10 Of The Best Podcasting Apps

Sarah Dobbs finds all the apps and programs you need for everything podcast-related

It’s hard to pinpoint the moment when podcasts went from being a niche interest to a standard part of the media landscape. Was it when President Bush’s radio broadcasts got an online feed in 2005? When Ricky Gervais launched The Ricky Gervais Show in 2006? When Kevin Smith launched his SModcast in 2007? It might even have been as recently as 2014, when Sarah Koenig’s Serial became the new thing you had to keep up to date with in order to keep up with the conversation in the pub.

Pre-Built Vs Self-Made

Mark Pickavance discusses the various merits of buying a PC either in bits or pre-assembled

I’m come clean up front and admit that, with the obvious exception of laptop systems, I’ve built all my computers from scratch. My reasons for doing that are numerous, but given the job I’ve got, it would seem to fly in the face of logic to buy them pre-made, with all the parts in them chosen by someone else.

If I had to put a number on it, I’ve probably built somewhere between 50 and 100 machines, so I’ve got the exercise down to a fine art that I can complete rapidly and with a high degree of success.

TP-Link Archer VR900

A fast Wi-Fi router for ADSL lines

A couple of years ago, the prevailing Wi-Fi standard moved on from 802.11n to 802.11ac. It’s theoretically faster, uses the less crowded 5GHz band, and has better range, so you should get decent reception over a wider area. Meanwhile, the ADSL broadband connections available over the phone lines to our homes moved up to VDSL, allowing internet service providers (ISPs) to run fast fibre-optic cables to the cabinet in the street and just use the copper wires for the last few yards.

Remembering… Sierra On-Line games

We recall a ground-breaking, but often risqué developer from the early PC

Hands up those of you old enough to remember King’s Quest? What about Space Quest? Or the Leisure Suit Larry games? These three game series for the early PC are some of the most iconic. Show a screenshot to anyone who’s 40 years old or more, and they’ll be able to tell you the difference between Police Quest and Space Quest, and how rubbing berries on yourself is a good thing to avoid being eaten by a swamp monster.

Eva – The real video social network

Social networking is everywhere these days, and here’s one to look into

Social media is big. Mind bogglingly big. In fact it’s estimated that over two billion people currently use some form of social media. That’s at least one in every four of us worldwide. And it’s growing too, at a rate of around two to three hundred million users per year.

We now have the ability to share virtually every aspect of our lives as an image, video or just a string of text. Whether sharing all of it is a good thing or not is up to you to decide, but you can’t knock the potential for bringing friends and family together and sharing life’s experiences at the instant they happen.

It’s little wonder that UK developer Forbidden Technologies has released the latest in social media networks.