Tag: google

  • YouTube and Podcasts

    YouTube and Podcasts

    Introduction Earlier this week, Google announced that their Google Podcasts app will be discontinued in 2024. They are instead pointing listeners to YouTube Music: “Looking forward to 2024, we’ll be increasing our investment in the podcast experience on YouTube Music — making it a better overall destination for fans and podcasters alike.” To facilitate this…

  • Flixster Transition to Google Play

    Flixster Transition to Google Play

    A few weeks back I noted that Flixster would be closing soon and had written to me to say that my film collection would transition to Google Play. Well last week, that time finally came to pass. The Flixster website is shutting down in December, and I’d need to migrate my digital collection to Google.…

  • Powerbeats Pro Review: with an Android Phone

    Powerbeats Pro Review: with an Android Phone

    TL;DR Excellent sounding and superb fit; but some significant connectivity and synchronisation issues alongside an atrocious case. I’ve been using these new headphones for a couple of months or so now, and think that I’ve used them enough to put together some sort of review about them. The first thing to say is that the…

  • RIP Flixster

    RIP Flixster

    At the start of this year I noted that buying a digital movie or TV series in the UK was an absolute mess. You can buy movies or TV series from a number of sites including: iTunes, Google Play Movies, Amazon, Sky Store and Rakuten. But if you buy something in one of those places,…

  • Digital Movie Libraries in the UK

    Buying a digital movie or TV series in the UK is an utter mess. You can buy movies or TV series from a number of sites including: iTunes, Google Play Movies, Amazon, Sky Store and Rakuten. But if you buy something in one of those places, you can only watch it via that company’s app…

  • The Dark Ages of Film History?

    I was recently talking to a some colleagues at work about one of my favourite films of all time, the classic Howard Hawks screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby. Made in 1938, it stars two of Hollywood’s biggest ever stars, Kathryn Hepburn and Cary Grant, both giving terrific performances in a classic of the genre. How…

  • Google Podcasts

    Without an enormous amount of fanfare, Google yesterday launched Google Podcasts for Android yesterday, with the possibility of being game changing. I’ve long argued that for the Android/iOS podcasting gap to be closed, Google needed to get involved and create a generic app. Apple Podcasts is a pre-installed app on every iPhone sold, and with…

  • Gaming Google

    It’s widely understood that news organisations can find the going quite precarious in this digital age, with a reluctance on the part of consumers to pay for news, and advertising alone not bringing in enough revenues. So it’s perhaps not surprising that they should look at whatever advantages they can take, and some of these…

  • Examining My Facebook Downloads

    One very good consequence of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica story is that a lot of people are discovering the surprisingly large amount of data that Facebook holds on them. The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones was “somewhat shocked” to see what it had on him. And The Verge has a good piece on the subject with particular reference…

  • Google and Podcasts – Stuck in Draft #3

    This is another of my Stuck in Drafts series – where I dig into things I had largely written months or even years ago – and get around to publishing them. This one is a little unusual in that it was penned back in April 2016, and I’ve left it alone. However, I’ve added some…

  • Pixel 2 – Review

    Note: I’m calling this a review, but frankly, it’s still early days, and there’ll be lots of things that come out in the wash further down the line. So think of these more as some initial thoughts. Not that any of this stuff prevents other sites posting reviews after less than a week’s worth of…