This week Mike talks about Trump (aka Orange Tang), Martin Scorsese, Fitbit buying Pebble, Facebook Messenger, Android Wear, and two months with his Apple Watch.
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Marco Arment, creator of the podcasting app I use on my iPhone, Overcast, explains why podcasts don’t use VBR MP3s, even though they’re more space-efficient and sound better:
AVFoundation, the low-level audio/video framework in iOS and macOS, does not accurately seek within VBR MP3s, making VBR impractical to use for long files such as podcasts. Jumping to a timestamp in an hour-long VBR podcast can result in an error of over a minute, without the listener even knowing because the displayed timecode shows the expected time.
I’ve been using time-jumping links on YouTube videos for years. It’s really handy.
Like this clip of George Carlin naming the seven words you can’t say on television (circa the mid ’70s). Here is a link starting from the beginning, and here is a link jumping right to him saying the words.
It’s too bad podcasts don’t support this. I splice in sound effects and little easter eggs throughout my podcasts all the time. It would be great to have direct links to them instead of having to remember the timestamps.
This week Mike talks about the new De La Soul album, self-promotion and entrepreneurship, the Facebook Trends algorithm, No Man’s Sky, manufactured outrage, and taking time to contemplate things before reacting. Rest in peace, Gene Wilder.
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Mike and Bryan discuss Batman v Superman and end with some thoughts on that dirtbag Trump.
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Mike discusses the Juno Space Mission, Apple removing the headphone jack from the iPhone, Tony Hawk’s 900, Spotify bitching about Apple, and letting go of a balloon, among other things.
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The Subreddit ‘LifeProTips’ has a great thread on ways to remove “um,” and words like it from your conversational vocabulary:
Replace your “ums” with spaces. You begin your thought with something as simple as “I’m…” space space space… then just finish your thought as it comes to you: “not really in the mood for spaghetti tonight.”
Eventually, the spaces will get shorter. “Um” and “uh” and “er” are crutches. Keep using them, and you’ll always need them.
I like mrwizard420’s response to this:
This is… absolutely correct. If you were to look at… certain famous people like… President Obama, you… would see this technique… used quite often.
(Bonus points if you read this in… the Obamavoice.)
Adding spacings and pauses in your speech is the most common piece of advice in this threaad.
As someone who’s continually trying to get better at talking on his podcast, this thread handy.
Over at AIGA’s Eye on Design blog, Jude Stewart solicited advice from podcasters on everything you need to know before starting a podcast:
Perhaps the most pungent advice comes from The Poster Boys’ Schaefer: “Fail. Screw up. Fall on your face, and embarrass yourself… Only you can figure out what you want your thing to be.” Podcasting is process. At its best, it should resemble every creative act: messy, iterative, dogged. For game talkers, mistakes-enthusiasts, learning-junkies, media-pioneers or some combination of the above, podcasting may be the ideal pursuit.
This rings true to me.
When I started my Weekly Exhaust podcast last year I didn’t know what I was doing. Technically, sure, I knew how to get it up and running, but the actually talking-and-making-it-interesting-to-listeners part? No clue. When I go back and listen to the first handful of episodes I hear how rookie I was.
Editing episodes at the beginning was tough too because I couldn’t stand the sound of my own voice (most people can’t), but with time I’ve grown more tolerant of my voice. I attribute this to repetition and getting better at talking, although I still have to work on my “ums” and “you knows”.
At the end of the day I do it because I enjoy doing it and I’ve discovered how to make it a great compliment to this blog. Posts from this site, combined with talking points I capture throughout the week in my Simplenote app, give me fuel for each week’s episode.
Mike and Bryan talk about The Six Million Dollar Man (aka the Bionic Man), 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Cavs, and Ohio sports sadness.
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This week Mike and Bryan talk politics. What?! They had to. The elephant in the room was too big. Next episode they’ll be back to their regular scheduled bitching about other topics.
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Over the weekend The New York Times published a piece, Podcasts Surge, but Producers Fear Apple Isn’t Listening.
Marco Arment, a prominent iOS developer and podcaster, responded:
And if that ill-informed New York Times article is correct in broad strokes, which is a big “if” given how much it got wrong about Apple’s role in podcasting, big podcasters want Apple to add more behavioral data and creepy tracking to the Apple Podcasts app, then share the data with them. I wouldn’t hold my breath on that.
By the way, while I often get pitched on garbage podcast-listening-behavioral-data integrations, I’m never adding such tracking to Overcast. Never. The biggest reason I made a free, mass-market podcast app was so I could take stands like this.
Big podcasters also apparently want Apple to insert itself as a financial intermediary to allow payment for podcasts within Apple’s app. We’ve seen how that goes. Trust me, podcasters, you don’t want that.
It would not only add rules, restrictions, delays, and big commissions, but it would increase Apple’s dominant role in podcasts, push out diversity, give Apple far more control than before, and potentially destroy one of the web’s last open media ecosystems.
I agree with Arment. Be careful what you wish for.
You don’t hear these complaints from less popular, underdog podcasters, like me. I’ve been producing my (sometimes) Weekly Exhaust podcast for over a year with my co-host Bryan, and it’s hard work, but that’s how it goes. Anything worth doing takes hard work. It takes me having to figure out how to market and advertise my podcast to get exposure.
If I hand that responsibility over to Apple I also hand over money that could go in my pocket. I also hand over my relationship with my listeners. I don’t want to do that.
This week Mike talks about the human tendency to harp on the negative, pattern recognition, loss aversion, the new basic economy class for flights, how great it is to fly Virgin America, and digging deep to find great culture.
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This week Mike talks about the downside of group chats, people who don’t know how to parallel park, hailing cabs and Uber rides, and clueless people at the gym.
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This week Mike and Bryan talk about the crap-tastic new Ghostbusters trailer, Donald Drumpf, and some other stuff.
This week Mike and Bryan talk about the Superbowl, Star Wars product marketing, the Phoenix Open, golfing in Napa, De La Soul’s Kickstarter album, and the movie The Martian.
