Heya,

It's been a while since I sent this email. In the last month, the dog has taken over the couch entirely. We celebrated my son's third birthday. And, we decided to move to a new, actual, house.

However, I discovered that I don't have enough time to send a weekly newsletter. For the rest of the year, at least, this will be a monthly newsletter. I am also looking for guest editors. If you'd like to have a crack, then send me an email.

This week:

♾️Another twist in the podcast battles 🏨 Just look out random windows around the world 📱 The best app for transforming your iPhone into a web cam

Enjoy,

Chris

Bizarro Devs  

Just when Spotify thought they had podcasts all stitched up, SiriusXM stepped in 🧵

Nutshell: This week, SiriusXM paid E.W. Scripps $325 million for the podcast network, Stitcher. The deal includes Midroll Media the ad company that cost Scripps a paltry $55 million in 2015.

There's a prize inside: Stitcher comes with an app and thriving content networks that deliver over 50 shows. The Earwolf network in particular delivers tremendously popular podcasts like 'Comedy Bang! Bang!' and 'How Did This Get Made?'.

The game is on: Spotify has owned the last twelve months of podcast news with their aggressive recruitment of producers, like Joe Rogan, and networks, like Gimlet. SiriusXM's purchase of Stitcher helps get them in the game with one of the few boutique producers remaining in the wild.

Hopefully: This pans out better than the internet and satellite radio craze that gave birth to Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio back in the 90s.

variety.com  

Facebook's thing for YouTube is starting to get creepy.

Getting dizzy: It feels like Facebook has been pivoting on video for decades now. Their goal to supplant YouTube really took off with the launch of Facebook Watch back in 2017. Three years later YouTube seems to be ok.

You will have an artist's page: The latest Facebook video move involves music video. Artists who don't opt-out will have a new music video page created for them automatically after August 1st. If the artists don't want to enjoy this feature, then Facebook will go ahead and create a new page on their behalf.

Why: YouTube account for 46% of the world's music streaming and paid out over $3 billion to the industry in 2019. Safe to say, they kept a fair chunk of change last year too.

No muss, no fuss: Artist's don't even need to upload or share links to their new music page. Facebook will add official videos to the page without any prompting at all.

techcrunch.com  

1. Today, I've already watched pigeons from a window in Doha, talked to balcony beagle in Bangalore, and swayed to songs in Stockholm. Window Swap has interesting window views from all over the world.
2. Help the Curiosity Rover navigate Mars by labeling images of the Martian terrain.
3. The CIA Freedom of Information Act Reading Room is like a rabbit hole if the rabbit was an all-powerful necromancer who spoke in riddles.
4. I played CS 1.6 in the browser for a few hours to verify it was still fun.
5. Great animations for hover menu effects.
6. Camo is currently in Beta but access is available for anyone who wants to look human in video meetings. Works with both iPhone and iPad to provide a pro webcam at with filters. Way, way, way better than the standard Mac offering.
7. Start sending your own email newsletters. The tutorial is good even with a strong focus on one provider.
8. Clients are great, obviously, but sometimes they don't quite know how to tell you what they want. Try some of these valuable insights into getting information out of clients based on techniques acquired In UX workshops.
9. A neat web app built on Heroku. Drive and listen lets you cruise through the streets of the world while listening to different local radio stations.
10. I'm 90% sure I will seriously consider switching to cloud hosting this year. These are the best options. However, I have excluded AWS because I know I am not smart enough to understand the pricing.

Bizarro Devs  

Engineers worked 24 hours a day for 15 days straight, executing over a thousand scripts and instructions — a 1,370 step process, according to NASA.

Bizarro Devs  

That's it for the week.

If you have a link for me, then my emails are always open. Simply hit reply to this email to land in my inbox.

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Have a great week,

Chris.

Bizarro Devs