Tags: podcast

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Audio book

I’ve recorded each chapter of Resilient Web Design as MP3 files that I’ve been releasing once a week. The final chapter is recorded and released so my audio work is done here.

If you want subscribe to the podcast, pop this RSS feed into your podcast software of choice. Or use one of these links:

Or if you can have it as one single MP3 file to listen to as an audio book. It’s two hours long.

So, for those keeping count, the book is now available as HTML, PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and MP3.

Huffduffing for podcasters

I was pointed to this discussion thread which is talking about how to make podcast episodes findable for services like Huffduffer.

The logic behind Huffduffer’s bookmarklet goes something like this…

  1. Find any a elements that have href values ending in “.mp3” or “.m4a”.
  2. If there’s just one audio on the page, use that.
  3. If there are multiple audio, offer a list to the user and have them choose.

If that doesn’t work…

  1. Look for a link element with a rel value of “enclosure”.
  2. Look for a meta element property value of “og:audio”.
  3. Look for audio elements and grab either the src attribute of the element itself, or the src attribute of any source elements within the audio element.

If that doesn’t work…

  1. Try to find a link to an RSS feed (a link that looks like “rss” or “feed” or “atom”).
  2. If there is a feed, parse that for enclosure elements and present that list to the user.

That covers 80-90% of use cases. There are still situations where the actual audio file for a podcast episode is heavily obfuscated—either with clickjacking JavaScript “download” links, or links that point to a redirection to the actual file.

If you have a podcast and you want your episodes to be sharable and huffduffable, you have a few options:

Have a link to the audio file for the episode somewhere on the page, something like:

<a href="/path/to/file.mp3">download</a>

That’s the simplest option. If you’re hosting with Soundcloud, this is pretty much impossible to accomplish: they deliberately obfuscate and time-limit the audio file, even if you want it to be downloadable (that “download” link literally only allows a user to download that file in that moment).

If you don’t want a visible link on the page, you could use metadata in the head of your document. Either:

<link rel="enclosure" href="/path/to/file.mp3">

Or:

<meta property="og:audio" content="/path/to/file.mp3">

And if you want to encourage people to huffduff an episode of your podcast, you can also include a “huffduff it” link, like this:

<a href="https://huffduffer.com/add?page=referrer">huffduff it</a>

You can also use ?page=referer—that misspelling has become canonised thanks to HTTP.

There you go, my podcasting friends. However you decide to do it, I hope you’ll make your episodes sharable.

dConstruct 2015 podcast: Nick Foster

dConstruct 2015 is just ten days away. Time to draw the pre-conference podcast to a close and prepare for the main event. And yes, all the talks will be recorded and released in podcast form—just as with the previous ten dConstructs.

The honour of the final teaser falls to Nick Foster. We had a lovely chat about product design, design fiction, Google, Nokia, Silicon Valley and Derbyshire.

I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to these eight episodes. I had certainly had a blast recording them. They’ve really whetted my appetite for dConstruct 2015—I think it’s going to be a magnificent day.

With the days until the main event about to tick over into single digits, this is your last chance to grab a ticket if you haven’t already got one. And remember, as a loyal podcast listener, you can use the discount code ‘ansible’ to get 10% off.

See you in the future …next Friday!

Whatever works for you

I was one of the panelists on the most recent episode of the Shop Talk Show along with Nicole, Colin Megill, and Jed Schmidt. The topic was inline styles. Well, not quite. That’s not a great term to describe the concept. The idea is that you apply styling directly to DOM nodes using JavaScript, instead of using CSS selectors to match up styles to DOM nodes.

It’s an interesting idea that I could certainly imagine being useful in certain situations such as dynamically updating an interface in real time (it feels a bit more “close to the metal” to reflect the state updates directly rather than doing it via class swapping). But there are many, many other situations where the cascade is very useful indeed.

I expressed concern that styling via JavaScript raises the barrier to styling from a declarative language like CSS to a programming language (although, as they pointed out, it’s more like moving from CSS to JSON). I asked whether it might not be possible to add just one more layer of abstraction so that people could continue to write in CSS—which they’re familiar with—and then do JavaScript magic to match those selectors, extract those styles, and apply them directly to the DOM nodes. Since recording the podcast, I came across Glen Maddern’s proposal to do exactly that. It makes sense to me try to solve the perceived problems with CSS—issues of scope and specificity—without asking everyone to change the way they write.

In short, my response was “hey, like, whatever, it’s cool, each to their own.” There are many, many different kinds of websites and many, many different ways to make them. I like that.

So I was kind of surprised by the bullishness of those who seem to honestly believe that this is the way to build on the web, and that CSS will become a relic. At one point I even asked directly, “Do you really believe that CSS is over? That all styles will be managed through JavaScript from here on?” and received an emphatic “Yes!” in response.

I find that a little disheartening. Chris has written about the confidence of youth:

Discussions are always worth having. Weighing options is always interesting. Demonstrating what has worked (and what hasn’t) for you is always useful. There are ways to communicate that don’t resort to dogmatism.

There are big differences between saying:

  • You can do this,
  • You should do this, and
  • You must do this.

My take on the inline styles discussion was that it fits firmly in the “you can do this” slot. It could be a very handy tool to have in your toolbox for certain situations. But ideally your toolbox should have many other tools. When all you have is a hammer, yadda, yadda, yadda, nail.

I don’t think you do your cause any favours by jumping straight to the “you must do this” stage. I think that people are more amenable to hearing “hey, here’s something that worked for me; maybe it will work for you” rather than “everything you know is wrong and this is the future.” I certainly don’t think that it’s helpful to compare CSS to Neanderthals co-existing with JavaScript Homo Sapiens.

Like I said on the podcast, it’s a big web out there. The idea that there is “one true way” that would work on all possible projects seems unlikely—and undesirable.

“A ha!”, you may be thinking, “But you yourself talk about progressive enhancement as if it’s the one try way to build on the web—hoisted by your own petard.” Actually, I don’t. There are certainly situations where progressive enhancement isn’t workable—although I believe those cases are rarer than you might think. But my over-riding attitude towards any questions of web design and development is:

It depends.

dConstruct 2015 podcast: Brian David Johnson

The newest dConstruct podcast episode features the indefatigable and effervescent Brian David Johnson. Together we pick apart the futures we are collectively making, probe the algorithmic structures of science fiction narratives, and pay homage to Asimovian robotic legal codes.

Brian’s enthusiasm is infectious. I have a strong hunch that his dConstruct talk will be both thought-provoking and inspiring.

dConstruct 2015 is getting close now. Our future approaches. Interviewing the speakers ahead of time has only increased my excitement and anticipation. I think this is going to be a truly unmissable event. So, uh, don’t miss it.

Grab your ticket today and use the code ‘ansible’ to take advantage of the 10% discount for podcast listeners.

dConstruct 2015 podcast: Carla Diana

The dConstruct podcast episodes are coming thick and fast. The latest episode is a thoroughly enjoyable natter I had with the brilliant Carla Diana.

We talk about robots, smart objects, prototyping, 3D printing, and the world of teaching design.

Remember, you can subscribe to the podcast feed in any podcast software you like, or if iTunes is your thing, you can also subscribe directly in iTunes.

And don’t forget to use the discount code ‘ansible’ when you’re buying your dConstruct ticket …because you are coming to dConstruct, right?

dConstruct 2015 podcast: John Willshire

The latest dConstruct 2015 podcast episode is ready for your aural pleasure. This one’s a bit different. John Willshire came down to Brighton so that we could have our podcast chat face-to-face instead of over Skype.

It was fascinating to see the preparation that John is putting into his talk. He had labelled cards strewn across the table, each one containing a strand that he wants to try to weave into his talk. They also made for great conversation starters. That’s how we ended up talking about Interstellar and Man Of Steel, and the differing parenting styles contained therein. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to rid myself of the mental image of a giant holographic head of Michael Caine dispensing words of wisdom to in the Fortress Of Solitude. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light, Kal-el!”

The sound quality of this episode is more “atmospheric”, given the recording conditions (you can hear Clearlefties and seagulls in the background) but a splendid time was had by both John and myself. I hope that you enjoy listening to it.

I have a feeling that after listening to this, you’re definitely going to want to see John’s dConstruct talk, so grab yourself a ticket, using the discount code ‘ansible’ to get 10% off.

dConstruct 2015 podcast: Chriss Noessel

The fourth episode of the warmup podcast for dConstruct 2015 is here, and it’s a good one: it’s the one with Chris Noessel of Sci-fi Interfaces fame.

I enjoyed myself immensely geeking out with Chris about the technology presented in sci-fi films like Logan’s Run, Iron Man, X-Men, Metropolis, Under The Skin, and of course, Star Wars. I shared my crazy theory about Star Wars with Chris and he was very gracious in humouring me.

Oh, at the end of the episode, we reveal the special event that’s happening the evening before dConstruct:

The night before the conference, Chris Noessel, one of our fab speakers, will be hosting a very special screening of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’.

Don’t miss it. And don’t miss dConstruct. Remember, as a podcast listener, you get 10% off the ticket price with the discount code “ansible.”

dConstruct 2015 podcast: Ingrid Burrington

The dConstruct podcast episodes are coming thick and fast. Hot on the heels of the inaugural episode with Matt Novak and the sophomore episode with Josh Clark comes the third in the series: the one with Ingrid Burrington.

This was a fun meeting of minds. We geeked out about the physical infrastructure of the internet and time-travel narratives, from The Terminator to The Peripheral. During the episode, I sounded the spoiler warning in case you haven’t read that book, but we didn’t actually end up giving anything away.

I really enjoyed this chat with Ingrid. I hope you’ll enjoy listening to it.

Oh, and now you can subscribe to the dConstruct 2015 podcast directly from iTunes.

And remember, as a podcast listener, you get 10% off the ticket price for dConstruct using the discount code “ansible.”

dConstruct 2015 podcast: Josh Clark

On Monday, I launched a new little experiment—a podcast series of interviews with the lovely people who will be speaking at this year’s dConstruct. I’m very much looking forward to the event (it presses all my future-geekery buttons) and talking to the speakers ahead of time is just getting me even more excited.

I’m releasing the second episode of the podcast today. It’s a chat with the thoroughly charming Josh Clark. We discuss technology, magic, Harry Potter, and the internet of things.

If you want to have this and future episodes delivered straight to your earholes, subscribe to the podcast feed.

And don’t forget: as a loyal podcast listener, you get 10% off the ticket price of dConstruct. Use the discount code “ansible”. You’re welcome.

Podcasting the future

I’m very proud of the three dConstructs I put together: 2012, 2013, and 2014, but I don’t have the fortitude to do it indefinitely so I’m stepping back from the organisational duties this year. So dConstruct 2015 is in Andy’s hands.

Of course he’s only gone and organised exactly the kind of conference that I’d feed my own grandmother to the ravenous bugblatter beast of Traal to attend. I mean, the theme is Designing The Future, for crying out loud!

To say I’m looking forward to hearing what all those great speakers have to say is something of an understatement. In fact, I couldn’t wait until September. I’ve started pestering them already.

On the off-chance that other people might be interesting in hearing me prod, cajole, and generally geek out about technology, sci-fi, and futurism, I’m taking the liberty of recording our conversations.

That’s right: there’s a podcast.

The episodes will be about half an hour so in length, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. There’s no set format or agenda. It’s all very free-form, which is a polite way of saying that I’m completely winging it.

The first episode features the magnificent Matt Novak, curator of the Paleofuture blog. We talk about past visions of the future, the boom and bust cycles of utopias and dystopias, the Jetsons, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the Apollo programme.

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe to the podcast feed.

Needless to say, you should come to this year’s dConstruct on September 11th here in Brighton. As compensation for listening to my experiments in podcasting, I’m going to sweeten the deal. Use the discount code “ansible” to get 10% off the ticket price. Aw, yeah!

100 words 078

I’ve noticed lately that my experience of films is lasting long after leaving the cinema. I end up reading opinion pieces and listening to podcasts about the film for days or even weeks afterwards.

Interstellar, Ex Machina, Mad Max: Fury Road …I enjoyed each of them in the cinema, and then I enjoyed thinking about them again by huffduffing related material to catch up on.

Sometimes I find myself doing it with other media too. I finish a book, and then listen to reckons about it afterwards.

I guess this is the water cooler effect, but extended to the internet.

100 words 036

I get home from a day in London, working on-site with a client. I’ve spent the day trying to crack a tricky responsive navigation issue, still hammering away at it on the train back to Brighton.

Once I’m home I crack open a beer—an Arundel pale ale. Jessica is making a fantastic meal of basque chicken (while simultaneously making some chicken stock). We sit down to eat this wonderful dish accompanied by a green salad and a bottle of Rhone wine.

I’m happy.

While we’re tucking in, we listen to an episode of Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time all about cryptography.

Happiness turns to bliss.

Soundcloudbusting

Matt wrote a great article called Ten Years of Podcasting: Fighting Human Nature (although I’m not entirely sure why he put it on Ev’s site instead of—or in addition to—his own). It’s a look back at the history of podcasting, and how it has grown out of its nerdy origins to become more of a mainstream activity. In it, he kindly gives a shout-out to Huffduffer:

…a way to make piecemeal meta-podcasts on the fly built up from random shows (here’s my feed).

Matt has written about how he uses Huffduffer before: a quick introduction to adding your Huffduffer feed to Instacast. It’s equally straightforward with Overcast, and most other iOS podcast apps.

If you use the iOS app Workflow, there’s a nifty tutorial for extracting the audio from YouTube videos, posting the audio to Dropbox, and subscribing in Huffduffer. I’m letting the side down somewhat though: Huffduffer’s API is currently read-only, but it would so much more powerful if you could post from other apps. I need to wrap my head around OAuth to do this. I was hoping to do OwnYourGram-style API with IndieAuth and micropub (once your Huffduffer profile has your website URL, and that URL has rel="me" links to OAuth providers like Twitter, Flickr, or Github, all the pieces should be in place), but alas IndieAuth only works on a domain or subdomain basis so /username URLs are out.

Anyway, back to Matt’s article about podcasting. He writes:

Personally, I like it when new podcasts use Soundcloud for their hosting, because on a desktop computer it means I can easily dip into their archives and play random episodes, scrub to certain segments and get a feel for the show before I subscribe.

It’s true that if you’re sitting in front of a desktop computer, Soundcloud is a great way to listen to an audio file there and then. But it’s a lousy way to host a podcast.

The whole point of podcasting is that it’s time-shifted. You get to listen to the audio you want, when you want. The whole point of Soundcloud is that you listen to audio then and there. That’s great if you’re a musician, looking to make sure that people can’t make copies of your music, but it’s terrible if you’re a podcaster.

To be fair, Soundcloud’s primary audience is still musicians, rather than podcasters, so it makes sense for them to prioritise that use-case. But still, they really go out of their way to obfuscate the actual audio file. Even if the publisher has checked the right box to allow users to download the audio file, the result is a very literal interpretation of that: you can download the file, but you can’t copy the URL and paste it into, say, an app for listening later (and you certainly can’t huffduff it).

Case in point: Matt finishes his article with:

If you don’t have time to read the above, it’s available as a 14min audio file…

That audio file is hosted on Soundcloud. You can listen to it there, or you can listen to it through the embedded player on the article itself. But that’s it. You can’t take it with you. You can’t listen to it later. You can’t, for example, listen to it in your car, even though as Matt says:

…for most Americans, killing time listening to podcasts in a car is a great place.

If you can figure out a way to get at Matt’s audio file (and maybe even huffduff it), I’d be much obliged.

Like Merlin says:

Overcast and Huffduffer

Marco Arment has released his podcast app Overcast for iOS—you can read his introduction to the app.

It plays nicely with Huffduffer. If you want to listen to any Huffduffer feed in Overcast, it’s a straightforward process.

Step 1

Overcast Add podcast
Launch the app and tap on “add a podcast”. Then tap on “Add URL” in the top right.

Step 2

Add URL Huffduffer URL
Enter the Huffduffer URL e.g. huffduffer.com/adactio.

Step 3

All Podcast episode
That’s it! You’re all set.

It’s pretty straightforward to subscribe to Huffduffer URLs in other iOS apps too. Matt has written up the process of using Huffduffer and Instacast. And there’s also a write-up of using Huffduffer and Downcast.

Responsive audio out

One moment

I use my walk to and from work every day as an opportunity to catch up on my Huffduffer podcast. Today I started listening to a talk I’ve really been looking forward to. It’s a Long Now seminar called Universal Access To All Knowledge by one of my heroes: Brewster Kahle, founder of The Internet Archive.

Brewster Kahle: Universal Access to All Knowledge — The Long Now on Huffduffer

As expected, it’s an excellent talk. I caught the start of it on my walk in to work this morning and I picked up where I left off on my walk home this evening. In fact, I deliberately didn’t get the bus home—despite the cold weather—so that I’d get plenty of listening done.

Round about the 23 minute mark he starts talking about Open Library, the fantastic project that George worked on to provide a web page for every book. He describes how it works as a lending library where an electronic version of a book can be checked out by one person at a time:

You can click on: hey! there’s this HTML5 For Web Designers. We bought this book—we bought this book from a publisher such that we could lend it. So you can say “Oh, I want to borrow this book” and it says “Oh, it’s checked out.” Darn! And you can add it to your list and remind yourself to go and get it some other time.

Holy crap! Did Brewster Kahle just use my book to demonstrate Open Library‽

It literally stopped me in my tracks. I stopped walking and stared at my phone, gobsmacked.

It was a very surreal moment. It was also a very happy moment.

Now I’m documenting that moment—and I don’t just mean on a third-party service like Twitter or Facebook. I want to be able to revisit that moment in the future so I’m documenting it at my own URL …though I’m very happy that the Internet Archive will also have a copy.

Ending September

September was quite a month. There were plenty of events that I attended right here in Brighton:

In the middle of all that, I went to Tennessee for Breaking Development and Mobilewood.

I finished the month with a trip to Italy for the inaugural From The Front conference. It was a great little grassroots affair. It was basically a free event—there was an ostensible cover charge of ten euros just to ensure that people didn’t sign up without showing up. That’s why I waived my usual speaking fee (as an aside, if you’re a conference organiser and you’re thinking about asking me to speak for free at an event that charges hundreds of dollars/pounds/euros to attendees …don’t).

I have to admit that the location of the event did make a difference. I jumped at the chance to return to Bologna. Jessica and I even managed to squeeze in a trip down to Florence. Pictures were taken.

The evening before travelling to Italy, before I packed my bag I had a chat with Jen for her podcast, The Web Ahead.

5by5 | The Web Ahead #3: Jeremy Keith on Everything Web on Huffduffer

We talked about a lot of stuff from the nitty-gritty of responsive web design workflows and processes to being future friendly in the face of the mobile browser landscape. We also discussed long-term digital preservation and the web’s role as a storage medium for our collective culture. It sounds like a random grab-bag of topics, but in my mind all of this is connected.

I somehow managed to avoid even once mentioning a space elevator.

Podchatting

There was an episode of the SitePoint podcast a little back wherein Max Wheeler and Myles Eftos discussed many matters mobile, including a look at responsive design. A post of mine—Sea Change—came up in the conversation.

Now admittedly this was before I published my clarification to make my point clearer, but I felt that my view was somewhat misrepresented on the show and I left a comment to that effect. I also said I’d be happy to come on the show and have a natter. Louis, the host of the show, was kind enough to take me up on the offer and we had a really good chat about responsive web design.

Have a listen for yourself or if you’d rather not hear my voice in your head, I’ve published the transcript amongst my articles.

SitePoint Podcast #111: Responsive Web Design with Jeremy Keith on Huffduffer

Listening

Whenever I take a trip somewhere—like Copenhagen, for example—it’s a good opportunity to catch up on what I’ve been huffduffing. Trains, planes and buses are the killer apps of personal podcasting. In many ways, Huffduffer becomes more useful the further away you are from a computer and an internet connection.

I didn’t get the chance to see Mark speak at this year’s Web Directions @media in London, but now that I’ve listened to his talk on Designing Grid Systems, I’m cursing the two-track format of the conference and the fact that I couldn’t be in two places at once. This talk is superb; one of the best presentations I’ve ever heard. It’s got a fantastic long-zoom perspective and completely crystalises and clarifies the fundamental problem with the approach taken to most web design today: canvas in, rather than content out. Do yourself a favour and huffduff this today.

Mark Boulton — Designing grid systems on Huffduffer

The audio from the hot topics panel I moderated at the same conference is also available for your huffduffing pleasure and you can read a transcript of the panel right here in the articles section of my site.

Web Directions @media: Jeremy Keith — Hot Topics on Huffduffer

Matt Ridley’s usual area of expertise is in evolutionary biology but lately he’s turned his Darwinian gaze to the evolution of man-made systems. His talk on How Prosperity Evolves, based on his latest book The Rational Optimist is a fascinating look at how ideas have sex with each other.

How Prosperity Evolves on Huffduffer

Two new podcasts showed up on my radar recently. One is The Box from web designer Tim Van Damme. Episode 1 features a short, snappy interview with Neven Mrgan, one of the creators of the iPhone game The Incident. Expect more short snappy interviews to follow.

The Box - Episode 1: Neven Mrgan on Huffduffer

The other new podcast is called The Incomparable, a chat show about sci-fi and geek culture. The first episode, We’ll Always Have Zeppelins began with a discussion of China Miéville’s The City and The City (which I’m planning to read now) and finished with a look at Cory Doctorow’s For The Win. While I was sitting in a chair in the sky listening to the discussion, I remembered that I had downloaded the ePub version from ManyBooks.net. I began reading it on my iPod Touch and now I’m hooked.

We’ll Always Have Zeppelins — The Incomparable on Huffduffer

So that’s just some of the stuff I’ve been listening to:

…and I haven’t even mentioned the prolific audio output of Dan’s excellent 5by5 network.

If audio isn’t your bag, then you might enjoy the beautiful-looking videos from Put This On, a web series about dressing like a grown-up from the ever-brilliant Jesse Thorn and Adam Lisagor. You’re welcome.
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