Last week, Apple released iPhone Software 2.2. This update had many new features including Google street view, emoji’s for Japan, improved performance and podcast downloading. Podcast downloading has been on the list of features people want on the iPhone ever since Apple rejected the Podcaster app. Fortunately I was able to get it onto my jailbroken iPhone and had been using it up until IPSW 2.2. Since I have now had a good chance of playing with them both, I can have give my opinion on these two different ways of getting podcasts into your device.

Podcaster is an application available on Cydia and it does pretty much what you expect, lets you download podcasts right on your iPhone. When you open the app for the first time, you will want to subscribe to podcasts. This is a very simple thing to do where you enter the address of the RSS feed and it will look for podcasts. Then you can select the episode you want, go into it and press the download button, and it goes into the download queue. At anytime, you can press the refresh button and it will look for any new podcasts in any of the feeds you’re subscribed to, and shows you that there is a new podcast available to download.

Unfortunately this app isn’t at well built as I’d like. The program crashes randomly or when you try and give it something to do. This is especially bad when it is downloading a podcast, because you lose what you have downloaded up until the last time you paused or quit the application. Another issue I had was when download, it didn’t hold the Wifi connection. Whenever the iPhone turned the screen off, the Wifi connection would drop shortly after, which would cause the program to crash when you woke the device back up again. To get around this, you ould have to stop your iPhone from going to sleep, which would reduce battery life significantly. The last little grip with it that I had was the slow and somewhat unresponsive playback of podcasts. When you push the play button to continue playing a podcast, you would have to wait a while for it to start playing. Sometimes you would have to tap some of the icons multiple times to get it to respond. These gripes are frustrating!!!

One the other side, we have the new Podcast downloading support that iPhone Software 2.2 brought to the device. For iPhone podcast downloading, you go into the iTunes Store, search for the podcast you want and then tap the download button beside the episode or episodes you want. You do this for all the podcasts you want. This puts them in the download queue and they go and download in the background and go to the iPod app when they are done for you to play. The podcasts pretty much behave in the same way as they do if you synced them over from iTunes. From each of the podcast pages in the iPod app, there is a button which takes you to their page in the iTunes Store so you can download any new episodes when they come.

There are limitations to this app, all of which Podcaster doesn’t have. These include the lack of any RSS feed downloads. You are limited to the selection of Podcasts they have in the iTunes Store. Although they have the majority of podcasts and for most people, have all the ones they would want, but it would be nice if that restriction wasn’t there. Another issue is that you can’t subscribe to podcasts. If you want to download podcasts, you have to manually navigate through the iTunes store to their page and tap the download button. There is no notification of new episodes, no notification of podcasts currently on your device, nothing. It is all manual, no automated downloading or anything. This is something they really missed the ball on because it would make it close to perfect. The last problem I had was with iTunes syncing. In the iTunes application, I have it set that it won’t sync podcasts. You would expect this to mean leave podcasts on iTunes and the iPhone alone, do not do anything. Well what it turns out to mean it sync all the downloaded podcasts on the iPhone and delete them from the device. This is not what I want. I want to keep them separate and I want them to stay on my iPhone and out of my iTunes library. This is by far the most frustrating feature/bug with the podcast downloading and hope it is fixed in the next iTunes/iPhone update.

Both of these app have their ups and downs. For Podcaster, I like having my podcasts separate from iTunes and my music library. I also like being able to subscribe to podcasts and check for updates. For iPhone podcast downloading, I like having the experience the same as when I listen to music and the better integration with the iPhone features and functions. I also like the stability of the whole process and the background downloading. What I dislike about Podcaster is the crashing, instability and unresponsiveness of the app at times. I also wish it could hold the Wifi connection and make the downloading process smoother. It would be nice to also have better integration with the media player already on the iPhone. What I dislike about the iPhone podcast downloading is the whole manual process of downloading podcasts and the lack of subscription and automatic downloading. I also hope they fix the iTunes syncing issues I have because they are just a huge pain in the arse.

As you can see, I am very torn between the two apps. They both have very strong good points, but they also are weak in others. If only each of them could take the strengths of each of the applications and fix all the problems, we would be left with two amazing apps. For someone who manages their podcasts in iTunes and only wants to be able to download podcasts on the road, the podcast downloading in 2.2 is perfect. For someone who keeps their podcasts separate from their music and enjoys a less messy way of getting their media, Podcaster is a great app for that. I hope that they can both sort things out so they can both be used by any podcast consumer.

There have been many updates to my blog and tumblelog over the past few days. All the blog changes are hidden away. Peppery has been doing some stuff with servers and what have you, as well as updating the blog to Wordpress 2.6. On the tumblelog, the changes are more apparent, with a completely new look. The reason for the refresh was not because I felt like it, but because my old theme had disappeared from the internet. The full story, as what was posted on my tumblr, is as follows.

As you may not have noticed, my blog was updated to Wordpress 2.5 last week, thanks to Peppery. The only noticeable change is in the admin panel where is has been redone to be easier to use and look much nicer. It is taking a little bit of getting use to but after a while, I’m sure I will remember where they have moved things. For a new Wordpress user, the admin panel will definitely be easier to use but for an old user like me, I’m going to have to get fully use to it.

You may have noticed the lack of update in the past week or so. The reason for my absence in blogging is because I have been overloaded with assessments that were due. I had 5 different bits of schoolwork to do. One was a report for geography on the processes of building the new Carisbrook Stadium in Dunedin, which was really hard to do. I’d be lucky to pass because I had no bloody idea what I was rambling about. I also had a Statistics project to complete which was straightforward, just took a little bit of thinking and time to complete and write up. There was also some small bits of homework such as 2 pages of physics questions, some Computing tasks and also an electronics research project on transducers to be completed.

I have finished doing all assignments and hopefully my plate stays relitively clean for a while, especially during the holidays, so I can do what I normally do and not be tied down with homework and assignments to get done. Hopefully there is no homework for me to do over the holidays so I can have a relaxing break without having to even think about school or school work. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

This morning when I woke up and started up the internet, the unusual looking Tumblr Dashboard shocked me. What had happened to the Tumblr dashboard I had gotten to know and love? Its gone and has been replaced with something better (I hope.) I really like the new dash, it is more simple to use than the old one. It is also much easier to differentiate my own posts from the posts of my followers.

Posting is still easy as ever with the same icons and functions that it always has, with the exception of the added Audio functionality. I personally wouldn’t use it but its nice to know that the option if always there if I ever wanted to use it. They have also added some advanced features to it such as dating your posts and also add tags to posts. The tag functionality isn’t quite finished and doesn’t do much right now but it will be extremely useful for searching and browsing in the near future.

Moving the friends and followers off the dashboard was a good idea. Now they are on their own individual pages. The icons are bigger so you can actually see the faces of your friends and followers and it is not in the way for the dashboard and not slowing down the page loading as well as wasting bandwidth. It would be nice though if we could still see the number of followers on the dashboard too, just like the number of friends. Another thing that would be nice to do is have the option to hide or show friends posts in the dashboard. This could remove clutter if you wanted to go and find or edit one of your own posts from a day or so ago without having your friends posts making this a little harder and time consuming.

Channels is something new they have added into Tumblr. I didn’t quite understand the feature at first but now I think I get it. Channels are a way to share things with a group of people, and its private. Only people in the channel will be able to see the content. They are going to expand the functionality of this feature by adding multi-author tumblelogs and the ability to make it public. This is another feature I’m not sure I would use but if I found a use for it, I would definitely use it as I really love the Tumblr engine.

They have reconstructed the Theme editor. I personally am not fussed over the new editor and prefer the old, simple one. Previewing the theme has been made easy and its much better than the old preview. I think its great that they have added some user created themes (from Bill Israel and Cameron Hunt) to the theme library. These guys have made amazing themes and I believe that its wonderful their works of art have been discovered and have been added. Off to the side now, the theme editor is the only place on the whole site that I managed to find the old Tumblr flower logo. I really liked that logo and would like to see it put back, and for it to become the favicon rather than the ‘T’ that is currently there. The Tumblr flower would look much better there in the tabs bar.

But now is the part of the post where I talk about the things lacking and things that I believe would make the service better. I have to do it and creative criticism is good because it helps a service grow into something good. I only have a few gripes about Tumblr, one is the fact that none of the advance features are in the bookmarklet. I use the bookmarklet for 99% of the posts I make on Tumblr, it would be nice if I could click a link and it would expand the advance options so I can tag and date posts right from there instead of going to the dashboard and editing posts to add tags and such.

On the topic of tags, when the feature is fully enabled and search and browsing via tags is usable, Tumblr should have an easy way to tag older content. At the moment the only way would be so scramble through the dashboard looking for your posts and editing them. For a lot of people, doing it this way would become impractical due to the fact that they have made thousands of posts and editing them all to add tags would be a nightmare. Also having your content mixed with others just makes the task more daunting. What is going to end up happening is people won’t bother to use the tag feature and a lot of functionality will be missed. Somehow, make an easy tag system for tagging posts without any tags so you can make sure any great content isn’t lost in the giant archives of the Tumblr.com.

There are a lot of other things under the hood and small changes that I haven’t felt the need to mention. I wish I had someone to make a new custom theme for my Tumblelog so I can catch up and have Yum9me’s Scrapbook v3 and can have a nice makeover like the main site. Anyone who is moderately interested in this service would be insane not to jump on board and at least give Tumblr a go. It is one of the web services that I love the most on the internet and I am very excited to see it grow and grow and grow. Another great update from the people at Davidville and best wishes on your next projects and Tumblr v4

Today Team M33 released their 3.71 Custom Firmware for PSP. The major thing that this adds is support for 3.71. It had been a while since the last release and the day before they released a statement saying that the firmware was ready but they were delaying it for various reasons. The release also came with another surprise, M33 is Dark_Alex, the king of Homebrew and Custom Firmware.

I hadn’t updated since 3.10 OE-A and I though now would be a good time to update. There were various reasons why I had held off for this long, one being that I was happy with the firmware I was on and everything we working perfectly and there was no compelling reason to update when there was the possibility of breaking all the stuff I was using. There was also a small chance of bricking my PSP but I like to feel I have the hang of it, for I have downgraded and upgraded 3 other PSPs other than my own.

Then when Dark_Alex announced his retirement of the scene, I was a bit worried about who would take over and release custom firmware. Was someone going to take over or was I doomed to 3.40 OE and the eventual death of custom firmware and go back to the official, most likely 4.XX. A new group rushed in and took the spot, Team M33. They said they reversed-engineered the OE firmware to create their own M33 firmware. When they released it, there were mixed opinions about this group. Some disliked them and wanted Dark_Alex back, other accepted them and decided to worship this new group that has entered the scene.

I was unsure. I didn’t want to go out and update the M33. I waited for the outcomes of other people. I also had a worse fear of everything breaking if I update to this M33 firmware. I quietly hoped to myself, that one day he would return, the king, Dark_Alex. I stopped participating in PSP homebrew but I did keep one eye on it. As time passed, Sony released more official homebrew updates, Team M33 were closely behind them releasing their custom firmware and a thin layer of dust covered the plastic enclosure of my PlayStation Portable.

Eventually I decided that it was time to wipe down my PSP, give in and update my PSP, for better or worse. 3.70 arrived from Sony so I waited for M33 to release their custom firmware of it. This was my entry back in, to bring life back into my PSP, hopefully. I waited and waited until today, it was released! The news was also that Dark_Alex is M33, which gave me comfort and made it definite I was taking the plunge, again. I eagerly downloaded all the files needed for me to make the big jump, from 3.10 OE to 3.71 M33. I did it. The process was a lot smoother than previous updates, it even used the official Sony updater instead of the black and white text screen. It was nice.

After the update was complete, I went to snoop around. My PSP crashed as I entered the setting menu, but this is nothing new. I then had a play with all of the new features. Themes is the biggest update from what I had, other than that, it was little updates that were either bug fixes or something I couldn’t/didn’t use. I had a play with the themes I downloaded and it looks nice and different but I went back to the original default look. Themes are just a fad and the one Sony has released are a little ugly. I can’t wait for people to make their own theme, those are going to be leet!

I also tested playing some ISO’s that I had on my memory stick. These ran amazingly, with no problems. I didn’t even have to modify the clock speed in the recovery menu and even online worked for Ratchet and Clank, it didn’t in my previous custom firmware. Also my favourite homebrew application, PSPTube, still worked in the firmware. I was extremely happy with the update and would recommend everyone update to 3.71 M33 now! Custom Firmware is AMAZING!

Most Windows users update their systems using Windows Update. Its nice and easy and does it automatically, sometimes. That is great. But… there is one thing I dislike about updating, and that is restarting my computer. I dislike restarting, or even shutting down my computer. I prefer to hibernate at night so it is using no power and I can just resume where I was when I left it.

Generally Windows Update give me the option to postpone restarting the computer, which I do. I also select it to remind me again in 4 hours, the maximum time it allows. I do not get why there is a low limit of 4 hours to remind me. Why can’t there be the option to remind me in 6, 12 or even 24. More conveniently, how about the option NEVER reminding me that Windows needs to restart to finish installing updates. Does it think I will forget to restart? Does it think I don’t notice the little Windows Update icon in the taskbar? I think it not giving me enough credit there.

But wait, there’s more! After about 12 hours without being restarted, it now also counts down when it’s going to restart automatically. Okay, this is a useful feature for some people, getting the computer to restart when they are not using it. You are given the option to postpone it more if you are there, but that’s the problem. Sometimes I live the computer for more than 5 minutes for various reasons, some people leave it on so it can do other tasks (for example Virus Scans and Legal Torrenting) while they are not using the computer. A restart at this time is annoying and kills what we are doing.

I should be telling the computer what to do and what not to do. I am the boss of it, I am its controller, I am its master. It shouldn’t tell me what it feels like doing and doing it without me giving the command. I don’t care if its something as basic as restarting but if computers can do that without user prompt, imagine if it decided to format the C: drive, now that would be a problem. I know, I’m being over-dramatic, but who knows what computer are going to do next, we are living in the matrix!