Ever wondered what Mr Massey of 808 State is upto nowadays? Well working with these people, the Sisters of Transistors:

Nice to see a) it’s rocking that electro-horror sound I’ve been calling ‘disco noir’ or ‘dark electro’ that takes a lot of inspiration from Mssrs Carpenter and Moroder, with a dash of early 80’s New York 99 Records/ESG-ness. It’s like Zombie Zombie and Padded Cell so I smell a genre – hence I’m working on a mix of this music and it’s inspirations and b) it’s in 3D! weee!!!

via PSD

Hey iPhone users – would you want to download podcasts via an app on your iPhone?

Well Apple Computer Says No. (via podcasting news)

It’s not like you’d want to download podcasts via the device directly, I mean it’s not a device with WiFi or HDSPA is it? Oh, wait…;-)

OK I’ve had my difficulties with Apple in the past*, that aside as a podcaster this does boggle the mind…I would like people to download my podcasts from wherever they are, whatever device they are on, and iPhone app to do that can do nothing but good (rather than those spammy Facebook-style one-podcast-only apps which annoy me, as of course only pro or semi pro podcasts can afford to develop those).

I suspect maybe Apple is launching their own app to do this…stopping all rival apps is not really beyond Apple with their history.

Really I’m starting to wonder if Apple really cares about podcasting at all…it seems to be sidelined you know?

* full disclosure: Radio Clash was banned or unable to get my feed onto iTunes for 2 years, with no explaination, part of the reason we never had the big ’spike’ of listenership others had – so I have experienced being outside that particular ‘wall’ – it’s not nice. I hope Apple sees sense about this app.

I’ve culled several podcasts I don’t listen to anymore. seem to be dead or podfaded off my PodSquid and ITunes…I’m running out of diskspace and I won’t ever have the time to listen to these…apologies if you, as I know quite a few of you read this or listen to RC, are one of those whose link has suddenly gone.

TBH I listen to podcasts less and less now…so it makes sense to stop downloading the ones I don’t have time for and reduce it to the core ones I listen to.

As badpauly correctly points out, there are serious caveats about the Genius feature in the new iTunes 8 and iPods. Submitting information about your whole library to Apple? Okaaaaaay. Yes Google does that and everyone’s running around like their Large Hardon Collider is on fire. Apple does it with shiny shiny colours and a big press launch and everyone’s like ‘do the shuffle shake? ooh how high?’ (hmm how soon is it before someone gets beaten up for ’shuffling’ their new iPod – I give it about a week. Yes that gesture means something very different here…).

I have another thought – iTunes is increasingly becoming a record company, especially now the Apple Corps suit is now sorted. Telling what songs your iPod should play or recommends in your library gives Apple quite a lot of power – a power of suggestion; it’s one thing playing that new album, another if it keeps coming up in Genius or Shuffle mode…forcing it into your conciousness. That could make them a lot of money – it’s one thing having your album there, but to have it coming up regularly in Genius mode, that’s pure power.

And call me paranoid but I’ve wondered about the Shuffle algorhythms and suchlike in iPods – notice that some songs come around more frequently than others – and the 2nd song is usually a new one? There’s more than pure randomness there, for sure.

Also an addendum – today (Saturday) I fancied one of the new 16GB iPod Nanos, not sure I can afford it, I probably can’t but it doesn’t matter – the ‘available immediately’ last Tuesday was bullshit, the Apple stores don’t have any until next week. Well at least I avoided spending any money…