Amazingly, my quiet little house has a fairly decent internet connection, considering it’s rural location. 7mbps down is quicker than the connection in my last house, but I still have a problem.

The nature of my work has changed dramatically over the past 6 months with production really ramping up on Besquare videos. This leaves me with scores of edited conference videos backed up waiting to be uploaded. Unfortunately, my seemingly adequate 7 mbps download speed is paired with an upload speed of just .33mbps. Full HD video with all the bells and whistles can top 5gb for a 30 minute session. This is leaving me with a very big problem.

The way I see it, I have three options available to me.

The first, which is my least preferred would be to rent a small office in an area with fibre. Upload speeds would be far greater than anything I could ever experience at home. Obviously, this would be a very costly decision.

The second option would be to use of the many co-working spaces popping up around South Wales. I am told that these may have fast connections and cost very little. My issue with this option is that I would have to stay at a desk for the day watching paint dry video upload. I also wouldn’t want to hog the connection whilst others are trying to work.

The final option I see open to me is to find a business in the Cardiff/Vale area who would be prepared to let me use their connection overnight. I would simply arrive before they finish for the day and set up my Macbook to upload in my absence. Therefore, I wouldn’t need to be left alone on the premises and I wouldn’t be hogging the connection during normal working hours. I would simply return in the morning to collect my Macbook – and maybe bring bacon sandwiches for everybody!

I like this last idea a lot, so much that I am willing to pay the costs for the connection in exchange for being able to use that connection for two evenings each week.

The Plea

If you have (or know of anybody who has) a super fast upload speed (5mb+) and would like to help out in exchange for cold hard cash and bacon sandwiches – please drop me a line. Areas considered include Cardiff, Barry, Penarth, Cowbridge, Llantwit, Bridgend and Porthcawl.

Why would you pay £1000 to visit Cardigan, stay in a tent at single figure degrees temperature and listen to lectures?

I have been asked the above question countless times over the past couple of weeks after excitedly telling friends that I would be attending the Do Lectures. Others told me that it would be a life changing experience. So with mixed feelings I decided to attend this years Do Lectures which had a startup theme. Details about the event were pretty sparse so I arrived with an open mind and ready to embrace 3 days of self nourishment.

Having now been through the full Do experience I can say that it definitely has changed the way I think about myself. I am normally very nervous when meeting new people, conferences always have me worried about how I will fill those gaps when attendees are encouraged to mingle. Couple this with the fact that I always think I am the dumbest person in the room, I braced myself for a difficult 3 days.

Upon arriving and checking in, the Do staff escorted me to my tent for a quick tour and then on to the bit I was dreading, the mingle area. To my surprise everybody was warm and friendly, and I am now feeling quite proud of myself for striking up conversations and introducing myself to anybody who would listen. This is not normal behaviour for me. There was either something special in the tea at Do, or David and his team had engineered an environment for people to feel relaxed and approachable. I am fairly certain it was the latter.

So along with hearing some very interesting and intelligent people speaking, attendees were encouraged to make things during workshops after the lectures. After a couple of team changes I settled into a team who were trying to solve the problem of children spending less and less time outdoors. A challenge which resonated with me. Over 72 hours, working with a fantastic and eclectic team something very special was conceived.

I won’t write about the solution (named doobox.me) just yet as we are still a long way away from launch, but I can’t wait to share the story of how with zero budget we managed to prototype an idea, create a desire for a product, build a working model of a sustainable business, and GET IT FUNDED. This is no mean feat but I truly believe that the team are a special and extremely talented bunch.

All whilst in a wet field in Wales. So to all of those doubting the power of conferences, meetups and get togethers, “Go do one”.

Are you ready?

On 13 May 1897, Guglielmo Marconi sent the first ever wireless communication from one land mass to another. It transversed the Bristol Channel from Lavernock Point to Flat Holm Island, a distance of 14 kilometres (8.7 miles). The message simply read, “Are you ready?”. Mobile communication was alive.

Less than a mile from that first transmission at Lavernock Point, at 9am on 28th November I will be asking that same question “Are you ready?”, to a theatre full of developers & designers all interested in pushing the boundaries of wireless communication via mobile devices.

Handheld 2012 took place last November after months of planning and preparation. 13 speakers took to the stage at a packed venue and spoke about responsive web design, native mobile applications and where they think mobile communication could be heading. Many believe that the majority of Internet traffic will be served via mobile devices within the next year or so, with the medium so young we all have a lot to learn. It is my belief that sharing knowledge and best practices will help us understand and make the task of communicating via mobile devices just that little bit easier.

Feedback from last years event has been very positive. Personally, there were a number of issues which have been niggling away at the back of my mind but on the whole it was a great experience. An experience which I am determined to improve upon this year.

I was humbled to hear that people had travelled from the United States, Singapore, Estonia and even Australia to attend Handheld last year. It was great to see people chatting about techniques, striking up friendships and generally enjoying each others company.

This year, as well as having a dream lineup, I am delighted to welcome some of the greatest designers & developers from around the world to Cardiff. I have chosen the stunningly beautiful Wales Millennium Centre as this years venue which has one of the biggest stages in Europe. Preperations have already began with the backstage team at the venue to make this years event run seamlessly for all attendees. The modern stage allows us to perform some unusual tricks which will mean we are able to throw in a few surprises during the day. I am working hard to make sure that Handheld 2013 is not just another web conference, it will be a well crafted show.

As well as the main event on the 28th, there will also be a day of workshops on the 27th and an after party that P Diddy would be proud of (although I am thinking more Brains will be drank than Crystal). A fringe event will also be taking place on the evening of the 27th in conjunction with Joel at Port80Events.

I am extremely happy that I have managed to keep ticket prices to an affordable £139 this year. Flying in speakers from around the world can be very expensive, couple this with hiring a beautiful venue and the one hundred and one other costs associated with putting on such a show, it has been no mean feat to keep ticket prices affordable. This doesn’t mean that the event quality will suffer, on the contrary, I am paying extra attention to the little details that will make Handheld 2013 a fantastic event. November can’t come soon enough.

Tickets go on sale from 10am on March 1st at www.handheldconf.com 

I hope Marconi would be proud.

Equipment

If you are anything like me, you will see a new project as an opportunity to purchase new shiny-shiny. This doesn’t have to be the case, but like most things in life, the quality will be improved dramatically by getting the right equipment.

Essentially, you will be needing a microphone, some recording software and a connection to the web for uploading. There are plenty of podcasts being recorded on cheap microphones, or heaven forbid, an internal mic from a laptop. Whilst I wouldn’t reccomend going out to purchase a Neumann U87 for podcasting, a quality mic will pay dividends when it comes to capturing clear vocals. Personally I use a Rode NT1 to capture vocals. The Rode is a great mic, but as it is designed for studio recording it doesn’t have the convenience of a built in pre-amp or USB connectivity. I use an Alesis io Express to provide power to the mic and to route the audio signal through to my MacBook. The io Express also powers my headphones so all audio duties are handled outside of the MacBook. This gives me full control over levels, both incoming and outgoing. The Rode Podcaster mic looks like a good alternative if you are looking for self powered mic with a USB interface. I also use a mic stand, a pop shield and a shock mount to avoid unwanted floor noise and sibilance. If you don’t have a pop shield, try draping a dirty sock in front of the mic – the cotton should help stop sibilance whilst the smell will make sure you don’t get too close to the mic!

When it comes to headphones, a quality pair of closed back headphones are a must. Sealing the sound will mean that the mic doesn’t pick up any delayed audio (particularly if you are speaking with another person vis Skype). Audio leakage can be tricky to remove in post production and if severe could even cause a feedback loop. I use Shure SRH-550DJ but any decent closed back headphones should work admirably.

Obviously you are going to need a computer to capture the audio, a bare bones minimum computer would probably be up to the job. Personally I use my day to computer, a 15″ Retina MacBook Pro, but the results wouldn’t vary if I used a £259 craptop.

Capturing

Capturing the audio is the easy part. I use Garageband which I love but if you are looking for a free alternative, Audacity can do the job. If you are using an audio interface, like the Alesis io Express be sure that you are not sending a signal too hot – geek speak for having to much gain powering the mic. Again, make sure that the mic isn’t picking up any leakage from the headphones and be sure to mute any other speakers connected to your computer.

If your podcast requires capturing audio from a Skype conversation I would recommend recording the conversation with Ecamm’s Call Recorder. If both parties are using call recorder you will have 2 audio files, both recorded locally. This helps to eliminate that horrible audio ghosting and echo that Skype calls often suffer from. Call recorder actually records audio as .mov files but comes with plenty of audio tools allowing you to export tracks as audio tracks. These tracks can then be imported into Garageband with each side of the conversation on separate tracks – a real benefit when it comes to editing in post production.

Post production

Even if the audio recording has gone well, it will almost certainly be improved with a little post production. Both Garageband and Audacity have great tools for editing. I prefer Garageband as it has a familiar mac-like interface. Trimming audio and removing unwanted coughs and splutters is easy enough in Garageband. I won’t talk you through that process, a simple YouTube search will pay dividends when it comes to learning how to make basic edits.

If you have more than one track recorded, it is vitally important to balance the levels of these tracks. Listening to an interview which has noticeable differences in volume between the interviewer and interviewee can be really distracting. I like to add a little bit stereo separation by panning voices slightly left or right of centre. Before exporting your final audio file, make sure that the master volume level is set so that the audio levels do not distort. Most audio programs have a limiting function to cut any audio which may exceed a certain level. I like to add a little compression before channelling audio through a limiter, but this isn’t essential.

Publishing

There are many platforms on the web where you can publish your podcast. iTunes is by far the biggest network of podcasts and publishing to iTunes is easy enough, I see little point in walking you through the process as Apple have a great guide available. Podcasts feeds are basically XML files referencing your media. Rather than handcode these XML files I would recommend using a podcasting feed service. As my episodes are published from a WordPress installation, I use the Powerpress plugin from Blubrry. If you are not publishing from a WordPress installation, Blubrry also have a standalone service. Buzzsprout offer a simliar service and comes highly recommended.

A lot of these podcasting services offer a hosting service for your media. This is fine for starting out, but if your podcast becomes popular it may make sense to start hosting your own media. I use Amazon S3 to host my podcast media (I did host on my own dedicated server, but when 9000+ tried to download a 1.6gb video podcast episode simultaneously it crippled my server).

You might also wish to make your podcast available on Huffduffer so people can add your episodes to their own feed.

You can subscribe to my Audio podcast for besquare.me here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/besquare-audio/id570769413?mt=2

I also have a video podcast here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/besquare-hd-video/id570750898?mt=2

This 320 page book features articles from a bunch of highly respected web folks such as Jeremy Keith, Trent Walton, Brad Frost, Josh Clark… the list goes on. The book doesn’t pretend to be a technical manual for mobile development, instead it gives personal insights into developing for mobile with tips & techniques from a bunch of different perspectives. Chapters within The Mobile Book do not have to be read in a linear fashion and I found myself jumping back and forth between chapters whilst discovering new ways of working. Every chapter is full of golden nuggets of information and the standard of writing is, as you would expect from a Smashing Magazine book, impeccable.

I must also point out that the cover and the illustrations within are simply beautiful. It is obvious that a lot of thought and care has gone into making this book a pleasure to look at.

Quite simply, anybody looking into designing or developing for mobile devices (and you ALL should be) needs to buy this book.

My partner, Amie, works with unemployed adults and her role is to make these individuals more employable. All too often she shares stories of people who chose an unrealistic career path after being misguided from school careers advisors. I remember the careers advisor in school, she told me I would be a good mechanic – those who know me will know how ridiculous that sounds, I am dangerous with a hammer. Amazingly, most schools still have careers advisors, doling out advice based on the students latest school report. Subjects and work experience are chosen as result of this advice, more often than not leading a child on a path towards a certain career – chosen by an advisor who is a stranger. This is broken.

Chatting with Amie, we decided to try and play a small part to fix this. After a few days of research, it became clear that a child has very little in the way of resources to help them make informed decisions about their future career. Asking friends and family, it soon became apparent that most based the decision of ‘what we want to be when we grow up’ for some crazy reasons, which may have well had been plucked out of the air. Some wanted to do what their parents did, some wanted to do something which they had seen on TV, and some just wanted to do what sounded cool. The foundations for these life defining decisions were often misguided.

It just so happens that Kickstarter has launched in the UK. This to me is the perfect route to gaining public support for a campaign which affects us all. Myself and Amie put our heads together and came up with ‘So You Want To Be A Spaceman’.

Rather than me babble on, go take a look at the campaign yourself.

Any pledges or promotion gratefully received : The Kickstarter campaign

As a creator/designer/developer I find great inspiration from a good conference session. Conferences may not bring value to all industries, but my industry is stacked high with quiet little geniuses beavering away from small home offices. A good web conference shines a light on these lost souls and allows for professional growth and shared knowledge.

As both a conference attendee and an organiser, I often find myself faced with a problem. The first, as a conference attendee, is not being able to attend all of the conferences on my wish-list. This is down to many constraints such as time, costs, and location. Sometimes, I am just simply not aware of a conference until I read the tweets and reviews days later.

The problem I face as a conference organiser is entirely different. Getting the word out about a conference is difficult – if it weren’t for Twitter I don’t know how I would have managed to sell out Handheld. Lanyrd is great for the social element, and Eventbrite is a no-brainer as the ticket gateway. But what happens after the event, conferences are generally one time events, does it just die along with the great content that may have been presented. Sure, a conference organiser can add the conference video or audio to the conference site, or maybe even upload to YouTube, but once the event is over, the site is quite often dormant until the following year.

So, after a twitter discussion with a few friends late one sunday evening, it became apparent, that there are a lot of golden resources out there which are not being seen. What if all of this conference video and audio coverage was neatly arranged in one central repository for designers and developers to peruse in their own time. Organisers could also use videos from past conferences to promote future conferences and not have to worry about video/audio hosting.

Don’t get me wrong, nothing compares to actually being at a conference, but if you can’t be there, be square.

www.besquare.me

For the past few days I have worked on a quick prototype of how I think besquare could work. The design needs a lot of work as I have simply hacked around with a premium WP theme, but I think it conveys the idea quite well.

The hope is that the site will be used as a resource for designers & developers to watch inspirational content when they have the spare time. Organisers could then promote future events as well as earn a revenue from paid for content* by charging micro payments for certain premium content. At the moment all content is simply being pulled in from YouTube, but future content can also be hosted directly with besquare.

There is lots of work to do such as a decent search facility and event tagging. I also imagine a profile page for prominent event speakers which will hold a bio along with a catalogue of their sessions. A social element also needs to be included but I am not short on ideas for the platform – just the time

* Note that conference content often belongs to the individual speaker. A lot of work goes into conference sessions and the speaker should always be aware of any event organiser profiting from the speakers work. It is the conference organisers responsibility to allocate monies to speakers if payment is taken. For total disclosure on my part, the sessions which are being recorded at Handheld will be made available for free.

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This year I have been spending a fair bit of time in Cardiff Bay organising the Handheld conference, I love the Bay area. I used to sail in the Bay before progressing out into the Bristol Channel where I would sail between the Islands (Flat Holm & Steep Holm) or take a weekend trip over to Weston Super Mare on my tiny yacht.

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I have spoken at a few events & conferences this year about mobile development and have loved meeting others within the industry. An industry which is still new, but highly innovative and supportive of others.

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Now, those 3 paragraphs probably read as if they are the opening lines of seperate blog posts, but when read together, it shows my thought process on how I came up with the idea of Objective-sea, a gameshow for mobile app developers from a deserted island.

The idea came to me in early June of this year. The original plan was to simply rent the island for some sort of hack weekend. I have done some work for the Ordnance Survey earlier this year where I learnt about an API which they are about to release for their Open Maps data. This would have been a great way for the Ordnance Survey to promote the new API to developers, and developers would have a great weekend hacking something quite cool… on a frickin’ island!

So I set to work, hired the island and spoke to a few contacts to make this happen. Then it hit me, this would make a great TV show. Mobile development is popular and the mainstream audience have an interest in how apps are made. The Apprentice has made business cool, Masterchef has made celebrities out of chefs, we even have celebrity gardeners!  It is about time the industry has some role models for children that are approachable and aren’t the classic geek. My experience with teaching app development in schools is that children are aware of the Zuckerbergs & Gates of this World, but they can’t relate to anybody in the industry; an industry which needs to encourage more children into designing and developing as I foresee a huge gap in the number of skilled up youngsters over the next decade or so.

Thankfully I have a few connections in the broadcasting world through my research for another project of mine called Pixel Picnics, within 48 hours of deciding to go the ‘TV route’ I was sitting with a production company over coffee discussing the idea. Ideas were thrown around and we came up with a winning format: Developers would compete in national teams. England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and a fifth ‘rest of the World’ team would compete in a hackathon over 72 hours on the island based on a set theme which will be revealed on day one of the hackathon. There will be a few challenges and surprises thrown in to keep everybody on their toes and a panel of industry experts will be judging the winning app/idea with a cash prize fund as well as ongoing support after releasing the app.

After a whirlwind of meetings, the show has been commissioned by a major national channel in the UK, and we are working hard to get the show aired in other parts of the world. Filming starts in Spring 2013 with an expected on air date for 6 x 30 minute shows in late summer 2013.

The website went live last Friday (17th August) and I have been bowled over by the attention it has received. Within 5 minutes of it’s launch I had 600 simultaneous viewers on the site and after 24 hours it had received over 9000 unique visitors from all around the world. I think this demonstrates how mainstream the subject of app development has become.

I must take this opportunity to thank Valentino for the amazing illustrations on the website and Eddie for heavily inspiring the animations that you see at the top of the page.

I am opening up applications to be on the show in mid-September and am excited about the prospect of bringing together some of the greatest developers in the industry to see what will be created.

When I first thought about bringing a mobile conference to Cardiff, I thought that convincing speakers to contribute would be the hardest part of organising the event. The first task for me was to draw up a list of who I would like to see, I figured that if I wanted to see these people speak in Cardiff, others would too. I was surprised & delighted that most on the list agreed to speak. I think this goes to show what a great industry we all work in – an industry with a true sense of community and a willingness to help, teach and inspire others.

I have been overwhelmed by the reaction to Handheld, the initial allocation of 120 tickets sold out in less than 48 hours and I have received messages of support from some of the greatest in our industry.

What I find interesting about looking at the list of those attending is the amount of travelling people will be doing. There are people travelling from the US, Singapore, Finland, Germany & France. The majority of attendees are obviously travelling from UK cities : (in order of numbers attending) London, Bristol, Manchester, Bath.

The biggest surprise for me when analysing this data is that there are more people attending the conference from outside of the UK than there are from Cardiff. This to me is very strange as Cardiff has a thriving web & software development community. I am thinking that maybe the culture is slightly different here in Wales, we have very few conferences round these parts. The bigger creative hubs such as London and Bristol have an established diary of these kind of events and designers and developers are comfortable with the conference model.

I have often wondered why until this year, Cardiff hasn’t had any real major web/mobile conferences. Aside from the fabulous Port80 event earlier this year, South Walians have had to travel over the bridge to attend any industry conference of worth. I can only think of 2 possible reasons for the lack of interest from local web/digital agencies. Maybe experiences of previous local events hasn’t been good, or maybe they would prefer the adventure of travelling across the bridge. Don’t get me wrong, a number of Cardiff agencies have bought tickets, but this number is dwarfed by the number of agencies from over the bridge. I would be interested to hear peoples thoughts on this so have left comments open on this post.

Finally, after speaking with the venue I have managed to convince them to change things around a little (even remove a wall) so that we can fit a few more people into the conference. Therefore, a limited number of tickets have gone back on sale at www.handheldconf.com.  The venue have also been very supportive of the conference and have thrown away the health & safety rule book to allow me to add a few surprises to the day…

When I tell people what I do for a living, everybody seems interested and nearly everybody has an idea for an app – I have had taxi drivers absolutely convinced that there idea is a million seller (it never is by the way). Sometimes I think I should be carrying around a bunch of NDA’s with me everywhere.

Apps are a hot topic, even in mainstream media; My grandparents even know what an app is. The throw away 69p app has changed the software industry, some might say that the emergence of the ‘pocket money’ app had damaged the software development industry. Personally, I think the app ecosystem, particularly on iOS is a great thing for developers. Being able to distribute a piece of software to a worldwide audience from the comfort of your own small home office is a good thing, I think Apple ‘earn’ the 30% bite that they take out of the developers pocket.

I get contacted on a daily basis about developing peoples ideas into apps. My first response it to always ask what the client would like the app to achieve. 90% of the time I get exactly the same response back, “I want the app to be like my website…”. My response is always the same:

“There is an app for that, its’s called Safari”.

With over 600,000 apps in the iTunes App Store, it is already busting at the seams with crap apps (crapps). It seems that just like in the mid 90′s when every small business was rushing to get a website, small businesses are now racing to get an app in the App Store, usually without thinking why they need an app.  Maybe it’s a vanity thing, people might be getting a kick out of seeing their logo in the App Store. As a developer, I am sure to be shooting myself in the foot when I say that 90% of the app enquiries receive would be better served by a well designed responsive website for the following reasons:

• * Safari is installed on every single iOS device and needs no user intervention to download
• * Search & print is built into Safari
• * Bookmarking is simple
• * Safari is social with iOS5 tweet sheets
• * Deploy & update via FTP in realtime
• * Accessibility is catered for with varying font sizes & voiceover

Let’s not forget that before the app store opened in 2007 we only had Safari and developers were building webapps – websites which we saved to our home screen with an icon.  These were just standard websites with a little bit of code to so the device would download an ‘app icon’.

Obviously, if the app requires the use of any of the hardware sensors such as the compass, accelerometer, GPS –  the app will have to be native. But, let’s face it, most small business apps are simply glorified catalogues or calling cards. I would consider these to be ‘dumb’ apps and I see no need to be stuffing up the App Store with this kind of stuff. I think the decision should always boil down to the presentation & desired manipulation of data. If we are just presenting static data, such as text alongside imagery, maybe the odd video embed surely a HTML delivery would be the way to go. On the other hand, if the app aims to make use of the sensory power of the device, a native application would be the way to go.