MDSWP

I’ve been playing around with Mogulus since Sunday evening and have to say I’m impressed (thanks Dean ). The test channel is running constantly at the right hand side of this site, and I’ll continue to play with it over the next couple of days before going live on Thursday night at 7:30pm GMT to record the next show (don’t worry if you can’t make it live, the whole thing will be recorded and put out on the feed).

Now I’m not saying that I’m doing anything that hasn’t been done before, but as someone who did a good few live Shoutcast shows a couple of years ago, this seems like the next step. Will it work? I hope so, the potential for incorporating stuff via Qik when I’m out and about is a massive one for me as well as being able to interact live.

You can take a look at the test channel here. It’s only playing Podfest footage at the moment, but I’m hoping to get some more stuff in there soon.

Better get my make up done!

Last night I took part in a live ustream broadcast with Paul Nicholls and about 10 others. It was extremely enjoyable and really hit home how much I loved doing my shoutcast streams a few years ago.

A lot of people have said that podcasters are just wannabe Radio DJs. This might be true, but I know I’d rather be able to talk to a few mates and play some music that I like than be told to choose from a playlist and feign excitement as another mindnumbing competition is announced.

At the end of the show last night, Paul tweeted about getting a few people together on a rota basis to do what he was doing each week.

This got me thinking; we could take the people interested in broadcasting their own shows and create a Ustream channel that has different hosts on each week. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it would be good to take the live format and use a network of viewers/listeners to get everything out there.

A portion of this was braindumped at 2am this morning, so it might not make too much sense. Just thought I’d get it out there.

I’ve been attempting to download programmes from iPlayer to my PC for a few weeks now without any luck at all.  I read somewhere that the BBC had released an Adobe Air app which would run on Windows, Linux and Mac. I would just get error messages half way through saying that the programme had expired.

It seems that the beeb have now decided to revert back to an older version of the iPlayer which does actually complete downloads, although it won’t let you subscribe to receive future episodes like 4oD does. Although iPlayer does it’s job, I’d still like to be able to have a weeks worth of BBC stuff waiting for me instead of having to remember it was on and find it on the iPlayer, y’know like on demand content is meant to be.

Not long after the iPhone was first released, I was reading quite a bit about the code that was developed to allow third party apps on to it. When I finally got my hands on the iPhone 3g a couple of weeks ago I had to search for quite a long time to find anything relating to jailbreaking.

The premise of jailbreaking seemed like a good one, before I actually had a chance to nose around the app store and see what was on offer. There are a ton of free and paid apps in there which have to be approved before they can be released, meaning that *most* of them are top notch.

Bare in mind I already have all the apps I need to get me through a day away from the PC, I decided to give jailbreaking a go earlier today. This is after my iPhone had a bit of a hiccup and had to be taken back to the o2 store, I had lost everything anyway (well, I have the backup to restore).

I managed to find quite a comprehensive guide on a couple of the methods that are available to jailbreak the iPhone 3g. The one I plummed for was QuickPWN although Twitter had been buzzing about Pusher a couple of days earlier (which I’ll test out if I ever get the installer to stop crashing).

Now, there are a couple of benefits to jailbreaking the iPhone. Cydia and Installer.app which offer those aforementioned third party apps to download. This is where the disappointment set in. Although it’s great to be able to flick the wi-fi on and off, keep applications open when they’re not in focus and set my own wallpaper to appear when the phone is locked, it makes the OS look cheap.

The apps that are available are ones that extend the functionality of the iPhone a little, but some seem to be more trouble than they’re worth. After downloading a few, I wanted to give someone a call. The iPhone crashed. That convinced me I could live without jailbreaking, at least until I could guarantee it wouldn’t leave me with a very expensive lump of metal.

I’m sure there a thousands of people who are perfectly happy with the little bit of extra functionality you get with it, but to me, the pitfalls far outweigh the benefits.

I first started playing around with Linux in 2005. I was distraught with how slow Windows XP was and wanted to dabble with something that was a little closer to OSX.

At that time, my first podcast was just getting off the ground, so I started to dual boot Windows XP and Kubuntu, simply because I needed to have XP running to record new shows and talk to contacts over Skype. It was a steep learning curve, especially after the relatively easy plug ‘n play option that XP provided me.

I’ve returned to Linux a few times since my first foray into using it and each time I’ve seen some improvement with each aspect of it. Installation is now very easy, especially when using a LiveCD which allows you to boot in to a distro and have a play around before installing completely.

With netbooks becoming so popular, I think we will see an increase in the use of Linux distros like Ubuntu as consumers start to realise that almost every app that you can run on Windows has an alternative which is a lot of the time a better option.

We have a lot of music on our NAS drive. To use that in iTunes, we have to have a mirror on a USB hard drive and constantly update the changes that we’re making.

Amarok is a fantastic alternative and handles large, networked libraries very well. Allowing me to have all of our music available without having to deal with crashes, slow downs or memory leaks – otherwise known as iTunes.

The one main thing that may put people off Linux is the learning curve. Most aspects of installation are pretty straight forward, but when you get under the hood and actually start trying to customise your install, problems can quickly occur.

I’ve bricked installations a few times in the past couple of years, simply by tinkering around with some of options and not being able to remember what I’ve done to right it.

So far, I’ve been running the latest version of Ubuntu for a couple of weeks with no major problems and I can honestly say that I don’t miss anything about Windows.

While I can’t afford to plonk down ridiculous amounts of cash to get a MacBook, Linux is going to be my stop gap.

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, linux, windows, amarok, itunes, tech,

As the sub-title of my blog suggests, this is all a work in progress. Last night at about 3am my bleary eyes somehow spied the announcement that Wordpress 2.7 has entered beta and was available for download. Having dabbled with a lot of beta releases for a few years now, I decided to give it a go.

I’ve been using Wordpress since around 1.5 (2005) and in that time I’ve seen it evolve into an amazing piece of blogging software. The latest release is no different.

If you’re in to living on the bleeding edge of software development, head on over to Wordpress and download the beta, backup your database, and then join in the fun.

Technorati Tags: wordpress, beta, upgrade, development

I’ve had a Netgear DG834G router since v2 of the firmware was released (late 2003) and it served our small network of two laptops, an Xbox 360, a 500gb Landisk and Wi-fi radio quite well up until about a week ago.

Monday evening we had what can only be described as a mini powercut. The TV flickered, the Sky + box lost a signal but the laptops and seemingly (at the time) the router were unaffected. Later that night the router started to drop connection to both the ADSL and the wireless every ten minutes or so. This carried on for a few days until I took the plunge and reflashed the firmware back to factory and updated to the latest version.

Since then the connection has been rock solid, and even a little faster than normal when accessing anything over the network. Despite that, I can’t help thinking that it might be time to replace my five year old router for something a little snappier.

I’ve narrowed it down to two options; the first is the DGN2000 which looks as though it’s the bigger, beefier brother of the DG834G with the second being the DG834N, which actually is the bigger brother of the DG834G (in model number if not in styling).

There’s not much to choose between them in terms of pricing or features so I think it’ll be whatever is at PC World when I get down there tomorrow.

Do you have any suggestions? I’ve been a Netgear fan for a while now, especially after having a few nightmares with D-Link routers a few years ago.

Let me know in the comments.

Technorati Tags: networking, technology, gadgets, routers, netgear

It seems that the new craze for the end of this year is for everyone to have a netbook. They’re now being sold at the Carphone Warehouse with mobile broadband packages and are going some way to encouraging people who aren’t particularly tech savvy to jump on board and get online.

PCs used to be considered gaming machines, but with the introduction of the next gen consoles and their integration in to the family home, along with the lack of many decent titles available these days (with the exception of the C&C series and Sims 3, of course ) they’re becoming more and more synonymous with using the internet.

There are plenty of articles on netbooks around the internet, including an article from June over at Cnet UK down their top 10 recommended netbooks. From what I’ve read, the Asus netbooks seem to fit what I’d like to use them for without being too underpowered.

I’ve been after a new laptop for a while and quite a few times I’ve had a look at the Macbooks, but just can’t seem to justify spending £1000+ for something that looks pretty but ultimately the same thing can be achieved by spending a fraction of that.

The main hurdle I’m getting to now is whether or not to go for the Windows XP or the Linux version of the Asus eeePC 1000. I’ve dealt with Linux before, with varying results; There’s always been something missing from it that makes me want to reinstall Windows and struggle along again. Looking around at various reviews around the net, I’m starting to paint a picture about the kind of machine I’ll most likely go for in the near future.

Technorati Tags: netbook, asus+eeepc, linux, macbook, tech

A Bank Holiday usually involves one of three things; insane boredom, copious amounts of beer or a mixture of the two. Determined not to let waste a day away from the office (both the physical and virtual) I decided to venture out to the local shopping centre and see which new gadget I could invest some hard earned wonga* in.

My ratty old Motorola v600 had been giving me a headache for a while, so naturally I was on the lookout for a replacement. Strolling into the Orange shop (yes, it is Orange for those of you in the States – do you have Orange too?) I eyed up some of the latest new releases. There was the ever so slightly chavvy Razr, a Sony Ericsson and a Motorola (SLVR) L6 sitting in the very first display. I’d been impressed with my trusty old Motorola during the year and a bit that I’d had it, so the fact that I could pick up the Razr’s less chavvy cousin for under £100 was the deal clincher.

It’s slim, it’s sexy, it does what I want it to do and it isn’t pink. All in all, a good day. Nice and fresh before the real work begins again tomorrow.
*I haven’t used the ‘wonga’ online for a while or even in everyday conversation now that I think about it. For the uninitiated it’s just a slang term for money. There’s a PDF file here that includes a load more definitions. Don’t you just love English slang?

Technorati Tags: phil+coyne, motorola, tech,

I’ve been using Feedburner for a while, since March 2005 in fact. Yesterday I started noticing that my host had started blocking any IP addresses that Feedburner uses to poll the XML feeds at certain points each day (when one is updated, for example).

This leaves me with a bit of a dilemma. I now have five or six feeds (including PUM, PodFest and bitjobs) that are showing up as not answering everytime Feedburner tries to take the original XML file and do it’s magic with it. The ironic thing is that I don’t actually use Feedburner for it’s stats/readership counts that much any more.

Ever since Clickcaster upgraded their stats service the whole thing has been out of wack, so I was actually considering ditching all the bells and whistles and just offering up the original XML files for anyone wanting to subscribe to the podcasts I produce.

I guess that’s the dangerous game you play when you use third party services like Feedburner, Libsyn or anything else that doesn’t give you full control over your content.

Technorati Tags: feedburner, libsyn, clickcaster, pum, podfest, phil+coyne, XML