Chit Chat Across The Pond Lite

This week on Chit Chat Across the Pond I had the great pleasure of talking to Slovenian tech podcaster, Anže Tomić. Anže also works for RTV Slovenia's Val 202 public radio, and as he says on his website, he sounds like an Eastern European Bond villain. He's also a writer for the most read Slovene tech magazine Monitor (think PC/Macworld in Slovene.) We talked all over the tech map from net neutrality, to the lack of spam calls in Slovenia, to Internet speeds, to his love of the old Nokia handsets, to Huawei's current problems, to his Chromebook. I used the format he uses on his podcast including asking him what his top 5 apps are and what one physical thing he's ever owned that felt like it was made for him. Anže mostly podcasts in Slovenian in a podcast called Apparatus. He sometimes has English-speaking guests on and when he does, those episodes go into his podcast called Storming Mortal at stormingmortal.com. You can even hear John Siracusa saying his name there which is fun all by itself. You can f

David Woodbridge of the Vision Store in Australia tells about how he's been testing and using the Samsung Galaxy S10, the Galaxy Watch and the Galaxy Buds side by side with his iPhones, Apple Watch and AirPods. It's a delightful discussion of the relative goodness of both platforms from an accessibility perspective. David is hilarious and we have a bit of fun wandering off topic from time to time. You can find David's many podcasts at: iSee Various Technologies from a Blind Person’s Perspective Vision Australia Radio weekly Talking Tech VACast David's video tech blog @dwoodbridge [email protected] podfeet.com/patreon podfeet.com/slack podfeet.com/facebook podfeet.com/amazon

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Jeff Gamet of Smile joins us to talk about the life of an Evangelist for TextExpander. We talk about some of the cool things you can do with TextExpander that you may not know about, how TextExpander works on Windows now, how awesome Jean MacDonald was when she was in this job and even funny snippet abbreviations. If you'd like to learn more about TextExpander you can go to textexander.com and you can find Jeff on Twitter and Instagram as @jgamet.

This week our guest is Bart Busschots but this is not Programming By Stealth. This week we're talking about Bart's recent post about the different types of free that are available for online services. We talk about his four categories: Free, Freemium, Free-for-now & Freepi (rhymes with creepy). It's a thoughtful discussion about understanding what we're getting for free and how we're paying for it. We don't ever suggest what you should do about any of this, rather Bart is trying to help us better understand what's happening. In the discussion I mention an article by Paris Martineau's about FourSquare and tracking and how Apple Maps is included in the tracking. Here's the link to the article: wired.com. You can read and reference Bart's article on the topic at Free, Freemium, Free-for-now & Freepi : Bart Busschots.

Dave Hamilton of the Mac Geek Gab and The Mac Observer joins us to talk routers, and mesh routers in particular. He explains the difference between a range extender with a traditional router vs. a modern mesh router system. He explains why some IoT devices demand a dedicated 2.4GHz network (or at least they used to). He explains what the marketing numbers mean on routers, like AC2600 and in fact he "does the math". We talk about the importance of the number of antennas, band steering and beam forming. He explains SU-MIMO vs MU-MIMO and why we can't have it but why mesh gives us many of the same advantages. He explains Quality of Service and why you might want to turn it on. Finally he gives us his short list of good mesh router manufacturers, while answering the question everyone is asking, whether it's of concern that Amazon recently purchased Eero.

After a hiatus that was far too long, we're joined this week on Chit Chat Across the Pond by Donald Burr. Even if you don't think you'd ever want a 3D printer, I guarantee that you'll enjoy hearing Donald explain the different models of 3D printers, how you can actually buy one now for far less than you think, and how you can actually build one from a kit. In his wonderfully humorous way, he teaches how not to do it, and how to fix the mistakes you make along the way. I smiled throughout this entire conversation. Donald wrote up every single thing he talks about for the show notes so there's lots of link goodness for everything.

This week we have recurring guest Shai Yammanee back, but this time not to talk about photography, videography or performing as he has in the past. Shai recently decided to remove Facebook from his phone (he still accesses it from his computer) and I wanted to have him on to find out why and also to explore this whole movement of people getting out of social media. We talk about the repercussions for "normal" people but also we learn about how important Instagram is for employment for performers. We talk about how social media makes us feel and what we would lose if we left. You can follow Shai on Instagram at shai_yammanee and shai_yammanee_photography. You can follow him on Twitter @shaiyammanee.

This week I'm joined by Darren Carr, host of the Mac Quadcast. Darren is an Apple blogger and podcaster and he's also paralyzed from the neck down. We spend a bit of time talking about how on earth he does all of this. Just learning how he types 20-30 words per minute using only his eyes (not to mention editing audio and video) was fascinating. After he explained the accessibility tools he uses, we switched gears. I shamelessly stole the format he uses on his show to interview Apple-centric guests to interview him. We talk about his favorite Mac of all time, his favorite iPhone, what album and movie he'd put into a digital time capsule so people would know what geeks liked 500 years from now, and the most enjoyable question, what would you do if you could control Tim Cook with Siri for a day.

This week we have returning guest, Dr. Maryanne Garry from the University of Waikato but this time it will not be an intellectual, deep learning experience about the mysteries of human memory. This time we're going to talk about our grammar pet peeves. As Maryanne would say, we're both quite pedantic on this topic. Sit back and enjoy our silliness, and please add _your_ grammar pet peeves as comments on podfeet.com, in our Slack group at podfeet.com/slack or in our Facebook group at podfeet.com/facebook. I bet you have your own grammar pet peeves, add them in the comments!

Nica Montfort, co-host of the snobOS Podcast (along with Terrance Gaines) answers my questions about her education (two STEM degrees, about to be a third), her mentors growing up, how it was getting an education as the only woman or the only black person in her classes. She then tells us why she and Terrance felt it was important for them to create their Apple-centric podcast and why they add the cultural flavor to the show. I think you will to be enchanted by Nica, at least I was! Partway through you'll hear us incorrectly quote the percentage of Facebook users that are African American. We come back after the end of the show and correct ourselves. Here's the article to which we were referring: Facebook is failing its black employees and its black users.

Dave Ginsburg, host of the In Touch with iOS podcast at intouchwithios.com joins us to teach us his top favorite iOS 12 tips. Dave is a master at iOS and I learned a lot so I think you will too. You can find Dave on Twitter @DaveG65.

This is a rather unusual Chit Chat Across the Pond where I interview Joe Dugandzic as he walks us around his tiny, smart home. Joe's home is 395 square feet and he produces his Smarter Home Life Youtube series all in that space. The interview is a combination of learning about how to create lighting that is intentional to what you're doing, how he's automated certain functions of his lighting and television and security, and how he's done the Master Class by programming on his Mac through the Indigo software using AppleScript and Python. Steve has also recorded it on video and the video version should be up soon.

I get a lot of PR emails trying to get me to interview people. I’ve never responded to one until just now. I was asked if I wanted to interview a former NASA Space Shuttle Engineer turned science fiction author. How could I possibly refuse? Darren’s stories were fascinating as he described being one of the last people tramping around in the cargo bay of the Shuttle before the astronauts got into it to go to space. Crazy dream job! We then shifted gears into his science fiction books. He’s got two books out in The Anghazi Series, book one called “Casimir Bridge” and book two was just released, called “Pathogen Protocol”. I’m sure you’ll enjoy listening to Darren’s stories as much as I did.

We're joined by Nuris Coronado and Dan Eckmeier this week as they talk about their experiences as blind users upgrading from iPhone 7 to iPhone XS. How is the transition from a home button to Face ID if you can't see? What about the form factor for women vs. men? I learned a few things about iPhone XS that I didn't know along the way.

I met Matthias Keller on Patrick Beja's Phileas Club when we were both guests on episode 114 entitled "The Social Media Sickness". Matthias mentioned how he's on Mastadon, which is a new-ish social network. I've tried to figure Mastadon out, and hadn't cracked the code, so I asked Matthias if he could come on Chit Chat Across the Pond and explain to us how it works and why he thinks it's useful and fun. Matthias explains what federated instances are, how the local timeline works and how you can follow people who aren't in your instance. If you'd like to connect with Matthias on Mastadon you can find him at: @[email protected]. I'm not sure I've figured it out yet, but you can find me on Mastadon at @[email protected]

I know I say this every week, but I had the best time recording this week with Dr. Michael Kramer, a digital historian from Middlebury College in Vermont. Michael talks about the impact of digital technology on history and culture and the humanities. We talk about the impact of women actually being the computers in the 1960s. We talk about what he hopes his students will do differently in their careers as a result of what they learn in his class. We talk about the insane number of books he makes his students read (but they look really fascinating!

Rob Dunewood of the SMR Podcast joins us to talk about how Epic Games has decided to support their insanely popular app Fortnite on Android but will not offer it through the Google Play Store. This may have significant security implications for users so I asked Rob to come on the show to walk me through what all of this means.

In this episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond I talk to Sal Soghoian and Ray Robertson. Sal was the Product Manager of Automation Technologies at Apple from 1997 to 2016. During his tenure, he was pretty much responsible for all of the automation in the Mac operating system and even the Terminal. Ray Robertson is a seasoned instructor of AppleScript who has spent most of his career teaching beginners and creative people how to use AppleScript. Be sure to check out their Down-Home Scripting Bootcamp at cmddconf.com/... and don't forget the coupon code you'll hear in the interview to get $200 off.

This week Tom Merritt, host of the Daily Tech News Show, (and co-host of Cordkillers, Sword & Laser and Current Geek) joins us to talk about the importance of the community to his podcast. We’ll explore how he created such a thriving and participative community, what it means to him, what it would be like without it and even the downsides of having a community. It’s probably one of my favorite discussions with Tom and I always love talking to Tom. You can follow Tom on Twitter @acedtect.