Nick Jackson

I’m sure you’ve all heard of podcasts - the ability to download audio or video snippets which a site publishes in an RSS feed. However, a lot of them are nothing more than a self-centred fool with a computer and a microphone yabbering on about stuff of little interest to the rest of the world (Much like this blog, but at least I have readers).

I have been known to subscribe to the BBC Radio 4 Comedy podcast for my weekly fix of current affairs comedy, but have never subscribed to someone just rambling on. Until today.

Stephen Fry’s podcast is a thoroughly pointless ramble, and an entertaining listen.

RSS links below for both podcasts, or whack the “iTunes” link to plug it straight into the wonderfully ubiquitous music player.

Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 (iTunes)
Stephen Fry’s Podgram (iTunes)

My iPhone has been playing silly buggers for a few days now, so I decided to bite the bullet and do a restoration on it. Having had some experience of restoring various gadgets to factory settings and the subsequent pain of getting them back how I liked them, this was something I approached with no small amount of trepidation.

Dock iPhone… it shows up in iTunes and predictably throws up an Unknown Sync Error (-39). No worry, I’ve already decided to click the “Restore” button. A single approval window appears, and I confirm my intent.

iTunes goes away and unpacks the new firmware, wipes my phone, re-flashes it and then restarts it without any input from me. I even went and played on Facebook whilst it was getting on with it. Next thing I know, the iTunes icon is merrily bopping away in my Dock and asking me if I would like to set my iPhone up as a whole new device or if it should just restore my backup.

Simply put, I restored my backup and it’s currently got all my settings (As far as I can tell) absolutely as I left them and is busy restoring all my media/contacts/email and so on. Apple wins for easy fixing of mildly broken phone, infinitely easier than fixing most other broken devices, even those with so-called ‘one-click recovery’. Even so, it worries me that people feel the need to put in a big “Fix It” button no matter how easy to use it is. Perhaps a more elegant solution would be an option tucked away in a menu, and a ‘cock-up counter’ which automatically asks you something like “Your device has failed to sync properly the past 10 times you have docked it - would you like to run an automated recovery and restoration of your backup?”

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So, there I was idly clicking through iTunes when I stumbled upon the trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Despite Mr. Ford looking a bit older (well, significantly older to be honest) it still looks like it could be somewhere on the other side of awesome.

I then, given the nature of the intertubes, went clicking around a bit and found my second dose of awesome of the day. LEGO Indiana Jones: The Game. All three classic films in LEGO goodness.

It is with joy I report that the BBC have started transcoding iPlayer content for the iPhone/iPod Touch. What this means is that whenever I am hooked up through a WiFi hotspot, I can get hold of any of the BBC’s programmes which are stored on the iPlayer.

There are also some other interesting points raised. Firstly, the ’security’ mechanism behind this is that the BBC does some user-agent checking. Basically, anything which can pretend it is an iPhone (Or Touch) can get the iPhone video stream. It was possible to rip the Flash video stream the BBC was using before, but it was fairly low quality. However, the H.264 stream given to the iPhone is higher quality, hence higher quality rips which are ready to go on an iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV.

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