This week on my pop-culture podcast The Incomparable, we take a look back at our favorite things from the past year, and then talk about favorite moments from the podcast itself. My guests this week are my six most frequent panelists from 2014: John Siracusa, Dan Moren, Steve Lutz, Erika Ensign, David J. Loehr, and Monty Ashley.
This week’s Incomparable is sponsored by:
Squarespace – Make beautiful websites easily, with new Getty Images integration, 24/7 tech support, and much more! Use code SNELL at checkout for 10% off.
Loot Crate – A monthly box of delight for geeks and gamers like us. Use offer code SNELL to get 10% off of a new subscription. January’s box, featuring Star Wars & Voltron and more, must be ordered by January 19 at 9pm PT.
This week’s feed sponsor is the Black Eyed and Blues Music Show with Brian Lee & Brian Parker. Host Brian “T-Bone” Lee showcases music from blues, roots and funk in a 90-minute weekly podcast. If you’re a lover of the blues, or just blues-curious, check it out.
And thanks to Brian Parker of On The Horn for asking me to include the phrase “we love @jsnell” in his sponsorship. I appreciate his support of me going indie. Here’s to a great 2015.
I want to make the case Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) is important and worth your time in 2015, and I want to suggest about 40 hours of Star Trek viewing that will cover all of the great episodes.
This is a great piece, written with love. When you’re done reading it, might I suggest dipping into the back-episode archive of Scott McNulty’s Random Trek podcast?
While traveling over the holidays, I was still working—especially on a bunch of end-of-year podcasts. For The Incomparable, I was putting together a little five-minute teaser for next year’s series of radio plays that we’re doing. While we were in Southern California, I realized that I needed an outtake from one of our previous sessions. The problem was, that clip was stored on my iMac, which was powered down in my office back home.
I’ve written a bit about how I use Dropbox to move my files around, but I’ve only been using an iMac as my main system for a few weeks, and I’m out of the habit of making sure all my files are accessible from my laptop as well.
Digging up year-old podcast files in the CrashPlan mobile app.
So there I was in Orange County, without a specific audio file I needed. And that’s when it hit me: I back up my iMac (and all my other computers) using an online backup service. Which means all of the files on my iMac are also backed up in the cloud. So even though my Mac at home is shut down, the files on it should be accessible to me.
Sure enough, I was able to log in to my backup service and restore the files. If you use CrashPlan, you can restore directly within the CrashPlan app, and files are saved right to your desktop. If you use Backblaze, you log in to the Backblaze site to specify files, and the company emails you a link with a zip archive containing the files you selected. (I prefer CrashPlan’s approach here.)
Both Backblaze and CrashPlan offer iOS apps, as well, letting you access all your backed-up files from your mobile devices. So if you forgot an important presentation or document on your computer, and you couldn’t connect to that device remotely, you could still open a copy from your backups.
When you think about this approach, it seems obvious—but the trick is, you need to think about it. It’s easy to write off your online backup as a mysterious blob of data that’s only there in case you have a disaster, but it’s there all the time, and the tools to access it are getting more convenient all the time.
Marriott is fighting for its right to block personal or mobile Wi-Fi hotspots—and claims that it’s for our own good.
The hotel chain and some others have a petition before the FCC to amend or clarify the rules that cover interference for unlicensed spectrum bands. They hope to gain the right to use network-management tools to quash Wi-Fi networks on their premises that they don’t approve of. In its view, this is necessary to ensure customer security and to protect children.
Of course what hotel chains really want is to eliminate your choice and protect their expensive in-hotel Internet access by usurping a band of radio spectrum that’s intentionally been left for public use. It’s despicable, but unsurprising.
Moltz has a red light on his Drobo (drobo.com). But it’s gonna be OK.
Then we discuss the rumors about a 12-inch MacBook Air.
http://www.slashgear.com/macbook-air-2015s-killer-feature-may-be-a-lack-of-click-22360353/
Rumors often don’t pan out, like the one about them removing the headphone jack on iPhones.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/06/06/lightning-enabled-headphones-could-let-apple-ditch-the-headphone-jack-on-future-iphones
Then the podcast ends forever when Dan says he keeps trackpad tapping on on his MacBook Air. So long, been nice podcasting for you.
OK, back to headphones, Moltz has these Bose jobbies — http://www.amazon.com/Bose-MIE2-Mobile-Headset-Black/dp/B007WQ9LSC/ref=sr_1_1?s=wireless&srs=2529061011&ie=UTF8&qid=1420181104&sr=1-1&keywords=bose+headphones — which, eh, are OK.
Dan has Koss PortaPros: http://www.amazon.com/Koss-PortaPro-Headphones-with-Case/dp/B00001P4ZH
Lex has Sony MDRV6s: http://www.amazon.com/Sony-MDRV6-Studio-Monitor-Headphones/dp/B00001WRSJ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1420182061&sr=8-2&keywords=sony+mdr
If you’re having trouble hearing from your MacBook’s speakers, you can use Boom and, well, maybe blow your speakers out.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/boom/id415312377?mt=12
Seems like you could get some completely acceptable podcasting equipment for certainly no more than $200. A Yeti isn’t the best microphone in the world but it’s fine. Hindenberg Journalist is about $100. For $100 more you can get Logic Pro.
Yeti: http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Microphones-Yeti-USB-Microphone/dp/B002VA464S/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1420182267&sr=1-1&keywords=yeti+microphone
Hindenberg: http://hindenburg.com/products/hindenburg-journalist/
Logic Pro: https://www.apple.com/logic-pro/
For video, if iMovie drives you berserk, you could actually edit video in Screenflow.
http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm
Finally, Lex tells the story of the PowerBook 540c that got away. By being stolen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_500_series
As we turn the corner on a new year, I’ve decided Family Sharing is not ready for my family. I have to admit it is not entirely my decision. There is, generally, an uprising in my house over Family Sharing and I’m half-expecting my wife and kids to come at me with pitchforks over these challenges.
Family Sharing is not ready for the Sparks family. I’ve spent way too much time trying to make this all work and this weekend I’m officially throwing in the towel on Family Sharing until it gets better.
The story is much the same in the Snell household. Family Sharing is a good idea, but between the limitations and the bugs, it’s making my family agitate for a return to sharing a single Apple ID.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
Despite the complaints–and there are no shortage of legitimate ones–over recent versions of Apple’s iTunes software, it introduced at least one feature that I’ve come to love: Up Next. It supplanted the old Party Shuffle/iTunes DJ feature, letting you choose songs for playback and reorder them, all on the fly.
As someone who tends not to create playlists, I love the ability to rely on shuffled playback and then insert songs as I go. I tend to be an associative listener, finding that a particular song reminds me of a different track. In the olden days of yore, long, long ago, that meant searching my iTunes library and selecting the next track, then remembering to hit play when the current song ended. Up Next did away with that bit of manual dexterity, and it’s been greatly appreciated.
But it’s not on iOS.
That aforementioned sleight of hand, selecting the next song you want to listen to, is even more annoying on an iOS device, since you can’t really “select” a song in the Music app–and it’s even more frustrating when the device an iPhone that you primarily keep in your pocket. The best alternative these days is to summon Siri when the current track finishes and then request the next track you want to hear. But I’d deeply love for Up Next on Apple’s mobile platforms too.
If the conversations I’ve had are any indication, the Music app on iOS isn’t particularly beloved. I don’t dislike it as much as many seem to, but nor do I find it particularly compelling–I use it because it’s what’s provided. Despite being part of the core functionality of the iPhone and the iPod before it, it hasn’t gotten a lot of attention in recent versions, outside of a graphical refresh for iOS 7/8.
So I’m hopeful that Up Next will make an appearance on iOS in the not too distant future. There are some third party apps that provide similar features, but given the low level at which Music is tied into the operating system, an Apple provided solution would be welcome.
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
In case you’re not familiar with UltraViolet, it’s the movie industry’s attempt to deal with the popularity of digital video. On the face of it, that’s a good thing, because it means that the studios are taking piracy head on, rather than sticking their fingers in their ears and humming “la la la la la la” as loud as they can.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t translate into a system that is particularly consumer-friendly. Allow me to recount the steps I had to take to redeem the free digital copy of Lawrence of Arabia that came with the 50th anniversary Blu-ray I received for Christmas.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
As I write this, I’ve been to one New Year’s party (hosted by English friends, so the celebration was in GMT) and am about to head to another, more Pacific Time-focused party. (Though presumably we will stop and acknowledge the ball dropping in Times Square at 9 p.m. Such is life in one of the last populated time zones to celebrate the new year.)
2014 has been a year of dramatic change in my life. Thanks to everyone out there who has offered their support and encouragement as I embark on the next phase of my professional life. It’s appreciated.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
The Incomparable’s multi-blog system is complicated. The one running this site is pretty straightforward.
On this week’s episode of The Talk Show, John Gruber and I talked about—among many other topics—Movable Type. The venerable blogging platform was once the go-to tool for making your own blog, but the rise of WordPress along with some questionable product and company directions ended up leaving it largely1 by the side of the road.
This is notable not just because of the tech nostalgia—there’s a lot of that in the episode, too, which is what happens when you hang around an industry for 20 years—but because Gruber and I both run our websites on Movable Type. As John says in the episode, I may be the last person to launch a brand-new website on Movable Type 4. I doubt that, but point taken!
One of the things I hope to document on this site, in addition to my coverage of Apple stuff, is my own use of technology. So I might as well tackle what the site is built on. I used Movable Type for a few reasons, including the fact I’ve been using it for years and I know its template language backward and forward. While I’ve used WordPress a little bit, setting up a site using WordPress would have required hours, or days, or weeks of setup. I launched Six Colors less than a week after I left Macworld, so the lack of a learning curve was vitally important.
Then there’s my friend Greg Knauss, who administers this site. Last year we set up the new web site for The Incomparable, and we used Movable Type for that. Similar reasons applied: Greg and I know the software by heart, and even better, Greg is a Perl programmer who can edit the code and whip up Movable Type plugins when necessary. (Which he needed to do, because Movable Type 4 doesn’t really support podcasts, so he wrote a plugin to parse podcast files for their size and run time.) The Incomparable’s implementation of Movable Type is pretty wacky, with five separate blogs that interconnect to each other like a relational database.
Again, we used it because we had some very specific features we wanted that existing CMSes—including those used by 5by5 and Relay FM—just didn’t offer. And we knew we could implement that fairly easily in Movable Type. So we did it. That was the first project I had really used Movable Type for in years, but when the time came to deploy Six Colors myself, it was sitting right there.
If Six Colors doesn’t look like a Movable Type site, that’s because I didn’t use any of Movable Type 4’s included (and out of date) templates. I built site templates2 with the help of Panic’s app Coda 2—and, yes, by carefully considering what I liked and didn’t like about the sites that have been my inspiration for this entire thing, including Daring Fireball, MacStories, Very Nice Web Site, and The Loop—and then converted them into templates and template modules. I used to do that sort of job all the time in the 90s and early 2000s, but it’s been a while. My skills were rusty. They’re slowly coming back, but I am woefully behind the times on JavaScript and CSS.
So does it matter that I use Movable Type on this site? Probably not, since the entire point of the site is the content on the pages, not how it was made. It strikes me, though, that the analogy of software being like pop music is even more apt than I thought. In the App Store, we see apps that become hits and climb the charts. Is this because it’s a natural way to think of software, or because the iTunes infrastructure was built for music sales and then adapted to cover software too?
Regardless, it turns out that software can also be considered uncool, even if it still works. Not only is Movable Type uncool (the equivalent of ’80s hair metal), but the language it’s written in, Perl, is supremely uncool. Like, New Kids on the Block uncool. The razzing John Siracusa takes about being a Perl developer isn’t really because Perl is old, or bad, but because it’s just not what the cool kids are talking about. The world has moved on.
And yet, sometimes that old stuff still works, and is still the best tool for the job. And that’s why, at least for right now, this site is built on software that was initially released 14 years ago and given its last major update five years ago. We’ll use it until it doesn’t make sense to use it anymore.
Version 6.0.5 is available and I believe still being actively developed.↩
I am not a designer. What you see here is what I’d call “not designed.” I hope to hire a designer one day to make it a bit prettier.↩
Leave it to Captain Kirk to publicize another way Twitter is monetizing its user base—in this case, by displaying accounts who aren’t being followed in follower lists.
In this week’s episode, Christopher Breen of Macworld joins us to watch in horror as Philip Michaels takes over the podcast and turns it into a new edition of the Tech Pundit Showdown!
Clockwise is sponsored this week by:
Dash: Create beautiful dashboards with a few clicks. Sign up now to get one free private dashboard.
This week on the tech podcast that likes to give out awards, Myke Hurley and I discuss our favorite things of the year by giving them awards. Favorite gadgets, games and podcasts of the year, among many other categories, are in the mix. Grab some popcorn, put on your best evening wear, and settle in for a monumental podcasting event!
This week, Upgrade is sponsored by:
lynda.com: An easy and affordable way to help individuals and organizations learn. Free 10-day trial.
Squarespace: Start Here. Go Anywhere. Use code UPGRADE for 10% off
Mailroute: a secure, hosted email service for protection from viruses and spam. Go to mailroute.net/upgrade for a free trial and 10% off, for the lifetime of your account.
[Update:The next three weeks are now sold, but there are plenty of openings in Q1 2015. Please get in touch if you’re interested.]
The Six Colors readership is smart and passionate about technology. If you’ve got a product or service that these people should know about, please get in touch about sponsoring the site.
Currently many slots for Q1 of 2015 are open, including next week. Drop me a line at jsnell@sixcolors.com or check out the sponsorship page for more information and a testimonial from a past sponsor.
And as I mentioned last week, I am trying to find a way for readers to contribute to the success of this site as well. It’s at the top of my to-do list for when I return home from my holiday wanderings.
This week on my pop-culture podcast The Incomparable, we ring in the new year with a discussion of the Marx Brothers, with particular focus on “Duck Soup” and “A Night at the Opera.” My guests this week are Andy Ihnatko, Philip Michaels, Steve Lutz, Monty Ashley, and David Loehr.
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My sincere thanks to MailRoute for sponsoring Six Colors during Christmas week. MailRoute is a hosted email filtering service that strips out spam before it reaches your inbox.
MailRoute owns their service completely, from IP to hardware (it’s not a bunch of pieced-together bits from other companies), so quality-control is thorough and reliable. Support is free of charge and their easy interface makes it simple for me to configure settings and route messages to their proper destination.
You can use the code SixColors for 10% off a new MailRoute account. Go here for a free 15-day trial or contact them directly for more info.
If you hate spam, and are sick of filters that stop working over time, MailRoute will have you covered. And in 2015, they’ll add another piece of the puzzle: hosted mailboxes.
As was prophesied earlier this month, HBO has released “The Wire” in widescreen HD on its HBO Signature channel (which is currently marathoning episodes) and in the HBO Go app.
It’s not a happy fun joyride by any means, but it’s still one of the best TV shows ever made. If you’re planning on watching (or rewatching), I highly recommend all of Alan Sepinwall’s reviews—which come in newbie and veteran editions—as great reading as you finish each episode.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
This is what Christmas looks like in Arizona.
In the past couple of weeks I’ve posted a bunch of stuff that I’ve tried to pass off as somewhat holiday related. Since it’s Christmas Eve, I present a recap of that stuff in case (as the kids say) you missed it:
