I previously wrote about the new feature in Apple Podcasts that auto-generates transcripts, with mixed feelings about it. A great improvement, and a step forward for accessability, obviously, but the accuracy and layout of it weren’t exactly what I would have gone for. I said at the time: As a creator, that’s all you actually have to do, read it and check it. You can opt out and provide your own transcripts if preferred, but this would at least be a great starting place to save some time. It’s not perfect, as you’d imagine, being a first release and relying on computer-generated text-to-speech that is so much better than it used to be but still has room for improvement. Because it is just transcribing the words, there is no differentiation between speakers, whereas I used to create my transcripts more like a script.

This website, mrschristine.com, has been hosted on a static site generator for just over three years and it’s been a fantastic step forward for me. At the time of the big switchover, I wrote about the pros and cons of moving away from Wordpress and it’s fair to say since then the pros keep getting better and better but the cons haven’t necessarily gone away.

There’s something brilliantly wonderful and overwhelming about diving into a subject you don’t really know a lot about. I’ve done this a few times: with films, with music and most recently with sport – getting fully involved with tennis, and this month, jumping feet first into Formula E with a new podcast and everything. At first, it seems totally overwhelming. There’s so much you don’t know, an entire history that you’ve missed out on (not so much with Formula E, being just a baby motorsport series), and so many connections you’re going to miss. What you have to do is push that to one side, ignore all the voices telling you it’s too big a subject, it’s too late, you might as well just watch re-runs of The Big Bang Theory instead.

One of our favourite things to do on Sidepodcast is look back at the stupid things we said a year, two years or more ago. Because you can’t search an mp3, that often means scrabbling for what is in the show notes, or better yet, looking back at the transcript for our word for word conversation. Transcribing is a lengthy process, however, and when it comes down to it, we don’t have time to record podcasts at the moment let alone sit down and write them out in prose.

We’ve recently invested some time and energy in using Flipboard to share posts, pictures and shows from Sidepodcast, which meant having to learn to use the crazy thing. Primarily an app, Flipboard allows you to browse through content from Twitter, sites and various web locations in a gorgeous looking magazine style. There’s absolutely no doubting that it’s a good way to peruse content. I found it quite hard to get my head around though. From the app, you have to find the content via some kind of stream that is already in there - ie, a Twitter account or someone else’s magazine. I couldn’t see there was an easy way to add content without navigating through many circles of hell.

I’ve always managed to get a lot of use out of my iPad. There are two main dilemmas around Apple’s tablet device (aside from price, etc) with one being “What would I use it for?” and the other being “It’s only good for consuming, not creating.” My iPad has always been kept busy, but I would admit that it’s mostly for consumption. Watching TV, videos, listening to music, browsing the web, playing games, the usual kind of thing. I upgraded to the new iPad Air, and wanted to try it out and see how much of my day to day desktop activities it could replace.

During some recent summer community fun over on Sidepodcast, the challenge arose to bake something F1 related. Given the wealth of choice of recipes available to me, and a limited amount of time, I went for something I’ve already made in the hopes I could do it better. A long while back, I baked an F1Minute cake, to celebrate a podcasting anniversary. It went down very well, although it was my first attempt at icing something and I went a little over the top in terms of thickness.

It’s been a while since I took one full week off work, but that’s what I did this past week, and boy did I pack in the activities! Wednesday and Thursday last week, Mr C and I went to Silverstone to watch some F1 cars while they were testing. We shared photos along the way via Twitter, and then gathered everything up at the end of the day in a dedicated post on Sidepodcast. Here are links to those posts, because I really like how creative we got with the photos and think it’s worth sharing - if you haven’t seen it already.

I’ve been joyously listening to the new podcast from Molly Wood and Tom Merritt, called It’s a Thing. They were so good together on Buzz Out Loud and it was a shame when they went their separate ways, but onwards and upwards, the glorious duo are back together! This time, it’s not specifically technology topics, they just talk about whatever they deem to be an up and coming trend, or thing!

It’s no secret that I like whiteboards. I used to scrawl on one during live shows of Sidepodcast, and I was quick to nab one going spare at work. The trouble is, wherever I go, there seems to be a fundamental inability to stick things on walls. Whether it is because I am in rented accommodation, or because my desk is not near a wall, these small boards are always precariously leaning and almost impossible to write upon.

The second book of the 365 F1 Stories series was published over the weekend, and you can find more about it on the books page. It’s been quite the process getting these two books into being, and it’s not over yet. There are more things to do with those two, and more ideas in my head for further exploration. I hope to blog more about the process when I am able to think straight again.

I’ve been catching up with some episodes of The 404 and they mentioned this relatively new website that lets you create a social environment for listening to music. Outloud.fm allows you to create a chatroom with the added bonus of anyone invited able to upload music to a collaborative playlist. The queue of music then plays out for everyone at the same time. I love this concept. I’m no music afficionado. I like what I like and that’s pretty much the end of it. However, Mr C and I have been known to have the odd Friday night conversation about music, the kind that starts with Glastonbury and ends with the knowledge that Sergeant Wilson was the father of one of the Wombles.

Twitter is a strange beast, isn’t it? Everyone uses it differently. For some, it is a means of promoting their work. For others, it is a place to follow comedians and laugh at jokes. Some use it as a replacement RSS feed, following those streams that are simple “new blog post” updates. Others use it as a way of keeping in touch with the family. A handful of people follow only celebrities. Some follow and don’t type, others type and don’t follow.

Over on Sidepodcast, we quite regularly live blog the practice, qualifying and race sessions, in something we have called the Factbyte Factbox. Essentially, I gather all the information I can from the screen, from Twitter and from other sources, and keep everyone updated, in what I hope is both an amusing and useful style. Now that the off-season has begun, we are looking for more ways to use the Factbyte Factbox. Firstly, because I am officially addicted to doing it. Secondly, because we need to keep on testing bits and pieces behind the scenes. Finally, because it is useful to see how easy and/or difficult it is to adapt the FBFB to other formats.

That’s wicked in a bad sense. A while back, we had some issues with our Sidepodcast wiki. It was hosted on Wetpaint, and… well, it basically didn’t work for a lot of people. There were intrusive ads that could be removed for a reasonable (!) $20 a month, and there were a lot of virus warnings floating around as well. It was time to move, and Wikia seemed like the best bet. A very popular wiki-host, with a look and feel that was very much like what you would expect from a wiki. There were some limitations, but equally plenty of benefits, and I decided to take the plunge, and put in a lot of hours moving everything across.

We have done the community film watch thing over on Sidepodcast, all gathered together to live comment a movie - ensuring we all hit start at the same time. I’ve seen many people tweeting their way through TV shows and movies. It seems as though sharing the experience with someone else is becoming ever more popular - even if you are on opposite sides of the globe. So here is a website I would like, if I had the millions to pay off the movie industry, and hire engineers to build it: filmwatchlive.com.

I was talking to my mother today about the fact that both Rob and Felipe both now know about the Felipe Baby song and how I really am quite embarrassed about the whole thing. (If you don’t know about the Felipe Baby song, it’s not really important to the story.) This conversation followed: Me: I’m flattered, obviously, but it’s really embarrassing. Mum: Yea, but imagine if there were people doing that all the time. If you were famous, and there were photographers camped outside…

Suddenly, over the festive holiday period, I have become obsessed with accessories. I have never been interested in that kind of thing before - except for an ill-fated venture into necklaces and nail varnish when I was in my teens. Since then, the only accessories I have really been bothered about are a ring from my dad, an engagement ring and a wedding ring. Roll on Christmas, and all of a sudden, I have this craving for all things accessories. I have already mentioned the bracelet that went a little bit wrong. It is in safe hands (not mine) and being fixed as we speak. I also bought another one (with matching shoes - crazy!) to go with Christmas party clothes.

Over on Sidepodcast, we featured a guest post recently from Dan Brunell, who wrote about the need for quality reporting on the web. I highly recommend it, but to sum up for the purposes of this post, the internet has made reporting all things F1 cheaper but also cheapened the reporting. As we start to understand how the internet works, we will begin to realise that paying for quality is the way to go.

One of the shows we do over on Sidepodcast is called the Parade Lap and features Mr C and myself in conversation with the fabulous Alex Andronov for an hour before a Grand Prix begins. It’s the kind of show that feeds off the audience - we ask for predictions and feedback, we play games and music, and it is generally a bit of fun and chaos before the racing action begins.

Part two of a media-related post on our sister site Sidepodcast. Do some keywords fare better than others? Which headlines provided the most interest? Everything is completely transparent, it’s quick and easy to tailor things on the fly and straightforward to vary advertisements according to budget. We have, in the past, run an advertising campaign purely for the live commenting of races. At most that means running ads for a maximum of four hours before closing them again. Try doing that in print.

Part one of a media-related post on our sister site Sidepodcast. Linking makes the social, well, more sociable and without it conversation takes considerably more effort. Which is why we know print is dead. It’s been a long time coming, but social networking has finally rendered the printed page obsolete. Remaining marginally rational for a moment, it’s probably worth adding that the length of the printed material and the type of content held within appears to have a bearing on just how dead it might be. Short passages of content would seem to be first on the chopping block. Quick snippets of content are easily replicated online. Longer pieces may earn a reprieve, and a novel’s worth of content might hang on for a long time to come. Equally print’s lifespan could be categorised by type, with news being the first to suffer, while fictional content may survive in print format for many years.

If you are not already subscribed to The Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog then you should go there right now and do so. Bookmark it, copy and paste the RSS feed, do whatever you have to do so that you don’t miss an entry. And when you’ve done that, go back through the archives and enjoy what you have already missed. The Big Picture is a collection of photographs around a particular theme, telling a story that is in the news at the moment. It has no agenda but just wants to spotlight moments from our lives that should not be forgotten. The subject matter can vary from week to week. Space missions get good coverage, Formula 1 is how we were first introduced to it, the tennis got a mention this week. Very often, there are harrowing images from war-torn countries, or places desperately trying to recover from a natural disaster.

I’m not really a big gamer. I’m obsessed with The Sims franchise, but have no time to play. I steer clear of driving games because I am beyond useless. Occasionally, we play games over on Sidepodcast and they are fun little flash games on the web. I am even worse at those. However, I recently found a game I both love and am pretty good at. It’s called Skywire. You may have heard of it, I know it’s quite popular on Miniclip. I played it relentlessly for a couple of days. I’ve completed all but the last level on the original game and the sequel.

I just realised that I didn’t share the video I made of Franck at Autosport. There are other clips in there as well, as my Sidepodcast Diaries audience have a wider variety of tastes than Mr M. Silly people! The whole thing tells a story, but if you only want to see FKM, visit 1:42, 2:53 and 3:12.

I don’t usually make resolutions, as I know I’ll either break them or have forgotten them by the end of January. However, I had already been talked into doing so over at Sidepodcast.com, so I thought I might as well share my three very simple resolutions for 2009. Try and stick to a Wii Fit schedule. I enjoy it when I do it but quite often forget and only remember when I’m tucked up in bed. Be a bit more house proud. I spend a lot of time in the one room - office - and often leave the rest of the flat to ruin. I want to pay more attention and try and keep things “nice”. Stick to one kind of to-do list. In my endless quest to find the ideal to-do list, I have spread my tasks all over the internet, the desktop, and my notepads. If I stick to one, then at least I’ve got a central place to adapt to my needs. Like all good resolutions, you should just start them when you think of them, rather than waiting for a specific day. I have already been mindful of these in the last two weeks, but I think January will be the real test.

Leo Laporte is turning his life into an internet show. But this isn’t like Justin TV, this is podcasting at its finest. He joined in the group of people who were live streaming themselves recording a show, which meant you could interact with people via the chatroom and it was all real time. Then he took that idea and brought it to a whole new level. Now he broadcasts live from his office A LOT. I still don’t have the schedule clear in my head, it’s every day except Mondays and Fridays, I think, and obviously there’s a time difference between here and the US.

I haven’t talked about drop.io over here yet, although we’ve been raving about it over on Sidepodcast. It’s a relatively new service that I heard from someone who heard it from net@nite. The idea is pretty simple. Sign up for an account, get 100MB for free, and start dropping. If you open it up, anyone can put in links, files and notes. The files could be pictures, audio, video, it’s pretty limitless. You can put a password in to make it more protected, and if you run over your 100MB, you can pay very little for more.

WordPress Gets Major Overhaul We’ve done it over on Sidepodcast. It’s… interesting. Adobe AIR Desktop App For FriendFeed Coming Not sure about FriendFeed yet, but the picture looks good. Reporting from the slopes - The Best of YouTube (Link retired) My god, people spend hours trying to perfect moves like that.

Another tech dilemma: I want to make more Sidepodcast Diary episodes. They are designed to be quick and easy to produce with minimal effects. The very essence of the Diary is that it’s just an upload to YouTube and that’s it. No RSS feed, no fuss, it’s a snapshot of life behind the scenes at Sidepodcast. I have been using a little camera, now I’ve been using my mobile and the quality is acceptable if not great. I import the raw footage and edit it in Adobe Premiere Elements.

Twitter appeals to the short-form writer in me. I used to run a site called 101 Words, which essentially a short post every day about random stuff, but that was crucially 101 words long. Exactly. It became quite an art to fit all your thoughts for the day into 101 words. Twitter is the same kind of thing. There’s something about having a short space to get your message across that makes it a much easier place to share things. You don’t feel like you have to explain things, because let’s face it, you couldn’t even if you wanted to. There’s no room to go into detail, people are either going to get it or they’re not.

Ever since I saw Live Writer, I knew that Microsoft had it in them to be good. They know what they’re doing when it comes to marketing to the masses but for us geeky individuals, they leave a lot to be desired. Live Writer has the essence of greatness, in that everything you need to blog to many different platforms is all in one place and it is unbelievably easy to use. My only problem is that Wordpress screws up the metadata for each image you upload, which means you have to go into the Admin screens anyway, so you might as well just right it in there. Ultimately, that’s a problem with Wordpress though, and not Livewriter.

The thing is, I didn’t set up my Facebook account, it started out as a promotional tool for Sidepodcast. It still is that, but now I have started to take more of an interest in the whole social networking thing. I logged in and today, of all days, it wished me a Happy Birthday. Because as it wasn’t specifically about me when it was set up, the account’s birthday was defaulting to Jan 1st.

Sidepodcast has a brand new Wordpress theme, introduced for the New Year, and I wrote it. I can’t claim 100% of the credit, but a lot of the fundamental CSS work was mine. There were just a few twiddly, fiddly bits that I needed a hand with. I couldn’t find a theme that suited me so I decided to write my own. You have to start by picking a layout that you like, regardless of colours or images. I didn’t do this, and started with the default Kubrick theme - which made my life that tiny bit harder.

Woke Up This Morning is no more. Sorry for the abrupt disappearance and for anyone who is going to miss my ramblings. This is the consequence of a choice I had to make and whilst it’s hard for me to see it go, ultimately it was an easy decision. Some things are more important than blogging. I’m still around over at Sidepodcast and look for me commenting on a website near you soon.