The Nitch Podcast: Recent Episodes
Jonathan Stark
A weekly podcast about building apps that run everywhere using open web standards like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, REST, and JSON. Hosted by Jonathan Stark and Kelli Shaver.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about how to go beyond native mobile apps and use the whole phone.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about how big of an impact mobile computing could have on civilization in the next five years.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about disappearing quotation marks, app cache gotchas, disillusionment with Docker, and ramping up with Ember.
Jonathan and Kelli discuss recent announcements from Pebble, IFTTT, and Twilio and how they portend the demise of the prevailing app store hegemony.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about expiring S3 URLs with Paperclip, first impressions of Ember, and we finally understand what's so great about Docker.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about our sticky backend. Specifically: organizing, monitoring, upgrading, and backuping (?) our resources on Amazon Web Services.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about another crazy new computing platform that could blow everything you know about the browser - but not the Web - out of the water.
Jonathan and Kelli imagine what computing will look like in the year 2030 based on the behavior of a four year old.
Jonathan and Kelli share 8 things we're doing in the new year streamline our work and home lives: everything from creating virtual machines, to deleting twitter from our phones, to finally giving up all those silly domain names we're never actually going to use.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about ten simple things you can do to retrofit your desktop website for mobile.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about the amazing Twilio API, scheduling tweets with a Zapier GCal hack, and ordering pizza over SMS.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about embracing a mobile first philosophy from a design standpoint, not a build standpoint.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about automated front-end testing with Rspec, Capybara, Poltergeist, and PhantomJS.
Jonathan and Kelli countdown our top ten giftable gadgets in the year's Nitch Gift Guide.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about a PhoneGap bug on Lollipop, building Hue Pi with Meteor, and we finally announce that Castbacker.com is live!
Jonathan and Kelli talk about cross-device user experiences at Disney, no-click purchases with Amazon Echo, image analysis with Ice Cream, image optimization with SquishTo, and Kelli’s favorite surgeon.
Jonathan and Kelli have a grand old time talking about broken axles, smoking eyeballs, and socking Mickey.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about gotchas with POODLEBLEED, admit to foreach stupidity in PHP, and recap the fun we had building Castbacker for Rails Rumble.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about the Moto Hint earpiece, scope bugs in coffeescript, Firefox vs Chrome dev tools, a new web based IDE called Nitrous, and why Canadian ketchup is so delicious.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about aggressive enhancement, the Physical Web, and the death of the browser.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about callbacks in ActiveRecord, keys in IndexedDB, and shocking developments wearable tech.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about bugs: Bash exploits, MYO armbands, HTTP headers, and a whole lot more.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about the Moto Hint earpiece and the new hands-free, eyes-free computing posture that it makes possible.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about the fallout from Apple's iPhone 6 and Apple Watch announcements: iOS is officially fragmented, NFC goes mainstream, and the smartwatch category gets the Apple stamp of approval.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about git workflow, AWS bugs, and Apple's upcoming product announcement.
Jonathan and Kelli we follow up on some Pebble smartwatch news, rant about bad error messages and documentation, and announce Nitch Bits: a series of short videos aimed at making your life as a web developer a little bit easier.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about building watch apps with Pebble.js, auto-playing mp3s with the audio API, and compiling HTML apps with PhoneGap.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about some crazy new I/O options and how they could fundamentally change the way we design and build interfaces.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about the new and improved Feathers front-end prototyping gem, whitespace bugs in JSON, and taking the Skateboard approach to product development.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about Rails, Rails, and more Rails. Paperclip updates, Devise bugs, and three nifty gems for your fun and enjoyment.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about bugs, bugs, and more bugs: iframe appcache hack, public assets gone missing with capistrano, retroactive paperclipping, stupid git tricks.
Jonathan and Kelli explore the subtle details that separate the good from the bad in user experience design for smartwatches.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about running Firefox OS apps on Android, logging calories in Lynx, and how Kelli was oh so right and I was oh so wrong about building APIs first.
Jonathan and Kelli list the top ten reasons why you should wrap your web app in PhoneGap.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about smartwatches, connected homes, zen clocks and app cache bugs. How's that for a grab bag?
Jonathan and Kelli talk about NFC rings, the Narrative Clip, and Amazon's new Fire Phone - but not before a big waffle about pretzel drones, vigilante skunks, nerd camp and much much more.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about three connected gadgets - the Hiku barcode scanner, the Narrative Clip, and the Pebble smartwatch - which ones are developer friendly and which ones aren't.
Jonathan and Kelli try - and probably fail miserably - to answer a Dear Listener’s question about the pros and cons of various frontend JavaScripts frameworks.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about updates to FastActive, gotchas with mod proxy, configuring virtual machines with Vagrant, and oh. So much more...
Jonathan and Kelli talk about programming a stateless SMS app with Twilio, managing web app releases with Capistrano, and dreading our children’s entry into teenhood.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about extending the functionality of your Rails application with engines - but not before we waffle around with housekeeping for about a half an hour.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about artifact conf recap, building static sites with assemble.io, and gotchas with msp.
Jonathan and Kelli brainstorm the underlying principles of designing in the browser in hopes of spawning a thousand baby Pattern Labs.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about exploding apps, deconstructing smartphones, and why social networking on a watch is a good idea.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about cross-platform perfection: what to do when media queries are not enough.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about queuing long requests with Sidekiq, monitoring servers with Monit, and playing cards over the internet with RDS.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about big text on little screens. The Spritz SDK gets us thinking that reading a book on your watch might make sense after all.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about tools, tools, and more tools: Grunt, Atom, Dropzone, Popcorn, and oh... so much more.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about Android Wear and the possible effects on everything from the Pebble Smartwatch to the sanity of Web designers.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about preaching to the choir(.io), web apps for watches, and a second look at smart glasses.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about first impressions of Google Glass, DIY SaaS integration with Zapier, and zoning out to the sounds of Github.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about recent announcements from Facebook, Nokia, Mozilla, and Samsung - and how they affect app developers.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about the shocking demand for smart headphones and what designers and developers can do to start building experiences for the coming zombie apocalypse of screenless devices.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about the relative merits of CSS grid systems and JavaScript libraries.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about a slew of geeky books we've read lately: security, astronauts, innovation, cyberwar, and more. Think of it as recommended reading for nerds.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about Kelli's new Raspberry Pi: what to do with it, how to program it, and what she loves about it.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about a few of our favorite APIs: Stripe, Dropbox, Github, Twilio, and not Facebook.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about the tools we use to get our jobs done on a daily basis. Command line utilities, browser plugins, text editors, project management, and more.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about the pros, cons, and programming implications of the top ten gadgets we received in 2013.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about the Twitter redesign, improvements to mobile browsers, math bugs in JavaScript, and more.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about cross-platform consistency: should your app conform to platform conventions or maintain a consistent look and feel everywhere?
Jonathan and Kelli talk about notification overload: what it is, how to deal with it, and where we might be headed.
Jonathan and Kelli discuss the highlights of “APIs: A Strategy Guide” by Daniel Jacobson.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about Feathers, a minimalist CSS reset and boilerplate gem created by our very own Kelli Shaver.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about Pattern Lab, a tool for building atomic design systems created by Brad Frost and Dave Olsen.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about Ruby and Rails: learning resources, application considerations, and Kelli’s big win!
Jonathan and Kelli give a brief intro to Git, how you can use it to replace FTP in your workflow, and why you probably should.
Jonathan and Kelli chat about the benefits of accessibility, availability, and progressive enhancement in cross-platform web projects.
Jonathan and Kelli discuss perception vs reality in the context of application performance. In particular, the importance of instantaneous feedback, a simple way to remove the pesky 300ms delay in webapps on touch devices, and the real reason why jank is a bad thing.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about Google’s two-factor authentication, smartwatch use cases, and a possible strategy behind Apple’s decision to release two new iPhones at the same time.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about how the iPhone 5c announcement illustrates that future-friendly thinking is more important than ever.
Jonathan and Kelli reach into the topic grab bag and pull out programmable lightbulbs, embracing constraints, prototyping in PHP, benchmarking CSS, and more.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about what happened during Kelli's 48 hour weekend hackathon, including first impressions of RedHat's OpenShift cloud platform, pub/sub in Ruby with Faye, and oh, so much more.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about timezone bugs on Amazon S3, problems with ruby on new EC2's chipset architecture, and news about RailsForum, Pandacodium, Spoken, Inside the Brackets, and a lot more.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about real live project work on apps that run cross browser, cross platform, and beyond.
Jonathan and Kelli walk through a process for modern web development using responsive design, CSS3, and copious amounts of progressive enhancement.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about function hoisting in Firefox, a fun new side project, and collapsing space with smartphone cameras.
Jonathan and Kelli continue with the fourth and final installment of their screencast on how to build a REST API with Ruby on Rails.
Jonathan and Kelli get very superstitious about Rails 4, JSON endpoints, responsive web design, and more.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about responsive design, progressive enhancement, and development tools in the context of a big huge site redesign.
Jonathan and Kelli continue with part 3 of their screencast on how to build a REST API with Ruby on Rails. Please visit http://nitch.cc and look for Episode 62 if you'd like to view the video.
Jonathan and Kelli continue their screencast on how to build a REST API with Ruby on Rails. Please visit http://nitch.cc and look for Episode 61 if you'd like to view the video.
Kelli builds a rest api with ruby on rails, Jonathan asks stupid questions while she does it, and we post video of the whole shebang for you to enjoy in your copious free time.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about the WeMo Switch, blink(1) USB, hue light bulbs, and the APIs that tie them all together.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about the upcoming screencast episode, performance problems with KnockoutJS, and the massive implications of Google's recent announcements at the IO conference.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about building - and more importantly, testing - REST APIs with Rails and RSpec.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about how to quote a project for a client who needs an app that can run everywhere.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about experimentation with the Lua programming language and the possible implications on cross-platform application development.
Jonathan and Kelli sit back and say "I told you so" for 30 minutes as they talk about Glassware, the Mirror API, and improved methods for the distribution of cat photos with Google Glass.
Jonathan and Kelli welcome special guest Ethan Marcotte to discuss some of the non-technical challenges of Responsive Web Design: unresponsive ad units, browsing the web on game consoles, getting client sign-off without Photoshop comps, and much more.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about Amazon Web Services - EC2, RDS, CloudWatch, and our new personal favorite, Simple Notification Service.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about drag and drop on touchscreen devices and opting out of responsive web design.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about maintaining context in small screen apps, reconsidering jQuery for mobile projects, and preparing your content for the zombie apocalypse of smartwatches.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about WebHook gotchas, reconsidering SMS, and touch sensitive backsides.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about Lawnchair performance tips, simplfying your CSS with CSS Simple, and preparing for the zombie apocalypse of devices, part 2.
Jonathan and Kelli prove that APIs are totally awesome, get into trouble with mobile first responsive design, and experiement with the next revolutionary mobile technology.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about onclick conflicts between jQuery and Google Analytics, our development setup for Responsive Web Design, and why SASS is stupid. Kidding! Sheesh... lighten up :)
Jonathan and Kelli talk about our defaults when starting a new project - tools, technology, language, structure, and more.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about getting clever with Amazon's Elastic Block Store, redefining wireframes in the context of responsive web design, and our growing obsession with Jackbooks.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about gotchas with CORS headers in Rails apps, the definition of "Mobile First", and a process for Responsive Web Design.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about enhancing site performance with Varnish, simplifying web development workflow with Sprockets, and legally binding responsive web design.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about the pros and cons of Bootstrap, learning to live with Objective-C, and new developments in lamp programming (and we don't mean Linux).
Jonathan and Kelli prognosticate endlessly about the future of computing, the effects of wireless connectivity on society, and what we can do now to prepare.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about trouble with really big buttons, SMS apps for Kenyan farmers, and how to send API requests to a lamp.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about Safari rendering bugs, more location hash gotchas, and a rundown of dev tools including knockout.js, markup.js, Yeoman, and Reflector.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about cross-browser location hash inconsistencies, thoughts on CoffeeScript, and the genius of NPR's "Create Once, Publish Everywhere" platform.
Jonathan and Kelli discuss media queries on Retina Macs, overflow scrolling on touchscreen devices, and lessons learned from a spaghetti code weekend with PHP.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about Web SQL Database, storing images as base64, and error handling considerations for REST APIs.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about Kelli's first impressions of cross-platform mobile framework PhoneGap.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about using DataMapper with CodeIgniter, the pros and cons of CSS grids in Bootstrap, icon font resources for responsive web design, and tips for using CORS with REST APIs.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about debugging appcache in standalone webapps on iOS, Multi-AZ deployment with Amazon RDS, and the inevitable invasion of 7 inch tablets this holiday season.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about debugging mod_rewrite, securing PHP installations, making Apache directory listings mobile-friendly, and who owns the data in a social application.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about tools, tools, and more tools: EC2, Markdown, MySQL Workbench, Sequel Pro, Sencha Architect, Zend Studio, Geek tool, and more.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about red flags, cranky moodlies, viral tweets... aaaand PhoneGap, and REST APIs, and interactive SMS bots, and all the usual stuff.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about one million things, including: what the DocBook XML grammar has in common with Beats by Dr. Dre. Yep... seriously.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about audio augmented reality, mobile sticker shock, bitching on (and about) Twitter, and the upside of getting hacked.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about what went on in the Dallas biodome, highlights of the iPhone announcement (from 2007), Jonathan redesigns his site live out of sheer embarrassment, and then we get tooly on yoaz: text editors, CSS pre-processors, lightweight blogging engines, and... whatever CodeKit is.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about sandwich achievements, gratuitous animations, wireless green peas, and a future without graphical user interfaces.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about slogging through kernel logs on AWS, Kelli's mobile first responsive redesign, self-documentation vs static docs for RESTful APIs, the future of web browsers on iOS, why Jonathan is not an hypocrite on the Facebook native app thing, and the heartwarming story of a ragtag bunch of watermelon seeds who beat the odds and go on to win the big game. Wat?
Jonathan and Kelli warm up with responsive web design, javascript media queries, and smart carpet before diving into Apple: how to learn Objective-C in a long weekend, the awesomeness of Xcode, and why iOS will never be a dominant software platform.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about everything from the future of online publishing to Cochlear implant hijacking. Sorry, no intro and outro music this week. If you miss it, please complain loudly on Twitter to @nitchapps.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about programming for a world where everyone has multiple connected devices, the tension between graphic design vs responsive design, and the challenges of managing open-source projects. But not before we spend 15 or so minutes waffling about juice fasts, coding as a family, and mousing with your face. You've been warned.
Jonathan and Kelli apologize to the authors of the CORS spec, explain why the Web vs Native debate is a red herring, and wonder aloud what will happen to all the soon to be unemployed cabbies in Boston.
Jonathan and Kelli rag on cross-origin resource sharing, defend php as a REST framework language, and open sources oranges. Then we head into the weeds with sms for dogs, digital pills, and trusting your eyesight to a computer.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about the genius of "view source" in web browsers, idealism vs reality in responsive web design, and freedom vs control in the coming wireless society.
Jonathan and Kelli begin with many-to-many self joins with ActiveRecord, "sticky-finger" swipe in the People.com mobile site, and a philosophy of comments for self-documenting code. And then we go totally off the reservation with broadcasting human senses, cars for the blind, and a truly terrifying robot dog. Fun!
Jonathan and Kelli talk about mobile web debugging tools, the moral conflict of using tables for layout, and development principles vs client demands. Also this week, The Nitch Podcast Drinking Game is born. WARNING: The audio is absolutely atrocious this week, so proceed at your own risk. Sorry!
Jonathan and Kelli talk about ActiveRecord and SQL views, complexity in the database vs the middleware, HATEOAS vs OPTIONS requests, and much MUCH more. Coffee printers, predator pee, and the future of bricks and mortar retailers, for example.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about X header deprecation, Margo ported to Ruby, database migrations with Active Record, and all things AWS.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about X header deprecation, Margo ported to Ruby, database migrations with Active Record, and all things AWS.
Jonathan and Kelli suggest a process for developing apps that run everywhere, share anecdotes about the alarming insecurity of telephonic communications, and wonder aloud about what will become of our website when we eventually shed this mortal coil. Grab yer hanky... it's a very special episode of the Nitch Podcast.
Jonathan and Kelli explain why the mobile web is really just a warning shot in the wireless revolution, what content creators can do to prepare for interactive Coke bottles, and the difference between portable and mobile devices. But not before we spend some time navel gazing in honor of our tenth episode.
Jonathan and Kelli apologize to the internet, shave our dogs, and discuss tools, tools, and more tools: wireframing, prototyping, documentation, debugging, and everyone's favorite - time tracking.
Jonathan and Kelli have a rambling chat about broken feet, bad movies, and bocce night in an attempt to talk about anything but Availio. Spoiler alert: we fail miserably.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about audio tag support in Firefox, the allure of nosql key-value store Redis, the emotional impact of SMS vs the mobile web, and enjoy a visit from a very special guest - J's blue Kenmore Intuition vacuum cleaner.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about accessing REST APIs over SMS, wrestling with Google Chat bots, confusion about the HTML5 Audio tag, and so much more.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about writing API docs before API code, the advantages of progressive enhancement over graceful degradation, and the lost art of writing SQL queries.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about REST APIs, automated testing, and knowing the rules before you break them.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about everything under the sun this week: ghost clicks in Availio, EOF merge conflicts in git, database events with Boutique.js, confusion about CORS, bitmapped text clipping paths on retina iPad, fun with the file API, and much more.
Jonathan and Kelli talk about HTML source order issues, painless API documentation, frictionless blogging with static Markdown files, people vs users, esoteric htaccess bugs, polishing eyeballs, and more.