder - short piece where an artist describes how a song came together, explaing the individual components. Hits the spot most times
A History of Electronic Music - from the archives, a personal history of electronic music. A second series is planned but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Desert island Disks - an oldie but a great one. A guest interviewed (excellently) by Kirsty Young, and shares musical items. Sometimes you are glad 'the musical items are shorter than broadcast due to copyright' but the guests are often surpisingly interesting and I have found some music from here

Comedy
The Bugle - a show that can creat the neologism fukeulogy has to be worth listening to. Satire at its best
Answer Me This - hovers on the boarder (dropped for a while), can get puerile and childish but overall satisfying
Richard Herring - a range of Herring podcasts, Warming Up has become flakey though and Me1 vMe2 has run out of steam!
Do The Right Thing - waiting for this nasty quiz show to return.

Calendar Apps

Having a calendar with you on the phone or tablet is great - makes it easy to add, check or change. We used to use Groupwise & there was a pretty pitiful client for the iPhone (which this post is based on) but things got better when we moved to Google apps. It links to the built in calendar, but I was never really happy with that for the reason of the first app.

I haven't tried many apps - I get hints from reviews and notices, and have three which I use for various reasons. I would note I am not a power user - don't share calendars, invite people or use a number of different ones. They are for me!

week cal
Itunes web link

This was the first calendar I got and I still use it. As an academic, during semester time week view is my main visual handle on my timetable - it changes from week to week and a good visualisation is essential. Week Cal's raison d'être is the week view (day and month views are available). Entering new events is straightforward using the normal touchdate/time, make selection about length from the tumbler etc. All the usual features expected of a calendar are there too - location, link to contacts, repeat, different calendars.

I was happy with it, but then read some reviews of other with different tweaks, and I now use 2 of them.

Fantastical 2
Itunes web link

The first thing is that this integrates calendar and reminders, so it is a nice integration, especially if you keep trying to get todo lists - at least they are together here.

Second, it uses 'natural language' item creation. Tap the + button and you get a text entry line and as you type it in the program makes its interpretations - meet student at 2 will start to create a meeting at 2 today, add tomorrow and it will shift the draft to tomorrow. Start the typing a todo and it will be a reminder (there is also a sliding button which will toggle between appointment and reminder. If it looks OK hit add, if not you can look at the details and fine tune it and add the regular stuff.

The next difference is the look. When you open it you get a ticker tape of days across the top (not showing sequences of more than 3 days without a meeting) with bars representing meetings for the day. Below is the current reminders and then a list of meetings.(Tap for more detail). As you scroll the list, the ticker tape slides across.

Drag down on the ticker tape and it changes into the month view with dots for meetings and also a search function.

I would use this as my main calendar except that the week view is available only when you rotate from portrait to landscape. As my phone is locked in portrait, that is a nuisance and effectively no use (one cal app I looked at had a button that shifted the view from day to week - much better - but it didn't add a lot more.

Question.

Who has their phone on rotation? As I say, mine is locked for  two reasons.

1. there is no consistency about whether the app will rotate (on the iphone the  iOS doesn't but it  does on the iPad)  . Browsers rotate, weather doesn't ; guardian rotates, ABC doesn't;  Music app does, ecoute doesn't). so you don't know what will happen

2. It makes me feel sick. I don't mind the parallax, but screens rotating and unrotating, doing strange things if you are lying in bed, - all too much for me.

However, with the iPad I use the  manual lock to change screen rotation & in fact tend to have it in free rotation - more programs rotate and I use it less, but in more defined places.

And finally, one with a very different interface which is breaking new ground.

Peek

iTunes link

I like this because it is looking at calendars a different way.

When you open the app you get a list of days as a series of horizontal tabs, a bit like some email. These are the days of the week view - so it is each day until saturday or sunday (depending on when your week starts) and there is a simple statement of date (small) day (bigger) and a bar indicating how much time is booked for that day. Tap on a day and a folding paper unfolds down with the list of appointments. Tap for details. tap again for it to fold away.

Below the week we get the rest of the month view, with a small bar histogram again giving you the time booked for each day (tap etc). the months are colour coded for season (so there are three month blocks) with a subtle (northern hemisphere [they're working on it]) icon for it.

This is all nice block colours (only 2 schemes at present, but I hope they don't offer too many options or it could get ugly).

The next innovation is the mechanism in adding events. long hold on the day and the event portal opens. Name ok. Press the start time and the whole screen opens to a bespoke time entry system - hours listed on the left, minutes right & you slide a marker up or down to select the start, am/pm below and then tick or cross to accept/change your mind.

then when we get to duration, hold your finger on and you are touching a histogram (note a trend) which you can slide up or down to give you the length, or convert it into a day event. Then there are options for repeat location etc. A very different interface which is more touch friendly, layer-operated than apples dials. And works exceedingly well.

2 other innovations. If you shake the phone you can get a 'wellness' reminder (just did & I got 'do what you love' which you can reject or get scheduled randomly soon. The other is more useful - if you cover the screen with your hand, or turn the phone upside down, it sense the shade and shows the time in nice big numbers. Very helpful if you keep the phone in calendar mode.

At the moment I am using all three because they have different advantages and fun (Peek) and would only go down to 2 when Fantastical can replace Week Cal.

But, for any big appointment entry work - like all my classes for the semester - the desktop is the only way. Thanks Google Calendar (I'm on PC).

Pocket Cast

One of the first apps I bought for my iPhone 3 was pocket weather (aka pkt weather and now weather Australia). I found the onboard app inaccurate and limited in detail. Pocket uses Bureau of Meteorology data which is the best available. The app also includes a wealth of detail - 7 day forecasts (obviously), radar, 2 day temperature forecast graphs with actual(predicted) & feels like  lines, rain time and amount, tides... As the Bureau's data has improved so has the app - it now has quite fine localization. It is one of my most used apps. 

Move forward & I hear Marco who created Instapaper (another long time very used app) is writing a podcast app. I have used iTunes & the podcast app most of the time (there was a period I used another app but it fell by the wayside). I was generally happy but some things with in interface always annoyed me (the placement of the store button for instance). Anyway I thought I'd see what the competition was. 

A few searches narrowed the field to the main players. One was getting a lot of praise for it iOS 7 implementation. Pocket Cast by Shift Jelly- it took me a little while to see the connection and a combination of the reviews, my experience with their weather & the fact they are Australian decided me on giving them a go. 

And I am very pleased 

Yes - it is a very nice implementation of the design aesthetic. Clean & effective, overall easy to pick up & work with. There are 2 main screens. 

Podcast view- all your subscriptions in an icon grid. 3x4 on a 4s. You can move the tiles around if you want to re-order them. A + 'button' takes you to the search area - with featured, search, networks, category, chart options.

Back at the grid tapping on an icon brings up the program information -  a list of unplayed and played files, indicating if they have been downloaded  their length, and if they haven't, the file size. Tapping on a program brings up a window about it with content details and actions (download, delete, mark as played/unplayed, star, queue, add to playlist (which are way to create) etc).  

Podcast view - note now playing

Episode view

episode info

Menu screen - this is where It gets very useful. Top line takes you to the subscribed screen, if you want to select an episode by Podcast. But Pocket Cast's filters are its strength. As you can see I have theme filters, but also one for all downloads and unplayed. Filters, as the screen shot shows, can include played, unplayed, downloaded etc. As I don't want to keep played podcasts (for memory management) my downloaded and unplayed lists should be the same. If you wanted you could have a filter that included all unplayed podcasts - but it would be unwieldy. 

Menu screen

PC uses notifications well to indicate when new episodes of subscribed podcasts are available. And my filter new/undownloaded Is set so that I also have a list available - and I can go there to download or mark as played (you can't delete an undownloaded episode, so the list of unplayed will show all available ones which annoyed me at first but I am getting used to it (rather than the past players where previous episodes were hidden by default or could be deleted from the list)  

filter options

Play - as the screen shots show, there is a floating playback control, and the circle around the play/pause button indicates time passing. Touch this and you get the full screen player - with all the visuals and controls you could want. << and >> skip a predetermined time set from the setup menu. Information, playlist controls are up the top right. Rather than having space dedicated to a volume slider, that is accessed by the speaker menu: and most of us probably use earphone volume controls, the buttons or some external control anyway. 

Speed of replay has a slider also, and can do increments up to 3x. 

Play screen

Sync - You can set up an account to co-ordinate your subscriptions and playing position. It is syncing and saving where all non-Apple apps seem to suffer for me. All the podcasts on the list are 'mine', there are others that I give Carol a copy of. Now we have an expensive internet contract - rural wireless broadband & I would rather not download them twice. With the Apple app & iTunes sync the files are available to copy. I think this is a fairly specific requirement so won't hold it against them - there probably aren't any that do it. 

This is a universal app, so no need to pay for a separate app, and is also available in an android version

In conclusion - a very nice podcast app, does everything most people could want very nicely. You can suffer a free app or pay a little bit & get something good. 

The website is here; buy from your favourite Apple or Android shops!

(Drafted on write for iPhone)

Write for iPad/iPhone

As you know I have an iPad, iPhone and iPhod and I use all three for things like email, note writing, reviews etc. There are a few frustrations like mailbox not saving drafts, having things at different stages on different things. So I have started to do a lot of my drafting on Write. 

At base it is a simple note taking app - as you can see. For some reason I like the night mode, and there are a few fonts to choose from. Above the keyboard is a line of shortcuts - it would be nice if they were editable (I'd like an ', or brackets, as I use them a lot - but that's fine). In the centre is a mouse button which makes navigating around the screen easier, and can switch between cursor & selection mode. 

The right panel is the sharing screen - it is editable so you can hide what is an extensive list - but I usually use copy to move the text to blogger or email etc. 

The main beauty of this excellent editor though is its integration with Dropbox - files are updated and I can then edit them on any if my devices, or even computers. So I can draft this on the phone while out feeding the horses, then polish it up on my iPad before uploading it to blogger. 

The list of files gives a taste of what I'm up to

The interface and design is flat and gorgeous - will port to ios7 easily. There are aspects I don't use, like using it for HTML markup & rich text would be nice (if the bold button bolded the text rather than adding the HTML code - but again, not a worry). 

Anyway, Ash has finished eating so I'll finish this later. 

When looking up the web link I saw another pair of features which I have scratched the surface of - device linking. You can pair them and use one as the keypad & the other as the 'screen', and also share clip boards - use one device to web surf, copy something & then paste into the doc on the main device. A nice little trick. 

Anyway, this is the link to the page about the app

645 pro

On the recent trip to Vietnam I took over 500 photos. This still astounds me. I can remember when you thought carefully about each shot because you only had so many films with you (with 12, 24 or 36 frames each) & on top of that you had to pay to get them printed. There was also a wait - often you would only take half the shots & then the rest later. And finally they might not come our - the film wasn't in properly, you had let some light in, it was blurry, the lens wasn't off .....

The first digital camera I had was a Kodak with enough space for about 20 shots. Extra memory was expensive & it was before you realised how easy photography was going to be. On a trip to Graz I had to cull some photos to take some on my last day there. 

Now you can shoot everything and cull on the spot or later, see if the shot is OK, take things just for fun. Hence so many from our trip.

For simplicities sake I use my iPhone - only one thing to carry round, unlimited space, and I could back up to the cloud if I wanted. I'm not a high end photographer but I can recognise the limitations of the inbuilt camera (and the strengths of simplicity) so a while ago I bought the app 645 Pro - and really used it for the first time on the trip. And while I was away it was upgraded meaning I used it even more in terms of the features.

Basically what it does, I think, is access digital imaging editing before the photo is taken rather than after (cropping, colour balance etc) giving you the opportunity to improve the photo before you take it - like a real camera!

This is what you see on the screen - the viewfinder is reduced (but an expanded view is available) because of the additional controls. The new version has made these a lot less fiddly which is why I used them more. The screen also gives you information on shutter speed and the state of some of your features. 

The ones I found really useful

Camera backs - 645 is the standard size of images. But by changing the 'back' you effectively precrop a photo. When I went to halong bay I knew that there would the pictures with lots of sky and water & the island inbetween. I therefore used a long thin back to make the horizon more prominent. Some shots would look better square so I would then change to that. It is easy to move between frame - press the button and a carousel of options appears, flick through and pick the one you want (the old version had a dial which was difficult to 'turn' easily. (The islands are at the top, and on the right is a 6x17 image.

Film stock - by modifying various aspects such as saturation, lightness etc the camera comes with a variety of black&white and colour films. You can swap between them as with the backs, but I tended to find one where I liked the contrast and output and stuck mainly to that. You can create your own too. 

Filters - this is an area where the new setup makes these a lot easier. There is a range of filters (colour for b&w, warm/cool for colour and 2 graded ones). In the previous version they were chosen by swipes on the viewfinder and changed by a different swipe. I didn't use them. Now you select by pressing a button & getting the carousel, and then to change the intensity you rotate the big button at the bottom. I found the graded filter fantastic for landscape shots to get a darker upper half to emphasise the lower features & get more sky details. And changing the intensity allowed me to modify this.

Light meter - you can swap between focused or widescreen metering, and playing with this made me realise in many situations it did make a significant difference.

There are other features I didn't use, or much,

• Grid - I started using it to set up shots
• Night mode - does allow you to take pictures in low light
• Shutter timer - for those group pictures
• Locking focus, white balance or exposure - if you want
• 3 shot options
• RAW images can be saved, and of the original image rather than that processed through 645.
• And a lot more in various preferences. 

I think that my pictures benefitted from using 645, partly because of the options I chose but also as I thought more before taking many of the pictures - about the shape, whether to filter, how to meter, where things sat in the grid. And point and shoot or panorama was still available with the standard camera.

But I would highly recommend the app for people who want to do more without having a separate camera with them. (Michael Hardaker makes a few simpler 'cameras' - PureShot is for example a cut down 645 pro which shares the same look but many fewer features.)

The app web site is here

UPDATE: latest version has more graded filters

Sound Apps

A bit of a note on some apps I have been having fun with.

First, a free one through Apple for the app-store-birthday: Traktor DJ (separate iPhone and iPad apps, both free). Load 2 tracks from your iTunes library and make a mix - switch between them, scratch a bit, add FX to one or both, and then record the noise you have made. I have only had it a few days but by mixing Fever Ray with Robert Fripp or Dave Stafford have made some diverting noises. Power users could even record their outputs.  Have just put on Steve Roden's Lines and Spaces - two piano tracks designed to interact: there's definitely an ambient opportunity here

And then to really just play I have bought Loopy which allows you to record/import a large number of loops and layer them - I made some 'interesting' mixes of airport sounds.

Then, pretending I was a real electronic musician I bought Audiobus which allows you to have input from various apps (such as Bebot, Figure, Mixtkl, Garageband) put them through effects (I picked up a free one called AudioEffects to play with) and then output to Loopy, earphones or garageband or others. Again, I am mainly making noise to pass the time - but it is fun and underscores the power that real music makers now have at their fingertips (literally)