Podcast 26

djmcloud.com podcast #26: syncing note app for iOS, Google Music client, iTunes Match, new OS X version on the way

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Hosted by me (@pacificpelican)

podcast artwork featuring Belle and Dodger the blue parakeets

show notes

-Intro song: “Pacific Shores” by Neener from the forthcoming Neener 2 LP

-Apple announces upcoming desktop OS release: OS X Mountain Lion (10.8); Jim joins in on this segment to help me discuss what that means

-iTunes Match

[I talked preliminarily about iTunes Match and Google Music in podcast 12.]

-Intermission song: “Salt Water” by Neener from the forthcoming Neener 2 LP; Jessica joins me to talk about our music and more

-e-Commerce and social networking: Gamestop, Nordstrom, and Gap have all opened and shut down storefronts on Facebook already.

-danmckeown.info update

-new version (2.0) of popular free “play anything” VLC media player for Mac, Linux and Windows

-iOS apps:

Nebulous Notes: take notes in a simple text entry interface, and then send them to your Dropbox. [I talked about Dropbox in podcast 11 and about note-taking alternative Evernote in podcast 10.]

Melodies Pro: play your Google Music collection on your iPhone

Podcast 25 – Twitter is becoming like Myspace

djmcloud.com podcast #25: Twitter users obsess over popularity and use Favstar; plus Nikon D800, and Canon

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Hosted by me (@pacificpelican) and Jessica (@JessicaMcKeown).

podcast artwork

show notes

I talk with Jessica about Canon (point-and-shoot sales are weak while dSLR sales are strong) and Nikon (new D800).
Then I go on a long rant about how now Twitter is like Myspace used to be, driven by crass popularity statistics and thus incentivizing pandering behavior by users as they obsess over how their tweets are received. People allow reactions from a few users to shape their sharing choices. This is not exactly self-expression. Favstar seems to offer Twitter users a place to obsess over their online image, and show off to other users how often they have been re-tweeted and favorited.

Podcast 24 – my new book, Lion’s new auto-saving, Megaupload shutdown aftershocks

Apple’s new auto-save system, my new book, file sharing chaos and more on djmcloud.com podcast #24.

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podcast #24 artwork

show notes

Moving up the results: Okay but not stellar progress in making danmckeown.info the definitive site about people who use that name.

Congratulations to Jessica for winning an award from her employer for her excellent work.

Fallout continues in the file sharing world of the Megaupload.com shutdown and arrests.  Some people report losing their files.  I’ve always thought that (legitimate) file sharing should be managed at as micro a level as possible–I wrote pacificpelican.us/cms to help make it easy for anyone with web space that can run PHP can easily upload and share files on their site.

I have an ebook that you can download: Like Any Gangster: Selected Writings 2006-2011 [54 pages, PDF and iPad versions both available for free].  This first edition was made with Apple’s iBooks Author.

A discussion of the file auto-save and versioning system in Mac OS X Lion: I illustrate the change in Lion from Snow Leopard by considering the difference between iMovie 11 and GarageBand 11 (the former auto-saves, the latter uses manual saving).  In addition, I consider the different implications of the new system for text files compared to image files.

Podcast 23

djmcloud.com podcast #23

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Hosted by me (@pacificpelican) and Jessica (@JessicaMcKeown)

show notes

Apple textbooks: Andy Ihnatko talks about the new software for making iPad iBooks.

Sol Republic earphones

NFL playoffs

When this podcast first mentioned Hipstamatic (an iOS camera app) in episode 3, I repeated a now-discredited marketing story they were telling at the time–namely, that there had been a small-production camera (“100″) in the 1980s that gave the name and inspiration for the app.  I personally don’t care about the myth but must admit I was dumb to be so uncritical and repeat it to listeners.  I bring this up unprompted because it took me a year before I randomly thought: Hey that story must be nonsense.

Megaupload.com faces mega international prosecution.

SOPA and PIPA protest

Paul Graham: “Kill Hollywood.”

How far will government and law enforcement go in allowing itself to be used as a tool for smashing competition and innovation for the movie and record industries?

Politico: ”Indeed, the fiery fight over how to preserve [sic] copyright on the Internet is far from over.”

Obey The Goose.

‘Smile’, the long-lost follow-up to the iconic 1960s classic ’Pet Sounds’ by The Beach Boys was finally released in a 5-disc set called ‘The Smile Sessions‘ in 2011.

A Vancouver newspaper is forced to turn photos over to police of the Stanley Cup riot last year; so they are releasing the images of people lighting fires, attacking police cars and smashing storefronts.

DJMcloud Music is now on SoundCloud.

Podcast 22: How much of a genius do you have to be to understand iOS memory management?

djmcloud.com podcast #22: Marines try new counter-insurgency tactics in Afghanistan that will piss off the locals, the New York Times questions the value of checking facts, and the Apple Genius Bar tells my wife to shut down applications on her iPhone

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Hosted by me (@pacificpelican) with help from the parakeets.
(http://djmcloud.danieljmckeown.com/updates)

News Topics and Links

US Marines urinating on corpses of Afghans perfectly symbolizes the intent and reality of the American war effort.  Barack Obama was unable to cover up these images like he did previous ones.

Mitt Romney is such a scumbag talking about “saving the soul of America” and even Newt Gingrich is attacking him for his shady business dealings.

New York Times public editor, Arthur Brisbane, asking whether lies should be allowed, shows how worthless mainstream journalists still are.

Tonight I saw Apple Genius Bar employees advising my wife to go through and kill applications manually.  So despite the debate over the utility of the practice (of routinely going through and shutting down a bunch of apps rather than using the shutdown occasionally when an app is acting up) they are telling people to do that at Apple stores still apparently.

djmcloud podcast 21 – iOS apps, Gen X hearts Bill Clinton (but why?), and a new song

djmcloud.com podcast #21: Another diptych iOS app, white noise sounds, Minecraft PE and Eden, Samsung stumbles, new house music from Neener

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hosted by Dan (@pacificpelican)
(http://djmcloud.danieljmckeown.com/updates)

iPhone apps
-White Noise (TMSOFT)
-Grid Lens (Bucket Labs)
-Minecraft Pocket Edition (Mojang)
-Eden (Kingly Software Inc.)

pacificpelican.us/cms

download the free PHP app for uploading files, creating text documents and creating shortlinks for your web site

Tech Media News

Samsung is badly misplaying its marketing hand with the “Dude you’re a barista” commercials.

John Gruber talks about Bill Clinton on the “Back to Work” podcast: What is it with Gen X and Bill Clinton??

Music

Bush: “The Sound of Winter” from ‘The Sea of Memories’ (2011)

Teagan and Sara: “Alligator (live)” from ‘Get Along’ (2011)

Neener: “Pacific Shores” from Neener 2 (forthcoming in 2012)–exclusive preview of the track at the end of the podcast

Podcast 20 – Notes on Hipstamatic/new iOS apps/Christmas episode/with Jessica

djmcloud.com podcast #20: The current version of my Notes on Hipstamatic,some links to Christmas videos, minor corrections to episode 19, and two new iOS apps: a fish-eye lens simulator and Google Currents.

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or download the mp3

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hosted by Dan (@pacificpelican)

(http://djmcloud.danieljmckeown.com/updates)

and Jessica (@JessicaMcKeown)

(http://jessica.sf3am.com)

(This podcast was recorded live on video via Ustream. See the recorded video here.)

show notes (Dec. 17, 2011)

follow-up on the previous podcast (#19):

I mentioned GTA 5 when I clearly meant GTA 4 at one point, and I also called Star Wars Battlefront 2 “Star Wars Battlefield the original one” which makes sense as far as that being the first Star Wars Battlefront title on PSP but obviously not on all platforms. For example PS2 had the true “original” Battlefront.

Christmas videos we’ve done:

pacificpelican.us/podcast 17: Santa Claus makes a brief appearance in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park

The Christmas rainbow: When Jessica and I spent our first Christmas together in 2009, it was the kind of Christmas Day in Ohio that you could ride bikes–so we did and then we saw a rainbow.

Christmas in Chicago: In 2010 Jessica and I went to Chicago to spend the holidays with my family out there, and this video collects some clips from that season.

[the Santa photo]

Gordon Square: This year we made a video about rock music, Christmas–and not snitching.

My Notes on Hipstamatic [incomplete as 12/17/2011]

Currrent Hipstamatic version: 225 231

Films:

Black keys super grain: nice sharp black and white with small black frame, no noise

Alfred Infrared: Cool take on infrared film; can create very cool reddish images; leaky white frame; no noise

Ina’s 1969: Creates mild “60s” colors effect; has retro yellow dot border; no noise

Blanko: Offers a relatively neutral platform for the lens, with solid white border

Pistil: Creates reddish colors, uses distracting verbose alphanumeric-character-having border that says something like hpstm 269 or something

Cafe Cafenol: brownish sepia like tones with a shattered partial dark frame

Blanko noir: neutral film with black border

Float: Japanese style film yellows the image somewhat while placing a dark border with random seeming tentacles reaching into the image in some areas

AO DLX: a free Nike-sponsored film, creates slightly grainy black-and-white images within a somewhat uneven black frame which includes alphanumeric noise including “Nike”

AO BW: another free Nike-sponsored film, creates high contrast black-and-white images with a nearly even white border without alphanumeric noise

Lenses:

Hornbecker: from the Nike free pack, emphasizes realism and accuracy

Lucas AB2: creates muted, retro colors

Chunky: creates sharply focused images with light leak effects

Labatique 73: mild grainy effect: from the Cowboys and Aliens free pack

Matty ALN: causes notable light ray effects; from the Cowboys and Aliens free pack

iOS apps

[repeat app recommendation/The djmcloud.com app of the year] ProCamera: the best iOS photo app abides–does the best job with meta-data, combing photo and video, and with overall shooting.

Snappr: another entrant in the fish-eye lens effect photo app category: offers a custom shooting interface and multiple fish-eye effects but currently has the limitation that it renders photos at 1200×1200 for iPhone 4S, smaller for older phones; also of course has the limitations that any app will have compared to an optical fish-eye lens

Google Currents: another entrant in the customized news and content reading experience; sort of like Flipboard and the various Twitter apps but with its own spin: allows reader to focus on a handful of feeds more so than the firehose of content on apps like Reeder (which actually is much more of a Google Reader client than Currents, but that’s not the point I guess).

Podcast 19 – Jessica joins me to discuss GTA 3 and more

djmcloud.com podcast #19: Jessica stops by as we talk about GTA III for iOS and mention Google Music–and our music

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hosted by Dan (@pacificpelican)

(http://djmcloud.danieljmckeown.com/updates)

and Jessica (@JessicaMcKeown)

(http://jessica.sf3am.com)

show notes (Dec. 16, 2011)

iOS game:

Grand Theft Auto 3 (10th anniversary edition)

http://goo.gl/2vOPn

also available for Android:

http://goo.gl/gRO1D

From the intro credits music to the crazy radio stations (“Jah,” “Head Radio”) to the eccentric, boxy and gently rising street grid, which is utterly mapped to the inner synapses of the greatest minds of my generation: it’s the game that ranks as very possibly the greatest video game of all time, starting in 2001 as a PlayStation 2 game and moving eventually to Xbox and PC before living middle age as “Liberty City Stories” on early attempts to take such scale of games to mobile as on the PSP before now finally living a grand old age as the one that came first (before the wild Vice City, the brilliant San Andreas, and the imperfect but impeccably tuned GTA V, before the transcendently good Red Dead Redemption) and laid out an amazingly large amount of the formula, fully formed, onto the public.  We’re talking about the deadpan timbre of the satire in the game, the utter corruption of power, the un-deniability of the wary protagonist, the complexity of the game’s universe, and the weapons–oh the many weapons.

Limitations present in GTA III and subsequently fixed in Liberty City Stories are present again–no baseball bat damaging vehicles, no motorcycles at all–still it’s incredible to see such an advanced game from ten years ago compacted down but utterly playable on an iPhone 4S.  It doesn’t hurt that I have pleasant associations with the game, but get through the fog memory and try it yourself–you’ll probably be surprised at how good the game is even today.

The Neener Band Blog

http://blogs.sf3am.com/neener/

Our music.  More songs like “Occupy Your Mind” (as heard on this podcast) forthcoming.

Google Music:

http://music.google.com

Music “locker service that allows anyone to store up to 20,000 songs and stream them to their devices via the web.

 

Podcast 18 – 3 new videos I made & 3 new app picks

djmcloud.com podcast #18

New videos from pacificpelican.us/podcast and three new photo apps for iPhone and why I can’t be bothered sometimes to try to fix crappy CSS for someone else’s project.

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subscribe via RSS: http://feeds2.pacificpelican.us/djmblog

subscribe via iTunes: http://notes.danieljmckeown.com/?r=5

hosted by Dan (@pacificpelican)

(http://djmcloud.danieljmckeown.com/updates)

djmcloud.com artwork

pacificpelican.us/cms: a free web app for uploading files and text documents and shortening links that you can download and use on your own web server for free

djmcloud.com podcast 18 show notes – Dec. 13, 2011

New videos from pacificpelican.us/podcast

Gordon Square“: a video set in Cleveland and Lakewood starring Jessica and the birds (and I appear briefly at the end) with new music from Neener and an important message: “DON’T SNITCH!”

Big Parrot Millet part 1“: a short fish-eye-lens-style video that seeks to answer the question of whether my parakeets like the type of millet sprays which are packaged for larger parrots.

Big Parrot Millet part 2“: in this rare sequel, we conclude that the parakeets do enjoy the big bird millet.

iOS apps

Flipboard

A way to view content from numerous sites in one interface–can link to Twitter, Tumblr, Google Reader, Facebook, Flickr and more.

FishEye Toy Camera (by misskwi)

Creates circular photos with simulated fish-eye lens effect; fun to mess around with but of course doesn’t offer the type of angles and views that optical fish-eye lenses can.

Big Lens (by Reallusion Inc.)

Allows photos taken with iPhone to appear to simulate a (dSLR-style) shallow depth of field.  Includes circular or rectangular focal area highlighting tool and virtual aperture picker.

podcast intro music: “No Sleep” by Screambird

podcast 18 additional notes

WordPress:

new version 3.3 with new features including updated media uploader: http://goo.gl/MXe13

CSS for default Twenty-eleven theme still smushing images cross-posted via Posterous on iPhone browser: http://goo.gl/OQtpr

archiving tweets using WordPress: this update/fork to the Twitter Tools plugin allows RTs to be archived along with regular tweets: http://goo.gl/78nyK

“Republican shills?!”: No Agenda Podcast episode 363  http://363.nashownotes.com/

Green apple photo taken with “Big Lens” app: http://links.danieljmckeown.com/?r=2