 live. We are live and direct. We are live Steve. Hey, we're live. I've got my shirt. I've got a new NASA Eclipse shirt. So does Steve. Yeah, you got gray. I got white. Diamond ring. Yes, it's the old NASA meatball. Wait, NASA meatball. Is that the meatball? That isn't the meatball. Isn't it all the meatball, Steve? Yeah, it's the. No, it isn't the meatball logo. Why did you stop talking? Just be arguing with me. I've got something else going on. Something crucial and important. Yeah, so it is the meatball. That is how is it? There are two NASA logos. Yes. And this is not the meatball logo. Well, it's shaped like the meatball. Yes, it is. The meatball is the big blue one. And the worm is the one with the like 1980s text. Yeah, but this text is not meatball text, is it? Yeah, it's the only thing different is instead of the blue with the stars, it's the dark eclipse, the black eclipse. That's the only difference. Everything else is the same. Dave Ginsburg is here. All right, it is time for roll call. Kevin, we have been talking to you on Nicecast for like 10 minutes. We turned you on and you didn't you didn't join us. And we were like really sad, really sad. All right, it is time for roll call. We have Steve and Kevin and Dan. Dan, you have been here in a while. Nice to see you again. Dave Ginsburg and we have our newest member, Paul. Geno Choi, we've got Dorothy and Rose and Richard and Sandy bringing up the bottom of the alphabet tonight. So we just disappear? That's so much better than saying bringing up the rear. No, you said bringing up the bottom of the alphabet. Okay. Yeah. Uh-oh, Richard got lost. That's what happened. All right, everybody welcome Paul who is flying out. I don't know where he's flying out to, but he appears to be on his way somewhere. And Richard is back. Looks like your connection got lost there. I'm glad you appreciate that distinction. All right, let's do, let's just kick in. I did a test recording. I think we are a go. Here we go. Ever so slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, September 3rd, 2017. And this is show number 463. Well, this week Bart and I celebrated 500 episodes of chitchat across the pond. Now, if you've been keeping track of the numbering, and I'm not that good at it, pretty sure I've messed up some numbers along the way. But next week with Joe Dugansuk will be episode number 499. So just don't worry about that. 500 was this week with Bart. You know, as much as I adore Joe, Bart started chitchat across the pond. So I want to do me here for the, you know, the big high five thing with this, with this going on so long. Now, if you've only been with us for a short while, Bart started contributing to the show by sending in audio recordings and eventually became my co-host for part of the no silicast. We eventually split it off as its own show in October of 2015. And I started numbering them from giving them numbers from that point forward. But I started back on when the very first show started. That very first show was quite a long while ago, and I'll be talking about that in a minute, but Bart was on the show every single week until he fell ill for a few months. When he recovered, we decided to go every other week with him, which allowed him the time to create his own great shows, Let's Talk Photography and Let's Talk Apple. And it gave us the opportunity to have other guests the other every other week. Now, I know not everyone who listens to the no silicast also listens to chitchat, and specifically the programming by stealth series that Bart and I are doing. And so I thought you might enjoy listening to our verbal high fives we did on chitchat this week. We started at some at the front end and some at the back end. So I'm going to give you both of them back to back. All right. So this is what you just recorded or this is back? No, this is what we just recorded. So this will be, let's see. So chitchat intro. So I could put a little noise in between if you wanted me to. A little sound or something. That's OK. I know you like a little blurb or something, but. You can make one. Blurp. That'll work. That's probably what I would do. All right. Let's hear how that connection goes. And and some at the back end. So I'm going to give you both of them back to back. Well, it's that time of the week again. It's time for chitchat across the pond. And this is episode number 500 for September 1st, 2017. And I'm your host Allison Sherrod. And we could not have the 500th episode without having Bart Bouchotte's back. Right, Bart? Yay. Now, for anybody keeping track, you'll note that 499 is next week. But we're just going to ignore that. You were you were in the earliest stages of this. You were. Well, you must have been the first person on chitchat, right? I believe I named the segment when it was a segment in your show. That's right. That's right. Because yes, I send you in audio recordings of me talking to myself. And you didn't think you like talking to people live on air. And I convinced you to give it a go. And then you did like it. And then myself, yourself and Steve spent forever trying to figure out a name for the segment. I think it was my suggestion book. Oh, goodness me. Are we going back a long time now? Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, the original pond is the Atlantic Ocean, right? Yep. Well, it's been a great fun. I probably should have written down what year we started that, but it doesn't matter. It's 500. And we are back from summer vacation. We didn't intentionally take summer vacation, but as soon as we realized it was stretching out, we said, hey, let's call it summer vacation. Well, I got to tell you, Bart, the last 37 installments, this has been fun. You're done. I think I should put something in to say, here's the end. Yeah. One thing that just occurred to me 2007. Was it 2000? No, it was 2009. We visited Bart. Yeah. Yeah. So that would have been after you had named it because remember, we had the real pond. We actually shouted across a pond 50 feet across. Yeah. Dave, with our shirts, we absolutely will be. We'll be doing a shirt photo. The kids don't know about it. Okay. Here we go. And now here's the part from the end of the show. It's not better. Let's see. Let's call it summer vacation. And now here's the part from the end of the show. Well, I got to tell you about the last 37 installments. This has been fun. You're definitely keeping me challenged. You're keeping me out of the bars. And just unfortunate. But I want to thank you for being with me and with the audience through 500 episodes. I know they haven't all been you, but if it weren't for you, this, none of this would be happening. So I want to thank you for your continued help in the awesomeness that you are for this show. Well, I honestly don't think I would be able to have as much fun podcasting and to create as useful a content with the partnership we have together. So I appreciate. I appreciate that. I'd everybody as much as. And that, that always surprises me and delights me. So I guess, I guess that's it until we meet again tomorrow to talk about security bits. Isn't that nice? Okay. That must be George. It's got to be George. Greeks from Oklahoma. Yes. Whenever it's a weird name, I know it's George from Tulsa. George say hi to Paul first time here flying out. All right. Let's keep going here. Nickname flying out. That is. Yeah. Was it just going to say there? Labor Congress all. Oh, you're recording? You're doing a show? Sorry about that. Yeah. Yeah. Just babbling there in your room. That's nice. Go ahead, dear. Okay. Muting now. Security bits. I still don't know why he gets as much out of it as I do, but let's not, let's not question that. It's fantastic. Well, you know, thinking about how far we've come and chitchat across the pond, Steve helped me go back and find the first episode of chitchat across the pond. It took us a while to dig it up. It was on November 4th, 2007, and it was an episode number 119 of the NoCillicast. As Bart said, he'd been sending in audio reviews. And the week before we started recording together, he sent in a recording about his experiences with the new operating system, Leopard. That really brings home how long ago this was, doesn't it? Anyway, I pulled the first 40 seconds of the recording just for nostalgia to play for you now. All right. Got the right one. I think that's it. Yeah, 39 seconds. The beginning of this was hilarious. It was, I can't believe how slow I talked back then. I remember being told I should slow down, so I did, but yes, that is the actual sausage grinder. That was the last live episode you were on. Oh, that's great. That's pretty funny. Check one note here. All right. Rose said she didn't see the shirt, so let me do it one more time. This is my NASA t-shirt for the eclipse. Steve's show yours, too. Our coolest new shirts. I may have adopted Steve's shirt obsession. I bought, this is the third or fourth shirt I bought for the eclipse. Here's the corresponding white shirt. How long do I have to maintain this pose? That's enough. All right. Okay. Let's listen to this. This is the first time Bart was on chit chat to play for you now. Well, I'm finally getting around to something I've been wanting to do forever, and that's do an actual interview. We have Bart Bouchotte's of BartBouchotte's.ie on the line here. You've heard a lot of reviews by him, and we decided we wanted to have a conversation about leopard. How are you doing, Bart? Hi, Allison. Glad to be here. So is it raining in Ireland? Give me a sec. Yes. It's always raining in Ireland. There's always an obligation that when you have someone on the line, you have to ask them about the weather. I don't know what that is, but anyway, let's kick in. I'm going to have a wild guess here and say it's sunny in California. Let me see. Yeah, it is. It's sunny here. All right. That's all I'm going to play of that. I like how you paused a bit before saying BartB. Well, that's before you put BartB.ie in. I think I'll mention that. So what's his, what was his? Well, it's BartBouchotte's.ie, but he created an alias so people who can't spell Bouchotte's could get it. Okay, recording now. All right. Yeah, it is. It's sunny here. Well, there's so many things I love about that little recording. First of all, how I stutter and stop when I try to say BartBouchotte's.ie. It was sometime later that he created the shortened version BartB.ie as an alias because most people can't spell Bouchotte's. I mean, I actually can't spell Bouchotte's yet. I use a text expander snippet to get it done. But anyway, the other thing I really like was nearly a decade later, we start out almost exactly the same way. I don't know if you've noticed, but I almost always say, I know today, Bart, and pretty often we talk about whether it's raining in Ireland or not. Anyway, I can't thank Bart enough for being the genesis of Chichat Across the Pond and being with me for 10 years. I also want to thank all of the guests who have been on Chichat Across the Pond over the years. I keep meaning to sit down and compile a table of all the guests so I can see who's been on, but I'm too lazy, so maybe Steve will do it for me. We'll see. Anyway, as I'm sure you've heard by now, Apple's big next big announcement will be on Tuesday, September 12th at 10 a.m. Pacific time. Steve and I will be in the live chat room with the next big announcement if you'd like to join us. If you've never been to the live show before, it's super easy. You simply go to podfeed.com live. On that page you'll see some text about what time the next live show is, but just ignore that because we're not talking about the live show. Also ignore the embedded YouTube video. Normally during the live show, that's me yapping, you can watch me talking, but that only shows when I'm doing video and for the Apple announcements I'm not using the text chat part. So on the right side of the screen, you're going to see an embedded chat client. Look for some green on the page, that's the chat client. You simply enter a nickname or you can let it pick a dumb one for you like nc underscore, I think it was pipe 8-5-8-5-2 when I looked at it recently. Anyway, pick a nickname and click start. That's all you have to do. It'll default to the NoCillicast channel on Bart's IRC server, so you'll be good to go. Now, if you want to be like the cool standalone chat client. You okay? You did mute yourself, apparently. I did. I was trying to get to the end of that, but I couldn't make it. Oh, that's right. Kevin did chit chat with Bart. What episode was that? Now, if you want to be like the... Okay. Thank you, Steve. All right. Now, if you want to be like the cool kids, you may want to download a standalone chat client. There's instructions below the chat and a link to MIRC for windows. Now, it's not nearly as complicated as I made it sound to come join the friendly enthusiastic. I just mumbled too many things there. Again, where's Ian and Daniel? They're not here. Well, Dan is here. Daniel. Oh, Ian and Daniel. We got Dan covered. We're good. Oh, an X chat. Hey, if you want to make a tutorial on the chat, I could post it on the live... the live page. I can't remember four years ago. Good. Now, if you want to be like the cool kids, you may want to download a standalone chat client. We've got instructions below the chat for how to install and set up colloquy, addium and textual for the Mac and MIRC for windows. At least we have a link to it. Now, it's not nearly as complicated as I've made it sound. I know Cela Castaways during the announcement on September 12th. We'll be glad to have you. We'll tell Kevin to be nice to you. All right. Galileo Galileo. Galileo Galileo. Can I sing, Steve? May I? Yeah, those are two entirely different things. Actually, maybe they not... They could be the same answer. Oh, it's raining. Paul, where are you? I wish it would rain, man. It was 97.7 degrees where we live and we live in a beach city. So that is insane. Drizzling and windy, 8 degrees C. So let's see. 97.7 F in real degrees. It's 36.5 is what it was here today. Rose. Not far still in Orange County. Well, that's good if it's raining. People cut down the fire danger. All right. Here we go. Save. Well, I've been a user of Google and Apple Maps for a really long time, both of which work great if you have Internet access. Lately, I've found myself outside of cell service while traveling in the United States. And all of these map applications I've talked about don't work well at all if you don't have an Internet connection. I hadn't really thought about solving the problem until we were in Oregon going to see the solar eclipse with Jean McDonald last week. She showed us an iOS app Galileo Offline Maps Pro. It's $3.99 US in the iOS App Store and it's also available on Android for $1 less at $2.99 in the Google Play Store. I find that interesting. I guess it's that what the market will bear thing. They can't charge as much in the Google Play Store. Anyway, if all Galileo did was offline maps, I probably wouldn't even mention it because there's lots of apps that do just that. Galileo does much more and solves some real problems I had. Maybe it will for you too. The first thing to remember about mapping programs is that they use several different radios in your phone to do their magic. To find your location, they use the GPS radio. But the GPS radio only knows where on the globe you are, you know, like latitude and longitude. It doesn't have the map data so it can't show you where that little blue dot is. If you've ever seen just a blue dot in a map app and it's completely blank it means GPS can find you but it doesn't have access to the map data where the blue dot is located. You need data to view the maps so you need to either use the Wi-Fi radio or the cellular radio to download them and get real-time updates to the phone. Having both on helps even more. Now... Why did I say now? Actually, is that true? Having both radios on helps, Steve? I know triangulation or something with cellular radios or Wi-Fi... Helping with position? Location? Yes. Wi-Fi and GPS. Okay. Well, I don't know about cell. Wi-Fi and cellular. I think they do triangulation with the towers and such too, right? Yes, cell towers. But I think Wi-Fi can also help. Oh, Sandy, it's nice. Down to 103. Alright. Well, that's not where I'm supposed to be recording. Put the cursor in the right place. You know, Daniel's not here to tell me to save. Oh, Kevin did it. Okay, good. Pay that much attention to him, though. Here we go. Now that we've got a common understanding of the problem, let's talk about how Galileo... Can you mute, Steve? Now that we've got a common understanding of the problem, let's talk about how Galileo solves this problem and what else it can do. When you first open Galileo, it will show you your current location with no map showing it all. You can also download a vector map for your current region. Vector maps are much faster to load, so vector maps are a good thing. When I was located in California upon opening... Oh, I am just not on my game yet. Kevin said pod feet. Saver pod feet will hit me. Vector maps are much faster. When I was located in California upon opening Galileo, I was allowed permission to download the entire map of California. That was 196 megabytes. I tested the same thing on the Android version, and while it asked me permission to download California, it did not tell me how big the map was before it did so. That caught me to thinking, these maps could really start to clog up the storage of your phone. I went into settings and I found downloaded maps, and I was able to delete the other states' maps data, so excessive storage use by Galileo will not be a problem for you. I downloaded the Android app, and I found something really interesting. You know that 196 megabyte California map that the Android app didn't tell me how big it was? When I looked in settings on Android, it showed that the California map was 387 megabytes, just under double the size that it was on the iPhone. I thought that was pretty weird. Anyway, the good news is you can see the sizes of the various maps on Android, and you can download... Are you following along in this one, Steve? If you are, or could you look for the word ONN? It should be on, and it says ONN. Anyway, the good news is... Thank you, honey. Anyway, the good news is... Anyway... I'm just not in rhythm yet. Anyway, the good news is, you can see the sizes of the various maps you can download in the settings on both iOS and Android. Okay, so lots of apps have downloadable maps, and Galileo uses the free OpenStreetMap project, so so far this is nothing extraordinary just yet. The coolest thing about Galileo is that you can record your path. When we were with Gene, we downloaded the state of Oregon, and we set it to record when we left her home in Portland. On our way to our Airbnb in Bend, near Madras, Oregon, looking for the best place to view the eclipse. Turn around, it comes to eclipse day. We only had to bring up Galileo and look at our path from a couple days before, and we could find our way back to these obscure little viewing spots we'd found along this gorge of the Deschutes River. Using the path recorded in Galileo, we had no trouble retracing our steps even though it was four in the morning and pitch dark outside with virtually no street signs. Here's another example of how useful Galileo was for us in Galileo. Steve and I took a hike while we were in Oregon, and I decided to trace our path. We did not have cellular service on much of our hike, but Galileo did a great job of tracking us. Galileo is a safety measure when hiking I think could be a really great tool. I remember one time Steve and I were hiking in New Caledonia and we got lost. We're on a little tiny island, so it wasn't like a life-threatening situation, probably, but it was really frustrating that we kept trying different paths to not find our way out of the jungle. The way we ended up getting out was clever and silly at the same time. We didn't have a real map, but I happened to have this cartoony map of the island that the cruise ship people had given us. I mean, it was just basically like the outline and a north-south thing on it. I could tell from the map what direction we wanted to go to get back to the ship, and I used the Compass app in the iPhone which does not require data, and that gave us the right direction to go. However, if we'd had Galileo, we'd have to exactly go exactly to retrace our steps without any problems. Okay, once you've recorded a path, there's lots of fun stuff to do with the data you've collected. If you tap on the folder icon on the right-hand side of the screen, you will see all of your saved paths. By default, every path you record will be visible on your maps, so everywhere you're just going to have lines all over the place, and this could get annoying. So if you tap on a path in the list that comes up, the name will turn gray, and the path has been hidden over on the maps. This allows you to save your paths but not have to look at all of them all the time. To the right of each path name is a little I, and it allows you to see the full path on a little tiny map, and on that same page, you can name the path and add a description. You can also create folders, which they call collections, to organize your paths. You can also drag the paths up and down within a collection to further organize them. You can also create a list of the paths that you created on the trip. For me, I'm really looking forward to using this. This can be a really useful resource if you have a bad memory of place names and locations and want to reference them later. Still in the information page, you'll see three options for how to display each path. You can choose a solid line, which is just a plain line of color of your choosing. Alternately, you can select speed, which will display your path with the speed you were going at the time, from red at 0 miles per hour to green at your top speed and shades of yellow in between. Finally, you can choose to display your path with altitude, where green is the lowest elevation and red is the highest. I look back at our path from Portland to Bend, and I could see that our top elevation was 3,630 feet and our top speed was 78.4 miles per hour. Steve? Oh, anyway, still in the same info window, you can see the length of the path, which was 223 miles, how long it took us, 8 hours, 14 minutes and 17 seconds, we stopped a lot, and the average speed we went, which was approximately 27.1 miles per hour. You can also see the date and time you recorded the path. Let's talk about another problem to be solved. Let's say you followed a path and you need to show someone else how to get to where you are. You can actually share your path with them. Shared paths open up a Galileo if they have Galileo loaded, showing them exactly how to follow along. Without Galileo, like, say, on a desktop, the shared path shows the map at a web browser. I was showing this option to Steve and Getz and he wondered if you could use Galileo to assist with geo-tagging photos. I hadn't even thought of that. I opened the shared link from Galileo on my Mac, and it opened a map URL at shared.Galileo-app.com. In the upper right, I saw KML and GPX. If you have a geo-tagging app, like, say, Hoot a Geo, it takes file to tag your photos. Sadly, my photos library is so large that apps like Hoot a Geo they open your media library inside the app, and that takes so long it takes absolutely forever. I just can't use that kind of tool unfortunately. All was not lost though. It's super easy to copy the latitude and longitude coordinates from Galileo, so I just simply messaged them to my Mac. Then I simply selected a batch of photos did a get info and paste it in the coordinates, and they were applied to all. Now, I already allow my iPhone to automatically tag my photos, but my big girl camera doesn't have that capability. I don't know why I said, I-I-I, what's that? Now, I-I-I I'm sure you guys were going to make fun of me for that. I kind of liked it. I-I-I Snowaholic. Hey, what was the site that we used to make our mugs so forth in those silicast mugs? Was it Redbubble? No. I remember who made it. It wasn't Zazzle, was it? It might have been. Oh, are you looking to make more? Nick was asking about the clock. Oh, that was Zazzle. Was it? Yeah. Okay. I'll keep looking. If you need a no-silicast clock, I don't think anybody bought any of that stuff but us. Where did I say I-I-I? They were applied to all. There we go. Okay, that's the problem. I already I already I already allow my iPhone to automatically tag my photos but my big girl camera doesn't have that capability so this might be fun to do from time to time. I've been talking about paths all this time but there's more. You can press and hold on any location to add a bookmark. Show up in the same info window where you can name them and add descriptions. Again, this is going to be great for me when I can't remember later what monument we saw or where that cool river was. I'm constantly naming my photos things like, ah, it was a monument. It's a church. It's big. Might have been a cathedral. That's all I know. I just forget things immediately so this could really help me out. The settings menu has a crazy plethora of options. I'm sure those of you not in the U.S. might have been thinking me earlier for talking about miles per hour and feet of elevation. In the advanced settings you can change the unit's format to metric if you're of that persuasion. You might also think the maps are U.S. only. While there are 52 downloadable maps for the United States, I guess like Puerto Rico and Guam must be in there too, they have one for Mexico, 13 for Canada, 26 for France, 54 for Africa, one for the Isle of Man. The list goes on and on and on of maps you can download. It wasn't until I was fiddling around in the settings that I discovered Galileo maps can also do navigation. Silly of me to think it didn't have that of course, but I really thought its main use was in tracking paths. With Galileo you can do all of the usual tasks of entering specific addresses or searching for types of businesses or attractions and a lovely lady will tell you how to get there. By default she speaks English. You can choose pirate English if you want along with seven other languages. By the way, there are other maps you can use like there's some biking maps and there's a biking hiking maps and there's a whole bunch of other maps of names I didn't really understand. That's why I'm not going through it in detail, but they are not offline maps. Now I really didn't mean to do such a big review of what I thought was a simple map program, but Galileo Offline Maps Pro has so much capability for $4 that I couldn't help myself. Speaking of the price, you can download the free version of Galileo Offline Maps, which gives you access to all of the features in three days. After five days, you can pick and choose individual features to add or a few feature packs or just give them the $4 they deserve for all of the features. Now one caution. If you use in-app purchases on any app in the iOS app store, you can't share these features if you have a family plan. So I recommend if you're going to buy the app and you do have a family plan, buy the pro version outright, not as an upgrade to the free app. That's what I did in the last year on an iOS app. Go check it out at Galileo-app.com It's getting hotter in here. So I can't for some reason have someone else. Well, I can log in. It's available to me, but only probably because I'm logged in. I thought we could make it available to others. Yeah. What might explain why nobody bought it if we... It's not quite what I had intended. Yeah. Well, I have every bit of faith in you on that. We'll have to work something here. All right. Here we go. Did I miss anything? Saw something come up. Labor... How do you pronounce George's name this week? Well, it's Latin, but I think it's Labor Omnia. How many megabytes are the maps and how many did you need for your Clips adventure? We only needed Portland, and Portland was small. I think I said in the review that the... Let's see. The California map was 196 megabytes. Let's see. What did it say? Yeah. 196 megabytes for California. And like I said, you can delete them if you need to. But twice as big on Android, why would that be? Why would the program be a dollar cheaper and the maps be twice the size? Maybe they're not vector when they're on Android. I didn't really pay attention. Getting really hot sitting low now. Turn my camera down so I don't look so stupid. Is that better? That looks just fine. My legs are getting hot. Do you want a fan? I have a fan on my legs. And you're still getting hot? Yeah. I'll be fine. Power through. He doesn't really bother me, Steve. I'm pretty mellow about it. Dollar bigger because it's twice as big. Bikinis are more expensive than one-piece bathing suits. Same thing. Anybody in the audience big fans of I'm just curious. I've started using it. Pretty cool stuff. Ever since smart phones started giving us navigation, we've been on the hunt for the best way to mount our phones so we can see them while driving. There were the windows suction cups which totally obscured your view out the windshield and which were technically against the Department of Motor Vehicle regulations so not very safe. There were the things you had to glue to your dashboard forever marring the surface of your car. Remember the sticky things to put on the back of your phone so that in theory they wouldn't slide off the dash? Yeah, it didn't work very well either. And then there was the bayonet mount that allowed you to clock your phone 90 degrees to lock it into place, but you had to use the special case and it was heavy and clunky. There were the vent mounts that worked pretty well. I had one of those except the driver didn't get any airflow and every time you got a bigger phone you had to buy a new model because it had a spring-loaded thing that would clamp and hold it in place. That clamp held the phone in place too well and so it took two hands to remove the phone. Every single solution I've ever used has problems of either marring the phone, modifying the car, requiring a special case, or it was clumsy to use. Well, I don't know if I've got the perfect solution but the phone mount that Gene McDonald showed us on our trip to see the eclipse is the closest to perfection I've found yet. Enter the $11 U.S. that is Techmat MagGrip Universal Car Mount. The Techmat uses part of your car that doesn't... please... Kevin, please don't send a picture. Universal Car Mount. Enter the $11 U.S. Techmat MagGrip Universal Car Mount. The Techmat uses the part of your car that has no real purpose anymore. The CD slot in your car stereo. Now I'll explain how to set the Techmat up but first let me describe how it works in action. The Techmat has a big round magnet on a swivel. You put the small provided steel plate inside your phone case and then simply set your phone on the magnet. This magnet is strong enough to hold your phone securely while driving and you let yet trivially easy to just pull your phone off with one hand. It's positively brilliant. Now let's see if I can describe this elegant design that might sound clunky because it is really elegant. The Techmat has one side that wedges into your CD slot. In order to be able to easily slide into the slot but not leave it flopping about there's a thumb screw you use to tighten it into place. So it's sort of got these two leaves that push out and tighten themselves into place. Once it's tightened you don't really have to mess with it again unless you're pulling it out to loan it to other people like we have been. It's not as cluegy as I make it sound. It's actually quite elegant like I said. One of the top of the Techmat is a small swivel arm with the roughly two-inch magnet piece on the end. The magnet piece rotates in three axes so you can position your phone to virtually any angle so it's perfect for you while driving. You could be tall or short, wide or thin and that phone could be perfectly aligned for you to be able to see it. I especially like how it rotates because perhaps your passenger might need to view the phone from time to time. It's a simple matter of rotating towards a passenger and rotating back to the driver. If the passenger needs to interact with the phone they can easily pop it off the mount with one hand pop it back on for the driver to resume watching navigation. That's the way Steve and I use it a lot. We'll use his phone for navigation and to say play a podcast and we want to mess around in the podcast app or he needs me to check a notification form or something like that. I can pop it off, mess with it, put it right back and it's very easy to put it right back the way he likes it. I mentioned three axes of rotation on the magnet. You can also adjust the tightness of that rotation to suit your needs with the threaded tightener that's right under the magnet head. Now I can't stand not having a breeze on my face so replacing my vent holder with a tech mat makes me so happy. There's only a few potential problems with using the CD slot to hold your phone. First of all, if you don't have a CD slot, this might not be the month for you. Second, if your CD slot is really low, the phone wouldn't be high enough for you to view the phone safely while driving. In Steve's car, the phone mounted vertically covers up the volume slash power button for the audio system so he has to kind of reach around the phone to get to that control. But he says that the advantages of the tech mat outweigh that minor inconvenience. I should mention that you can mount the tech mat with the magnet arm pointing up or pointing down. If you're not as tall in the saddle like me, pointing the arm down will give you a better viewing angle. I mentioned that the metal piece you put inside I mentioned about the metal piece that you put inside your phone case. This metal piece has a sticker on the back so in theory you could stick it to your phone and not use a case. But I highly recommend against using that sticker. In the documentation and all over the sticker it says in no uncertain terms, this sticker can never be removed. It is a permanent sticker. That's why I suggest putting it inside your case. The nice thing is that the peely side of that non-removable sticker can go against your phone so the metal edges don't damage your phone. They also give you a round metal piece and they give you a round one and a rectangular one so you get to choose which is better for you. I like the rectangular one because it gives me more flexibility of how easy it is to actually hit the mount on the right spot to hold it. I've been going case free ever since I got my iPhone 7 Plus but I gotta tell you this thing is so convenient I broke down and put a case on my phone just so I could use the tech mat while driving. Remember that since we're never going to use that sticker you can place the metal piece inside the case in different places depending on how you want to use it. For example you might want a dead center on the phone so you can easily look at the phone in landscape or portrait mode but perhaps you want the metal piece up at the top that would give you a better angle or maybe lower the phone down if it's too high or vice versa. The Techmat MagGrip CD slot magnetic car mount is the best mount I've ever used. It works with any size phone in any car with a CD slot it's only 11 bucks. Check out the Amazon affiliate links in the show notes. It comes in black or red for $11 but if baby blue is your thing you can pay $2 more to get your favorite color. Wait the clock has gone again? Well it's weird everything is there except the clock including a a case for an iPhone 5s. What? We haven't updated this in a while. What are you talking about? I see the clock. You're logged in though aren't you? Yes. Yeah I think if you don't log in the clock is gone? Yeah it's kind of strange. Break it again? Break what? No the clock is there not logged in. Okay could you put the link that you just used in the show? Pufffeet.com is live. No we're talking about two different things. What are you talking about? We're talking about the pod feet clock behind you to order on Zazzle. Okay Steve I don't think I'm going to deal with that right now you can be in charge of that one. I thought you were when you started talking about the clock. You were telling me earlier you had broken the clock or something was wrong with the clock. Hey when did the other Nick jump in? I'm doing Nick's tonight. John is waiting for you to say hi. Hi John how are you? I haven't talked to you in forever. He was in some of the pictures with with Mipples wasn't he? Alright now somebody is going to need to explain Mipples to Paul. It's going to get ugly. Alright what's next? I think it's time to spam you guys with some Amazon stuff. Alright here we go. I'm going to do a shout out today to our Canadian listeners who have been using the living daylights out of the Canadian Amazon affiliate links. This month was the biggest usage we have ever had more than doubling the amount purchased. Stephen Goetz told me he's been using the heck out of the links and so it might just be all him but I'm guessing he had some help. If you're not in the United States you might be surprised to know that there is an affiliate link for you in Canada. There's a couple of ways you can find those links. You can go to podfeed.com and click on support the show and that will take you to a row of icons of ways to support the show. The Amazon logo defaults to the US store but below that are links to DE, UK and CA. If that's too many clicks it's really fun to go to podfeed.com slash fun with flags just click on your country's flag. Once you've got all this work you might as well just make it a bookmark in your browser and that'll be easy peasy. That'll be the best way to do it. Anyway, thank you so much to everyone who sends help send a small percentage to help the show while doing your normal shopping on Amazon. Maybe I should bring in new season thralled with Steve. What should you bring in? Mipples. Well, has anybody been explaining it to Paul? No. Paul says I wasn't going to ask better I think. Yeah, probably not. Mipples is my childhood toy when I was five years old my mother got up for me when I was in the hospital having my tonsils out I think it was and so anyway, Steve doesn't like doesn't like Mipples. He thinks Mipples should die a horrible death and at some point Steve wanted a 27 inch iMac his previous 27 inch iMac so by the way Kevin that was five years ago that was 2012 because Kevin wanted him to have oh lord here it comes Kevin wanted to have Steve get a new 27 inch iMac so no stop it don't stop it give it to me get so Mipples was kidnapped by Kevin Kevin this is poor Mipples look how sad this thing is he's had a tracheotomy it's a little bright he's had his appendix out and I think maybe kidney stones over here or something his eyeballs fell off real soon so my mother drew him on with indelible ink he smells really bad isn't he adorable but anyway that is who and I was not able to get Mipples back from Kevin until I got Steve a 27 inch iMac so that's how that happened that was fun those are good times good times Nick the reason I hate it it doesn't smell good yeah it's a little nasty not gonna lie but I'm I'm 59 so this is 55 years old you don't smell good either after a shower I do well you know we haven't ever tried to wash him let's do that maybe I put him in the dryer and I think he used to have fur but he doesn't anymore it's just fabric now yeah that's the definition of thread bear yeah look at that yeah that is actually thread bear he's adorable I'm gonna give him a bath that might be that might be his end when you like to wake up and smell Mipples poo on your pillow his full name is Mipples Morgan Platt Moorhead by the way hey I was 5 I think we want to go right no maybe no okay full shopping on Amazon well it's that time of the week again it is time for security bits with bar poo shots and I just talked to you yesterday but I am always excited about some security bits yeah and because we went early last time we got a lot oh good I was wondering why there were 70 something things in the major SS feed and I was like oh yeah the last time it was only a week and a half sorts of news which means this is two and a half weeks worth of news well that'll do it right yeah and actually I should give a slight health warning may not be the right word but normally there is nothing in suggested reading that I haven't fully read there are things in suggested reading that I know I want to read but I've actually only read the headlines and the first paragraph or so so far so it's possible I'm accidentally suggesting something I shouldn't be ah so that basically I haven't had enough time to do as much homework as I normally would so there's a slight caveat on some of the suggested reading okay all right so well but anyway with that said the the other I should do a thing on this um I had some noise on the line on uh on my side of the recording that I should have stopped us right when we started because I heard it and I thought oh it's probably fine you probably can't hear that it sounded horrible and I tried to take the noise out using a couple of higher-end apps and I ended up using my own tutorial I wrote for audacity and it was fantastic came out really really good so anyway did you do the car mount post post you mean did I read it yeah yeah that's what I just finished doing I must have been doing something else uh must have been asleep huh all right yeah we're actually uh we're winding things up already right here oh you're creeping up on 70 that's cool you do not look 70 girlfriend definitely not you know what I do about my age though I lie tell people I'm you know like 68 and they'll say dang you look good if you lie about your age they'll say what you've been up the sun too much what happened to you so that's my theory deed if everything stays according to schedule two weeks from now we'll be talking again and until then stay patched stay secure well that's gonna wind us up for this week do not forget to send in your dumb questions comments and suggestions by emailing me at alison at pod feet calm you can follow me on twitter at pod feet remember everything good starts with pod feet calm how are you going to find those uh amazon affiliate links for your country pod feet calm slash fun with flags how about you want to donate through patreon pod feet calm slash patreon how about you want to join our facebook group pod feet calm slash facebook if you have the google plus persuasion we're having fun over there too go to pod feet calm slash google plus and maybe you want to use those amazon affiliate links without going to fun with flags if you want just the us store pod feet calm slash amazon and if you want to join in the fun of the live show like paul did for the first time this week head on over to pod feet calm slash live on sunday nights at 5 p.m pacific time enjoy the friendly and enthusiastic no silicast a ways thanks for listening and stay subscribed you're just after the super senior saver dinners yet you know you don't get anything good until like 65 right steve i i haven't seen any good discounts there's some at 60 and some at 62 what what is pod feet calm fun with flags that's well i explained that earlier that that gets to all of the different countries so there's us flag and a canadian flag and a german flag and a uk flag but that that's unique to your site that's not a generic pod feet calm slash fun with flags yeah yeah okay so i don't think anybody else can use pod feet calm good but i stole it from actually i did not come up with that idea somebody else did uh um yeah so somebody else came up with that thought it'd be a funny name for the site i thought it was funny made me laugh that works there's kind of an international flair to it yeah see see and let's see george finds it difficult to use pod feet calm yeah he was having trouble finding the live show just the what he pointed out was that the logo does not look that much different for the live show it's the same logo with the word live written on it so apparently that didn't catch his attention as much as i hoped it would on sunday nights at five p.m. pacific time join the friendly and enthusiastic nocella thanks for listening stay subscribed that's interesting george well what else is difficult because maybe there's stuff i can do i don't find it difficult i found it i find it really easy to navigate and very repeatable but a lot more clicks than i used to have to do that would be my assessment like i can always get to the things i want but it's just a lot of clicks there's another factor and that is nocella cast live is embedded or buried under join the conversation so you kind of have to assume it's part of joining a conversation to get to the live show when some people may not be joining a conversation they may just well why would you want to come to the live show if you didn't want to join a conversation you might want to watch it without taught there are people who lurk without actually engaging in the chat room well they don't have to engage in the chat room but it would be joining just to listen are you saying listening isn't joining i'm saying it's not a conversation if it's you're just listening yeah it is if you go to a party and don't talk to anybody would you say you hadn't joined any conversations right i think joining a conversation means means it's two way you have to contribute i didn't say contribute to the conversation the title is that title is join the conversation i know join implies you're talking okay so how about podfeed.com live which i have said at the end of the show for since there's been a live show but i and i don't want to be too snarky on that but i i did crack up when a guy worked with said hey i want to send you an email what's your email address and he was an avid listener of the show and i couldn't stop laughing because it's like really you haven't heard me say alison at podfeed.com like 11 million times but anyway i should write that down you really should all right what is it wait that's chitchat i want this one where's nc audio where did i just save that file today the third right where did i just export the file to that's one thing with hindenburg i don't always know where i'm saving stuff okay i accidentally saved it in chitchat audio nc there it goes gotta pay attention to that all right it is 553 and i'm getting close to the end here wait a minute no back to no silicast there we go i never show my screen anymore is anything dangerous on screen nope patty is also listening to podfeed patty hey patty what up patty all right i don't think i have anything dangerous on screen there just show people what i'm doing so down here this is hindenburg my latest audio recording software you know i might try using garage band again gene mcdonald uses garage band so i'm gonna take the aiff file and i'm gonna drop it on um odd what is it called amadea i'll get it yet alphonic leveler i have a preset which will do my set my audio levels so that they meet the loudness standards it'll do all that compression and all that and we'll convert it to an mp3 sandy's gone how did i miss that what did what did you miss nick nick missed the button for the live page on your uh well maybe maybe i should just have a button that says live show maybe it shouldn't say no silicast live could be anything live couldn't it i mean if it's just george you couldn't find it i wouldn't fix it but you know if nick can't find it it's pretty far down on the page yeah everything is no listen to the podcast i mean i sort of did it by the in the order going down the page is the order that either people do participate already or that i want them to participate so like support the show might be no actually support the show last no second to last join the conversation is last okay so you know most people participate or sorry watch the show or listen to the show next would be uh actually most a lot of people read the blog post listen to the podcast videos that one's just that one's up a little high tutorials a little high support the show during the conversation so but if that were just a live button if it just said live would that catch your attention more you mean in the same location yeah like so if i kept it right here and it said live i don't really want to mess up this navigation i mean i could have a whole another button that said live show but the number of people who participate you know we get 20 30 people it's that nothing like the the audience for everything else i could start cluttering this up and have lots of buttons i think you're just pointing out the button looks well the looks the local looks like this so if down here if it didn't say no cell cast live if it just said live uh and didn't have all this other you know no if it just said live show would that help yeah would that help what do you think i think there are two issues one is the placement on the page and the second is it looks a lot like the first the button above yeah i'm not really lie i'm not don't like the idea of moving join the conversation up or moving that out of join the conversation but if it said live show yeah yeah live show link to live show something like that yeah and and maybe a different a different logo maybe just that's what i'm saying get rid of the the don't have it say no cell cast live and the ever so slight apple bias and the feet and all that could just be called pod feet live paul found it yeah again i would i would insult george and say he was slow but nicks pretty bright so that's what makes me maybe there's something else going on i don't know let me bring up wonder list no i will use paper i will make a new logo new logo for live show let's see if i do that i might live is perfect yeah just live what might say live show yeah maybe that all right so this is finishing up process it takes a long time to do this let's get that down and next i will bring up feeder and i will actually get rid of hindenburg and we'll put feeder up here as the show notes being created you guys don't have to stay after class now but i figured it was a couple minutes before so maybe that would help i would just babbling along all right kevin good night good night patty good night john are the girls around good night girls all right we should probably call it wait i'm waving hang on i was waving i didn't see it tonight kevin good night patty good night john good night girls whoever's there good night everybody good night john boy and of course good night rose bye bye