Ronny’s Personal Blog

I am writing this post after playing with Gowalla for about three weeks. Gowalla in short is a social media game you may say in which you collect stamps, pins and items by checking into real world places with a gps and internet enabled phone. Currently only the iPhone and Android phones are supported. Stamps are spots you visited, pins are earned rewards and items are virtual things on spots with real nice logos that you can collect by swapping them out. Every time you check in on a spot your friends get a message and optionally a tweet.

The thing I am missing with Gowalla is the interaction with your friends. But if the only interaction is knowing where they are, I don't care. I have used Gowalla during a train trip and checked in at every station to collect a stamp and to look for cool collector items. My friends got bored by the message every 5 minutes and tweeted me questions about it. I got bored with a friend going from shop to shop. Seeing the check-in message was the only interaction.

The other problem in my opinion is the amount of users. There are a lot of spots in my part of the Netherlands where I am the only one checking in. Either I am not in the right places or there are not a lot of users. The activity I see from users at train stations or even a cool place like Seats2Meet is very low, like one check-in every other day and sometimes nothing for weeks.

My conclusion is that for a social media tool like Gowalla you need two things: users and (inter)activity. Gowalla is lacking both at the moment. The amount of users might grow but the lack of interactivity is really a miss.

Today I was listening to this Week in Tech 207 when I, again, heard the downside of URL-shorteners. There is a security risk in clicking on a shortened URL because you don't know beforehand where the link is going to. You presume that you can trust someone that mails you the URL or you follow on Twitter. But the link might actually lead you to a malware or fishing site. Are URL shorteners therefore bad? No, just use them wisely. Only reluctantly click on them if you really trust the person sending it to you AND you are using anti-malware software. I know people that never ever click on a shortened URL.

Why are we using URL-shorteners then? Because they are short and a tweet is only 140 characters long so you save a lot of space for text. Because an SMS is only 160 characters long and it is a hassle to copy a long url to a browser. Because mailclients break a long URL with linefeeds. Because...

At the moment bit.ly and tinyurl are the biggest URL shorteners according to TechCrunch:

They both offer very simple ways to preview a shortened URL. With tinyurl just put "preview" before the url. So http://tinyurl.com/2x6rgl becomes http://preview.tinyurl.com/2x6rgl. With bit.ly put a "+" after the URL which is the same as "info" in between. So http://bit.ly/GH4Cn becomes http://bit.ly/GH4Cn+ or http://bit.ly/info/GH4Cn. Tinyurl is promoting the preview option but on the bit.ly site it is hidden in their blog.

Searching for the preview options of the other URL-shorteners I found longurl which gives you the option to enter a shortened URL which it then exands for you. They also offer a Firefox-plugin and an API. Some Twitter-clients such as Tweetdeck, but also search.twitter.com, offer options to (auto)-expand a shortened URL which is almost the same as previewing it. They might be using the longurl API, but that is something I don't know.

To summarize: URL-shorteners are great, but use them wisely. And if you are not sure of the content preview or expand it first.

I would advise bit.ly to promote the preview option a bit more, just like tinyurl does. They have a Firefox-plugin, but not everybody is using Firefox.

Today, 17-7,  my new iPhone 3GS arrived, together with a T-Mobile plan and a new number. After hearing some bad stories about the T-Mobile coverage I was happy to see that the coverage in my house and neighborhood is fine. 3G is working happy. Migrating from the iPod Touch was a no-brainer. I made a last backup of the iPod Touch to iTunes and used that backup to "restore" the iPhone 3GS. The only thing I had to re-enter where my passwords for mail and wifi. The only down-side is that I bought it together with an Artwizz SeeJacket Crystal case. The case also covers the screen and it sometimes feels that the sensitivity of the screen is a little sluggish. I sometimes have to hit the home button and go back to an App to reinitialize the sensitivity. It might not be the case but the Phone App finding the network, "restore" from an iPod touch or other CPU hogs. I have to investigate this further.

Tonight I took the iPhone with me on a 10k run replacing the iPod touch. I was listening to No Agenda when I saw the Zaltbommel bridge in a sunset. Photographers call this the golden hour. I just had to try the auto-focus camera on the 3GS on this play. For a "phone" camera the picture looks fine. The lens is semi-wide and the focus is good. Everything else is auto-auto and thank god Apple didn't try to implement a software zoom function. I suspect that I will blog more iPhone 3GS news soon.

Update 19-7: The problem with the screen does not seem to be an issue with the case. Without te case it sometime looks like the OS is hanging; the sensitivity of the screen is bad or not responsive at all. Using the home button or the power button and unlocking again gets it out of that state; sometimes not for long.

Update 8-8: After all it seems that the cause of the problem is the case, especially when I clean the case after opening it. Cleaning the case with a cloth makes the case electrostatic making the screen unresponsive after closing the case. Cleaning the case with water and a paper towel prevents that. Problem solved after all.

Today was the first time I went for a run with the babyjogger with my 7 months old daughter in it. The weather was great: 23 degrees with mild clouds and a little wind. She had a lot of fun, as had I. This was also the first time I used my new iPhone 3GS to track the map using InstaMapper. InstaMapper is a free tool that sends waypoints periodically to the InstaMapper server. Below 120 seconds between updates it keeps the gps on, over that time it turns the gps off. It won't send an update until the configured accuracy is reached. This time I used 100 meters and 60 seconds. When the gps stays on InstaMapper claims that it will drain the battery in 5 hours. On the InstaMapper website you can make a track from a series of waypoints which you can than export or share with the world. Until Posterous supports .KML files the following map is created with an iframe to InstaMapper.

I regularly check these podcasts:

• Cranky Geeks
• No Agenda
• Tech5
• Geekbrief
• Dvorak-Horowitz Unplugged
• The psych files
• Bright TV
• Tips from the top floor
• Lenswork
• This week in Tech
• This week in startups
• This week in advertising
• Daily Source Code
• Radio-online
• Buzz out loud
• The 404

I will add comments per item soon.

In the comments of "How I listen to podcasts" I wrote that I was sure that my quest for the right solution is still not over. Well, after experimenting with a hybrid RSSPlayer, iTunes and Music App workflow for over three weeks I just moved back last night to RSSPlayer only.

RSSPlayer rocks. Not able to multitask is the only problem of using RSSPlayer but it is nothing compared to the huge workflow of downloading the files the native or the hybrid way. Downloading directly is also saving a lot of time in the difference between RSS-publication and iTunes-publication of a file. I can really recommend buying RSSPlayer in the App Store.

Notice: this post applies to listening to podcasts, without the use of iTunes on a computer, directly on an iPhone or iPod Touch.

I am not a huge fan of Office, but I really like this "movie"-trailer...

In a previous post I talked about the why of listening to podcasts. This post is about the how. I started listening to podcasts on my Apple iPod last year.

I discovered some podcasts in the iTunes-directory and downloaded them. The iTunes-directory is very nice to search for podcasts and try them out. When I liked one I started to download it. I didn't want to use the iTunes program for this purpose because that would require a computer and damage my workflow. But the workflow was still not optimal. For downloading the initial podcast, no problem. But how do you know when there is a new item? Well, you open the music app, go to the podcast, hit "get more episodes" and get send to the right directory in the iTunes app. Most of the time you will find out that there is no update. You then either go back to the music app and try the same sequence for the next podcast or hit search in the iTunes app and enter the name. With 15 different podcasts to follow this is quite a hassle.

This was the moment I moved to RSSPlayer, which is a great app! I searched for the RSS-files of the podcasts I liked, most of them could be found through its native search, and entered them in the app. Once in a while I let the app look for updates and when updates are found download them. You then have an agenda of unlistened podcasts which is kind of like a playlist. RSSPlayer plays the files itself which works great. There is even a built-in web browser to surf the web while listening to a podcast. This is needed because Apple does NOT allow third-party apps to play in the background and files downloaded by RSSPlayer cannot be played by the music app. Another thing I found out was that publication in iTunes is sometimes hours behind RSS-publication.

And that is the reason I changed my workflow again. I really like to listen to a podcast and at the same time mail, twitter or use other apps. On the bike or while running I like to have iTalkingClock say the time every five minutes. This is all impossible with RSSPlayer. So what I do now is look for updates in RSSPlayer and download the podcasts through the music app and iTunes, hoping that Apple is not too much behind. Although I really like RSSPlayer, background playing is too important for me, accepting the extra worflow. I am sorry Alex.

With OS 3.0 came the option to listen to podcasts at double (or half) speed. This is a really great and time-efficient option. I was stunned that listening to speech at double speed is not that much of a difference to normal speed. It is not as noticeable as with music. This is great: you get twice the information at half the time!

One year ago I discovered podcasts and have since then not listened to anything else on my iPod touch. Podcasting is a very efficient way of absorbing information. I have a 30 minute commute on the bike each way and walk the dog for another 30. I cannot read or watch anything in those 90 minutes, but I can listen. Podcasts for me are a great way of "radio". The big difference with real radio though is that you can stop  the podcast for 8 hours of work and listen further where you left off. Of course I am talking about real information here, no music. Listening to music is a waste of time for me. It is podcasts for me and when I am out of podcasts I will try a new one. The next best thing is audiobooks. I will elaborate on the how and which in other posts.