While I anxiously waited for the new Tweetdeck web app, Seesmic quietly beat them to the Google Buzz-Facebook-Twitter-LinkedIn-4Square punch04:27:19 PM July 28, 2010from Seesmic Web
I have a mixed marriage. My wife has an Apple iPad, but I replaced my Apple iPhone with a Droid Incredible. Not because I didn’t love my iPhone, but because I wanted to find out what it would be like to actually have voice communication with a phone. That necessitated my leaving AT&T. Don’t get me wrong. AT&T treated me wonderfully and they have great products. Unfortunately, I also wanted a network that let me talk on the phone in the places I frequent. When the AT&T network allows me to talk on the phone along my usual routes, I will happily consider returning to AT&T.
So, life without an iPhone in my new Verizon world: Android can very happily automatically download audio podcast updates using Listen. Unlike the iPhone, Android phone storage is easily accessed to just drag and drop music from the computer. Unfortunately, the Android Music, DoubleTwist, and HTC Music apps on my phone only recognize album art embedded in the music’s tags. But I also want playlists that synchronize between the phone, the iPad, and the computer and I want my video podcasts on that awesome Incredible display.
Given the iPad in the house, we’re going to continue to use iTunes. Frankly, I like the way it looks when we’re playing music on the HTPC, too. Unfortunately, Jobs and Co. are at war with the Google Nation. iTunes will not willingly sync with a Google Android phone. There are at least a couple of programs that seek to bridge the gap. For those who like to cut to the chase, I’ll start with where I ended up. For the cynics, later I’ll explain why I took this approach.
For audio podcasts, I use Listen on my phone and no desktop client. If I wish to hear my audio podcasts on my computer I go to my ‘Listen Subscriptions’ folder in Google Reader on the web.
For video podcasts, I copy my podcasts from my iTunes ‘podcasts’ folder on the computer to the ‘Podcasts’ folder on my phone’s microSD card. (If you don’t have that directory then make it.) I can then watch them using my Photos mobile app. Yes, it is called “Photos” but it plays videos, too.
For music, I use MediaMonkey and listen using either my Music or DoubleTwist mobile app. For playlists, I use iTunes Export to include my iTunes playlists in MediaMonkey. (Alternately, iTunes Export can also export your iTunes playlists straight to the ‘Playlists’ folder on your phone.) This means I have the same playlists in iTunes as I have in MediaMonkey as on my phone.
As I showed in a recent post, I have arranged my Listen, Music, and Photos apps on the same page. Don’t tell Apple, but I think of it as my iPod page.
The main thing that stands out in moving from iPhone to Android is how much more work it is to get an Android phone to do what I consider to be all the basic smartphone functions. Now, calling favorites is easy and intuitive. Set up your favorites in the pre-installed widget and give them their own home page. Touch their face and talk to them. 10 out of 10. I’m no longer on Verizon so chances are I can actually make the call. However, Verizon did drop my Father’s Day call from my son as I drove through the western mountains of Virginia.
The big four of smartphone uses are the four C’s, Calendar, Contacts, Chats, and Calls. If you are a Gmail user, just enter your Gmail account info when setting up the phone and you can use all the Android apps. However, HTC includes some nice apps that require a second setup using either Microsoft Exchange or pop/IMAP settings. That’s fine for non-Google accounts but redundant for Google accounts. I did find this more straightforward than either setting up syncing through iTunes or MS Exchange on the iPhone.
But it is not all sweetness and light once we leave the land of meat and potatoes and head to the side dishes of smartphone life. The iPod on the iPhone is slick. The only gig on the iPhone is that one has to manually update podcasts or hook up to a computer and sync with iTunes, which automatically updates podcasts. However, the interface for music and podcasts is beautiful. It matters not whether we are listening to albums, artists, genres, audio podcasts or video podcasts. It is beautiful, intuitive, and all in one place.
An Android phone breaks the iPod function out into multiple applications. There is an Android Music app. It is beautiful and also allows playing by artist, album, playlist, song, genre, or composer. One can easily make or add to a playlist. Hold your finger down on an album or song and follow the menu for adding to a playlist. You can also copy m3u format playlists from your computer. Getting music onto the phone is as easy as copying it to an external thumb drive. HTC adds an attractive widget for this app.
There is an audio podcast app, Listen. Listen bests the iPhone in one area only. It updates podcasts over the air automatically. No need to manually pick new episodes or hook up to a computer. The ability to find a podcast with Listen’s search function is horrible, however. I found myself shopping for podcasts in the iTunes store and then copying the URL of the podcast and then typing it into Listen using their ‘Add Subscription’ function. Awkward and shameful from a company that is primarily known for their ability to perform a search.
Both viewing photos and videos are done using the Photos app. There is no way to subscribe to a video podcast of which I am aware. There is no way to bookmark where one leaves off viewing a video. Like the new iPhone one can do basic picture edits, but there is no iMovie equivalent for videos.
Steve Jobs has completed his keynote address. It sounds like the iPhone 4 is going to be a solid competitor with the HTC EVO 4G. The video chat will require a wireless connection for now but Qik and Sprint found out that supporting this over the air was an overwhelming challenge so it is hard to [...]
Last time we looked at making your HTML5 video degrade to a flash player. This post will look at how to default to the flash player and fall back to links to the HTML5 video for the smaller segment that do not have flash enabled on their browser or are viewing on their iPhone or iPad. All I did was convert my source video to flash (FLV), H.264 (MP4), and Ogg (OGV). I set up my flash player to run as usual, but instead of giving those without flash a link to get flash, I give them two links. One will let the Safari and Chrome crowd, including those with hand-held devices, watch the MP4 file in the HTML5 player (or to download it). The other link lets the Firefox, Opera, and Chrome crowd watch the OGV file in situ (or to download it). Continue reading FLASH FIRST?
Distributing a video product can be very simple. I just shoot a video with my iPhone. Touch the share button. Touch the ‘Send to YouTube’ button and I’m done.
But if one wishes to produce a regular video program or include video elements in one’s web page or blog then distribute it to the general public things start to get a little more tricky. My wife has a Droid Eris which runs on Android. You may have an old version of Internet Explorer. (Please tell me you don’t.) Some of you have Macs which choke on about 75% of the web’s videos because they are in Flash. On top of everything else, like the iPhone, the new iPad won’t be able to handle Flash at all. We could choose to curse the darkness (you fill in who you would blame), but it is dark so we need to light a candle if our web media is going to continue to be relevant into the future.
In addition to the variety of operating systems or hardware one might have, there are many different browsers one might use. Oh, and there is a change in the HTML standard with regard to video coming down the pike as well. In anticipation, HTML5 has already been implemented in some form or another in most contemporary browsers.
Maybe my wife hates me. Maybe she hated hearing me boast about how my iPhone has this app or that one. Maybe she got tired of hearing me say, “Oh, let me tell you the answer to your question” as I Googled the topics at parties. (Oh, yeah, I’m definitely the geekiest guy there.) So she took her perfectly good LG enV3 and washed it in the washing machine. Then she went out and bought the phone I would have bought if I didn’t have this AT&T contract around my neck. She bought the Droid Eris.
Now, she is the one spouting off about how the house we just passed is selling for X-dollars (HotPads) or she just got an email from one of our kids while I’m driving us to church. And, unlike my iPhone, she can watch internet TV streaming from TV.com or from NBC.com. Even Apple’s computers choke on flash video according to Steve Jobs, who says it is one of the main reasons that his company’s computers crash. But, that is only about 75% of internet video so it’s no big deal.
LSS is a nuts and bolts blog. Written by a geek who loves God, this journal reports my quest for technical perfection, environmental and social justice, and venting whatever else is going through my little pea-pickin' brain at the moment.
If you poke around a little, I'm sure you can find something to tick you off, but you might just find something that helps you, too. The former I consider collateral damage and the latter is my hope.
I'm not afraid of or offended by contrary opionions so I hope you'll use the comments to encourage, challenge, and inform myself and my readers. Thanks for visiting and don't forget to subscribe before you leave.
