Podcast List - November, 2011

My father just visited and wondered where I got the podcasts I listened to in the car.  I explained that I use DoggCatcher, an app on Android to download them directly from RSS feeds, but that with his iPhone, he should be able to get most of them via iTunes.

Below are a list of my favorite podcasts.   I am posting them in the order that Doggcatcher lists them.  I generally get in the car, tap the top one, NPR news and then continue to listen.  This generally is like my own private radio station, with pause.  I pick up on the story I was listening to where I left it.

Jeff's Podcasts, November, 2011

Podcast	Pro/ Am	Network/ Web Page	Topic	Length (mins)	Freq.	Comment
NPR: Hourly News Summary Podcast	Pro	NPR/PRI	News	5-7	Hourly
NPR Topics: Story of the Day Podcast	Pro	NPR/PRI	News	10	Daily
Sonnetoptics: The lions Road	Am		SCA	30-60	occasional	on hiatus
NPR: Planet Money Podcast	Pro	NPR/PRI	Economics	15-25	2-3 per week
Stack Exchange	Am	Self	Tech / Programming / Community Building	60	weekly	chatty
This Week In Google	Pro	TWiT	Tech, Cloud	60	weekly
Freakonomics Radio	Pro	self	Economics	20-30 ?	weekly
this WEEK in TECH - MP3 Edition	Pro	TWiT	Tech	120	weekly	chatty
Current Geek	Proish	Frogpants /TWiT	Geeky	5-7	weekly
Judge John Hodgman	Pro	Max Fun	Entertainment	20-30	weekly
On the Media	Pro	NPR/PRI*	News Media	60	weekly
WNYC's Radiolab	Pro	NPR/PRI*	Science	15 or 60	occasional
This Developer's Life	Am	self	Programming	60	occasional
This American Life	Pro	NPR/PRI*	Stories	60	weekly
Back to Work	Pro	5by5	Motivation/ Life Hacks	60	weekly	chatty
The Moth Podcast	Pro	NPR/PRI*	Stories	15-45	2/week ?
NPR Topics: Technology Podcast	Pro	NPR/PRI	Tech News	60	weekly
Real Time with Bill Maher (mp3)	Pro	HBO	News Opinion	60	weekly	poor audio
Pennsic Independent Podcast	Am	Self	SCA	30-60	occasional
Chivalry Today	Am	Self	SCAish	30-60	occasional
Stuff You Should Know	Pro	Discovery	Science/ Information	20-45	2/week
All About Android	Pro	TWiT	Tech / Android	60	weekly
NPR Programs: Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! Podcast	Pro	NPR/PRI	News Quiz Comedy	60	weekly

* A public radio station in some form... link takes you to website...

There are many more on my list but I rarely make it to them in a week.  With the change in driving that I have recently had - I doubt I will make it this far down the list on a regular basis.

Ads in Notification Bar in Android

I recently started to get some ads in the notification bar on my Nexus One.   It turns out it was from an app I don't remember installing called Gtalk Updater and that it was using a framework called Airpush.   I didn't like them one bit.  In addition to just being annoying by pushing to the notification bar, they also caused my phone to vibrate.

Luckily someone has created an App called Airpush Detector which will find apps that are causing this update and take you to the uninstall screen for them.

If you are noticing ads in your notification bar on your Android phone, you may want to check this app out.

Restoring SQL Express Databases

When I set up my latest computer, I paid special attention to making sure everything was backed up and I am really glad I did.  I had several issues with bad hard drives fairly early on and recently had another issue with some older drives that I have on the computer dying.  The only purpose these other drives had was to store the log files of my SQL Express Databases.   When they died, I actually didn't notice for several days until I tried to access one of these databases for some work on a development project.  All of my databases were offline.

Luckily I had set up an automated backup off all of the DBs.  Getting this setup using the Free SQL Express isn't obvious and requires (or at least helps to have) a great app that is out there called ExpressMaint.  This lets me run a Scheduled task that automatically backs up all my databases.   Those backups are then backed up by windows backup to a USB hard drive and by Carbonite online.

These databases were easy to restore after I changed the settings on my server to have the logs be on a different drive and made sure to restore to the good drives.   

Gmail's Priority Inbox (Categorized Important Messages)

I like Gmail's new "important" message feature that they are testing in beta currently.  To use it effectively with my setup that already automatically sorts my Gmail into categories, I had to do a few alterations.  I am using the "Multiple Inboxes" lab feature and I wanted to get the new division of "Unread and Important" and other "Unread".  The priority inbox only shows those emails that are in my inbox in those categories but because I have popfile moving my email to other tags, I needed to change the filters in my multiple inboxes.

I set the my filters to

• is:unread is:important
  (show me unread items with the important flag) 
• is:unread -is:important  
  (show me unread items that DON'T have the important flag)

So now my inbox has all my unread important messages at the top (sorted by category) and all my unread, probably not as important categorized emails in the next section.

Response to Twig 37 - Why users want apps.

I just finished listening to this week's TWIG. They were talking about how users prefer apps over web based applications.  It seems fairly obvious to me why this is but they didn't talk about it at all.  I think there are a few reasons that web based apps didn't take off.  

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