marco f dot net

The iPhone 3G and 3GS are wonderful devices. The iPhone OS3 is amazing. But the implementation of podcasts is still not very good. And that's an understatement.
 
The way it works now is that users subscribe to their beloved podcasts in iTunes and sync their iPhone with it. However, iTunes biggest flaw is that if you do not listen to the podcast for a while (actually: do not listen in iTunes, it doesn't see that you listened in the iPhone), it stops updating. Yes, you can manually open the iPod function in your iPhone, go to Podcasts and push "find more episodes".
 
That's fine and dandy, but it needs the user to check if there's a new one or not. Cumbersome. Not to mention there's a 10MB limit on podcast downloads over 3G. But that point is moot compared to the other issues.
 
There's been a podcast app for the iPhone for quite some time: RSS Player. You can subscribed to RSS podcast feeds and it will download to your iPhone. I love the app for the ease of subscribing and downloading podcasts but I really dislike it when it comes to user friendliness. But the major no-no is that it cannot run in the background, like the iPod can. That's not the developer's fault, it's that Apple won't allow these background processes. When I'm on the bike or scooter, I like to pause, skip, control the iPhone using the mic button on my earbud cable. Not possible in RSS Player. Once you click the mic button, the iPhone starts the iPod function .. Closing RSS Player along the way. Stupid.
 
So, here is a proposal I'd like to see imlpemented on the next OS update, for a NATIVE podcast experience that works:

• The user subscribes to podcasts in iTunes (or iTunes.app on iPhone)
• The subscription data is stored in your iTunes account, so it's available online (and could eventually be downloaded as an OPML file)
• The Apple iTunes backend systems send out a PUSH notification to the iPod application on the iPhone if there's a new episode for download.
• The user can then open up the iPod app and download the episodes. 

 
The "old school" iTunes syncing is still available, with one small adaptation that the podcasts don't stop updating when not listened in iTunes. Any subscription updates are stored in the cloud, instead locally on your mac/pc. So you're always up to date whereever you listen.

Het WNF vind zeeschildpad a la Den Blijker smakeloos. Dit kopt de Telegraaf  vandaag. 

Niet alleen maar op knuffelbaarheid!

Hurrah!
 
In aug 2008 I switched from blogspot to Posterous. On my blogspot blog I
had about 132 posts. I went to Posterous, and never looked back. Almost
forgetting the blogspot place. Today, Posterous announced they can import your old posts and merge it
into the Posterous blog you want.
And lo & behold, it works, dead-simply!
 
I now went from 47 Posterous pages to 61, and the timeline goes back to
May 2007. Great work guys!

I wished I new "back then", otherwise I would've kept all my blog posts (since 2000) :-)

We have a MobileMe family account and with the event of iPhone OS3 I thought my wife and I would finally be able to share our calendars. So, I published my calendar on iCal, my wife published hers and we cross-subscribed to eachother's calendar on our iPhones.
 
However, new events weren't visible for either party. Sucks. And what do you know? According to this support article: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1213 The shared calendars do NOT sync through MobileMe! Which means to get this working computer syncing is a neccessity. Big bummer and fail.
 
So, since MobileMe family package allows for 5 accounts and we're with 4 people in our family (not counting the cats, who may want an account too..), I thought I'd just set up one central "family" account and use that. Bummer again, the iPhone does NOT allow two active MobileMe accounts and activating one account will remove the other account's calendars on the iPhone.
 
Dear Apple, please solve this, it's rediculous that if you have a family account you cannot do anything that is really shared and it's even more weird you cannot have more than one MobileMe account on your iPhone!

 
(via http://www.reddit.com )

NASA launched LRO/LCROSS yesterday. Great, so those will (again) scan the moon and create beautiful maps. And LCROSS will crash into the moon, and very maybe find a drop of frozen water.
 
Hey guys, let me tell you a little secret: the Moon is dust, rocks, craters and hills. Been there, done that, even got the t-shirt! Let's just team up 4 astronauts and frigging go already! There really is no real added value to have LRO/LCROSS check out the moon for the zillionth time, with the same result as always: rocky, dusty cold place and oh, very maybe, but definately not sure, because, well, there was so little data available (we need another mission to investigate more!), frozen water.
 
Print a map of the moon, throw 3 darts at it and voila, you got your landing areas!
 
Ah yes, there's that little issue that NASA (or any other space agency) doesn't have a rocket powerful enough to send people to the Moon. Bummer. Spending money on a fluke Ares-1X won't do that any good. Bummer again.
 
What we and NASA need is focus. Let's just focus for 10 years to get people there. Just like "the good old days". No distractions of more Mars missions (leave those to ESA), ISS missions (leave that to Soyuz .. ESA as well) no other budget eating missions. Focus. Then, by 2020 (according to NASA we'll be there by 2018.. I am really doubting that plan will work with all the budget issues and delays currently going on), we'll be on the Moon for sure. If they could do it in the primitive 60s, we certainly can do it in the high tech 21st century!

Of course, NASA is working hard to make it. I really hope they will. So far, everything looks pretty good on the Ares-I front and Orion capsule. But I believe there isn't even a design for the AresV yet.