My new favourite iPhone app: Instacast

I love podcasts. I listen to a lot of podcasts. And almost exclusively, I use my iPhone to listen to podcasts.

But heres’s the thing: subscribing to and downloading new podcasts to my iPhone is fiddly. Syncing with iTunes on my Mac is fiddly. Downloading new episodes a-la-carte via the iTunes app on iOS is fiddly.

Which is why I was absolutely delighted to learn about Instacast. It’s a standalone podcast downloader and player for iOS, and it’s exactly what the iPhone’s built-in should have been. I wish I’d known about it sooner. Here’s a video:

Introduction to Instacast from Vemedio on Vimeo.

If you listen to or download podcasts regularly, and aren’t satisfied with iTunes, Instacast is well worth the $1.99 asking price.

Reminder: The In-Between Stuff Matters

Christopher Schanck compares his iPhone to his Droid X, and in doing so, highlights the interface paradigm introduced by the Android back button:

You know how every Twitter app on the iPhone has its own built in browser? And how each embedded browser works almost, but not quite like, all the other embedded browsers? With each embedded browser having different buttons, different scaling strategies, different rules for rotation? All of this exists to prevent you from having to leave your Twitter app and go to Safari, which would render the link properly. Going from TweetDeck to Safari is a big deal. After you switch to Safari, when you are done reading the link, looking at the picture, whatever, then you are stuck at a precipice — you want to go back to TweetDeck right where you left off. How do you do that? Home. Restart TweetDeck. Hope it is written such that you pick of where you left off. But traversing through the Home key and the Springboard is incredibly interruptive. Indeed, leaving TweetDeck or any other app in order to go to Safari feels like a huge step on the iPhone.

Contrast that with the Android Way: just click on the link, and whatever app you set as the default handler for that action springs open. Noise around, read it, whatever. Then just hit the back button and you are right where you left off. No barrier. It truly blurs the line between applications.

I know I’ve linked to it before, but it’s really worth repeating: The In-Between Stuff Matters.

How to get Skype on your iPhone in Canada

So here’s the thing: Skype launched its free iPhone app today in every single iTunes store except Canada.

So what if you live in Canada and want Skype? No problem. Here’s what to do:

1. Sign up for a US iTunes account using these instructions (no credit card required)
2. Log out of your Canadian iTunes account, and into your new US iTunes account (instructions)
3. Sync your iPhone
4. Download and install Skype from the App Store app on the iPhone

That’s it. Enjoy!

This way to freedom

I like the underlying tension of my new iPhone wallpaper. Steve Jobs’s smooth, shiny slider beckons me to head right, to unlock the phone and start fiddling around on the internet. But at the same time, crudely painted Bain Avenue graffiti suggests I should put the phone back in my pocket and continue to live in the real world.