Jose A. Lobato

I love his guitar playing. But I also like when he sings his playing. In the past, I had mostly listened to the albums after “Breezin'” but this time I wanted to focus on the first albums. So, this week I’ll be using this playlist to explore how this master, that started by playing the ukelele, got his great feeling of jazz and blues.

But not for the reasons you may think. Last week I needed to do some calibration on my iPhone to recover the battery. In fact not only some calibrations, but also a full restore of the phone. Of course, it was difficult to adjust my schedule to the moments when the iPhone was off due to the different steps in the calibration (5 hours rest without charge, off while fully charging, etc.) So there were moments when I usually use my phone that I was not able and I missed it.

I took the opportunity to analyze my behavior and think on which were the reason, and what was the thing I needed it for. What I wanted to do all the time, so what I miss the most, was listening to podcasts, and the reason is that this activity is deep into my daily routine. In fact, I was surprised when I notice how essential it is in my everyday activities that I needed it constantly. It is by far the activity I do the most on my phone. I also use it to help me with my guitar playing (metronome, backtracks,...) but honestly, I carry the phone to listen to Podcast.

Now, I'm in full French inmersión, so I only listen to French podcasts. I have around 20 hours of audio always downloaded so I can choose what I want to listen to on every moment. I use Castro for that, a convenient app for the whole Podcast experience. I do listen while doing other things, never while working because I can not work and listen to someone talking at the same time, but as long as I finish work or stop for lunch break, I set on my BeatsX and hit play.

For convenience, silence July I use the BeatsX by Dre. Those earbuds are not only very comfortable but also they allow me to have them on hanging from my neck all day long. I never miss them, and they are never on my way, except for when I brush my teeth.

Llegir contes per a nens no és en veritat molt divertit. Ho has de fer divertit tu quan llegeixis. De vegades els dibuixos estan bé, però la història és fluixa. D’altres la història és bona però els dibuixos són terribles. Però quan totes dues coses funcionen bé, és una delícia. Aquest és el cas d’aquest conte de Matt de la Peña i Christian Robinson. Quan li vaig llegir al Pau vaig acabar plorant (literalment). És preciós.

After listening to more than 250 episodes of Podcast in the last two months with this application (Castro tells me so), I can now talk about it with confidence. In the past, I have used several applications, and they mostly have the same behavior, you subscribe to stations, you get the episodes, and you listen to them. But none of those apps were any good for managing a large number of shows. And that is the thing that catches my attention with Castro, the control of the complete podcast experience.

As you know, if you know me I'm a huge fan of podcasting. I have been doing it myself on 85% Cocoa, and listen to it since 14 years more or less.

But before talking about the tool itself, it is better if I list the requirements that I would like a podcast application to cover for me. I won't put them technically or in detail but broad terms:

I need to subscribe to more than 100 feeds. I won't listen to all episodes of all feed, but I want to a notification when new episodes appear on the feed.

Because of de number of feeds I do not want the shows to download automatically but on my request. I other words, I like to plan what I will listen to every day.

I want a good track of what I have been listening to. Also, some statistics will be helpful.

On the player, I want the usual controls, and I would appreciate a nice way to navigate the audio of an episode.

So, what's up with Castro? Well, Castro covers most of my requirement and excel in the most important one: the workflow for managing feeds and episodes. I do not know if there is any other in the Store that does exactly that but for me, now that I have tried it with Castro, it is a must.

I talked a lot about "workflow” so let me explain how do I use Castro, so you will quickly understand how it works and what are the benefits.

Every morning, as I do my GTD daily review, I review the Castro inbox. There I have all the new episodes published for my subscriptions. Then I can decide, for every one of them, if I want to listen to them, so they go to the playlist. Otherwise, I'll move them to the archive for the future. Then the inbox contains all the new episodes that I have not yet decided upon.

The playlist is just a nice sorted list of the shows, and you can move them around at your will. Stop one and switch to another and more. Of course, every episode in the playlist gets downloaded and ready to listen directly.

Then we have the archive. There I can find the list of feeds that I have subscribed to with all its episodes. It has convenient ways to filter them and navigate them. That tab also contains a history where I can see the played episodes in order.

All around Castro there are nice usability features that show the care put into the design and development of the tool.

You may be thinking, why I have to decide for every episode? But you do not need to. Whenever you subscribe to feeds, you can select whether new episodes go to the inbox, the top or bottom of the playlist or the archive. That is perfect, for the shows that I want to listen to every single episode I set them to go directly to the playlist. Some others that I have just for reference are configured to go directly to the archive. Those are useful for those moments when I do not have anything to read or want something different. The rest goes to the inbox for me to decide.

Even If subscribe to tons of feeds, I only have from 10 to 20 every morning to review and decide. That helps me tailor my daily playlist every day according to the kind of day I foresee. Of course, there is always leftovers from the previous days, and also some episodes that I started and do not enjoy, are thrown back to the archive from the playlist.

Because I've subscribed to tons of good feeds, even if I do not listen to a lot of them, it is very nice, on weekends, when I have more time, to visit the archive looking for episodes to discover. For me, it is a pleasure.

For now, the one thing I could ask to the guys behind Castro (Supertop) is to add a statistics section. Somewhere where freaks can get crazy analyzing their habits and know, for example, how many shows on every language or other "very” useful things.