Dogear Nation » Podcast

So… I’ve you’ve been following my tweets then you know that over the holiday’s I’ve been studying to write an iPhone app. My goal is for the first app to be a Dogear-Nation application. I would love to hear what you would like that App to be like. I’ve got a few ideas:
1) RSS reader of the Dogear-Nation RSS Feed
2) Allow you to listen to the audio stream without having to download it via your podcatcher
3) Allow you to click thru to the links we talk about while the show continues to stream (take that apple for not allowing us to multi task)
4) Other ideas?

I have planned on using a lot of the code that Andy put together for the Dogear-Nation Dashcode Widget, but since only 25% of our audience uses a Mac, many of you may not know about it. How many of our listeners use an iPhone? Do we need to make it a web app so that it can be on the Android?

I’d love to hear your thoughts?

I’ve just refreshed the theme of the blog for the first time in ~2 years. We’d been using the lovely i3theme for a long time, but as the show evolves and brings in new listeners (and as I’ve been curating and progressively improving / upgrading the site) it was time for an update.

The Publicizer theme we’re now using describes itself as having more of a “Web 2.0 look-and-feel” and I definitely like the rounded corners. I’ve made a few small changes to it to make the switch less jarring – I changed the header fonts from Times / serif to Trebuchet / sans-serif, and tweaked the spacing a bit. The essentials are all still here – we’re blue-and-white, we’re all logo’ed up, and the feeds and links are all still right there in the sidebar. The nice prominent search box, clean look and larger text should make it easier to find what you’re looking for.

The look is less Mac-ish, too, and although we talk Apple a lot, the show is definitely not supposed to be all about Macs or iPhones – we love our Windows, Linux, BeOS and DOS-using listeners, too A small annoyance is that you have to click through to an individual post to leave a comment, but I may change that.

All of that is just my opinion, of course, and I am but a humble web monkey. What do you think? As usual, we’re keen to hear your views – leave us a comment, or tweet us

Update: added social network links at the top right, and threaded comments!

This special live recording was made on June 29th, as part of a IBM Innovator’s club meeting. We gave the team a special behind the scenes look at how we started Dogear-Nation, how it has evolved, and how we record a show. As part of that meeting, we did an abbreviated version of the show (really only 15 minutes shorter than our target show length). We want to make a special shout out to all those who tagged links for this special show with the tag “innovators-club”.

What’s cool?
Michael M — The avatar will see you now (via kiambogo)
Andy — Daily Mail 0, Andy Piper 1. Next round, Brazil. The Snowglobe lipsync mentioned in 108 and TinyChat and Twitter (via @mauricioswg)
Michael R — 3D Puzzles and Soccer

Innovator’s Club Tags
Right Ear’d (gpsychk)
Can you believe this Crap!?! (gpsychk)
Social Media conference Future Focus (cliveharris)

Final Thoughts
Michael R — Amazon calls’ NC bluff
Andy — Five Levels of Social Media (andypiper)
Michael M — Another shameless plug! (via lx5)

Special Swag
Commemorative Mug for listeners (UK version here)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:31 — 7.9MB)

Spot the, ahem, deliberate mistake in the video.