you find it annoying/ineffecient to subscribe to download all the episodes, and then have to sync via cable
you’re usually using wifi when consuming podcasts
for example: I like the ABC/NBC news video podcasts. but I only watch them every few days. I don’t want to subscribe and download an episode every day. also, when I feel like watching, I may not have sync’d my iphone/ipad.
so here’s the tip:
1. using your favorite notes app (one that syncs from desktop to device), copy and paste the iTunes URLs into a document. i use SimpleNote. after it syncs, it looks like this:
2. click the URLs to open iTunes on the device. touch the episode name to stream the episode directly. don’t click the “FREE” button – that’ll just download it for later.
there you go – listen/watch on demand without having to subscribe.
It’s a long read, but worth it. Here’s a choice excerpt that rings so true. It’s a fictional conversation between Fake Steve talking to Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T:
While I’m ranting, let me ask you something, Randall. At the risk of sounding like Glenn Beck Jr. — what the fuck has gone wrong with our country? Used to be, we were innovators. We were leaders. We were builders. We were engineers. We were the best and brightest. We were the kind of guys who, if they were running the biggest mobile network in the U.S., would say it’s not enough to be the biggest, we also want to be the best, and once they got to be the best, they’d say, How can we get even better? What can we do to be the best in the whole fucking world? What can we do that would blow people’s fucking minds? They wouldn’t have sat around wondering about ways to fuck over people who loved their product. But then something happened. Guys like you took over the phone company and all you cared about was milking profit and paying off assholes in Congress to fuck over anyone who came along with a better idea, because even though it might be great for consumers it would mean you and your lazy pals would have to get off your asses and start working again in order to keep up.
…
And now here we are. Right here in your own backyard, an American company creates a brilliant phone, and that company hands it to you, and gives you an exclusive deal to carry it — and all you guys can do is complain about how much people want to use it. You, Randall Stephenson, and your lazy stupid company — you are the problem. You are what’s wrong with this country.
when you call an iphone user and go to their voicemail, you don’t get this retarded message that eats up your air time and generally wastes your time:
* AT&T: “To page this person, press five now. At the tone, please record your message. When you are finished, you may hang up, or press one for more options.”
so the iPhone 3GS comes with a built-in compass. the Compass app itself is pretty boring, but it comes in really handy in Google Maps to show which way you’re facing.
but the real fun is yet to come, when ‘augmented reality’ apps start to take advantage of the compass. that is, since the phone knows where you are, which way you’re facing (via compass), and where the phone is pointing (via accelerometer), it can easily combine that with data from the internet to create a live heads-up-display to augment your reality.
here’s a perfect example: New York Nearest Subway app (awaiting Apple approval)
