Upgrade - 12: Plant and Analyze

Episode Date: December 2, 2014

This week Jason and Myke address some holiday follow up, before talking about democratising podcasting and conducting a (very slow) lightning round.

Hello and welcome to episode 12 of Upgrade from RelayFM. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Hover, simplified domain management, MailRoute, a secure, hosted email service for protection from viruses and spam, and also our friends. Jason loves these guys, like all of our friends our friends at dash where you can create beautiful dashboards in just a few clicks my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by mr jason snell i'm mike i love all those people they are our friends all of them that's starting to seep into everything now by the way people it's funny how it's funny how things that you don't um that you do once and you're like oh that's just a stupid thing i said and then it becomes a thing

after that because it resonates with people and and it comes back like the verticals has come back a bunch of times and uh and the enemy discount and yeah it's funny that's it's that's great it's one of the delights of doing a podcast is that you say something once and think, well, that was kind of stupid. And then it becomes a thing because people remember it and think it was funny. It's very strange. And it comes back to you in weird ways. It still upsets me greatly that nobody has taken advantage of the enemy discount. It'll happen one day.

One day. It'll happen. The relay ad sales are going pretty well though so they're gonna have to you know they're gonna have to find a spot where they're gonna find like the enemy slot yeah i don't know running out of space for yeah maybe i don't know maybe at the very end of the show buried under like 10 minutes of silence and there's an ad and it will be like in reverse so you have to rewind the show to hear the ad. Yeah, you have to turn the cassette tape that you're listening to the show on backward.

Yeah, that could be. But anyway, it's a lot of fun. I'm sure someday we will get an enemy to sponsor us, and that will be interesting. To say the least. Cross fingers. Would you like to do your favorite segment? Sure. I hope,

again, yes, I would love to do some follow-up. And the, what I wanted to say is that we got a lot, after last week's show,

we got a lot of tweets from people, especially, saying, I'm really enjoying the show. And I thought, wow, are people in a good mood? Did we have a particularly good show? I hope that's true. I do wonder, since we did talk in last week's show about how, although we don't like comments generally, we love interacting with people on social media. If this was everybody's message

to us of like, well, here I am interacting with you on social media. But I hope it's not just that and that they actually literally were enjoying the show and not just using social media to say that. But there was a lot of that last week, so I thought that was pretty funny. Did you get that? I got that. Yeah, yeah, I do. It's this interesting thing that uh i was listening to old episodes of one of my favorite podcasts called hello internet and i mentioned this show quite a lot

because i like it i like it a lot and they were talking about feedback um and there's just this one little uh soundbite that i quite like which was positive feedback trends to zero in the idea that the more and more you get of it the harder it is to remember specific parts so it's like when you ask me that question I know that I

am very lucky and I'm very happy that I get lots of good feedback about the shows every day. So it makes it harder to remember specific things. But like if you would have said to me, did you see that bad tweet last week about the show? I would definitely remember it. Tell me the timestamp.

Yeah. You know, so it's just, yeah. I mean, yes, I do remember actually. I do remember people talking. I remember getting lots of like, you know, good on you kind of type things from last week. You know, people that were, oh, I do. I am involved in this and I've been doing this and congratulations on, you know,

continuing to work on your own. That kind of stuff, you know, like a lot of like support. We're in this together type messages because that was slightly different to usual but yeah i remember getting those yeah i mean i didn't it's not in the notes but i did get a note from from one person that said this episode was a little too navel gazey that's exactly what he said and i i responded and i said well you know we did both just leave

our jobs and uh not every episode is going to be about that. But his point, I think his point was, I keep hearing podcasters talk about how they don't have job job jobs. And and I get how it's really samey from that perspective. But I don't regret us talking about it. Because this one of the things on this podcast is it's sort of the story of our lives. Now you've got more podcasts. Well, I don't know, do you have more podcasts than me? We could fight it out, but you have more podcasts in which you have a platform to talk about your, uh, what you're doing, uh, with your career, especially analog since so much of this is about sort of like the feelings of, of, uh, you going through this process and talking to Casey about it and making Casey question his life. Um, and,

uh, so I don't have any regrets about us talking about it here because we don't have that many platforms to talk about stuff like this. And we do have that in common. But I totally get how the podcast sphere can lose perspective on this because you've got a lot of people who are like that. And I always felt that when I was a guy who was commuting every day. And you might have thought that too. It's like, wow, there's a lot of people talking about quitting their jobs and working out of their house in every day. And you might've thought that too. It's like, wow, there's a lot of people talking about quitting their jobs and working out of their house in their pajamas. And now we're those people.

But it is, our story is, that's one of the things that we're both going through. So I think it's logical for us to talk about it every now and then. I think I host more podcasts than you, but I think you own more podcasts than I do. I'm on, I think I'm on four that are recorded weekly yeah see i have uh i have five weekly shows and one like monthly show yeah right if you can call

that a show no i have i have i have six weekly shows okay you win you win you have more you have a bigger platform than i do to talk about not having your job anymore. I have a show that's like dedicated to that. I know. I know. It's amazing. So anyway, I don't mind that we talked about it. But the point is that the guy who said we were too navel-gazy totally remember the exact words of that tweet.

But a lot of really nice feedback from everybody else. So I don't know whether that was semi-ironic for like, oh, okay, you like social feedback? You're going to get social feedback, guys. But it was great. So thank you, everybody. Listener Sam, in particular, a tweet that I wanted to mention, said he loved last episode. He said, and then he trained his magnifying glass on us. He said, I study independent workers. So everything you talked about is stuff I obsess over at theworkologist.com, which is, I believe, Listener Sam's website. I'm getting my PhD in positive organizational psychology with a focus on indie work and how to best support that style of work. So Listener Sam

will be paying attention to our podcast our podcast and noting our uh responses to stimuli i think listener sam if you if you ever notice anything that me and me or jason do that are like warning signs please let us know let us know let's know any triggers please please bad bad news um listener sebastian wrote in long time follower first time feedbacker he said listening to last week's episode i was compelled to write you guys on the subject of remembering to leave the house shower etc i've been working at home for two years now and admit to having practiced all of the embarrassing acts you sheepishly discussed for me getting a dog halfway through this period has made the single biggest positive difference and he goes on to talk about how now he has to walk the dog he has to get out the dog provides

some companionship and and you know just and i have this we only have a cat here now but um just having a pet in the house and like wondering what what what's the pet doing and do i need to feed it and whatever that can be good and then with a dog you got to get out and walk the dog uh so i thought that was interesting i don't have a dog right now but i do have kids so i have reasons to get in and out of the house because i've got to take the kids places and walk my son to school or pick him up and there's a lot there's a lot going on there um as for you mike i don't know maybe uh is there a dog in your future i'm not a big animal person all right unfortunately maybe uh maybe a telepresence robot i would definitely have a telepresence robot.

I would definitely have a telepresence robot. Yeah, maybe I should get one of those dogs. You could pay somebody to come once a day and just be in the robot for an hour or something. Like a little robot pal. That could work for me. Just an idea. Or you could just get out and see people and all that. That works too. Today I was going swimming and forgot my swimming shorts.

So at least I got out of the house, Jason. Yeah, that's true. Did you just come home or did you go buy some swimming shorts? No, no, I just came home. I think the previous me would have bought swimming shorts, but this is also me trying to be responsible with my finances. And they don't let you go naked in the Olympic pool. They don't, actually.

Believe it. I asked, but then I had to leave. Isn't there a naked lane? Just like the far lane. We're not going to judge you. Just go to the far lane. The very far lane. Yeah. I suppose you not going to judge you just go to the far lane and the very far lane yeah i guess i suppose you could go maybe you could go in your in your uh in your pants

but then how would you get home exactly i i don't think they're suitable for for exercise probably not anyway that was an interesting vertical, the naked swimming issues vertical. Listen, Joseph said something I don't think, something I think wasn't touched on that I think I'd be interested in hearing about, especially from Mike, is this. What if Relay, or for me, Six Colors, became enormously successful and necessitated a much larger staff or office presence or business. Mike has said he doesn't see how he could ever possibly go back to a corporate environment. But what if Relay became corporate? Would you work in an office? Could you work in an office, even if it was your place? What do you think about that? I think that what I think about as corporate would maybe be different. I come from

a world of companies with tens of thousands of employees. I hope actually that one day I do have a little team of people, a couple of people that I work with. And I would very much like to have an office space for Relay based in London or wherever I live. I think that would be really cool. But I think there's a difference between like working with a few people and being corporate. I mean, because currently I already work for a few people. Right. Right. And it's a smaller business and it's virtual, which is fine. I like going to an

office. I didn't like the big commute, but I think you're right. I think there's a bigger distinction here, which is that working for a company with hundreds or thousands of people versus working for a company with eight. There's that video, The Verge posted a video today about sandwich video and they've got like eight people in their office in LA. That's a really different kind of feeling from being this branch of this giant company and you're in one division and all of that, which is what both of us went through.

I thought about that, that if my business got up and running and was really successful to the point where I could see value in having outside office, someplace I could go to work instead of working in my house, I wouldn't be against that if it made sense. But I would want it to be close. I wouldn't want to drive across the bridge every day like I did for 15 years because that was a lot of time that I would really rather reclaim. But listener Joseph actually says that he went back after not really liking his job and feeling like he was becoming a hermit and how his dog wasn't sufficient social contact. Take that, Sebastian. That he's back to an eight to five job, but he's moving. So he'll be within five minutes of the office. So he gets the no commute thing. But I'm

not opposed to it. I had a friend who found an office in like a law firm that had an extra office and it was like five minutes away from his house. you know it was just a little office but he took it and he's got that and actually greg i think did greg nos mention this last week maybe not but i know greg and his wife who's a lawyer they have office space so they can get out of the house and go to work yeah yeah i'm sure yeah yeah so um anyway that was really interesting to listen to Joseph. And I think it's an interesting point of how we view corporate versus not. Yeah, it would be fun. I've said this a bunch of times that the thing I miss most after two months of doing this is the team.

We had a great team at IDG. I had a really great team that I had built at Macworld. And I miss that. I miss having even, you know, two or three people who were, you know, we're planning what we're doing and helping each other out. And I get a little of that, like we've got the Slack chat room for Relay that I'm in, and we've got one for The Incomparable, and Dan Morin is writing some stuff for Six Colors. So he and I are chatting a lot but it's not quite the same as back when I

had that team thing so I totally miss that. I don't think I need that to necessarily be in person but I do miss it and that doesn't feel like an evil to me. That's a good. I wish I still had something like that. Yeah, I mean it's interesting to think how it might go.

Like I have put thought into, could I have a team one day? And I would like that. I think I would like that people working with me because I don't want to have to do everything for myself forever. I think it would be nice to, to, to, I mean, because even though, you know, I've obviously got a lot more time to focus on Relay now, I'm still focusing on kind of the whole stack, as it were, maybe even more so, because I now have more time than Stephen to look at these things. Right.

So, you know, I wouldn't be surprised surprised if and i would be happy to in the future just to as the company grows to take on more responsibility um but it's just interesting and and to think you know maybe one day i could have somebody who looks after ad sales for us i could have somebody who i don't know does some production work for me actually does some show prep and without me need to do it or maybe somebody books guests for me or something you know all of these things they're very exciting to me yeah i i had uh this yesterday i was editing i spent like two hours in the morning rather than writing stories for six colors or or um a couple freelance stories that i'm working on I was fixing the embedded audio player on the incomparable

because I got tired of looking at the relay pages with your really nice embedded audio player and then looking at our default quick time audio player that safari sticks in to the incomparable pages and so I had to figure out what your player was and yeah because we were 100 zero help with that. Yes, because I asked hey, how do you do that? And you guys are like, I don't know. I think it's in the CMS. Thanks. So I figured out what that was and it doesn't look as good now.

But then I looked up and it was 11 o'clock and I'd spent two hours doing that. And so that was not necessarily procrastinating or anything. I wasn't really goofing off i was doing something to advance the quality of one of the things that i'm doing but it was it did strike me that like you're wearing a lot of hats when it's just you or just a couple of people and um i you know it's

not a bad thing to to grow to the point where you can say uh here's somebody who can focus on this or here's somebody who can focus on that not necessarily even full-time maybe it's not a bad thing to grow to the point where you can say, here's somebody who can focus on this, or here's somebody who can focus on that. Not necessarily even full-time, maybe it's even part-time, but being able to say, you know, can I get five hours a week from you to look, you know, fix this stuff on our website? Maybe someday. Should we take a quick break,

and then we still have a little bit more follow-up? I need a friend. I need to hear from a friend, Mike. Tell me about a friend. Hover is a friend, and they are supporting this week's episode of Upgrade. Hover is the best place on the internet to buy and manage domain names.

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I now need to know.bearsTLD. Is it happening or is there one? Seems unlikely. Although, this ought to start plumbing. Once bears get on the internet, the jig is up. It's incredible that.app

hasn't gone through yet. It's like it's ready for pre-registration. But like you think about some of the ones that have got through, like.diamonds. .xyz. Yeah. I mean,.xyz is just like a whatever kind of domain, you know? But like things like.diamonds, like why does that exist? So why is that here?

I had this thought, which is at some point, shouldn't big internet companies just get their own TLDs? And I realized that on one level, that way lies madness. But on another level, if everybody is whatever.tumblr.com, at some point, isn't it better if there's just.tumblr? Or isn't it better if there's.google? That makes a lot of sense. Like.facebook. Yeah. tumblr or isn't it better if there's dot google that makes a lot of sense like dot facebook

yeah i mean maybe at some point that that's worth it or if there's no dot fb country maybe facebook should just be dot fb and they could i don't know i mean at this point the domain system is so ridiculous that why not why not let uh and that like i said tumblr was my example why not let tumblr just own control.tumblr and everybody who uses it can just say, you can find me at brainball.tumblr. I think that that is genius. Like, I don't know why that hasn't been done before the madness that we currently have because clearly there's no restrictions anymore.

Like, okay, there is like a council, but- Well, and somebody's got to pay to administer that TLD and that there is cost there because they have to have the servers that are looking up all of the domains in that TLD, but a big company can afford that. Yes, definitely. I mean, especially when there are special deals that happen, right?

So like t.co, that was arranged before the.co domains went on sale, the Twitter links. So they were able to get that. And also, you know, like single-letter domain names, I don't really think they exist, right? Like t.co. I don't know any other websites that have just like a single letter. I think you can do that.

I think that's like essentially up to the – if the government of Colombia wants to allow a single-letter domain, they can do that. Yeah. My understanding is that that was arranged before the sale. The fix was in. So you can – there's some interesting stuff that could be done, and I think that's a smart idea. We should write to ICANN immediately. Yes.

Our friends at ICANN. Yeah. Not sponsoring the show. I have 16 domains at H domains at hover by the way it's quite a lot it's quite a lot how many of them are like a sensible domains that are in use uh fewer than that yeah i don't uh i i don't i don't have the list in front of me many of them were from my Six Colors speculation period so I have bleed6.com and I have jsnell.net

I have 6-colors.com and 6colors.me and 6colors.org I have 25 domains with Hover I have some interesting ones in here. Would you like to know any of them? Sure.

I have apppreviews.net. I went in and got that. That's a lot of Ps. It is. Yeah, it's app with three Ps and then reviews, which doesn't scan very well. I have internationalexports.co, which is a James Bond joke. I have podcasts.expert. Ooh.

Yep. I have podcasts.wtf. That just redirects to Bonanza, right? Well, I mean, I could sell that to Mark Maron. That's true. I think those two. I think Marco sent me iMessages one day and was like, you should buy these. So I was like, okay.

So I did. Yes, Marco. I have thecircuitry.com. So I think that was an idea for a show name that I had. I also have varietyhour.net, which I quite like. One day I will make a podcast called The Variety Hour and that will take that domain. There you go.

That's a small selection of the weird and wonderful domains that I have that none of them are used. I have two domains that are for novels that I've written but haven't published. Justparked.com. So, yeah. Justparked.com.

No, that's not it. One of them is a.us, but that's for a specific reason. USA, USA. USA. All right. More feedback. Listener Mike, talking about commenting, he said, comment systems are like sports talk radio and sites without comments are like NPR radio.

So that's just a shot at comments basically. But I thought it was funny because of this. Some people really like listening to call-in radio shows and I don't. And anytime I'm watching a TV show and I don't watch as much TV as I used to. But when I would flip around the dial and you watch a show and it would be an interesting interview, and then the host would say, all right, we're going to take some calls now. I'd be like, okay, moving on. Not going to watch. I don't want to hear your calls.

I don't want to hear your calls. It's just something about it. It's like that's not why I tuned into that show. I tuned into that show for a professional interviewer to have an interesting conversation with somebody. And now we're going to have the calls. And, you know, I, I guess that you could say that that makes me an awful elitist person because I don't want to hear from the people, but the fact is with social media, we can hear from the people. It's just, my point is that I think the professional interviewer probably has, uh, understands the technology of his show and what questions have already been asked and what questions the guest is not going to answer and maybe do a better job of interviewing that person

than the people on the phone. And so I'd rather keep that job be that person's job and then let people have their opinions over in another place. But some people love it. Some people love sports talk. Radio, it just drives me crazy. I can't listen to it. Well, we have Dave from Cincinnati on the line, Jason.

He's going to let you know what he thinks. Dave it's a caller there you're on the air oh he's he's dropped off and we dropped the line you dropped yeah turn sir turn your turn your podcast radio down we can't the feedback is awful turn the live stream down before you anyway um listener pascal i believe his name was uh had lots of Apple logos in it, but I think it's Pascal, said, in Canada, as soon as Halloween is over, you get Christmas ads and stores start selling Christmas stuff. And I just wanted to mention this, this furthers my theory of the Thanksgiving firewall, because in Canada, Thanksgiving happens before Halloween. So Halloween is the last holiday before Christmas. And once Halloween is done, in comes the Christmas stuff. Whereas in the US,

it really is. I mean, it's not. There are people doing it who jump the gun, but there's generally, I think it's accepted. Everybody on my block put up their holiday lights on Thanksgiving night or the day after. That was the official start of it. So in Canada, you get a longer Christmas season because your Thanksgiving is in the middle of like May. So, yeah, I know it's in October. I was there. I was there. I was in Canada for Canadian Thanksgiving. I got two Thanksgivings this year, although one of them wasn't that exciting because I just went to the airport and flew home. Oh, that's not exciting at all, is it? No, I should have had turkey somewhere

if i had known if i had known that i was going to be in canada on canadian thanksgiving i would have stayed an extra day and had a canadian thanksgiving feast because that would be how cool would it be to have two thanksgivings you had none i would have had two oh i had one did i tell you oh oh i saw so yes oh now I'm way too excited for this. But yes, you went, you tweeted like a picture of a drink that was served in a cup that looked like a turkey leg. I did. I sure did. So, this is very peculiar. So, I met some friends. We went and had our beards groomed before a weekend away. Beards.groom. That could be a domain. I just came back. Groominggroom. That could be a domain. Grooming.beard?

I don't know. I just came back from grooming.bear. I just came back from a stag weekend, like a bachelor party for a weekend. And a few of us went to have our beards groomed prior. So I have a Thanksgiving dinner at an American restaurant, which we didn't know was happening. We were going to this place. It sold like ribs and stuff like that. So we're going to go there.

We arrived and said, we've got a set menu today. And it's Thanksgiving, right? And so basically, would you like to know what I had? Yes, yes. Because I took a photo of the menu. I had pumpkin and squash soup to start. Valid. I had farm pit smoked turkey.

Okay. Smoked turkey. Which is great. That is absolutely legitimate. Brown sugar and bourbon candied sweet potatoes. All right. That's what we said. That's your sweet potato dish.

Which was amazing. Loved it. Creamed spinach. Roast garlic dirty mash. I don't know why it's called dirty mash. Homemade cranberry sauce. And a fresh baked pumpkin pie for dessert. And it was one of the greatest meals I've ever had.

I can see why everyone is so excited about Thanksgiving. And I will put a couple of photos of my Thanksgiving meal into the show notes for people, including the turkey leg cocktail drink. I'm so proud of you. You did it. I'm pretty proud of myself. You had American Thanksgiving.

No, we were, I was looking at those pictures actually, I think as I was making Thanksgiving dinner here. And, you know, we were working the night before we cooked some stuff. I had to brine the turkey. So I did all that the night before. And the turkey sits in a five gallon bucket in the corner of my garage for overnight soaking in this giant, you know, vat of brine. And then, you know, on the day, I mean, we made, we had cranberry sauce. We made, we roasted the turkey. We had a cornbread, cornbread dressing, which is sort of like a stuffing, but you don't put it in the bird. You cook it separately in a cast iron skillet. We had the mashed potatoes. We had. We had Brussels sprouts, this really great balsamic

roasted Brussels sprouts dish that was, they were gone. They were completely gone. They were demolished. Some rolls, because my son demanded rolls. A sweet potato and cranberry casserole that was really popular. Yeah, it was great, but that's the kind of stuff. And it's fun to do that. We don't have a feast like that that often. That's the sort of thing, unless you have servants who are making something for you.

It's quite a thing. It's quite a treat to have something with that many dishes, and we had like 11 people. I'm glad you got to experience it a little bit. I might try and do it do it next year because i enjoyed it immensely um that's good now you you described the place you went as an american restaurant is that a thing yes what what what's it called this place was i think was called the big easy all right um yep the big easy uh well and there are other places i mean yeah we

have chain restaurants right so we have like tgi fridays which is considered to be a american restaurant right right because for you guys it's just like whatever but it's right yeah that's true no you're right you're right i just it's it's strange to have that idea that somebody in another country is eating from a menu that is supposedly representative of your country's food. It's just kind of funny. The Chinese feel this way all the time, I assume. So I now know how they feel. That's just fascinating. That's fascinating. I should go to an American restaurant sometime.

You should. I recommend them, especially at Thanksgiving. Okay. Good to know. Were there Americans there? Were there Americans participating in a far-off Thanksgiving? Yeah, there were lots of Americans there. I think that's the reason that most of these places do that,

is to cater for Americans in London who would like a Thanksgiving meal, who don't want to kind of cook for themselves or whatever, because it might just be for two people or something. All right, that's good to know. Thank you for that Thanksgiving update. That was our Thanksgiving vertical. We'll retire it for a year, but it'll be back canadians it'll be back even sooner than you expect uh one last because we're still in the follow-up one last piece of follow-up this is worse than atp now um lister gary this is just a quick one i made an aside about the farm cast podcast about farming he said i worked for a web host in the early 90s that con con that

contracted for mer Publishing. They did market research at the time to choose which of their magazines to put on the web first, and agriculture.com won out. I've got friends that write APIs for tractors, so a farmcast could get a lot more nerdy than you think. Imagine plant and analyze, and you're right in the ballpark. So there's a farmcast update from listener Gary. Plant and analyze and you're right in the ballpark so there's a farmcast update from listener gary plant plant and analyze you should start that yeah yeah new podcast niche podcast networks farming vertical i'm telling you there's something and and if i wasn't dissing the farmcast i i like i said i grew up on 50 acres and we had cows and horses and a pig at one point and chickens.

And I am from the rural parts, so I am not dissing the farm cast. I just thought that was a funny combination of farming and podcasts because, you know, I wasn't thinking about that before. That's it. That's the follow-up. We we're done should we sign off now mike yep see you later what what else should we talk about so i apologize to the person who said we were navel gazey because we're going to talk about podcasts again. Just a little bit. This is something that is becoming... Okay, so the joke at the moment is podcasts are alive having been dead, right? That's the current joke.

And I can see why this joke is happening because there are lots of articles being written and new podcasts occurring, and it's popping up all over the place in mainstream media and that kind of thing, right? But it is very interesting right now to look at what's going on. And I'm reminded of when Twitter was becoming popular, and all of the tech podcasts that I listened to

only spoke about Twitter. It was all there was to talk about. Right. It was just a hot-button topic at the moment. Unfortunately, to everybody listening to podcasts, the current hot topic is podcasting. Podcasts. And the thing is, and the problem is for the majority of our listeners

and for us, the people making making them we've been doing it for years and now the conversation is happening um but we there are things to say we have things to say there is a conversation which i think requires not requires but cause for some intervention especially from people that are uh making them you know like myself and jason so we're going to talk about that again and i'm sure we'll talk about it again on a future episode yeah but i but i would say and and uh there we may get to some other stuff later that i would say we are well aware of the fact that this is podcasters talking about podcasting and we'll try to keep it um as as light as

possible also keeping in mind kind of a slow news period other than unless we wanted to do a whole podcast about what sales are out there right now and this is a thing that people were talking about way more than i expected um and so i think we should talk about it at least a little bit there's a great summation that we'll put in the show notes that's by um alvaro serrano i'm sorry if i mispronounced your name there, but at analogsenses.com, he wrote the ultimate guide to podcasting guides where he links to all of the different articles that have been written on this subject. That was a very helpful thing. So I feel like I definitely had a part in starting this because what happened was on Thanksgiving, Amazon did a gold box deal,

because what happened was on Thanksgiving, Amazon did a gold box deal. So a limited time deal on the Yeti, which is the microphone I've been using for about two years now to do all of my podcasting. And it was 79 bucks. And for a long time, I've just said, I think this is a really great combination of quality for value,

that it's not as cheap as some other microphones, but it has some advantages. It sounds better than like the Blue Snowball. It's got a hardware mute button. It's got a hardware volume button, and it's got a headphone jack. And that is a big deal because then you can hear yourself and you know when you sound bad, which I think actually is a huge contributor to people making better sounding podcasts is hearing their own voice while they're recording and realize oh I'm not facing toward the microphone or there's a terrible sound behind me that I need to shut down in some way so that people can't hear that or I need to reposition my microphone

and the Yeti has all those things the Yeti has these other settings in which you can record in multiple different environments right right it's got a it's got a two across so that you can have two people on either side of the microphone and record a. It's got a two across so that you can have two people on either side of the microphone and record a conversation. It's got a omnidirectional. Yeah, it's, again, it's not the best microphone

that's out there by a long shot, but it's not bad. And certainly two years ago when I was shopping for microphones, I thought it was the best combination. I've had since, and this was part of the conversation, a couple people point out that there are, in particular, there is a dynamic microphone, which is the kind that I think the pros generally prefer because dynamic microphones pick up less background noise. There's a dynamic microphone from Audio-Technica, I think, that's like 59 bucks and it's a USB microphone and it's got a headphone jack. And I haven't tried it, but it comes recommended by some really smart people

and that might be a perfectly, that might be the best entry-level high quality microphone now and not the Yeti. But the reason that I kind of got mad on Thanksgiving night, I posted this deal and then I had a bunch of people say, I don't consider that an acceptable microphone. And some of it was, I don't consider that a microphone for professionals, which bugged me because what they're really saying there is, well, first off, I didn't say it was for professionals. In fact, recommending a $79 microphone is perhaps in itself not a recommendation for professionals. It was really, I was really thinking of people who want to get a better microphone than they've got, but are never going to spend more than $100. So it kind of bugged me that people come out of the woodwork

to point out, well, that microphone's fine, but it's not a professional microphone. You shouldn't really use it for that. And two, it bugs me because I've used this microphone for two years. I take pride in the sound quality of my podcast. It is absolutely good enough to be used professionally. Now, it may not be the best microphone for a professional, and I could certainly upgrade my podcast gear, and I may, in fact, do that soon. But to say that it's not possible to use it, and then somebody who's doing even professional level stuff just shouldn't ever bother is, I mean, it's provably wrong. I'm doing professional podcasting with it. So that set me on my rant that I've had. I've done that rant before. There was a time, and he doesn't say this anymore, but there was a time when any

time people talked about microphones, Dan Benjamin would say, you can't do a podcast without a dynamic mic. And at the time, that meant spending $250. And that always bugged the crap out of me because that, you know, I was speaking at a sci-fi convention a couple years ago, and I mentioned the blue snowball for $50, and people were horrified. I was like, oh, my God. These people don't even want to spend $50 and people were horrified. I was like, oh my God, these people don't even want to spend $50 on a microphone. They want to use their earbuds or they want to use, turns out this is actually a really good tip. They want to plug in their rock band microphone. That's actually not a bad idea. That would be better than nothing. And I had a couple of people

say, you know, I do a podcast with a rock band microphone. It sounds okay. I'm like, all right, that's interesting. Or a headset mic. And that was, my point was, I feel like audio is so intimidating already. And having people in, who are already doing podcasting say, you know, really, unless you're willing to spend a lot of money on all of this fiddly hardware stuff that you don't even understand right now, you shouldn't even bother. It's just erecting more barriers to people coming into the medium. And I'm sensitive to that because I feel like this is a medium that's really young,

that it needs more voices, and that I think it's a danger when we start talking about all the podcasts end up being from people who are professional stand-up comedians or NPR personalities or other broadcast personalities and not interesting people from other places. And as somebody who started doing podcasting regularly four years ago, I don't want to be one of those people who says, well, now that I'm here, let's shut the door and not let anyone else in. I love the fact that this is a really democratic medium and that somebody who's got something interesting to say should be able to say it. Now, there were a lot of posts about this. I don't want to be misunderstood as saying it doesn't matter if your podcast sounds

crappy. It totally matters. I've turned off podcasts from really good professional people in their line of work because the sound was awful. There was one in particular that it was like a guy in an echoey room, like in an echo chamber, talking on a speakerphone to somebody somewhere else on a really bad telephone line. And I was like, I can't listen to this. It's terrible. But what I am saying is I don't want the insistence on audio quality to be such a barrier that people just say, look, I'm not going to bother. I'm too intimidated by all the technical things that go into a podcast. I figure if you dive in, you'll learn. And as you go, you will be, if you truly

love it and want to do it, you will be dissatisfied if it doesn't sound good and you will work to make it sound better and you'll learn. And that the net effect of people saying, you know, don't, you know, don't do a podcast unless you've got hundreds of dollars worth of equipment is to turn people off from, from starting. And I don't like that because this is the kind of medium that we should be letting people get in fairly easily. And then, yeah, some of them, it'll sound bad or they won't really be committed and they'll give up. But what I don't want is somebody who's really got something great to say, to say, I'm not going to bother saying it because I'm not going to spend hours and hours and hundreds of dollars making this

setup. Because then you fall into that audiophile trap where you're like, you've spent a lot of money, or a computer person can do this too, spend a lot of money on equipment and then don't have anything to say. I think that's backward. Do it the other way. I used the Yeti for years. And I recommend it, not because it's the best microphone microphone but i think that it gives you more than than anything else does at that price range and i recommend it because it's one that i've used i've not used all of the others so i mean i'm the same as you like whenever i see that amazon flash sale for 70 bucks which they do every few months for the yeti um i always make sure that i tell people about it because if you're even mildly interested,

you should just drop those $70 and keep it and then use it for another day. I have a bunch of people that are friends, like bloggers and stuff, who I've recommended to buy it because if you ever get invited onto a show, it's really great to have it rather than using the Apple

earpods or something which I if I call someone on Inquisitive and they don't have a mic then I tell them to just plug that in because I mean there are many people that will tell you that you should write ahead and you should ask them to get it. I don't do that because

I don't think that's fair to say would you like to take an hour of your day for free to be on my show? Oh, and by the way, could you spend $150 on a microphone? Ideally, you'd eventually have a budget where you'd have a bunch of microphones that would just be

shipped in advance and then with return postage and they would take it out of the box and plug it in and all that, but that's ridiculous and nobody's going to do that. I know people that have done that but that i don't know even then that seems interesting over the course of time um as we were doing the incomparable we everybody started to upgrade their equipment a lot of people got yetis um but i've still got a couple panelists who use headset mics and they don't, I can tell, but they sound okay. And, um, you know, it's, I don't know, again, if you're somebody who's doing this for a living and you're concerned

about audio quality, yes, you could probably invest in higher quality gear. But, um, you know, I just, my bigger, my bigger point was just like, it's so easy to mystify things like tech people, right? We deal with people who are afraid of computer stuff right our our relatives our parents are like oh i don't know how to get that to work i don't know why the printer's doing this and you realize that you know we know all the secret stuff and it's super intimidating to them anytime audio is a really weird technical um area and i mean some of that stuff really intimidates me i I'm still trying to get a lot better at it and learn a lot of stuff about EQ and compression and stuff like that. But

I just feel like to get a wider range of voices, you want to encourage people to try. And the technical jargon and barriers scares people. And that, that was really my only point. I, I think you should take pride in what you create. And I think that if somebody gets into podcasting and really loves it and has no budget, then when they started, then as they go, they're going to be like, Oh, how do I make this better? And they're going to work on that. But I don't think, you know, I think we need to be wary that we're creating a, you know, a bunch of people in white lab coats who are saying, sorry, you don't pass the test. You can't come in because that's that's the part that concerns me. And it's true. It actually one of the great things about this is like Dan Benjamin now recommends a like an $80 microphone as a starter microphone. And he recommends a different one from the Yeti and a different one

from the condenser, or from the dynamic. His is actually a condenser, which is a sign of a change in Dan's view of this, I would say, because he was always very negative about condensers when I would talk to him about it. But the fact that those microphones are down in price to like an $80 one and a $50 one, that's great. Because that means that one of the barriers here, which was you really can't buy a good microphone for less than 50 or $100 has changed. And that's great because now, yes, now you can buy a good microphone. That said, if you buy a good microphone and you don't have good microphone technique and you're in an echoey room, it's going to sound bad anyway. So there's so many different things about making podcasts

sound good. But my point is, if you really love it and you care about it, you should do it. room it's going to sound bad anyway so there's so many different things about making podcasts sound good um but my point is if you really love it and you care about it you should do it and then as you go you will learn how to make it better yeah that's my that's my thing and definitely uh the analog census post is worth looking at if you're interested in this subject because it's got links to all of the all of the stuff and i feel like sort of everybody was in violent agreement um everybody's got their own particular acts to grind here like you know marco armant is very much like uh uh look you can do good sound quality you should do good sound quality even on on the cheap you can you can make your podcast sound better and he's totally right i i don't i don't dispute that at all he's he's

absolutely right so i think it was all okay in the end, but, um, you know, I, I would, that was the thing that set me off was I feel like you get professional podcasters who are basically trying to close the doors and say, don't come in anybody else. You don't, you're not qualified to do this. And that drives me crazy because, um, you know, it's a little, you know, we all started this recently too, right? Even the people who've been doing podcasting the longest haven't been doing it that long. So maybe we should welcome other voices and not try to close them off artificially. So that was, that was my point. Should we talk about a friend now? now yeah let's do that what friend should we talk about now mike

jason why don't you tell me a little bit about mail route mail route all right i love these guys they are a friend mail route helps me with my mail every single day so mike i want you to picture we're going to do some visualization exercises here i want you to picture. We're going to do some visualization exercises here. I want you to picture a world without spam or viruses or bounced email. How lovely it is. Isn't that nice? Does that give you a warm feeling? This is such a nice place over here. Imagine opening your email and seeing only the legitimate email that you want and need to receive and not any other junk cluttering your inbox.

Oh, hello, legitimate email. Yes, exactly. Ahoy, email. Well, MailRoute can make this a daily reality and does for me. No more spam. Oh, hello, legitimate email. and sorts it itself and delivers only clean email to your inbox. Now, it's easy to set up. I set it up in a matter of, I think, 10 minutes. It's reliable. I've never had a problem with MailRoute in the year, year and a half I've been using it. Maybe two years now.

Wow. And it is trusted by the largest universities and corporations. If you're a regular old user, you'll find that the interface is super simple and effective. There's a great web interface. There's an email that they can send you with what got filtered out. One click to whitelist it, one click to deliver it. But I get so few false negatives that that email is more of a formality now than anything else. If you are an administrator or an IT professional thinking about using MailRoute for your organization, they've got all the tools for you. They've got an API for easy account management. They support LDAP, Active Directory,

TLS, mailbagging. I don't even know what mailbagging is. It terrifies me, but they support it. I'm so glad they do because I'm all about mailbagging. And well, actually, this is the next thing they support is going to be one of your favorites. They support outbound relay. That's a good good word everything you'd want from the people handling your mail if you are an admin or it professional but if you're a regular person like me works great too super simple web interface so remove spam from your life for good with mail route go to mailroute.net slash upgrade. Easy to remember. For a free trial and 10% off for the lifetime of your account. And thank you so much to MailRoute for sponsoring Upgrade and for filtering all the spam out of my email. Thanks, MailRoute. Seems like the perfect time of year to be thinking

about email spam because we're already getting so much email we don't want this time of year. So much. It's nice to know that there are people out there that can help you at least reduce some of that. So there you go. Yep. Thank you, MailRoute. Thank you. Being a friend to my inbox.

So we've been going a long time. I feel like maybe we should just jump to some listener q a before the show you you announced on twitter that we were running light on topics which ironically now we could have done two hours without this but we're going to push some topics to next week and instead we're going to enter the lightning round i wish i had a sound effect for you okay there we go we got one i'll do all the sound effects it seems seems like, Jason, there are lots of things that people want us to talk about. Indeed. And it's good because, you know, you were mentioning, like, when we talk about the podcast stuff, it is that time of year.

It is the quiet time of year. So maybe this is a time when we should fall back to what actually, funnily enough, what actually people want to hear us talk about, which is an interesting sentence. Whilst I was putting these together and I was using the official Twitter for Mac client to drag and drop the tweets so they embedded quite nicely in our Google Drive app, which was a tip I got from you, I did think to myself, is there a way, is there a better way to try and get these kind of questions coming through on a more regular basis i don't know so again another question for the audience i know some people use like subreddits and stuff like that which which i haven't uh looked into it's kind of scary yeah i'm not really a reddit user at all um it's it's something i've

never really gotten into i feel like i would probably lose all of my productivity being on reddit well that's a good piece of feedback for people out there what would be a good way for us to have a uh kind of like a flood of uh of topic suggestions on maybe the the morning that we're doing the the podcast is the is twitter the best way or is there some other way to generate you know a form we i mean we could do like a google form or something it's not that exciting though i don't know yeah exactly there are many i'm sure there are many options i'd like to see what people think it might be something that we've never heard of so the first the first question that we have these are all

is all via twitter so i will do my best to read uh twitter names this is at eda Ross, or E-D-A Ross. He's interested in, his question was selling your advertising space on sites and podcasts. So I guess we've both started doing this. It's not really a question. I guess let's talk about this. Also, by the way, one of the weaknesses of the Twitter app for Mac is that it brings across their username but not their actual name. So then I have to double check and sort of enter in that it's listener ed or whatever, which you didn't do. So we don't know who these people are, but that's okay. Selling your advertising space on your sites, podcasts. What do you want to say about that, Mike? So I think the interesting thing is how this has changed

for me and how like now I'm doing it on my own my own i mean when i was a part of five by five it was a very nebulous process like the ads arrived in the document uh in the calendar and then i went and found the ad scripts and i read them but the interesting thing about this stuff for me now is i'm doing a hundred percent of it so well not a hundred percent we do have the mid-roll help us as well with some of our stuff. But I do the vast majority, over three quarters, if not more, of the ad sales for RelayFM at the moment.

And it's an interesting process. There are parts of it that I do really enjoy. I do very much love the thrill of getting the sale. That is a great feel. To get off a call and you've just you know you've just put three months worth of sponsorships that's a nice feeling um but you know and and i also like

knowing exactly where the money is coming from and where the money is in the chain and then i can communicate that to you guys as well right um it's also interesting writing the ad copy myself, and I like that a lot. I like writing my own ad scripts or my own talking points because they're written by me for my voice, which I quite like. I don't take canned reads from advertisers as it stands at the moment because I like to be able to put them in my own voice because we go to companies that either I use or I believe in or I think are really interesting. So I want to say what I want to say about them. And that's why with the MailRoute ads, we have Jason do those ones because I don't use MailRoute, but you do. So it makes a lot more sense for that ad to come from you because you are a customer.

And we have a forthcoming sponsor that only works in the US. And so I'm going to do that ad too because you have no... I may quiz you again like we did with Thanksgiving. But that's really... I'm going to do that one because it makes sense. I can use that product and you can't. Exactly. And so, yeah, I like these sort of interesting different things

that I get to think about now, now that I do them myself. It does add a level of stress, but that stress is always there. And in a way, I'm more happy doing it myself because I have a control over the stress. Like, for example, we had some free months in December. A lot of bigger companies start to look at their budgets for next year. People want to talk about next year now rather than the next couple of weeks. So today I sent some emails to some smaller companies that we work with

and have been able to sell some spots on that. So it's like, okay, if I was just looking at that calendar, I would be getting a bit freaked out. But because I'm able to affect it, I just sent some emails out today. You know, I like that. I like that feeling. How about you? How are you finding the sponsorships on Six Colors?

I am, I'm not a fan of sales stuff because I come from this editorial background and I'm not a salesperson. I don't want to be a salesperson. Six Colors has been so far a sales success in that we sold out through all of 2014. Every week got sold. And every week got sold by people coming to me and saying, I would like to sponsor your site. That's a real tough sales challenge for me.

It's a pretty nice position to be in. I did have to set a rate. And I set a rate that I thought was optimistic and I managed to sell every week out by quoting that rate to people and mostly they paid it. I did a couple of bulk deals for people who bought multiple weeks. But in fact, that business 101,

I raised my rates because if I sold out at that rate, I should probably charge more. And I got good feedback from people. And so that's fine. But what I've said several times to people who've asked is, if it comes to the point where I really need to beat the bushes to get weekly sponsorships, I'm going to find somebody to sell the sponsorships for me because it's not worth it for me. I do not want to spend my time selling sponsorships. It's just not, I have other things I would like to do

with my life then, uh, and create more stuff and not sell sponsorships. So if it comes to that point, I'll do what I do for my other podcasts that are, um, that like the incomparable, which is I've got somebody, um, in that case, it has been Dan Benjamin and now it's going to be the mid-roll. Um, it was actually Dan and the mid-roll for a while, then it was just Dan and a little bit from Oasis Chuyon, and now it's going back to the mid-roll. And they just, they handle it, and I don't have to worry about it. And and we end up with uh you know an agreement to sponsor three or four weeks of six colors in 2015 that i don't um get that feeling of like yes you know afterward but it's not for me that is not my thing so um so that's i basically am relying on people coming to me and i love those people who are approaching me about six colors and saying we'd like to sponsor you.

And then otherwise, I have other people selling the ads for me. And that's fine. I hate sales. I've always hated sales. I used to be in a sales role for a while. But I really don't feel like I have to sell this very hard. All of the companies that I talk to, they're very much, we want to help support you. We love what you do.

That's not a hard sell. The hardest kind of thing that I have to do is, would you like to buy an extra week? Like that's kind of as hard as it gets. I don't know if we're just lucky at this stage or maybe I'm not charging enough. I'm very happy with the rates that we have right now i'm i'm uh if anybody cares i'm currently making more money than i've ever made i think that might make people happy to know that this is going very successfully for us uh and and i'm also not i'm not i'm not I'm sorry, Jason. I'll give you more.

And I'm not breaking my back over it either. That's good. I'm kind of happy with the way it's working. You're terrible at lightning rounds. Yeah, I know, right? Okay, lightning round. This is so lightning, you don't even really get to answer this one. This is from NBeethy.

I'm really going with the Twitter names. Not a tech topic. I'm interested in hearing what you think of the Star Wars teaser. I've never heard Mike talk about Star Wars. You're not allowed to answer this because you've already done that. That's the incomparable.com slash 222. An excellent

episode of The Incomparable with you and John Siracusa and Dan Morin as well. I really enjoyed, I said this to you privately, I enjoyed hearing John and Dan duel over Star Wars trivia. Like, I know more than you

know I know more than you. I know all about that. I know what that sound is. That may be the least I've ever spoken in an Incomparable episode because those guys are just, they're beside themselves about Star Wars. There's one specific argument about the origin of a sound effect, which I was so entertained by. But I'm very excited. I am, of course, a Star Wars fan.

I am not devout. I've seen all the movies. I like the correct ones. I've never seen the Des. I like the correct ones. I've never seen the Despecialized, for example. Because I've never hunted it down, and also when I grew up, there was no

Despecialized edition. Because I think... Well, I actually did first see it on VHS tape, but then kind of came into mind with DVD copies was when I saw Star Wars the most. I don't necessarily

like the prequels. I don't hate them in the same way that some people do, but I definitely don't like them. Does that make sense? I'm not like, I don't begrudge people watching them.

But I'm very excited about the new star wars stuff i am a big fan of jj abrams work i think the star trek uh series is fantastic um and i really enjoy those i love all his other stuff as well i'm very excited i think that the broadsword uh lightsaber is awesome i'm one of those people that look at that and I'm like, that's really interesting. I subscribe to the exhaust theory that you have. And I just think it looks really cool. I look at that and I'm like, well, maybe this is a

Sith who's kind of doesn't really know what he's doing and this is what he's stumbled upon because he's in a forest, right? I assume he's just been living in the forest for a while and he's built a lightsaber out of wood or something. And he's stumbled upon because he's in a forest, right? I assume he's just been living in the forest for a while. And he's built a lightsaber out of wood or something. And it's not working very well. Hermit.

So, yes, I'm very excited. And I love the fact now that Disney owns them because I love the thought of a Star Wars universe in the way that we have the Marvel universe. Yeah, I agree. Good one. Good one. And listen to The Incomparable 222 if you want to hear people talk for more than an hour about 80 seconds of

trailer. Jack Brewster and Aaron Isaacs would both like recommendations on comics to read in Marvel Unlimited because I think people are bringing this up because you just wrote a piece on Six Colors promoting the incredible sale. as as we record this

there's a 75 cent uh teaser sale for one month of marvel unlimited and you're signing up so that you know month two will be billed at 9.99 and it's there's a because there's a ten dollar a month tier and then you can also just buy a whole year for for 70 dollars um and i wrote last week i wrote a kind of gift guide post about Marvel Unlimited, which I wholeheartedly endorse as a service. Comics are expensive, new comics, especially, but even used, you know, not used old digital comics are still a couple dollars each. And Marvel Unlimited, if you like Marvel comics, it's access to just a huge number of, of Marvel

comics from their history and from the recent past, not the ones that are for sale this month, but like Netflix, it's stuff that's been out for a little while. And I can read one storyline in a day or over a weekend in Marvel Unlimited, and then I count how much money it would have cost to buy those issues, and it's like $50 easily. So I think if you read two story arcs or runs of something in the year that you paid $70 for it, you've saved money, honestly. And so it's changed my reading habits. I buy very, very few, some, but very few new Marvel comics now. And a lot of the other stuff that's going on, I'm like, eh, I'll read that in six months on unlimited um so best things to read were the sort of uh uh suggestions here um my standards i mean hawkeye is on there and the hawkeye comic is great if people haven't read that yet love that so much

that's great and the guys who did that a matt fraction and uh david aha or david aha or i can never he has some some of his his names are Spanish and some of them are in Spanish. Anyway, they did a comic with Ed Brubaker, who's a really good comics writer as well. They did a run on Iron Fist, I believe, was it Mortal Iron Fist? That is really great. And I'm not a, like Hawkeye, Iron Fist, not really an appreciated superhero in the Marvel Universe, but they did a great run of, I think, like 20 or 24 issues. That was really good. So I recommend that.

And I don't know. And this is all kind of happening awfully fast. So beyond that, I read the Infinity event. One of the things that Marvel Unlimited lets you do is they actually create little playlists of these events that span multiple books. So it can get really confusing about what the reading order should be. And I read their Infinity event from last year, which is mostly Avengers and New Avengers. And I really liked it. It was sort of a sci-fi event. It was more everybody against an oncoming cosmic enemy instead of, you know, supervillains versus heroes kind of usual. And so it was more of a sci-fi plot. And I'm not generally predisposed to like comic book

crossover events, but I felt like this one, it really was the same writer for all of it. It was really only in two different books that most of the story was being told. And I thought that was really good. And I read that over a over a weekend and again that was one of those things where that was probably 45 dollars worth of comics that i read and you know i i had already paid my annual fee so it was just free at that point so maybe check that out too i don't really have any um recommendations i've thumbs up in hawkeye love hawkeye hawkeye uh i haven't i kind of fell out of comics a bit just because of the expense um yeah yeah i mean that's one of the things i really like about this is being able to just sort of try things that i wouldn't you know they'd say oh we're

introducing this new comic i thought well that sort of sounds interesting but i'm not i'm not going to spend like i read avengers arena which is an interesting idea. It's like arcade kidnaps a bunch of young Avengers and puts them in murder world, essentially. And it's like the Hunger Games with superheroes. And they're trying to get out. Like the Hunger Games, they're trying to figure out, you know, do we have to play this game or not? How do we get out of here? And that was okay. That was, I kind of enjoyed reading it and i would never have

bought it when it came out i was like nope not interested at all but um as part of marvel to just try it out and see if i like it and then read through 10 issues really fast and say oh that was fun and move on um you know that that that's really dangerous when you have to buy every issue but it's not with marvel unlimited so that's one of the reasons that I like it a lot. Have you seen the movie Battle Royale? No, it's on my list. That's the Korean or Japanese movie. Yeah, well, it's all in Hunger Games.

This is the same premise, and it's all kind of combined together. I'll put in a plug for Ultimate Spider-Man. The original Brian Michael Bendis Ultimate Spider-Man going back, I mean, he's still writing it, but going back 10 years to when they started that with Ultimate Peter Parker. That's a great series. That's my favorite comic series of the last 10 or 15 years where they're retelling Spider-Man from the beginning and taking their time and doing it without the encumbrance of the existing kind of Marvel continuity. And there's like 150 issues of that. So if you haven't read that, I would go back and read that all with Marvel Unlimited.

It's great. How far back can you – sorry, how recent is what I'm looking for? How recent are the comics on Marvel Unlimited? I think the lag is like six to nine months. I would pay – I mean, I'm sure everybody would. I would pay more if they would just give me everything yeah but they just know they know they make a lot of money from people who are the hardcore comics fans who are buying you know it when it comes out at full price

and like with netflix you know i'm sure everybody would love net their netflix subscription to have every movie that's released on it right and the moment and the moment it's released on video but you couldn't make a service with that. So this is the balance of it. I found that that release window has gotten a lot closer. I think it used to be more like two years or a year and a half,

and now it feels more like it's six months. And I think they're using it as a, I think they see value in releasing more new comics because if you really get into it, then you reach the end of the unlimited line. And if you want to into it, then you reach the end of the unlimited line. And if you want to keep reading, you've got to go buy the issues. And I think they see that there's a marketing benefit to that.

Like if they want people in the new Ms. Marvel, one way they can do that is by releasing a few issues of the new Ms. Marvel. And then once you're into it, maybe you're going to go switch over and use the Marvel app or Comixology or something else to buy the current issues, which I think maybe some people do. So they've obviously made a calculation about it, but totally worth the $70 if you like Marvel Comics, because you could just read, that could be your, if you really like Marvel Comics, it could be your only purchase of comics for a whole year, and you would have plenty to read. You just have to not pay attention to websites that are

telling you about the latest whatever. You just got to just embrace being six months behind is comiXology completely ruined it's not completely ruined oh man we could do a whole show about this it's not completely ruined i actually talked to them at comic-con in san diego um i think they were caught by surprise by how quickly the Amazon thing happened. My problem, I mean, I don't love the fact that you can't buy comics in the Comixology app anymore, although you can in the DC and Marvel apps that are basically Comixology, but just for those publishers. Well, here's the thing. Those publishers can swallow the, they're not a middleman, right? That's a relationship where it's like the publishers

and Apple. And so they set a price and Apple takes their 15% or whatever it is. Or 30% or whatever it is. And that's okay. But Comixology, in their main app, they're the middleman. And they're making all of their money on

the markup from wholesale. And then Apple takes the percentage and there's nothing left for them or Amazon. And so it's different when it's the publisher, right? Because the publisher can just set the price and presumably they're compensating Comixology in some other way for that. So I think that's the difference there.

Maybe Comixology still makes the same cut, but it doesn't matter so much to Marvel at that point because there's still more money for them i don't know i don't know yeah it it may be but it's when it's direct it's it's different anyway so i don't think it's totally ruined but um i i am paying i'm buying fewer comics on comiXology i i tend to buy all my comiXology stuff through the web anyway honestly because I always thought that the Apple in-app purchase thing was kind of hinky. I always felt like, why am I getting Apple involved in this transaction at all? And so I would often go on the web and just sort of look at the big, on my Mac, and look at the big images and then click on a bunch of things and add them to my cart and buy them. And then later I would just go to my iPad and read them. The problem is not just that they've actually

improved the iPad web experience for Comixology a lot because they know people can't buy on the iPad app. The problem is that the app itself has not been redesigned to reflect reality. The app is essentially the old app with some stuff ripped out of it. And they need to do a much better job of saying, you know, hey, you just bought some comics on the web. Here they are. And right now there's like there's a tab with a recently purchased menu item. And then you can see what you just bought. And that part needs to be much better.

And they know it. And hopefully they'll do a software release that improves it. Because that's, I think, the Comixology experience, although it's never going to be as good as it was when you could buy in the app, could be way better than it is now. If the app was redesigned to accept the fact that you're not buying the comics there. And you're buying them elsewhere. And then they need to show them to you once you arrive. So they'll get there eventually. But it's too too bad it's a sad thing for this year let's take a moment to thank our final friend for this week's episode and that is dash dash is a super cool website that lets you quickly create real-time custom dashboards these dashboards

allow you to get a visual overview of data that is important for your website business or even your life dash allows you to pull in data from a variety of different sources around the web. There are dozens of pre-built widgets for services like Twitter, Chartbeat, Pingdom, Google Analytics, GitHub, and many more. And you're also able to display your own custom data in Dash as well. They have an API that allows you to share data from Dropbox or all around the web and create your own custom widgets. So the pricing model for Dash is a lot like GitHub. Everyone gets unlimited public dashboards so that you can share live data with the Dash community. But if you upgrade to their pro account for $10 a month, you'll also get unlimited private dashboards too.

These are just for you to see. Now to give you an idea of how these could work, you could have a public dashboard which is focused around your favorite sports team. So you could have the sports team's Twitter account in there. You could have Google News stuff and you could have some of the recent things that are going on. And you could have some imagery of like the logo, maybe the current jersey or something for the team. You could have some imagery in there as well because you can add little images in to help personalize your Dash experience. Or maybe you want a private dashboard that focuses on your own stuff. So you could have information from your Why Things scale. You can have that pulled right in. You could have your own Twitter account there as well. You could have an

Instagram feed so you can see what's happening in Instagram and maybe some analytics from your own personal website as well. However, Dash is currently running an awesome limited time promotion for you guys. If you sign up for a free account today at thedash.com, you'll also get one private dashboard in addition to your free accounts and limited public dashboards. There's no credit card required and you'll keep your private dashboard for free forever. This is a fantastic offer that you should definitely be taking advantage of. There's nothing to lose. So go sign up right now at thedash.com. Thank you so much to Dash for supporting us

at RelayFM. We love you very much. Don't go to dash.com. That's a detergent. Thedash.com. You could go there as well, but they don't help. So go to thedash.com. Unless you have dirty clothes. So I've done a terrible job of this lightning round.

And we're about three questions into our 100 questions. So we're speeding it up. Should we do a few more? Yeah, super lightning. Okay, I have nothing to say on this one. So Tiger Matt would like to know Jason's thoughts on tech in sports and how baseball in particular is handling the future, like replay. All right.

I think Major League Baseball in the United States, obviously, is doing a great job with technology. They actually set up a company called Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which most of the streaming sports video that you have live streaming sports video in the U.S. of the streaming sports video that you have live streaming sports video in the U.S. and actually maybe in the world is run out of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, even other sports. ESPN, their streaming stack is Major League Baseball Advanced Media. It's actually a really cool story about a cool tech startup. The instant replay stuff, I believe, is all leveraged from Major League Baseball Advanced Media's digital media center in New York City, which I went to a few years ago. It was really cool. And they have this insane server farm across the street from their office. And I had that moment of like, is it really economical

to have all these servers here in Manhattan? I mean, surely there's better space somewhere else, but no, they're in like Chelsea. Anyway, I'm very impressed with their technology and I think they do a really good job. There are always issues. There are lots of issues with rights for, you know, cable and satellite TV companies spend a lot of money to save themselves from cord cutters by getting exclusive rights, which is why you can't sort of stream your home team. which is why you can't sort of stream your home team um i i i would like i'm a i'm a robot umps uh and robot uh officials in general fan and i know a lot of purists don't like that i love i love the game but i'm a uh i'm a stats guy i'm a stats guy for all of this i love how a math and analytics and uh intelligent viewing of sports changes how we view, like I love the New York Times fourth down bot for

American football, which has analyzed the probabilities of going for it on fourth down and realizes that coaches are way too conservative and they're actually losing themselves games by not trying, by not gambling. They're afraid to take a risk and so they never take a risk. And as a result, they actually are worse off, which i'm fascinated by psychologically and also just from a competitive standpoint i think it's interesting that to your saving face by doing worse um and then major league baseball the same way i love i love um all the sabermetric stuff and how we think differently about who good players are now that we have a better idea of um uh of what really impacts the game although i think we we still haven't cracked it uh there's a guy named ken arneson i'll put his uh

post in the show notes who wrote a great piece saying that um uh that he thinks we're still missing some of the core um concepts of um how how baseball works because we're not the the sabermetric stuff can't measure these thought chains about like the pitcher trying to fool the hitter that are actually at the core of the game so I love that stuff I and again this is not very lightning the last thing I'll say is I think that now that we have computers and cameras that are mounted in all the major league stadiums that can tell where a baseball crosses home plate, that umpires need to stop calling balls and strikes and they should give umpires a little clicker that tells them whether it's a ball or a strike. And we should remove that human elephant element from the game.

Not human elephant. That's something totally different. Because the computers know and getting it right is important. And you can keep the flavor without, I think, ruining the game, and you'll get things more right and be more consistent. I think that's a good thing. So that is my sports dump. Did you understand a word of that? We're still getting up to speed with Thanksgiving, Mike.

I don't want to confuse you too much with sports and american sports no less which is terrifying i have literally no idea what you yeah do you do you care about sport sport at all no um okay so it's even worse it's twice removed yeah this is american sport and sport i can't even put that information into like football or cricket you know know, I literally have no idea. I know that like I hear people explain some of the technology that is lacking from football, and I don't understand it. Like, for example, there are no sensors on the goal lines to see if something goes in. Right, and you should be able to do that.

And the technology exists now, and the fans will demand it eventually. You end up having so many uh decisions that are are i mean this happened in the world series this year and in baseball in general this year that um there were um they now have instant replay and the fact is they get the calls right and it used to be umpire would make a call or and um or a football referee would make a call and you would immediately see the instant replay and say oh they got it wrong and that was it you just had to be angry that they got it wrong and now when you see they got it wrong you say oh well that'll be overturned they they'll get it right i feel like yeah this might be an unpopular

thought but from my perspective considering it is legal to put money on these things there shouldn't be allowed to be a margin for error by a referee's decision like i i agree with you i people talk a lot about the human element and i think a lot of times not the human elephant and they're talking about how oh well you know part of the storytelling is that you get mad because there was a bad call and you lost the game it's like you know what's a better story that everybody got it right and the team that won won because they deserved it that's a better story that's a the human element uh as code for sometimes people make terrible decisions and we all have to live with it it's like what the hell kind of crazy human element is that so i think getting it right is probably what the priority should be and i and again if you destroy all of the atmosphere and

excitement of the of the game by getting it right you're doing it wrong but i think i think that there's a long way to go between getting it right and destroying the game. And people who are opposed to getting it right always talk about destroying the game. But I think, again, having some cameras and sensors in a goal to verify that that goal happened, probably worth it. Probably worth it. People would probably rather get it right than get it wrong. So Seth K. Jolly is very confused, Jason, about whether he should be buying a Chrome stick, a Fire TV stick, a Roku, an Apple TV. He doesn't know what to do.

This will be a short one. I have a Fire Stick now. I tried it out a little bit. It's nice. What all of these point out is that Apple's interface is really kind of old and out of date and the Apple TV needs a major upgrade

and I'm not quite sure what they're waiting for. I would never buy an Apple TV right now because I feel like it's at the end of its lifespan and there'll be something else, a new Apple TV that will be better. There better be because this other stuff, the only thing the Apple TV has going forward right now is that it's connected to Apple's ecosystem. The Fire Stick is fun and it's really small, which I really like. And a lot of TVs have USB

ports, so you can power it via the USB port on the TV and it's basically invisible at that point and it's got a little Bluetooth remote so it's cute I have only used the Chromecast briefly it's fine I prefer I prefer one of these devices to have a remote control and not an app remote because I think app remotes stink I don't like and I have a Roku and the Roku is nice too I don't like the idea that you're going to control a device with your phone all the time because I don't always have my phone with me when I'm watching TV. And I certainly don't have my phone in my hand, unlocked, ready to control it and look on the touchscreen to see what I need to tap in order to get it right. I hate that. So I like the fact that the Amazon Fire Stick

comes with a remote that is itself much larger than the product. So they're fun and they're cheap. I mean, I bought the Fire Stick because it was 20 bucks and I thought, what the heck? I can try it out and maybe write about it at some point. But all of these products are good, but have limitations.

And I mean, that's really all I can say is they all they all try to tie you into an ecosystem of some sort or other and depending on what ecosystem you have files in that's going to affect your decision we have a couple of questions about headphones headphones at cf318 and at underscore joe donnell are interested in the headphones we use both what are the fun headphones we use for music what do we use on the desk how do they differ and i guess i would also throw in professional what do you use for your podcasting so So Jason, what headphones do you use? I have a pair of Ultimate Ears in-ear monitors that I use at my desk that used to be my headphones that I wore everywhere, but they've got replaceable cables, which is good because the cables go bad eventually. And they've run, they don't, they no longer make cables for these headphones

and I've run out of the iPhone version. That's got the clicker and the microphone. So now all I have are regular headphone cables. So now they just stay at my desk. So those are what are in my ears now. And they are, um, they're standard in-ear monitors. Um, they're like the UE fours. I think, um, they're really good. They're the best headphones I've ever owned. And I'm an in-ear headphone guy. So I'm like the, when Marco Arment reviews headphones and says, stop telling me about in-ear headphones, I can't wear them. I'm that guy who can. And I actually have silicone custom ear tips that I had made a few years ago. So that's really cool because they're molded to fit my ears. So

they don't just stick in with a little like foam earbud that sticks in your ear. I've got these silicone things that are the exact shape of my ear canal. So when they go in, the seal is solid and it isolates me from outside sound, sometimes laughably so, but it makes them sound that much better because there's no sound interference. And then separately, for when I'm walking around, I've got a pair of an Emotic in-ear ones that come with the little iPhone clicker on them. And that same mold that I used for the custom tips for here, that company, which is, I want to say say ecs i think um that makes those custom ear tips um uh i just called them up and said do you still have my mold because they do a 3d scan so there's

it's just a file and i said can you make me a pair that work on the edemotic headphones and they're like sure that'll be i don't know what 75 bucks or something like that and so i have the custom i have custom uh silicone ear tips on those edemotics that I use when I'm walking around. Very fancy. Thought I'm an in-ear guy. Once you go, for me, it's like once I went in-ear, I would never go back. They're super comfortable and they sound great. And I totally appreciate how other people can't wear them because especially when I went to went to arizona to visit my mom i forgot my headphones and i had to buy a pair of headphones and i bought in ears but with just little like

you know generic tips on them and boy wearing those for an hour my ears were really unhappy with me but when you get the customs done which aren't cheap the custom old cost like 150 bucks or something like that but boy they sound good and they and they feel good. Yeah, I can't do in-ears. They make my ears really hurt. And one of my ears, I think my left ear, just doesn't stay in. I don't know why. When I'm out and about, I just use earpods.

They're fine. They're fine. I mainly listen to podcasts rather than music. I do listen to music with them, but I'm not on audio file. I listen to streaming music services. Like the quality is not massively important to me. Obviously, I want good quality, but I'm not, you know, I'm not crying about it. When I'm traveling, I do have some Bose headphones.

I do have some Bose headphones. I can't remember what ones I have, but I will make sure that they go into the show notes. And I just use those because when I'm on a plane, I like to have headphones that go all the way over the ear. But I don't like noise cancelling either. It makes me feel sick. I don't like noise cancelling either. It makes me feel sick. I don't know why.

Oh, I have the Bose QuietComfort QC15. No, I don't. I have a different model. I looked at the picture and realised that they're not the ones that I have. Because I read in an airport, I think I was on my way to San Francisco uh I bought up one of Marco's reviews uh and went through that and picked a pair um but now I can't I can't find them but I will find them don't worry they're like the sort of the smaller ones. Anyway I

yeah I pasted in the chat room what I think of as the first time I ever saw who you were which if you can look at that picture I put it in the show notes as well Thanks. This is some guy

sort of singing into a microphone holding on to headphones and i thought who is that guy that was you that was me so those headphones those are like sony like studio yeah they are the the sony hdr 7506 yeah they are widely considered to be um the best for spoken audio. Whenever you see pictures or video of people in studios, they are pretty much all wearing these. I think I said it wrong. It's the MDR-7506. Yeah, that's what we had

in the podcast room at Macworld was those. So those look very familiar. I'm on to my second pair because my first pair i used so much that like the black on the cushion started fading away uh i can't recommend this enough they are i wear these headphones sometimes for like eight hours a day and they are incredibly comfortable and they sound fantastic so uh big So I'm a big fan. Yeah, I think that's it for me on headphones.

All right. Now, I think we will maybe go into a couple of very quick questions, actually. Crumpy wants to know that now my commute is shorter, will I have bought the 6 Plus? The answer is yes, because I love it. Obviously, I can't speak for an alternate timeline me, but even now I would still buy the 6 Plus. I would still get this form factor because it's

something I really like. No regrets at all. N. Kremens is interested, Jason, in the... More Nerf Brain Ball. More Nerf Brain Ball! I was going to gloss over that part. No! Okay, what would you like to say about the Nerf Brain Ball today?

We got multiple requests for the Nerf Brain Ball today? We got multiple requests for more Nerf Brain Ball. I'm holding it now. I enjoy the Nerf Brain Ball. I have no new Nerf Brain Ball news other than to suggest that at some point it would be really great if we could find a way to get a Nerf Brain Ball to Mike or an equivalent as well as some Manchego. if we could find a way to get a Nerf brain ball to Mike and, um, or,

or, or an equivalent as well as some manchego. We should, we should work on that. Come on people help me out here. Um, and I have had a few people send me pictures of other like foam brains or brain props.

Um, most of which really are disturbing, but keep sending them. That's my brain ball update. Um, uh, are disturbing but keep sending them that's my brain ball update um he also mentioned the uh top shelf episode which is i think the verge do they did a great uh episode of top shelf about podcasts which you should this you should watch uh i enjoyed it a lot um but i think the main thing that he wanted uh you to talk, I'm going to put this on you your opinion on

the App Store Red notification I'll put some links in the show notes if you don't know what they are, those show notes by the way can be found at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 12 I don't have a lot, I mean so App Store sent out a notification yesterday

saying buy great apps and the money goes to Red. So it goes to fight AIDS. And the fact I guess what I would say is some people got upset about this. I guess I would say these things have been going on for a while. This is sending notifications out for sales and for other things that are against the App Store rules has been a thing that's been happening forever. And I think it's dumb that this is a rule if it's not going to be enforced. And I think it's extra dumb that Apple is breaking it, but it's also doing it for a good cause. And if it's a rule that's

not being enforced anyway, then for Apple to break it with a tasteful message for a good cause as a part of their App Store Red promotion seems to be about as gentle a way to break that rule as possible. So I understand the frustration of developers that the App Store rules aren't being followed and aren't being enforced. And maybe Apple should look at that. But it's hard for me to get particularly angry about this. If this was the only time, if apps had been pulled from the store and nobody had ever, ever sent a notification that violated those rules at all, and then this was the first time, even then I would probably be like, eh, you know, it's for a good cause. It's fine. It's hard for me to get worked up. I understand that a developer who has to go back and

forth with Apple about App Store rules would be mad when Apple's own apps violate some of the rules. I understand that, but, you know, it's hard for me to get particularly upset about it. App Store rules should be clearer, and I think it's great that Apple was so

involved in the Red project this year so you know shrug it's pretty pretty much how i feel like yeah it sucks that they sent out a notification but they did it for a good thing and also i mean the only reason it sucks because of the rule if the rule isn't there it wouldn't even matter so maybe i should just get rid of the rule in the first place but whatever but i do think that um it should you know if you can overlook it you should overlook it because it was kind of for a good reason and we have time for one more comment which i promise will be very quick this

is from jim and tonic and he says i'm flying tomorrow for work what are your preferred technologies for air travel and or travel altogether? And I'm going to keep this simple. Airplanes. Airplanes are my preferred technology for air travel. Zeppelins would be a second. But airplanes are, I generally go with airplanes for air travel. Thanks for writing in, Jim.

I'm not 100% sure if that's what he was getting at. I don't know. I don't know what else he could mean. Whilst I agree with Jason, I also like airplanes. I think a couple of things for me that I would suggest. I use Evernote to keep all of my travel documents in. I use an app called Flight Track 5 or something. Oh, yeah, Flight Track. I use an app called Flight Track 5 or something

I'll put that in the show notes just as a good way to track my flying planes I don't know what else to say I have Passbook now I use Passbook or the Photos app sometimes

if it's a here's your barcode on a web page. I'll take a screenshot of it so I make sure that I don't have to load the web page when I get to the airport. I'm a big fan of Passbook when I'm traveling, when it works, when the airline allows you to use it. Makes me very happy, Jason. And these in-ear headphones that I mentioned earlier, those are great on an airplane. Yes. Those are great on an airplane. They just block out the airplane sound. You should

100% be using a set of in-ear or any kind of over-ear. Just good headphones when you're on a plane I think is quite important. And it's why I have my unidentified Bose headphones for that. Anyway, Jim, I hope you're flying on a jet airplane tomorrow

because that's the best. Good luck. Good luck. I once flew on a propeller airplane and I was very scared by the whole situation. Well, my dad actually had a plane for a little while, a propeller plane. And man, well, that demystifies a lot of flying when you realize

that i don't know how my mother allowed him to spend any money on on something like that and then eventually he sold it but he was a private pilot and he flew to little tiny airports in this little tiny airplane and it was uh uh kind of scary but then we did we took a commercial uh flight that was a prop plane in florida once I was like, what have we gotten ourselves into? It was a very slow flight. Very slow. Scary. Okie dokie. We haven't even gotten to all of our questions but we'll save some for next time.

It's too late. If you'd like to find this show in a Citiz Weeks episode, you want to point your web browser of choice at relay.fm slash upgrades slash 12. My name is Mike Curley. I'm at I'm Ike on Twitter. I am YKE. And my illustrious co-host,

Mr. Jason Snell, is at jsnell on Twitter. That's J-S-N-E double L. And he writes at thefantastic6colors.com We'll be back next time with another episode of Upgrade. Thanks again to our friends Hover, Dash, and MailRoute.

Until then, goodbye. Goodbye.