The New "The Talk Show" Is Now "The Talk Show With John Gruber"

Last week, amidst the controversy of John Gruber leaving Dan Benjamin's 5by5 Network (and taking the name of the podcast, "The Talk Show," with him), I lamented the fact that there are now two "The Talk Show" podcasts, both with the exact same title.

https://twitter.com/tvaziri/status/206890635716861952

Apparently this is no longer the case.  I noticed on iTunes that Mule Radio Syndicate's "The Talk Show" has changed its name to "The Talk Show With John Gruber".  This is an admirable (albeit small) step in differentiating the new podcast from the previous show's incarnation.

Much has been written in tech-geek-land about Gruber taking the podcast (along with its title) to a new network, and most of it revolves around idle gossip and speculation.  The former partners have made their statements about the split.  Benjamin published a short, four minute special podcast "Regarding The Talk Show", which appeared on May 21, three days after the Mule show debuted.  Gruber mentioned the breakup on Episode 2 of the Mule podcast from May 24, and on May 29, wrote a few words about the split on Daring Fireball.

I will miss 5by5's "The Talk Show" very much. The Gruber/Benjamin production was the first regular podcast I ever listened to, and it turned me on to other 5by5 podcasts, like "Build and Analyze" with Marco Arment and, in my opinion, the new flagship 5by5 podcast "Hypercritical" with John Siracusa.  In a short period of time, Benjamin has created a brilliant podcast empire.

I will also continue to read Gruber's insightful commentary on Daring Fireball, as well as subscribe to "The Talk Show With John Gruber"; it will take some time for Gruber to find his rhythm as host (rather than guest, which is essentially what he played on the 5by5 podcast), and I'll be listening to hear the show progress and evolve.

James Bond: "Somebody's Gonna Die"

Inspired by The Talk Show #71 hosted by Dan Benjamin and John Gruber, I just had to make a poster for the rhetorical film, James Bond: "Somebody's Gonna Die".  Hear the context of the title around 1:31:31.

update:  John Gruber (@gruber) apparently liked this enough to retweet it, and Dan Benjamin (@danbenjamin) wrote me a nice note about the poster.  Love those guys.

How Siri Could Work With AppleTV

click here for a larger image

I was inspired by the discussion on 5by5's excellent podcast Hypercritical (episode 38), hosted by Dan Benjamin and John Siracusa, to create this extremely quick and extremely dirty mockup of how Siri, the amazing new feature on Apple's iPhone 4S, could be implemented on the AppleTV. My idea is adding a dedicated Siri button on the AppleTV remote, as well as a microphone that sits at the top of the remote that transmits your voice commands to the AppleTV.

This solution bypasses the problems Dan and John discussed, such as shouting at the AppleTV from a distance. Plus, with the remote control/microphone only about a foot from the user's mouth, ambient noise is a much smaller issue than with a microphone attached to the set top box. Plus, it eliminates the need for an expensive iOS device (like an iPod touch or an iPhone) to be the sole input for voice commands. I suppose the entire remote would no longer be an IR remote, but a full-on Bluetooth remote. If I spent more than an hour on the mockup, I would have removed the little IR window at the top of the remote. With complete ignorance of how much power consumption Bluetooth requires in a remote control-sized unit, or what technical requirements might be necessary for this kind of functionality (not to mention the additional cost required, in order to hit that $99 sweet spot), I hacked together this quick mockup of what it might look like. I admit I rushed the on-screen interface - it's not very polished and is almost a direct lift from the iPhone Siri interface. My idea is that the regular interface would blur in the background, and a custom AppleTV Siri interface would appear. Anyway, there ya go.