NPR
Latest
'This American Life' tackles patent trolls, lives to broadcast about it
The financial crisis, DIY cryogenics, the love songs of Phil Collins -- This American Life has taken on a lot in its 15-plus years on public radio. This week the Ira Glass-helmed show tackles a matter close to our hearts: the patent wars. The show has devoted the entirety of episode 441 to the seedy world of patent trolling. The TAL team focuses in on the practices of Intellectual Ventures, a name that should ring some bells and rattle some bank accounts around these parts. Check out the link to episode below -- and why not subscribe to the podcast while you're there? You can thank us later. [Thanks, Brandon]
TUAW's Daily iPad app: NPR 2.0
NPR has rolled out a rather hefty update to its venerable and well-liked iPad app. As before, the app is kind of a digital magazine that mirrors the content mix on NPR, with world and U.S. news, the arts and music features. The iPad app is more fully featured than the NPR app for the iPhone, which contains mainly news. NPR does have a separate music app for the iPhone. You can listen to any NPR station live, and also access dozens of NPR programs like Car Talk, All Things Considered and Fresh Air on demand. Programs play in the background, so you can exit the app and use your iPad while still listening to the content of your choice. The app has an AirPlay icon, but it was dimmed. I'm not sure what is going on there. My other AirPlay-enabled apps worked fine, and I can find no settings on the NPR app that will turn the feature on. In terms of the user interface, I think the improvements are positive. Getting access to the hourly newscast is just one click away, and listening to local stations and NPR programs is just two clicks. The app can access your location, if you allow it, and display the closest NPR stations to where you are. The programming list has been cleaned up and programs can now be sorted by topic and title. The ability to make playlists has been retained. Audio playback now has a 30-second rewind feature, and NPR says the app is more stable. I didn't see any issues in about an hour of use. I've always liked the NPR app on both the iPhone and iPad. This update has cleaned up the user interface quite a bit, and added some new features that are worthwhile. Other than the malfunctioning AirPlay button, NPR for iPad is a good, free upgrade for news and arts junkies. %Gallery-127943%
Malcom Gladwell discusses Steve Jobs with NPR
If you missed Malcolm Gladwell's article, Creation Myth: Xerox PARC, Apple, and the Truth about Innovation, in the May 16 issue of The New Yorker, then you should tune into a recent episode of NPR's All Things Considered. In this seven-minute interview, Gladwell talks about Steve Jobs and his now legendary visit to Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in the late 70s. As the story goes, Jobs visited the research center and saw a demonstration of Xerox's $300 three-button computer mouse. Inspired by what he saw, Jobs brought the concept to industrial designer Dean Hovey. Hovey improved upon the concept and developed a single-button mouse that cost a mere $15 to build. This mouse became the center point of a new graphical user interface similar to one demoed at Xerox. This hardware and software eventually evolved into the now iconic Macintosh. Unlike many who accuse Jobs of stealing the idea from Xerox, Gladwell distinguishes between invention and innovation. Xerox may have been the inventor, but Apple was the innovator and ran with the concept.
PBS launches free iOS app for watching full-length video
PBS has just announced its own app for iPhone and iPod touch, and from the looks of it, it's a doozy (if you're super into PBS, that is). That's right, the free PBS app will allow you to watch full-length PBS productions on your device -- including its popular news programs like FRONTLINE and the PBS Newshour. You won't be able to watch everything that PBS offers just yet, but the app also has a built-in calendar which should be super useful if you happen to structure your entire life around PBS programming like we know some of our avid readers do. PBS developed the app with help from Bottle Rocket Apps, and adds this to its other apps currently available, the Antiques Roadshow game app and the PBS for iPad app. This one's available right this second in iTunes and it's free. Full press release is after the break. [Thanks, Jake]
Grace Digital adds color displays on new Solo Touch, Bravado X, and Mondo WiFi radios
Can't say we had the best of times with Grace Digital's Allegro, but the dawning of a new year means the dawning of a new effort. Three efforts, in this case. Poised for an official unveiling next week at CES, the outfit's new trio of internet radios have all been upgraded with color displays. Up first is the Solo Touch, a $249.99 device with an expansive 4.3-inch touchpanel, bundled remote, Ethernet connection, RCA outputs and a headphone jack. Stepping down a notch, there's the Bravado X ($179.99), which offers a 2.7-inch color display, RCA in / out and a USB connector. Finally, the $169.99 Mondo packs a 3.5-inch color display, a full-on alarm clock (with snooze!) and a USB port of its own. The whole lot can be controlled via a free iPhone app, and they're each capable of tuning into iheartradio, Pandora, Sirius XM, WeatherBug, CBS Radio, MP3Tunes and more. Now, off to Vegas to see if those user interface quirks have been cleared up...
Holiday cooking with your iPad: be safer while you sauteé
Flour belongs in cookies, not on your iPad. The same goes for butter, wine, eggs and oil. Your kitchen may be a treasure trove of cooking essentials, but iPads and food should never directly mix. That's why this cooking with your iDevice radio story over at NPR gave us a moment's pause at TUAW central this morning. Although it's a good piece about the varied experience of using traditional cookbooks and modern technology, one blogger still sighed with exasperation. "Did these people never hear of a gallon-sized Ziploc bag?" Zip-seal bags -- specifically the 1-gallon size -- are, in fact, extremely iPad friendly and minor kitchen miracles. You can still touch your device's capacitive screen through the plastic, and because the bags are so thin and basically iPad-sized, the iPad can be set in your normal holding stand so that your recipes remain viewable.
Woz gets quizzed on Wait Wait
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is something special. He has an uncanny wit and carefree personality that makes everyone smile. His latest foray into the public spotlight found him as a guest on the NPR program Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! In the show, host Peter Sagal quizzes celebrities, asking them to figure out which statement is real and which one is made up. Woz's topic of apples, the real fruit kind, was aptly chosen. While the three-question quiz on apples was enjoyable, the brief interview before the questionnaire is where Woz really shines. Host Sagal asks Woz about his early history with Steve Jobs and his thoughts on the computer and smartphone revolution. Woz reveals some gems, like the fact that he carries three iPhones - one Black model, one White model, and a third used for tethering and other testing purposes. Woz flashed this white iPhone on CNN last week and now admits with candor that his white model is one of those case hacks obtained illegally (at least from Apple's perspective) from China. The 10-minute audio clip is embedded after the break (apologies for Flash) and is worth a listen to help chase away those Monday blues. Enjoy!
Chrome Web Store, HTML5 and the iPad: symbiosis at its best
It's all coming together, folks. It doesn't take much of a gander at the Chrome Web Store to notice a trend: some of the flashiest, most mature "apps" are actually just in-browser versions of iPad apps. And you know what else? Most of these "apps" actually run fine in Safari on the iPad. We're not sure how long Google gave developers to port their experiences over, but it seems like most of the best work had already been done in the form of HTML5 apps that were merely wrapped in app form for App Store delivery. Google's just taking things to the next logical step. Continue after the break as we expand this thesis paragraph into a number of supporting blocks of text, a few jazzy pictorial examples, and a stunning closer.
Google demos Chrome Web Store, rolling out later today to US (update: now live)
It hasn't been that long since we first saw Google's web store -- mid-May, to be exact. An updated version is currently being showcased on stage at the Chrome event. The UI looks much more refined, and those who are itching to try some out yourself, it seems some of the web apps are already available, at least partially: NPR, The New York Times, Amazon Windowshop. If you ask us, they feel a lot like iPad apps for browsers and mice / keyboard. Audio can run in the background even if you move to another tab. There's offline mode, too. App purchases are tied to your Google account, naturally. There's some gaming, but from what we've seen so far ("you pop it!"), it's nothing you're gonna be focusing a lot of time on. Interesting note from the Q&A is that the apps, since they're built with "standard web technologies," will work with all compatible browsers. We've been trying to access the web store (via the Chrome browser, naturally), but it's currently hiding behind a "coming soon" redirect -- it's rolling out later today, though, at least for the US, so keep an eye out. Update: Try that link one more time, the Chrome Web Store should now be live. %Gallery-109484%
Kinect support coming to XNA 'in the future'
Good news: Microsoft has plans to offer Kinect development tools to XNA developers. Confirmation comes via Xbox director of incubation Alex Kipman, who said during an interview on Talk of the Nation that, while there's no current Kinect functionality in XNA, it's something Microsoft "will support in the future." Honestly, we're thrilled -- haven't you seen some of the awesome stuff people are coming up with ... without the proper toolset? The Talk of the Nation episode on which Kipman appeared focused on Xbox 360's new camera peripheral, which Microsoft is pleased to see developers tinkering around with ... to a degree. Hacking the device, which Microsoft classifies as someone accessing "algorithms on the side of the Xbox" for ill-use, or someone exploiting Kinect in a cheating manner is not tolerated. Creating a driver that might "open the USB connection" or one that "reads the inputs from the sensor," on the other hand, are uses that are totally cool by Microsoft. Microsoft offered no timetable for when Kinect support would come to XNA, so in the meantime, keep those "good" hacks coming!
Are morning commuters using iPhones to listen to NPR?
Although your car has a fully-capable AM radio, and you're an NPR listener, do you find yourself jacking your iPhone into your car stereo and listening to NPR through its app instead? New data released from NPR seems to indicate that's what a lot of people are opting to do. According to its data, NPR has noticed a rather significant spike in its iPhone app usage during typical morning commuter time. What makes that data so interesting -- at least to NPR -- is that, presumably, these people are in their cars. They're with radios capable of receiving AM FM signals and, therefore, NPR's programming over the airwaves. So why use the app? I say the data isn't so cut and dry. The sample they are seeing is only 8,000 people, which really isn't all that many when you consider there are many more people listening to NPR on a daily basis, overall. There's also this thing called telecommuting, so I wouldn't assume all of these people are in radio-equipped automobiles. There are also thousands of people who walk to work everyday and thousands more who simply don't work at all. If you're using the NPR app and have access to an AM FM radio, why are you using the app instead of the radio? Let us know in the comments. [via MacDailyNews]
Choose Your Own Adventure available for iPhone as U-Ventures
If you, like me, were a big scifi/fantasy reader at a young age, you probably remember the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series. It was a series of books in which, every chapter or so, you could make a choice that affected the story, and you were then prompted to turn to a certain page to continue the story after that choice. Edward Packard was the original author of that series, and he's now teamed up with an iPhone app company to create U-Ventures, a throwback iPhone application that works as an interactive, e-book style Choose You Own Adventure. The first book is called "Return to the Cave of Time" (after the first book in the original series), and just like the old series, it offers up a set of second-person branching paths. Unfortunately, at US$3.99, the app is pretty expensive. Reviews say that there are only about 15 minutes of content to go through here, and while the old books were short, there are a lot of other interactive storytelling options on the App Store in the form of games and other e-books. But as a retro return to the old form, it's a nice taste of what's possible. I'm hoping that Packard will update the idea a little bit and make it a little more iPhone-friendly next time. Or, ... you could just roll your own. Our own Victor Agreda wrote about iPod-friendly CYOA books a long time ago. Download some of those onto your iPod, and you could be right back in those old pre-video game days of interactive storytelling. [via Slashdot]
Study suggests internet will become number one matchmaker
"Love is a many splendored thing, love lifts us up where we belong, all you need is... hold on, email." -- Anonymous Since we can't presume all Engadget readers regularly attend their NPR All Things Considered listening parties, here's something you might've missed this week. In a segment on the growing trend in online matchmaking, Jennifer Ludden cited a research from Stanford University's Michael Rosenfeld that seems to fall in line exactly where we'd expect: it's really easy to be yourself and find matching partners when you have the ability to reach out to strangers who present so much personal information from the get-go. More specifically, the study found almost one-fourth of couples met online -- a number that jumps to 61 percent if you single out (no pun intended) same-sex couples -- and it's growing at a pace that it' "may soon become the No. 1 way Americans find a mate." For now, however, it's ranked second, just above meeting at bars / restaurants and below the classic, meeting through friends who just love tricking you into bad blind dates with the "great personality" line anyway. Make sure you have the right camera just in case.
"Wait Wait" goes after the iPad
We love Peter Sagal and the gang, but they certainly jumped ugly with the iPad on this week's episode of NPR's quiz show Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me. In a segment of fake confessions from public figures, announcer Carl Kasell stood in for Steve Jobs and admitted "It's just a big iPhone without the phone." Tell it to the NPR iPad app team, why don't you? They seem pretty excited about the new device... in fact, quite a few NPR listeners are potential iPad buyers, although you'd be hard-pressed to know it from the cranky comments on this post. The funny business continued as Sagal skewered the iPad: "Fans of the new device say it is just a little more expensive than other computers that do a lot more things. But it has the advantage of being slightly more difficult to use. See, in a regular laptop, sending an email is no big deal. But on the iPad, it's a personal triumph over adversity." Spoken like someone who hasn't used one yet. Just to put the icing on the cake, the contestant actually had an iPad in hand while she called into the show, leading Sagal to comment "Yeah, it's amazing; immediately we go from like, you know, posture of mockery to, ooh, you have one?" How quickly they turn. Of course, when he asked the contestant how she liked her iPad, she replied "I love it very much" -- but then when he pressed her on what she could do with it that she couldn't do before, she promptly admitted "Nothing." Oy. This week's WWDTM features panelists Luke Burbank, Kyrie O'Connor and Adam Felber (a personal favorite). You can read the transcript here or just listen to the opening "Who's Carl This Time" segment, but we recommend subscribing to the weekly podcast. P.S. Did you know that NPR listeners, compared to the average US citizen, are twice as likely to be Mac users? Intriguing.
WoW.com on NPR
This Tuesday morning while everyone else was lamenting weekly maintenance, I headed down to the local NPR studios to sit in a very quiet, empty studio -- and chat about World of Warcraft with illustrious individuals in distant lands on WBUR's On Point. I joined William Sims Bainbridge (author of The Warcraft Civilization, which is available in stores today) and host Tom Ashbrook for an hour-long discussion on the meaning behind World of Warcraft. Can we really use events in WoW predict the future? Is WoW the first real afterlife? Is the game world dangerous and addicting -- or a great place to connect with friends and co-workers? If you're interested in catching our discussion, it's available for streaming online or you can download it (as well as past and future editions of On Point) as a podcast on iTunes.
NPR and WSJ building 'Flash-free' pages for iPad, Apple quietly delays select iPad accessories
For awhile, we couldn't decide what we were more angry at: the fact that select devices wouldn't support Flash, or that Flash was simply too demanding on select devices. We still can't say with any degree of certainty which side of the fence we're on, but there's no question that Apple's refusal to play nice with Adobe on the iPhone, iPod touch and forthcoming iPad limits the abilities of those devices significantly. Curiously enough, it seems that Apple's importance in the mobile (and media delivery) realm is coercing select portals to develop Flash-free websites for those who drop by on an iDevice. Both the National Public Radio and the Wall Street Journal are furiously working on iPad-friendly websites, which will be devoid of Flash for at least the first few pages down. What's interesting is that we get the impression that this will soon become the rule rather than the exception, and it could be exactly what's needed to launch HTML5 into stardom and put these Flash or no Flash debates behind us. In related news, we're also seeing that a couple of iPad accessories won't actually be ready to ship when the device itself cuts loose on April 3rd. Yesterday, the iPad Keyboard Dock was listed with a "May" ship date, though today it has moved up to a marginally more palatable "Late April." The iPad 10W USB Power Adapter also carries a "May" date, while the iPad Case is slated for "Mid April" and that elusive camera connection kit is still nowhere to be found. But hey, at least you'll get your (overpriced) iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter and iPad dock by the first weekend of next month, right?
NPR, WSJ prep Flash-free sites for iPad
Both National Public Radio and the Wall Street Journal are preparing Flash-free iPad sites in time for the device's April 3rd debut. MediaMemo cites a blog post over at NPR, letting us know that NPR fans can either download an updated app for NPR (once the iPad ships and the app is ready), or visit an iPad-optimized version of NPR.org that contains no Flash. The Wall Street Journal is also going with a Flash-free site, although visitors can expect to hunt through the site and find some pages which still have Flash. Having non-Flash sites exist alongside their Flash siblings will probably be the solution for many publications in the near future. However, we know that Steve Jobs hopes that Flash will go the way of the PowerPC and the floppy disk, and developers will turn to alternatives such as HTML5. [Via MacDailyNews]
Pocket Sitar is a virtual sitar for the iPhone
NPR posted the other day about an app that promised to simulate a sitar, the stringed instrument used mainly in Indian music. So just for you, dear readers, we downloaded it [iTunes link] and gave it a shot. The verdict? If you can already play the sitar, you'll probably find it a reasonable approximation. Just like the guitar simulators on the iPhone, there are various strings on screen that you can "strum," and the notes are labeled under the virtual strings. As for actually learning the sitar, however, you're probably out of luck. There's one instructional page, and links to eHow videos, but there's nothing solid in terms of actually learning the device. And unfortunately, the app just feels pretty cheap -- there's a large part of the screen taken up with a one-hit sitar sound, and quite a few times, we'd try striking different strings and get the same notes, as if the app had bugged out and gotten stuck on one file. Of course, I can't play the sitar (though I'm pretty respectable on the guitar), so maybe I was just doing it wrong. But even a little experimentation with the app didn't bring up an easy way to do it right. Still, NPR has a point -- you can't always carry your sitar around with you. If you want to pay 99 cents to have a Pocket Sitar around, this will app will probably strum your chikari.
NPR's iPhone app helps doctor recommend treatment for stroke patient
I have been a huge fan of NPR's News app [iTunes link] since it was initially released in August, and so seeing the following item was especially heartwarming. Right before Christmas, NPR published a story on how a Los Angeles doctor utilized the NPR app to obtain the information needed to get the right stroke treatment drug for his sister. Tanya Gill, a Chicago art instructor, collapsed while shopping, and word went out to her family members that she had been rushed to the hospital. Her brother, Dr. Joe Hastings, told his wife about his sister's illness, who commented that it sounded like a story she heard about stroke treatment on NPR. Hastings accessed the story on the NPR app and e-mailed it to the rest of the family. He then contacted the doctors treating Gill and urged them to utilize the drug, tPA, mentioned in the story. Gill has since made a complete recovery. While tPA is not a 'miracle drug' for stroke (it can only be used on a subset of patients, in a very narrow time window, and carries with it a substantial risk of severe bleeding), in this case it may have made a big difference. How has 'the internet in your pocket' changed how you interact with family members and health professionals when it comes to medical issues? Let us know in the comments.
Public Radio App lets you resume 'This American Life' whenever you please
Now that you've got an NPR-lovin' stereo in your bedroom, the only thing missing in your otherwise completely fulfilled life is an NPR application that enables you to listen to your favorite programs whenever, wherever. If we just rung your bell, you can now drift away and die happy. Available this very moment in the 100,000-strong App Store is the Public Radio App, which essentially acts as a DVR for the iconic station. Once fired up, the app can "pause and rewind public radio streams from NPR, PRI, APM and local public radio stations," and there's even an alarm clock setting that wakes you up with your favorite public radio stream. Unfortunately, on-demand streaming is still a pipe dream, but there's nothing to stop these guys from adding that very feature in the next iteration. Go on -- try and lay off the trigger. It's not like that awfully low $2.99 price point is tempting or anything.
