“We started reviewing all apps and games before they’re published – it’s rolled out 100%...And developers haven’t noticed the change."

- Purnima Kochikar, Director of Business Development for Google Play

File this one under "things I never thought I'd see in my lifetime". I don't know how I feel about this yet. The Apple review process is an insane PITA for developers to deal with, so all I can hope is that Google doesn't follow their lead.

Episode 1 of Topical is out (links: web, Pocket Casts). This brings our total to 2, because hey, we're programmers and that's how we roll.

Our plan is to release a new episode once a week, on Friday. If you're in America that's probably Thursday for you, because you don't live in the future like we do. It's ironic, after explaining in episode 0 about how we weren't just going to be talking about tech that we did, but rest assured the next episode is something else entirely.

Our hope is that we can make a show that doesn't attract partisan support. We want Apple people, Google people...and hey...even People people! Whether we get there or not is anyones guess. In the meantime it's been fun reading the various feedback we've received so far.

Shipping is hard. So hard that sometimes I like to make joke websites about it. My personal favourite would have to be http://www.hasbjangoreleasedskala.com/, for my friend Marc, who I honestly believe will ship the most amazing design app we've ever seen. Just not today, well let me refresh, yep, not today. A close second was the one I made for my co-founder Philip, when he said he was feeling a bit de-motivated. That's how this site was born. It's half Silicon Valley joke, half long running office gag, but I still go there from time to time to have a laugh.

But today, today we actually shipped a real thing. Pocket Casts 5.0 for Android. An amazing effort spanning many months of development, with some truly awesome design and features. If you want to read more, you could do worse than start here: http://blog.shiftyjelly.com/2015/03/05/its-finally-here/.

 

Some of my friends have odd names, but none so odd as Daniel 'Jelly' Farrelly. I mean 'Daniel'...seriously!

If you're into odd names, and you're into podcasts, Jelly and I just happened to have started one. Just for you. Well not really for you, but feel free to pretend it is.

Chances are if you made it to this 3rd paragraph, you might actually like it, so check it out!

• Website
• Pocket Casts Link
• Twitter
• Send us nasty emails

Remember in December of 2014 when some crazy punk told you that 2015 would be the year of Android? Well he's not looking so crazy now, and I think he'll continue to look less and less crazy as the months tick by.

Today iA Writer joins the Android fold:

In the summer of 2014, we started dabbling with the Android SDK to get a feeling of what it would mean to develop an Android adaptation of iA Writer. We discovered a dev-friendly world with scant traces of the Android horror stories we had in the backs of our minds.

- https://ia.net/writer/updates/starting-out-on-android

Well worth a read. The post does a good job of highlighting the differences (both positive and negative) of developing for Android vs iOS.