Twit.tv / MediaFly app – iPhone versus Droid

I enjoy listening to Leo LaPorte’s tech podcasts (http://twit.tv). With his growth the last year he is looking to expand beyond iTunes distribution, and also make the leap from audio to video (not to mention making the leap from the internet to your TV via the Roku player).

So he has teamed up with MediaFly (http://mediafly.com) to distribute for him. The hows and whys are more complicated than I want to get into here.

I used to listen to the podcasts in the Zune software on my laptop when home, and on my Zune player when out (via the generic RSS feed functionality built into Zune).

Now there are MediaFly “apps” for both the iPhone and the Droid for “accessing” (streaming/downloading) the podcasts. I am using them both, and I can’t help comparing and contrasting.

Let me cut to the chase.. they both are very young, but right now the Droid app is more useful to me. Let me soften that by saying I realize how fortunate we are to be living in an age when we see advances like this – streaming and downloading mobile audio and video without having to sync. MediaFly is getting this attention because they are breaking ground, and we are the winners either way.

Both apps have drawbacks around the GUI, with the iPhone one being very busy-looking, with mystery pauses in navigation, and controls that don’t act like standard iPhone controls.

The Droid app is very touchy – over and over I lose where I am or exit the app altogether just in handling the cell phone normally.

There are a couple of issues they have in common – for instance the inability to move around in the media. I often want to back up 30 seconds or one minute in an hour-long audio or video, and that is impossible with these clients, where the Zune made it dead-simple. They need to add buttons to the slider already present. Also, if you exit the clients, most likely they will not remember the media you were playing, where you were in it, etc.

Now for my reasons for preferring the Android client at the moment - (1) Twit video – android app has it, iPhone app does not, and (2)the GUI is a little cleaner.

Actually to really make this fair I should download the full beta Android client, because the one I have is just for the Twit network of shows.

MediaFly - http://mediafly.com/

iPhone app - http://www.mediafly.com/DigitalLifestyle#SelectedDevice

Android app - http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-mediafly-android-video-twit-zzBt.aspx

Twit on Roku!!!

http://www.buzzmachine.com/2009/10/03/the-model-of-the-new-media-model/

Leo Laporte gives a great talk, including the bombshell that Twit (a channel of all his podcasts) is going to be on the Roku player (famous for Netflix and MLB streaming). Plugs into your TV, 99$. Not just the live shows, but access to the archives as well!

We follow

http://wefollow.com

http://wefollow.com/tag/tech

This is great. In response to Twitter's widely-ragged suggested list of people to follow http://twitter.com/invitations/suggestions , Kevin Rose created an app that just lists people by categories and followers, so you can see who really is a popular twitter-er on a certain subject. Politics one-upped by democracy. I heard about this on Twit (http://twit.tv).

Teracopy

So there are still a couple of things about Vista that drive me crazy. One I will note here, is that file operations still (post Sp1) SUCK! I can't copy large files fast. I can't copy a ton of small files fast. Operations involving copying a set of folders over another set of folders (typically I am getting rid of dupes by keeping the newest ones) just outright fail, over and over and over. Yuck!

Paul Thurrott has found something that might help us. Of course we hate to use an outside utility for something like this, but what choice do we have. Teracopy ( http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php ) as mentioned on the latest Windows Weekly podcast ( http://twit.tv/ww72 , http://www.winsupersite.com/paul/podcast.asp ). I will be trying it out (oh yes) and you can too.

Twit vs Twitter

http://army.twit.tv/

Leo Laporte has put up a proof of concept Laconia microbrowsing service ala identi.ca . How apropos that the chief Twit is taking on Twitter! XMPP wants to be free baby..

Old time stories

In honor of Bill Gates' retirement, Leo gets a bunch of old timers on to tell stories. This is amazing stuff:
http://twit.tv/149

Then Steve Gibson responds with an awesome story of his own about Bill:
http://twit.tv/sn151

(These are podcasts - from the webpage your best bet is to download the mp3 and listen to it. Steve's story is somewhere about half way into the podcast.)