We crawl and index freely available RSS/Atom feeds that podcasters publish. Technically (and legally) it's not much different from how Google crawls your blog. We don't currently host any content ourselves. But have plans to introduce a caching and transcoding layer to be able to guarantee a consistent user experience and low latency streaming. Which is hard to do when you don't host the content yourself or have any control over the coding of the files that is streaming.
Hi everyone! The maker (and CEO) of Wave here. Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on the app.
We're a seed funded start-up from Stockholm, Sweden with a background from Spotify and Beats Music among other things. We have been working on this for almost a year now. Our goal is to make the podcast experience more social and build the best platform for discovery and listening possible. We have a ton of cool features lined up waiting to be released in the coming months. But we're starting small with a very focused and simple app.
Hey! I just downloaded your app and I love the design, I'm at work so I haven't had a chance to use it. I've recommended it to four other friends so hopefully we can get you some feedback.
One thing I've noticed immediately is that I can't import my podcasts from the podcast app... is this not a possibility?
Okay, so far the feedback I've heard is as follows, everything in quotations is from a friend:
What we love:
-Love the way podcasts play and the little circle on the bottom right hand corner for play/pause
-The flow of new podcasts for the week
-The general layout
-"I like the concept. The idea is great to see what new podcasts are there instead of just relying on iTunes top 10 list"
-"I like that you can fast forward or rewind the podcast with your finger instead of that 10 sec but they have on podcast"
-(Note: my friend preferred this, but I like the 10 second fwd/back)
What can use some improvement:
-"The app is very glitchy. I'm "following" you but you don't appear as one of my "friends" and I can't read what it says below your name (I'm assuming you connected through Twitter)"
-"It would also be nice to have a page where you could see a list of everyone who is following you and who you are following"
-"Also I can't go into your profile to see who you're following!"
-(Likewise, I was not notified that my friend had started following me. I don't know where to find my friends?)
-"I can't go into a podcast to see who liked it..."
-I'm not sure if I just can't find it but I typically prefer to download podcasts in order to save on data. They help me get through my 3hr commute.
-"I don't like how they make you sign up with connecting FB or Twitter
No other option to just sign up independently of the other apps"
(I agree with this)
Overall the consensus was that we can't wait to make this our number one podcasting app and are genuinely excited for how this all develops! I'm not sure if you've talked to the guys over at Gimlet about your app, or if they are hard to reach... I did notice you have Gimlet shows on the screens on your website, but you are both part of the podcast revolution.
My other two podcast friends are at a wedding for the weekend, but I will follow up with them when they get back.
Thank you for the great and extensive feedback! We will make sure to fix as many of the things you mentioned as possible in the next minor update to the app. Most are actually usability problem. It is in fact possible to access followers and who's following and so on. It's just not immediately obvious how I guess. Downloads for offline listening is available if you long-press on a story in the feed and then tap "Download". Not very user friendly. We're working on a better solution.
We've actually reached out to Gimlet to get their thoughts on the app. But haven't heard back from them yet.
Anything we can do to help, you guys have a great product! I'll be sure to utilize the downloads- maybe one of those brief tutorials when you download the app (like on Snapchat when you first download) could help to explain app features like long-pressing.
I just tweeted Gimlet to see if it encourages a response, but I'm nobody special on Twitter so don't get your hopes up. ;)
For now yes. We're a startup and thus have limited resources and need to focus our efforts. We are going to nail the user experience on iPhone before moving to other platforms.
"The hypothesis was that MDMA would make the negative memories less painful."
Recreational use of MDMA has given me panic attacks, increased anxiety, emotional dependence and depression. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence online that tells the same story, which is something you rarely hear anyone talk about. It seems like different people respond differently to MDMA. Perhaps it's dependent on your personality or brain chemistry. For people like me the effect on the serotonin system in the brain can be very dangerous and sometimes cause permanent damage.
I used to be very liberal towards drug use in general until I experienced the down sides first hand.
"Ecstasy is so consistently adulterated that when pure MDMA turns up on the street, it’s likely be to sold on the street under the name MDMA or sometimes “Molly.” Corporal Luc Chicoine, the national co-ordinator for the RCMP’s pharmaceutical and synthetic drug operations, has worked on the street in drug operations for 18 years and said he can’t remember ever seeing pure MDMA."
"For a sense of just what might be in a given pill, Hudson points to Ecstasydata.org — a Sacramento-based website listing active ingredients and proportions in mailed-in samples — which has tested thousands of hits of “ecstasy” since 2001.
A growing majority contain no ecstasy at all. Since 2010, 61% of 533 samples tested had no MDMA, with 111 containing the drug, and another 96 some combination of MDMA and other chemicals. Of 27 Canadian samples studied since 2010, 14 active chemicals were discovered, including caffeine, methamphetamine, benzylpiperazine (BZP) and procaine."
"Ecstasy" was originally used as a synonym for pure MDMA, before the crackdown on MDMA and its precursors. I have no idea how the term is used these days.
You say yourself that the evidence is anecdotal. There is evidence that points in many other directions, some of which are very promising and in need of further research.
Did you have a test kit to determine whether your experience was actually with pure MDMA?
> Did you have a test kit to determine whether your experience was actually with pure MDMA
This is pretty important when talking about recreational use of MDMA. It's often pretty hard to find reasonably pure MDMA in many parts of the US. For more information on what pure MDMA looks like and common adulterants, erowid.org is a great resource.
But this is not a problem Android has when apps target 4.0. The ActionBar has been a huge stabilizing influence on the Android interaction pattern; strongly enforcing backpaning, swipe-to-navigate, and consistent locations for navigation.
I'm not sure why you'd say this. Android actually hasn't suffered from tactile UI fragmentation much more than iOS has.
> Android actually hasn't suffered from tactile UI fragmentation much more than iOS has.
If the apps on this page a representative, I'd say that Android has experienced a lot more UI fragmentation than iOS. These are being held up as examples of best Android interfaces, and they look very inconsistent to me.
In contrast, I just opened up a bunch of random apps on my phone's home screen, and they all look very much like "iOS style". Obviously the native apps match well, but so does OneBusAway, Wikipanion, Skype (though the UI is flatter than the rest), Google Voice, Amazon, OneNote, etc.
I thought you were talking about the actual meaning of taps and swipes and whatnot... that's what I was referring to the as "tactile" part of it, where things like long presses and swipes mean the same thing between apps. In terms of visual style, there has been significant change over the last 18 months as designers come to grips with the new 4.0 style. Both iOS and Android tend to suffer from the problem of "What the fuck can I press?" with some apps.
But to my eyes as an Android user, I see a lot of consistency here. The ActionBar is firmly in place, so I know where to go for navigation. The visual metaphors vary in terms of actual look, but I get what's up.
For example, compare to very different apps: Catch and doubleTwist Alarm Clock. Both are "bounded" by their top bar (although Catch has elected to add extra app-specific chrome at the bottom, too). The navigation "upwards our out" between panes is consistently in the upper left. The additional actions for the app as a whole are on the top right.
In cases where the apps deviate (e.g., bottom bars in Gmail and Catch), the designers have had the good sense to use the standardized icons as opposed to further customization, helping to signal the user that this app does deviate from pure actoinbar navigation. The share, attach, favorite, and trash icons are all with pixels of standard.
A lot of iOS users first coming to Android (including myself) after the advent of ICS may be surprised once they realize how consistent the presence of the ActionBar is, even if it varies in appearance. I encourage you to play with one to see this in action. I certainly felt that sense of confusion at first because I'm used to unified navigation chrome from iOS for most things outside of games. I think this is just a case of longtime iOS users not being familiar with the visual language of the Android platform.
Well, the meaning of taps and swipes is part of the consistency issue. Interaction is more than just "what does swipe do?". It's also "how do I go back?", "how do I take an action on this item?", "how do I change context?".
I personally don't run into a ton of issues in iOS with determining what swipes vs long-presses vs long-taps do. Swipes in a list tend to invoke the "delete" context. Swipes up/down scroll. Tap to invoke. Long-tap for select in a text context. There's certainly not 100% consistency, but it seems fairly consistent to me with the apps I use. I can't speak to how consistent or inconsistent these are on Android, because I haven't used an Android device enough to really know.
Speaking to Catch and doubleTwist, these seem inconsistent to me. Visually, they're quite different, but there seem to be pretty significant functional differences. Many of the doubleTwist screens do not have the "up/out" chevron in the upper left (how is this not redundant with the global "back", anyway?). On the 4th screenshot in particular, there's no "up/out", but there is a settings cog that appears in none of the other screenshots. It appears that doubleTwist also uses a "slide to reveal" metaphor (invoked by the chevron on the main screen) that isn't in Catch or the other apps. In catch, despite there being an action bar at the top, virtually all of the actions you might want to take actually seem to be in the custom bar at the bottom. I don't see how these at all demonstrate consistency.
> I can't speak to how consistent or inconsistent these are on Android, because I haven't used an Android device enough to really know.
They are pretty consistent. Swipe to delete in a newer action, but other than that most things tend to have similar functionality. I have mainly used 2.3 and I think I never had issues with finding UI elements. Options button helps when nothing else does.
Back button does have issues at places (browsers mostly) but it eventually takes you where you want to go. I shifted to ICS 4.0 very recently and experience is even better.
> I personally don't run into a ton of issues in iOS with determining what swipes vs long-presses vs long-taps do.
Unless you play games or use some of the most popular twitter clients. ;)
> Visually, they're quite different, but there seem to be pretty significant functional differences.
To be expected, they do very different things. I chose them because of their differences. Both apps have deviated from a very mellow Holo standard without introducing a lot of confusion. Evaluate their differences as deltas from the Android baseline (the way a user would), instead of as deltas from each other (which is how someone looking at screenshots on a webpage would).
> (how is this not redundant with the global "back", anyway?)
Oh, because back goes to the last thing you were doing. The chevron goes up in the app. Any Android user figures this out and why it is this way very quickly, but I can see why an iOS user probably finds the distinction weird.
Apps share functionality in Android. So unless the app has hijacked your back button (very rare, only games, browsers and the keyboard tend to do this now), it generally goes where you expect. It took a LONG time for the Android devs to get this right, but for the most part it works surprisingly well now.
> On the 4th screenshot in particular, there's no "up/out", but there is a settings cog that appears in none of the other screenshots.
This is DoubleTwist being cute, for them they have their chevron animate down with a backpane. The navigation has traveled to the lower left. This is confusing in screenshots, but not in practice since it is essentially a snazzy modal dialogue and the user has just spent 160ms or so watching the pane slide down. It's essentially a backpane dialogue.
> In catch, despite there being an action bar at the top, virtually all of the actions you might want to take actually seem to be in the custom bar at the bottom. I don't see how these at all demonstrate consistency.
The ActionBar generally speaks to navigation aspects of the app, not specific screen actions. In this, it's very much like iOS's topbars and clearly there was some inspiration there. It's not unusual in an iOS app to see a novel piece of chrome with fixed position for "add" and "remove" and other actions core to the app.
> Unless you play games or use some of the most popular twitter clients.
I haven't noticed any weird issues in games, but it's true that I don't play much, nor do I use twitter with any frequency.
> To be expected, they do very different things.
I agree there should be differences. My point is that with these two apps I see almost no actual similarities in the UI. If you'd told me that one of these was an Android app and the other was from, say, Meego, I'd totally have believed it.
> Evaluate their differences as deltas from the Android baseline (the way a user would), instead of as deltas from each other (which is how someone looking at screenshots on a webpage would).
Ok, but the question was whether there was more fragmentation in Android than iOS, and from what I can see the answer still appears to be yes. The deviation from the "baseline" seems higher in Android.
> Oh, because back goes to the last thing you were doing. The chevron goes up in the app. Any Android user figures this out and why it is this way very quickly, but I can see why an iOS user probably finds the distinction weird.
Maybe I'd understand this more if I used an Android device for an extended period of time. It seems that these have a ton of overlap, though. Most of the time, in my experience, up/out is the same as back, because I got to my current location by drilling down through the content. Unless back is only between apps now.
> This is DoubleTwist being cute
I get what they're doing. My point is that it's inconsistent with the platform.
> The ActionBar generally speaks to navigation aspects of the app, not specific screen actions.
Someone should tell the Google+ team. On their ActionBar, I see "write" (new post?), "refresh", "reply", and "upload picture" (I'm guessing).
That might be because you have subconsciously (or consciously) installed apps that have similar UIs. Your other comments here indicate that you value consistent UIs strongly, so that's not suprising. The author of this blog is only targeting "beautiful" apps. I personally agree with you, most of my apps are in the ICS style. I find apps that I used to think were attractive (like DoubleTwist and DoubleTwist Alarm) to look dated now and out of place.
However we also know that normal users don't necessarily value consistency as strongly. Many developers have reported that their iOS apps do better with an in-your-face UI.
Could be. I think it's more that iOS has had a relatively consistent UI style since day 1, while Android's style has been changed more. Additionally, most Android apps have traditionally come after their equivalent iOS apps, and so have often been the victim of bad UI ports (as evidenced by the large number of Android apps that look distinctly iOS-esque).
I wonder if Window Phone will suffer from the same as it (hopefully) becomes popular. I assume the vastly different UI style will probably prevent some of this, though.
I don't want to spam this thread, but I feel I have to plug my personal pet project Related (https://github.com/sutajio/related), since it is, well.. yeah... "related" to the topic being discussed.
It can't do half of what Titan does and is a much, much simpler design. But it is fast, easy to use and works really well for 80% of the use cases you might have for a graph database on the web (social graphs, semantic web stuff, etc.)
I'm swedish and this is really not that strange. She's just an ordinary Stockholm hipster with an odd sense of humor. We got a bunch of those here. We've sort of had a tradition of that kind of very politically incorrect and absurdist humor here at least since the mid 90s. I would even go as far as to say that it is considered a bit chick in some circles to behave like that.
But I can see how an american/international audience wouldn't get the joke.
> Hipster racism involves making derogatory comments with a racial basis in an attempt to seem witty and above it all. Specifically, the idea is to sound ironic, as in “I’m allowed to say this because of course I’m not racist, so it’s funny.” It’s an aspect of a larger part of the hipster culture, which wants to seem jaded and urbane and oh-so-witty. Using language which is viewed as inflammatory or not appropriate is supposed to push the boundaries and make someone look edgy, but it only really comes across that way to people who buy into that system. To everyone else, it’s just racist.
So no, this isn't some unheard of Swedish phenomenon, it's "hipster racism," as described above. And god help us if you are going to tell me that Swedes just aren't racist like Americans.
The linked blog post is a bit of a rant. Sounds like the author really hates hipsters and just wishes to accuse them of being racist without actually providing any substantial evidence to back the claim. If "hipster racism" is a legitimate phenomenon, I'd like to read about it from another source.
On the main point, the Swedish troll isn't really saying anything overtly racist. She is just mentioning a number of things that make people feel uncomfortable and making some questionable remarks that are obviously designed to be incendiary. I'm not sure this fits into the "hipster racism" model, as described in the linked blog.
I am tempted to believe this article is a troll. But on second thought, the author is probably just projecting imaginary racism on at least half of the so-called hipster racists.
The author suggests that the use of the hashtag #thuglife is racist. What kind of moron thinks pointing out the lack of behavior attributed to a "thug" (which, by the way, is not even racial in nature) in an ironic way is exhibiting a form of racism?
Then the author attributes the word "ghetto" with racism. News flash: ghettos are never fun to live in, much less visit. Certainly there's racial undertones because traditionally ghettos were populated by a single ethnic group, but even the explanation of the example by the author disregards race and focuses solely on the poor conditions of the area.
I won't comment on number 3 because there's no arguing with emotional instability.
On number 4, I have to say that it is definitely racist to say any ethnic or other group in general is bad or sucks, etc. That being said, I have lived with white anglo-saxon protestants for most of my life, and they can definitely be super lame. Perhaps it's an excessive amount of lameness that forces people who deal with it on a regular basis to lash out at the whole populous. Not good, but at the same time, I totally understand what the hipster is saying. And is it hurting anybody? I don't think so. The least-oppressed group can stand to take a few knocks for their flaws every so often.
What's the racial connotation? The fact that black people refer to themselves as thugs in music and culture in a quasi-romanticized way of expressing who they are? The term is significantly less racial than words like "goyim" which explicitly refer to race, yet are completely benign in everyday speech. The only difference I see is that if a word is tangentially related to black culture, it's racist for non-black people to use them.
The phrase in question, "thug life", is an attitude and a way of life. It originated from 2Pac who defined it as an acronym meaning "The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everyone" as well as a code to live by (which gangs such as the Crips and Bloods signed a peace treaty based on). It never had anything to do with one's race. Of course the majority of the gangs that were attracted to this phrase were african-american, but included white, latino and asian members.
Actually, here in good 'ol socialist Sweden all of our groceries, with a few exceptions, used to look like that up until the end of the 90s. I remember as a kid eating cereals from a big white box with the word "CORNFLAKES" on it in big blue bold letters.
Umm, no they didn't. What you're talking about was a particular brand, Blåvitt[1], owned by the Konsum chain of stores. It was a very concious (and successful) marketing strategy, and not some generic non-brand.
