iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

James Cridland @james.crid.land · 03/10/2026

In Berlin. Having a… currywurst poutine. I assume this is fine. @chagota.bsky.social

Chips covered with sausage, curry sauce, pickles and cheese curd

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 30/09/2026

Ah, no. Just the bit on the bottom of the image. :)

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 30/09/2026

The studio for the Podnews Daily today - Fitzroy Square in central London. I stood facing this railing (it’s a private garden) since it’s a quiet square away from what Peter Sellers would call “traffics noise”. Now to go and mix/edit/publish.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 28/09/2026

This is very cool. @play.date now has a radio app, so you can use it to listen to the radio. You can't tune it to anything specific, so it's just a tune up and down the dial to find a station you think you might like: probably the right way to think about it anyway

A small yellow Playdate with the PEEDEE app on it

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 26/09/2026

Congratulations to the sportsballers! Hurray for winning the SPORTSBALL! #sportsball #brisbane #brisbanelions

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 30/08/2026

Fun fact: in Indonesia, KFC has an app which is called KFCKU. It’s not just me, is it?

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 13/08/2026

Good grief. Even now, more than 25 years since I was on the radio, I'm still worrying about whether I'm allowed to mention some of the candidates of the Clacton by-election in any way on polling day. Those Ofcom rules never leave you. Thankfully, they don't cover @podnews.net . Phew.

Congratulations to Audacia Audio’s Kym Treasure, who is the winner of the Entrepreneur Award at Mediaweek Australia’s Next of the Best.
Also, congratulations to Candace Wilson from Your Podcast Producer, who appeared on a recent episode of BBC Radio 4's Woman’s Hour, giving advice on how to start a podcast.
And also, to Jon Harvey, podcaster (Trash Talk) and independent space warrior, who, wearing a bin on his head, is standing in a British election today against a toad.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 13/08/2026

Wore my @countbinface.osintnet.uk t-shirt to the coffee shop this morning, in Brisbane, Australia. Promptly forgot I was wearing it. Someone came up to me and wished me good luck. “Why?” I asked. “Oh,” I said, looking down at my t-shirt. Binface supporters are everywhere.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 04/08/2026

Astonishing. Why would Spotify want to do this? podnews.net/article/spot...

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 23/07/2026

Delighted with my new t-shirt, all the more so since nobody will understand it in Australia.

A Count Binface t-shirt, saying “Clean up Clacton”

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 31/12/2025

Best get around to reading my email today but not sure I can be bothered

An email announcing National Motivation & Inspiration Day on Jan 2.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 29/12/2025

Fun to flick through the 2006 book "Tricks of the Podcasting Masters" by @podcast411.bsky.social and @mightymur.bsky.social . Peppered with fun humour and the whole book remains surprisingly undated. (The screenshots of the websites - which are all over the book - certainly are though!)

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 29/12/2025

Double apostrophe abuse in the new Betty’s Burgers menu. You’d have thought with a name like that, they’d know.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 27/12/2025

Seemingly some pretty great MeshCore activity in Riga, Latvia (where I am in March). Should be interesting to see how far it would go. (This map is based on "observers", i.e. people on the ground feeding it data; I don't think it's complete.) analyzer.letsme.sh/map?lat=57.6...

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 07/12/2025

Tell me that it’s Christmas in one word.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 23/11/2025

Closed my Uphold account which had a total of US $10.84 in it (all BAT from Brave). “Why do we have so many data breaches in Australia?”

A note saying that they have to keep my data for the next ten years.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 17/11/2025

... I'm hoping that I can now convince them to fix the BBC app's player so that it can be played full-screen, rather than within a webview window (with browser controls at the top and bottom). (You *can* watch full-screen by visiting the website on your phone instead).

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 10/11/2025

We get BBC News Channel free in the BBC app here in Australia. But it’s a non-standard HTML player in a webview, so you actually can’t full-screen it. So if you like watching the news in a tiny window, you’re good; but otherwise, if you wanted to watch video like any other app, in fullscreen, tough.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 09/11/2025

What was I doing on the deck? Well, as it happens, working out how to make a complication for my watch telling me how my car battery is doing, like any normal person would.

An Apple Watch, highlighting a complication showing the percentage charge of my car battery, and whether it was charging or not.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 09/11/2025

Sitting on the deck, minding my own business, and a colourful visitor comes to see what I’m doing. #australia #brisbane

A king parrot, with a green body and a bright red belly.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 30/10/2025

Quite the impressive logo cropping by the BBC from this LBC footage with @iaindale.bsky.social

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 30/10/2025

A UK podcast I’ve listened to weekly for well over 15 years is literally doing a live show down the road in Brisbane. I am a bit excited.

Satirical news podcast The Bugle, celebrating its eighteenth birthday, has announced two live shows. The show is hosted by Andy Zaltzman in London, so it’s only natural that the show will, um, travel 10,200 miles to Brisbane on Dec 2 and even further to Melbourne on Dec 22. The Brisbane show is a ten-minute bus trip from Podnews’s HQ, so you can be sure that we’ve just bought tickets and will not be putting them “IN THE BIN!”

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 19/10/2025

Meanwhile, our pool has a visitor.

A water dragon - a foot long green lizard, sits next to the pool

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 19/10/2025

Brisbane in late spring. Pretty!

A jacaranda tree with purple leaves, all over the ground below

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 16/10/2025

Still remembering this conference panel fondly. Now ten years ago, in Toronto, Canada - a peak “manel”, with an extra exciting twist for poor Alan Cross who had to ask Jeff all the questions.

A panel with four white men called Jeff. One is called Geoff, to be fair.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 08/10/2025

These are pretty cool. An e-ink bus countdown sign in #Brisbane - didn’t know these existed.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 07/10/2025

BBC Radio appears to have almost entirely disappeared from TuneIn in Australia (and, I gather, Malaysia). My presets have a regional restriction notice on them - and search for these stations gives nothing in response.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 05/10/2025

More “toilet humour” that the kids apparently enjoy… on free to air FM radio

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 05/10/2025

Aus govt: we’re going to block all social media for under 16s Also Aus govt: 12 breaches of obscenity in 2025, but fine for Kyle & Jackie O to play “guess from the sound who from our team is taking a piss” while children are being driven to school. james.cridland.net/blog/2025/ki... #auspol

A transcript of K&J’s show, from an official ACMA document

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 04/10/2025

The Podnews Weekly Review just hit 250,000 downloads. Congratulations to producer and co-host @samsethi.co.uk and thank you to all at Buzzsprout for being our sponsor. Here’s to the next quarter of a million! weekly.podnews.net

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 02/10/2025

Here's the same view, but on the website, not the app. I do wonder what the BBC is playing at... (or, more accurately, not playing at...)

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 02/10/2025

On the BBC (international) website, about a third of BBC Radio 4 is now available for catch-up, including Today. Yet, on the BBC (international) app - mobile is where most radio listening takes place, not desktop - there still isn't a single link in the schedule pages to catch-up content.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 21/09/2025

The FM performance is incredibly sensitive, so you’ll probably find even more!

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 19/09/2025

Hello from Calgary, Canada!

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 18/09/2025

I hope that the Holiday Inn in Calgary airport gets to tell the full story about this big sign in the elevator one day.

An angry-looking sign reading:

Please do not jump or horseplay in elevator to avoid system failure and hefty fines that will be billed to your guest room.
Thank you.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 09/09/2025

I was in central Jakarta last week - in the middle of a concrete jungle. As I walked past the Indonesian Marine Corps headquarters, though, I noticed that they were cutting the grass.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 03/09/2025

Big podcasting news (just too late for Podnews though) - Melvyn Bragg is to stop doing In Our Time.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 17/08/2025

Running the Mac OS 26 beta (I know, I know), but running out of hard drive space. Turns out the reason is that half of my drive is full of "System Data". Internet searches are not very helpful in terms of how to reclaim this space. Does anyone know what I should do? #techsupport

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 03/08/2025

They’re not in the app. They are listed as hyperlinks hidden in the audio FAQs, which open a web page. You’ll not find them in the app’s search or anything else. A hidden link is not “in the app” in my definition!

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 01/08/2025

Yes, that sounded good. Here's that statement.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 24/07/2025

The BBC Sounds app has finally closed for me. If you have it still on your phone, it's almost trivial (right now) to get to work again - details in the second image. However, a) you need to have the app installed, and b) I don't think I'll get any updates, so it'll stop working soon.

To get it to work...
* Kill the app
* Connect to a UK VPN
* Use the app for a minute, and close it
* Kill the UK VPN

... it now seems to work fine. I guess it thinks I'm on holiday. (Of course, you need to have the app installed - which is no longer in app stores).

(I'm logged in with a user account that says I live in Australia.)

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 23/07/2025

July 23. The BBC Sounds app, which still works internationally, now has removed the Jul 21 closure time in the banner, and now says it’ll close “imminently”. Spare a thought for the product managers arguing about strategy in some NBH meeting room.

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 21/07/2025

Just listening to BBC Radio 2 live using the BBC Sounds app internationally. It’s July 22. The banner says the app will close “from July 21”. Ah, sneaky. Maybe it won’t close at all? Maybe the product manager is still in a shouting match with five other unpleasant people in a room in NBH?

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 21/07/2025

The BBC updates its secret list of domestic radio stations to say "yeah, you'll need to delete BBC Sounds first now". BBC Radio 4 is also no longer in that list (it ought to be, and ought to link to BBC Audio, surely?) www.bbc.com/audio/schedu...

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James Cridland @james.crid.land · 17/07/2025

Trust Commbank with your savings? Turns out I can't even trust them to spell the word "newsletter".

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