I played with an iPhone in the AT&T store yesterday. It was cool. Amazingly cool. But when I went to my web page, none of the links to my mp3 files seemed to work and (sorry Gary) the Pickle player didn't work.

Does anyone know what would be the easiest way to let people download your mp3 files when they visit your website from their iPhone (or play the file directly from the website)?

Thanks!

Mignon

I don't have an answer, but I'm finding it amazing the things we have to think about as the technology changes and advances. In regards to podcasting, that is.

You would think, however, that with the iPhone, that the file might automatically open up in iTunes... I mean without having to subscribe to the podcast.

~Dani

The iPhone does not support flash so thats why the pickler player does not work. I think making a direct link to the mp3 might work, but I can not verify that.

First to take a cue from Rob at podcast411, make sure your podcast page is labeled "iphone compliant".

I think the problem with the players and the links is that I believe the phone lacks Flash. I could be wrong. easiest way would likely be through itunes. I don't know for sure, but it might be with calling the question into today in iphone.

If that would mean a fork of the Pickle without Flash, I'm all for it. Because I'm on a slow computer Flash makes this website sluggish.

Anyway, Apple has written a guide for webdevelopers, called Optimizing Web Applications and Content for iPhone, which could be very useful for those who want to make their websites iPhone compatible.

Take care.

Thanks!

I am with rasheed. I would love a no flash version of the pickle.

Count me in on losing the flash too. I just haven't been coming here as much since the site added so much flash. My work computer crashes and my home computer just can't handle it.

For those that want to see what their websites look like on the iPhone - http://www.marketcircle.com/iphoney/

Gary already knows my feelings about the Flash site. However, I've been told that the Pickle is actually built on a newer version of Flash called Flex. Maybe the player is too?

But the iPhone can handle some flash, because it can handle YouTube. But just because it can handle flash video, I suppose that doesn't make it automatically compatible with Flash applications.

Eric

I believe you are mistaken. YouTube is converting its videos to H.264 in a rapid pace. I think it is the H.264 (a MP4 format) the iPhone displays, not FLV (Flash video).

I also remember Steve Jobs saying that the iPhone has no Flash support.

Actually, I believe that it is you who is mistaken, Rasheed. I use YouTube and it is most definitely Flash, which uses H.263 and not H.264. I can't speak for future plans, but I don't expect a sudden change. Additionally, the support for YouTube was not initially included in iPhone and is a recent addition to the iPhones features. It may also be the only official use of Flash on an iPhone, although I did find this nugget in a Google Search. So it may be that the iPhone isn't as hobbled on Flash as we may think...

Eric

Read the comment about the option to enable Flash not being available to the user. This could be a bogus article, which is not unheard of, considering the hype surrounding the iPhone.

Furthermore, read this paragraph in the press release on Apple.com:

So the YouTube videos on the iPhone are definitely H.264 video and NOT Flash video. Period.

Well, not to quibble, but you can make flash videos from H.264 source files, and you could conceivably encode videos in flash using the H.264 codec, just as I can make .mov files from H.263 and H.264. That's not to say that you're incorrect entirely. You might be right about the iPhone using YouTube H.264 MPEG4 vids over YouTube's normal Flash vids, but if they are, it's probably through a special portal designed for the iPhone and it's browser, because as I said earlier, YouTube on the whole is still using Flash to deliver their movies. And that's a fact. Period.

Eric

It is some kind of special youtube player just for the iPhone and it is not flash. Supposed to be faster and better and yadda yadda.

It's probably a QT container designed to look and act like YouTube's player, then. Those are actually supposed to be pretty easy to make. I would suspect that there's a script at YouTube or in the iPhone that auto-redirects you to a iPhone-only YouTube clone site where videos are H.264 MPEG4 if you access with an iPhone. I wonder if they have something like that set up for the AppleTV as well?

All I know is that the YouTube site that the iPhone takes you to is not the same one that your PC does. That one still uses Flash, and why not? Flash has a 98% browser penetration.

Eric

yes. http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/06/20youtube.html

A flash free pickle would be fine with me! As far as the iPhone, I think they missed the mark on forcing one cellphone provider on everyone who buys one, that is why I will not be getting one besides the price. As a 1.0 version product, it doesn't surprise me that Flash doesn't work on it.

I think only the new pickle players are flash. The older two are not.

I am just wondering, I heard they sold 700,000 iPhones, which is great. Out of that number how many do you really think are listening to podcasts. I guess 60, ok I will up it to 80.

With however many thousands of podcasts there are out there. That is a lot of people fighting for a very small amount of listeners.

Ok my numbers may be off, but you get my point.

That's a good point, P. Dilly. I also wonder how many people will need to synch the iPhone with their computer? Lucky for us, as far as I know, that's still the only way to update your iTunes playlists, and hence, subscribe to podcasts. I heard that the iPhone was going to have some kind of RSS reader, but I'm not sure how well that will work with podcasts.

Incidentally, I checked my website with that mock iPhone with the plug-ins turned off and for the most part it seemed to work okay (our Frappr map and the flash video obviously didn't work), but when I checked the Pickle, it was almost unusable (I wasn't surprised by that, given the Pickle's heavy use of Flex). I just thought it was an interesting exercise and it made me wonder how many people are going to go out of their way to make their sites iPhone-friendly? Is it worth it, so early on in the life cycle of the product?

Eric

Wasn't podcasting the niche medium par excellence?

If the only thing that counts are metrics, why bother doing a podcast directory in the first place? Most people are listening to radio and watching tv. Wasn't the arrogance by broadcasters that metrics are everything and exceptions inconsequential that started the podcasting revolution, to promote niche content, create a bond with your listeners, and don't give a d**n about metrics and other corporate cr**?

Isn't the fact that some websites are still IE-only proof that corporate arrongance is stupid and that every customer is valuable and should not be excluded because of the browser (s)he prefers?

BTW The Podcast Pickle doesn't work properly on Safari 1.3.2 on the Mac. I can't click through to podcasts I've selected. It also brings my CPU activity up to 96% at times when I hover over buttons on the Flash interface. So it doesn't really work and it slows down my Mac. If I want to use the Pickle's podcast directory, I have to do it with FireFox. That is why I wouldn't mind to have a non-Flash fork of the Pickle.

Of course, I can appreciate the site will not be modified because of me, or even the iPhone. I'll have to buy a new OS (and possibly a new Mac) to be able to enjoy sites like this, because feature richness seems to be the norm nowadays, if we have to believe that corporate speak by Adobe, Sun and others. iPhone users just have to look for a podcast directory without "modern" features, IOW a site that just works and doesn't rely on Filthy Rich Clients.

I don't complain, because this site is free and I don't have to use it, but I can tell you what I observe, can't I, even if it doesn't matter a snippet of code change?

I've been a podcast consumer since almost the beginning, and stats/metrics on some level have always mattered, even if it was just for bragging rights. Numbers are important. They have to be, if podcasting is going to be anything more than a niche hobby, like shortwave radio.

The real strength of podcasting isn't in eschewing numbers, but rather creating better and more diverse programming. Rather than focusing on numbers first, content comes first. Also revolutionary is the cost of entry to podcasting. It is very low by comparison to traditional media, and thusly you have more diverse programming that people can choose for themselves. So the value of the audience increases because they've chosen, out of thousands of competitors, to consume a particular show.

Big media is commodity advertising. People pay a lot of money to reach a huge audience, but not everybody's buying what they sell. Enter the potential of podcasting: Smaller, targeted markets that will eventually prove to be more valuable because an advertiser only has to pay to reach those people interested in the product they're selling. They might pay more per head when all is said and done, but they're return should be much higher.


That's why it's important to think about the new devices accessing our content. We need to make it available to them if we can.

Eric

I'd like higher numbers. Why?

1. I think we have a great service to offer to a wide audience, if they only knew about us. (Which is why we also set up a Yahoo Group, so even non-listeners can benefit.)

2. We'd like to be recognized as a credible media source when dealing with companies like video game and toy developers. Some companies respect us; some do not. Apple & MS have both snubbed us.

3. I wouldn't mind a paying sponsor just so we can afford better equipment to improve the quality of our show and maybe be able to attend a convention or 2, like the International Toy Convention each year in NYC or, of course, the Podcast Expo to meet some other podcasters.

You can express yourself so much better than I can. Off course, numbers matter (what was I thinking?). I should have said that contents comes first.

My point was that not supporting the iPhone just because so few of those are used to visit podcast websites is just so thinking like big media. IMO if you can do a few simple things to let iPhone users find you and interact with you through your website, you should do those things. Every active listener/viewer is valuable.

I understand if design decisions have been made which make it expensive and time consuming to support the iPhone for your website, you shouldn't support it. It seems once you've started using a Flash interface, you're stuck with it. Feature richness and beauty comes at a price, it seems.

The only thing that I will add to this discussion is that if you've designed your site to web standards, then you'll have no issue with it displaying properly on the iphone.

My day job is designing and implementing sites for the Big Three, and with CSS 2.0, DOM, DHTML, et al, there isn't a whole lot that you can't do with a site now that used to be only possible in Flash. A lot of designers will go wild and design every element in Flash, even the navigation (because it's cool), only to find that they've locked out a portion of their audience from visiting their site. And with mobile devices becoming the de rigueur, this is an issue that more and more sites will have to address going forward.

LN

Yes and no. The from what I understand the iPhone also does not fully support javascript (or is it just plain java?). Anyway, the functionality of many sites that use java applets will be hampered by this.

I suspect that the decision to not to build in support for some of the web's more common technologies is due to two factors: Licensing costs and secrecy. At the time they were developing their platform, the latter was probably more a factor. It will be interesting to see in the next iteration of the device if they add in support for things like java and flash, now that they won't have to worry about the existence of the iPhone being leaked.

Eric

Applets, because they need to be executed by a client-side JVM, are indeed not working. Javascript, DOM, and CSS2 styles, which are interpreted by the browser, are working fine on sites that I've tested, which heavy utilize implementations of these components. I've never considered applets to be a very good way of presenting info on a page and I would venture a guess that a majority of developers would agree. Besides, with SOAP, XML and REST there are much more efficient ways of retrieving remote data and making it available to the page's DOM.

My guess as to why Flash was omitted was bloat. The engine has always been top heavy and with the addition of FLEX (more bolting on of functionality rather than an attempt at rewriting the Flash core, IMHO) it will continue to be that way. I'm also curious if performance was a factor from the standpoint of the iPhone's processor--perhaps they decided that it wasn't up to snuff and put integration of Flash off until version 2.0. Apple has always put the focus on the paint on the car rather than what's under the hood, and they wanted everything that they could control to be working and working well straight out of the box. An Adobe port would have introduced a few unknowns into the mix and that might have been enough to 'nix the idea. Who knows; it's all speculation...

On the bright side, my experience with some of the more popular templates used by WordPress and other Blogs/CMSs are that they conform quite strictly to CSS standards, making any nail-bitting by some here at the 'Pickle that there own site may not display properly a moot point. However, if you want to be sure, visit an Apple store like Mignon did or download the emulator to put yourself at ease.

I would also venture a guess that CNN's recent redesign may have had a lot to do with the release of this little device, as that site has been forever a hodgepodge of poorly written code and nests upon nests of tables strictly for layout purposes. It's now clean and efficient. And if this little device changes the landscape like the iPod did, we may find more sites begin to design to standards, and that would help eliminate a whole host of issues.

LN

I have an odd request and I am not sure how we would pay you back, but if someone can send us a pic of their iphone playing That's Good to Know.....That would be awesome


just send it to thatsgoodtoknow@gmail.com

If you send me an iPhone, I'll send you a pic

Eric

Nah, just photoshop it. Much cheaper for everyone, and just as promotional