After more than 2 years, quite a few posts, dozens of themes and a lot of fun, this blog is leaving wordpress.com.  The blog’s URL (www.acrossthepod.com) will remain the same, but you will now get sent to our new wordpress installation over at dreamhost.  Our feed shall also remain the same (feeds.feedburner.com/acrossthepod).  Thanks to the wordpress guys, i have only seen features grow while i was here, not once was this site down, and overall this was the best experience possible to teach me how to use wordpress.  See ya! 

After a few months work, a lot of emails, and strangely enough, a lot of ichat usage: the next Across The Pod episode is officially in the works.  It will be a round-table discussion with me, Alex Lindsay and John Foster.  It should be good, we are recording on the 28th march, and the show should be released a few days after that.

Word processing is a traditionally utterly mundane task.  Just lay out your document exactly the way it will appear on paper, write it, and print it.  Microsoft word is the titan of this area, dominating well over 70% of the market.  However, a few growing niche alternatives exist, such as Apple’s Pages (‘08), which i switched to recently in order to leave MS word behind.  It was an easy transition, and the prowess of pages at its job astounded me.  Pages is still fundamentally a “word processor”  though, and after i discovered a piece of software called “Scrivener”, i have left pages behind too, in favor of Scrivener.  

 There is something fundamentally different about Scrivener compared to other software products in its class- Scrivener is designed to write content.  In many cases, the finished product is not what you see, as i write this, i don’t need to write it in the exact same fashion that it will appear on the site (something which effectively, all word processors do), i just need to have good writing tools.  Scrivener offers a variety of templates for novels, radio drama’s and plays, as well as the obligatory “blank”.  The key to the operation is the one-window nature of the application.  Within one window (and quite importantly, one application) i can store an entire project, its chapters, notes, and even research i have done for the article.  This is what sets scrivener apart, scrivener is not a word processor, it is a content processor.  Later, when you want your work exported to the required format, scrivener’s export function takes care of producing an exported file to the users specifications.  Regrettably,  Scrivener can not handle files from Apple’s Pages directly when importing.  What is most frustrating is seeing the potential scrivener has, but only being able to access what it has now, to really complete the package, Scrivener could really do with some templates for other types of contents such as columns and online articles, as well as an additional plug-in to directly post Scrivener articles to web-sites (such as wordpress and moveable type) via the XML-RPC standard. Overall, Scrivener is a revolution in content creation, but could do with just a tad more work. 

I just started using fluid.app .  It’s a small app for mac that makes Web-Kit based SSB’s (Site Specific Browser).  In other words it makes a cocoa mac app for your website based on the same great technology of safari.  I used it to create a little app for the wordpress admin for the website.  This functions perfectly, and works great, because while i love word press’s advanced admin and posting features: i hate that they are confined to the web browser (and don’t really want marsedit).  So know i have the desktop blogging app i always wanted.  The apps are real cocoa apps with scripting and automator support, and can be handed around just like normal apps if you want.  I know some people who’ve used fluid to create desktop iterations of google reader, and before i tried fluid, a friend of mine sent me one, and i didn’t even know it was built with fluid, it even had a custom icon (which fluid supports)

As many of you will know, the podcast that goes with this blog has kind of been stop-start for the last few months.  That’s mainly because i’ve been experimenting to find our niche in podland (wherever podland actually is).  Well, i think i’ve found it.  In future the show is probably going to be a round-table discussion of well known tech people (and me) just “geeking-out” and talking about cool stuff we like.  This sort of thing has seeped into other shows, but to my knowledge, there is no show dedicated to it.  So there you go, our next episode, and the first one as part of our new direction, will be released within 1 month, so head over to iTunes and subscribe to make sure you don’t miss it!

When i take photo’s i like to think of the “SLR Shot”, think of a photo that you would want printed and hung on a wall, having this mindset helps you take much better photos, landscapes and scenery in particular.  Also, going through your old photos once in a while helps too, as this can help you realize the value of something that, at the time seemed like an OK photo, was actually a great one!

The next episode of the show has been delayed, until my voice chords start working again, i don’t feel as bad as i sound, but its not worth talking like this….

Drupal is a great CMS (content management system), and has some really powerful uses (such as 43folders.com) but it is limited, if Drupal really wants to become the CMS of choice, i think they need to make some changes.  Take wordpress as a base, wordpress is the most powerful blogging system i know, and i love using it, and having trawled through blogspot, typepad, moveable type and even vox i don’t want to switch anytime soon.  What drupal needs to do is perhaps fork the code, produce an easy to use version of Drupal for Bloggers and podcasters, or perhaps have a “new media mode” which can be turned on and off, this way, it can maintain the power of drupal, but do what wordpress does best, and since WordPress is open source, they could even build a module to turn wordpress themes into drupal themes.  I want drupal to become wordpress for those who want to move beyond even wordpress, i want to be able to customise it completely, throw in modules of functionality, make the new media coverage experience easy.  Drupal has a lot of this already covered, with a little tweaking and some fresh code, Drupal goes from “great if you can get it working” to “the CMS for power users”- From Good to Great.

Since the tech community is currently buzzing with speculation about acquisition talks with Yahoo, i was thinking…does Yahoo actually need to get acquired?  Del.icio.us,Flickr,Upcoming: all web 2.0 properties that Yahoo owns, yahoo is also well liked due to its open source mentality.  Yahoo could do very well merely by consolidating into a conglomerate of web 2.0 companies that individually, some make a profit, and some don’t, but together form a profitable enterprise.  Flickr for example, a great loss leader, it brings brand awareness but has huge bandwidth costs, but combine that with Yahoo’s other services, and you could, with a lot of tweaking, have a lean, nimble web 2.0 conglomerate.  Imagine it, The main yahoo can concentrate on what it does best: Mail, Calendar and Business info, and attached to the sides can be all the amazing web services Yahoo has managed to pick up.  Under this scenario, Yahoo might even turn into “Venture Capital without the Venture Capital”. By that i mean, a single company that purchases start-ups, is profitable as a whole, but can afford to wait to let companies truly blossom, unlike traditional VC, and since Yahoo! has already been on the Stock Market for years, people could invest in this new company easily, allowing investors to buy a single share in what is over-all a profitable enterprise, but the combined share approach also prevents Wall Street’s “Get Bent” attitude towards individual companies penetrating deep into yahoo and killing its loss leaders.  Yahoo could even sell their search portion to google on a subscription basis, eg. Google pays $$$$ per year to “own” yahoo search, and with a constant flow of google cash pumping into Yahoo, yahoo can continue to fund its acquisitions and become a great company.  Sound’s good to me….

Just noted a spike in the visitor numbers, first of all: Thanks for visiting!  Secondly, please comment, it helps me work out what readers want from the blog….

In this episode, Across The Pod does a short review of the now free RSS reading client for mac: NetNewsWire

People often get obsessed with the WYSWYG nature of modern web design, i’m asking them to take a step back from that.  With tools like Panics Coda and Mac Rabbits CSSedit using WYSWYG to do basic page layout and then hand coding to fine-tune your site and achieve the look you want, is becoming a very attractive option.  None of us like to learn how to code, but a little coding goes a Very Long Way.

Twitter: i’ll admit it now, i’m hooked.  But more importantly, i wan’t to know why, what is it about Twitter that draws me back time and time again.  At first, there was a certain learning curve to get over, and then i posted once every week or so, in bundles of posts, but now i post several times a day, enjoy using it, track who follows me and the people i follow, and enjoy the social feel of it.  Twitter feels like a club where people are free to say what they want and people will comment accordingly (and most of the time, kindly and sensibly), and because there is no direct comment-to-post features, the fan-people attacks that plague many sites are rare, as people are unwilling to fill their own twitter front pages with angry,irrational spittle filled retorts to other users.  This might mean that Twitter has actually shown and helped these peopple calm down and think rationally, and realise the bad image and first impression they are portraying as fan-people.  I still can’t lock-down what draws me to Twitter.  It’s certainly an acquired taste, but it’s a taste i want to order often…

Being a tech junkie does a lot of things to you.  One of the biggest is changing your stances on quality, because after having trawled through hundreds of web services, I’m not willing to put up with anything other than well-written and first-class products (in the realm of web services).  That’s why i use WordPress, i have gone through 4-6 Content Management systems and WordPress was the only one which was easy to set up, had a plethora of features, excellent spam protection, was a joy to use, and simply had a slick feel to it.  As a result, if i’m investigating a web service, if you can’t make your product seem engaging within 5-10 seconds, i’m gone.  If i try your product and its not intuitive and doesn’t have that sense of polish and quality that it should (wordpress and the products written by 37 Signals are examples of that polish) then i’m gone.  As something near to a power-user and someone who does actually value their time- I shouldn’t have to learn the tiny intricacies of your product and pound on it for about 3 days to get it working.  Basic functionality should be slick and intuitive, and more importantly should work right out of the box.  Advanced functionality should be intuitive to access and have an easy learning curve.  Taking the time to achieve this is beneficial to you to- because by building a great product that people use, your users will love it, pass it on, and help you along the way

I use the service “Delicious” (at del.icio.us) a lot to bookmark interesting stories and tidbits from the internet (you can see my 7 most recent posts in our website sidebar), and love it.  Its ease of use, sense of community, utility for podcast workflows and more make it one of my must haves.  Unfortunately when i want to see who else has saved a story of mine (which i’m interested in to find like-minded people, find out if people saved my stories etc) i am increasingly finding myself on the recieving end of a “999 Error”-Which to put it bluntly means i am denied of a large chunk of Del.icio.us’s social functionality.  Yahoo! should realise that buying del.icio.us was a great acquisition and that it is one of the well used and modern parts of their portfolio, but if i keep seeing errors and can’t use del.icio.us as i should be able to, I, and probably most of the del.icio.us community, will leave.

These day’s i listen to a ridiculous amounts of podcasts, by that i mean gigabytes a week (it’s what happens when you get disillusioned with TV), and as such, have an opinion that (at least i hope) is based on a lot of experience.  Recently, i have noticed how more and more podcast’s are moving away from the Geek-side of technology coverage, and are moving towards “subtitling” every topic they cover, i disagree with what they are doing.  While i may be biased, the geek-side is what i, and the huge geek audience out there-enjoy.  For example, take the show macbreak-tech (at macbreaktech.com), i listen to this show and enjoy it due to its geeky side, and it’s willingness to stay there.  If it moved the other way, i wouldn’t subscribe to it, but i do, just a note to you podcaster’s out there.

In this episode of Across The Pod we discuss:

• Rode Podcaster
• Inquisitor
• Macheist
• Bento and more

There’s just minutes to go, so i’d thought i’d get my totally “out of left field” prediction out there, since no one quite can put their finger on the Steve-Jobs-Keynote Pulse this year-I am predicting a mock funeral for PowerPC, much like the one held at the WWDC keynote in 20002 for Mac OS 9. Prepare for the coffin to rise from the floor-PowerPC is dead! Long Live MacIntel!

The Macheist Bundle, a bundle of Mac software, offering $368 of fairly good mac software for just $49 ($39 if you enter their “heists” and get special codes), has just gone fully unlocked, previously people would have to wait until the bundle raised $100000 for charity to get ALL the software ( See Below) to be available for download, but its ready now.

1password	$29.95
CoverSutra	$22.00
Cha-Ching	$40.00
iStopMotion	$49.00
Awaken	$12.95
Speed Download	$25.00
AppZapper	$12.95
TaskPaper	$18.95
CSSEdit	$29.95
Snapz Pro X	$69.00
Pixelmator	$59.0

Newsgator, the company that produces a myriad of RSS based products announced that as of today all of it’s products for individuals are now: free!  Every single one of them.  Did i mention that also includes their cross-service synchronisation?  So now you can have your feeds where you want them, how you want them, when you want them.  Crucially, this means that Newsgator’s critically acclaimed RSS reader for the Mac-Newnewswire, is available free-of-charge.  This is excellent news, and when you add in the free syncing, Newsgator is now putting on an offering that you simply can’t refuse to try.  Newsgators free products for individuals are available here

Gmail in the web browser: Dead. To. Me.Why?  Because a kind developer gave me access to review his app, mailplane.appMailplane is a desktop-gmail client.  For people like me, who manage several gmail accounts, i just open up mailplane, check my default account, and simply click through every account in order, all while retaining Gmail’s user-experience ( for example, time tracked conversations instead of huge reply emails).  This is the app that gmail-junkies have been looking for. The interface is simple and intuitive, the user-experience just works and the level of polish on the app is very hig.
Did i mention that mailplane makes your gmail fully cocoa integrated.  This is huge, you can finally apply all the local-app functionality that Mac OS X offers to your gmail (Services, Automator, scripting, the list goes on….)Overall, i’m even considering using Mailplane in favour of apple mail.app.  This is an excellent application and i would strongly recommend you all to check it out. Gmail-Junkie?, want a mail.app alternative”, or just want to cocoa your gmail?: the solution is right in front of you.  

Due to the soon to be open macworld expo and conference the mac-universe is currently in full-swing and quickly moving towards overdrive.  As as result, the next 2 weeks will be mac-focused, featuring Mac reviews tips, tricks and more.

In Our Relaunch episode, we discuss the Pixelcorps with founder: Alex Lindsay.

Show (Derivatives are available at our good host archive.org)

Credits:

Host-Shash

Guest-Alex Lindsay

Recently, i have become a member of the organisation known as the “Pixelcorps”.  The Pixelcorps is a guild of content creator’s, tech-heads, and new media Oficcionados.  The thing is, the Pixelcorps is kind of “inside-baseball” at the moment.  Very few people take the time to “review” membership, and explain it on a detailed level.  Well, I’m going to.From the moment you join, the Pixelcorps is a wonderful experience.  So much is included with your membership it’s hard to believe the price.  Without special code’s or the Pixelcorp’s annual summer promotion, membership is still an excellent deal.  When you join, you get sent your reciepts, registration info and links to everything a new member needs, then comes the amazing experience. Firstly, the Pixelcorps has a members-only wiki, we’ll revisit it later, but for the moment, i can tell you that within this wiki there is a multi-page guide, explaining what you need to do to take advantage of your membership.  This guide isn’t just a string of text which you need to trawl-through, video training is included, every step of the way, a member of the pixelcorps staff will guide you on how to create your forum avatar, how to access the Pixelcorps internal tools and more. Speaking of “internal tools”, the Pixelcorps membership is more than just a group of people.  You get access to hours of video training, a private Pixelcorps-VPN account (allowing you to “tunnel-in” to the Pixelcorps central, and access the rest that the Pixelcorps has to offer), and access to pro-software.  By Pro-software, i mean real pro software, Cinema 4D, Modelling tools-In short, thousands of dollars of useful, powerful tools.Beyond this the Pixelcorps offers internal “challenges”, pre-release footage on new equipment (such as the Red Camera). Apart from this, the Pixelcorps is really a community of technology savvy people who are incredibly knowledgeable in their own niche’s,  and who are willing to pass around idea’s, tips, tricks and more to their fellow Pixelcorps Members. Its the beginning of the year, and, in my “blown-away and amazed” reviewers opinion, if you really want to get in to visual media, new media and a whole lot more, its a great time to join the Pixelcorps. 

Many tech-heads know that while having a good operating system is, well…good, it is extremely important to cultivate a high quality developer base, and give back to them. That doesn’t just mean having a stranglehold on the market, as Microsoft does now, people develop for windows, because its windows:If windows didn’t have the mass market share it does, developers would go somewhere else. Why? Developing for windows is by no means easy, there aren’t great developer tools, and you have to avoid getting your, legitimate program quarantined by a user’s security system. MS has developers because users have MS.

The Mac is now proof of why the MS approach just doesn’t work at a high level. While the mac doesn’t have anywhere near the Goliath market share of Microsoft, it is an excellent space to develop for. There are a number of reasons for this:

Firstly, developer tools, the mac has some of the best developer tools on the planet. Every single Mac shipped today comes with access to Xcode , the same development kit that apple itself writes it’s applications with. Xcode works with almost every programming language, integrates deeply with the Mac, provides debugging features, and even comes with “code-snippets”, which take care of large swathes of application development for the developer, Xcode even has easy to use “application-converts”, that with a few check-boxes and a couple of lines of code, make any application 64 bit and multi-core enabled. And the cost of this great development system: Nothing. Xcode is free to every mac user.

That’s not it though, by no means. Every mac also get’s shipped with Quartz-Composer, a visual-code less framework for building mind-blowing applications for the mac. Want to create a visual RSS reader that displays your feeds in a customized view (want your feeds to spiral onto the screen, wan’t them to come up like old-skool terminal commands, you got it!), you can have it! In fact, quartz-composer can build many applications without a single line of code, and can even integrate with web API’s.

The Mac also provides a slick, easy to use, completely OS X integrated framework to build Apps on. Cocoa (did i mention everything i’ve mentioned, including cocoa, is free, for those not impressed by that, similar developer tools on windows, or on the mac just a few years ago, could cost thousands apon thousands). Cocoa take’s care of vast amounts of Dev-work for you, Cocoa makes sure that your app slides neatly into every Mac user’s experience, so that users can automate and script to your application, and access it as a tool from anywhere in the OS.

With leopard, the “core” api’s in the Mac OS become more polished and complete. Right now is a great time to get into Mac OS X Dev.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Dev, Mac, OS, X, MacOS X, Leopard, core, Xcode, free

07 is nearly over, techies everywhere are preparing for the real winter rush, not the Holiday season, but trade-show season.  CES, Macworld Expo, NAMM, CEBIT, NAB: For geeks everywhere this is “the most wonderful time of the year!”.

CES keynote’s will continue to be dud’s, but as always, cool products will show up, and hopefully, the might just about appear by the end of 08.

However, as anyone who watched the trade-show’s in 06, CES, despite being so huge that distances between bathrooms are measured in miles will be overshadowed by whats happening in San Francisco: at Macworld.

It’s well known that people actually run to get seat’s at Steve Job’s world famous Macworld Keynote.  It was here that Apple truly moved to Intel, where the iPhone was announced, where the 12 inch powerbook was released.  If 4, Infinite Loop, is the seat of power, then Macworld is the state of the union speech.

One thing is sure, since the rumour mill is practically running on empty (with the exception of the sub-notebook/tablet rumor, which has been kicking around for years) whatever is announced at Macworld, it will be big.

Then come the lesser known trades shows, such as NAMM and NAB.  There, the real media-pro’s will gather to see the new products.  It was at NAB were the real “smart people in the room” plunked down thousands of dollars on what was then vapour-ware: the Red Camera (they are now reaping the rewards, rental prices for Red’s are skyrocketing)

CeBIT will continue to show what the largest trade-show in the world can be, huge, exhausting, and downright breathtaking.

Trade-shows still have a place, Macworld is a prime example.

Tags: Macworld, NAMM, NAB, Trade-shows, CeBIT, Expo

Love it or hate it, advertising it what keeps the web free. If it wasn’t there, then 1995 would come a callin’ and we’d all be paying subscription fee’s to our favorite websites. So instead, thanks to advertisers, we pay with a little of our time and perhaps a little inconvenience, but for the complete no-holes-barred anti-ad person, there’s always ad-blockers.

I digress, what I’m trying to say is centered around the concept that we “pay” for the largely free internet “with a little of our time and perhaps a little inconvenience“. Inconvenience is the key here, because an advertisers dream, and to a certain extent, a consumer’s, is to have ad’s that are polished and refined, don’t get in the way or detract from the user experience, and that the user likes. This is obviously incredibly easier said than done, and whichever advertising agency can come up with a golden formula to do this would be able to build a HQ out of gold bars instead of bricks.

However, since that hasn’t happened yet, and is probably never going to happen, writers and website developers should be trying to find innovative and new ideas that work for advertisers, but more importantly work for users. Yet most don’t, most just stroll down to adsense.google.com and sign up for the tried and tested context-sensitive text-ads. But what many of these adsense users don’t realise is that adsense works for a broad audience, glancing look user, who is trying to find something and spots an ad, on top of the fairly widely held opinion that adsense isn’t very accurate without extensive work and configuration. If you have a niche audience who is interested and knowledgeable in the subject you are writing/producing shows about then ad-sense makes no-sense.

What you need is a different ad-experience. Note: experience, not service or website, because in the process of making a better advertising experience for your users you could end up using several different models.

Firstly, if you write a high-quality, outspoken and influential blog or website, then you could, and probably should, try and join one of the “premier” advertising networks centered around the blogosphere. These networks are like the private banks of the internet advertising industry, they go beyond the plain vanilla, they work for you, they don’t just co-operate with you, they like to have a friendly relationship with you. And while their ad’s are primarily banner based, their ad’s are slick, polished and extremely well targeted towards the audience of your website. This does stem from their selective nature on the subject of which sites they allow to join their network, as their working with a smaller amount of sites, so can afford a more personal relationship with you. In my opinion, the two best of these private-bank like premier advertising networks are Federated Media and The Deck.

Secondly, you should make sure your ad’s are unobtrusive and yet functional, while a good relationship with Federated Media or The Deck will certainly help you, as these companies have a lot of experience in innovative advertising, you might want to go into other area’s. For example, if you write about various products frequently enough, and you feel the product that you are writing about is something that is worth a user buying, why not join one of the industry standard affiliate programs, from Apple or Amazon. If you choose to use the link-form’s of these programs then you can provide unobtrusive links to products (or full blown ad’s if you want to) which user’s can use to easily purchase the product you’re writing about, and best of all, these programs can be big earners.

Finally: Whatever you do, don’t take this as a course in advertising or “monetizing” your website. If you want to blog or to produce internet show’s, do it because you love it, because you have fun doing it, and because you’re passionate and enthusiastic about your subject area. NOT because you wanted to earn some revenue. To take blogging as an example, write because you love it, enjoy having an audience, and if you can earn through advertising, then that’s a layer of delicious icing on the cake for you to enjoy.

Tags: internet, advertising, ads, federated media, the deck, premier, beyond, adsense, google

Hi again, long time since my last post.  Consider this the relaunch of across-the-pod.  This post was written in flock, which is my new browser.  To be frank: Using the newest release candidate for flock has been the best browsing experience i’ve ever had.  Within minutes, i was able to integrate into my browsing experience my Flickr, del.icio.us and of course, my wordpress account.  You can also integrate, youtube, facebook, twiiter and so much more.  Honestly, i was very sceptical about flock, i had heard so many bad stories about “flock being overloaded with yahoo” but it wasn’t, because del.icio.us and flickr, while owned by yahoo, are genuine services that many people use.  The only possible “yahoo-ification” was the default search box, which offers cool “inquisitor” type results-as-you-type, but if you want, and i did, change the search box into a normal google search box.   I’ve never had a smoother, refined browing experience, so give a flock a go, if you don’t like it, you can always switch back…

Blogged with Flock

Tags: relaunchflock browser cool yahoo delicious flickr

It’s been a well known fact for some time know that Yahoo! will soon role out UNLIMITED free storage for yahoo mail users, and since there is already a program to hack gmail into a hard drive, how long is it going to be before someone realises, and writes, a program to turn your yahoo email account into an online hard drive, if, and when that happens, i suppose companies like Xdrive from AOL can just wave goodbye to their “pay-for” storage plans. Although 2 storage companies i have used myself, box.net and Omnidrive, are probably safe. On the one hand, a simple server connection turns Box.net into a slick little 1GB .mac replacement, and Omnidrive does the same except you have to install a small app to make it do this, better still, omnidrive is slick even on an old Windows XP computer which is bogged down in registry items. Both of these companies offer solutions WAY slicker and user friendly than what any hacker will probably write, so the lesson for companies whose business model relies on people paying for storage (after upgrading from a free storage plan) then those companies to make their solutions, slicker, more user friendly, lighter on system resources and definetly offer more storage per buck because if they don’t, as far as they are concerned, if this hack comes out the upper “uber-geek” end of their market is GONE.

In our first episode we interview Scott Bourne of www.ilifezone.com and www.podcastingtricks.com about what is web 2.0 in his opinion, we look at why the adobe lightroom beta (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/) will NOT kill Apples aperture Scott also gives us the scoop on his new podcast as part of the TWiT network: Gear+Media+Tech!You can download it here…unless you did the smart thing and used a podcatcher, in which case, these shownotes are right here, right now.

Here it is album artwork….

It’s under wraps at the moment, but soon, the first episode will arrive…prepare for touchdown.