0042 Sir Gene Speaks Special - Interview Ben Hills Anytime Podcast Player

Gene: 0:14

This interview was prerecorded prior to the Apple announcement about podcasting. But other than that, I think all the information is quite interesting. And I really do think that this is one of the best UX examples of any podcasting app. Hope you enjoy this episode. I'm joined today by Ben Hills, who is the developer of the anytime podcast player, app. Ben, how are you?

Ben: 0:41

Good. Thanks. Thanks. How

Gene: 0:43

Yeah, Glen, to have you on here. Always get to hear from the developers that are creating the next generation of podcasting products. So you're player, the anytime podcast player app. I think I actually complimented you on the UI for that after I looked at it.

Ben: 1:00

yes, you did. And the bank as much of that as well. It's good to read.

Gene: 1:03

It's u i the place where technology touches the human. So I think it's very important and I certainly don't want to disparage any other developers out there, but there certainly does seem to be. A number of products out there that were created by developers. And I think they assumed their users would only be developers. And so the interface is anything but intuitive. It is certainly figure out a bowl by somebody, if that's a word who is a technological person, but not necessarily by somebody who's not a techie. And I think your product is sort of the opposite of something that seems like. The interface is very clean and easy to understand and use by pretty much anybody that looks at it.

Ben: 1:45

Yeah. They always try to keep me with design clean and simple, partly by design and partly by time constraints in the summers time to work on these things. You want to do the best you can with the features you've got and then other apps I've done, I've learned, but actually a lot of people appreciate having some, that's just straightforward and simple. Some people like developers do like to have, setting for everything imaginable, but. I try and keep the UI simple. So anyone can use that, right?

Gene: 2:10

that's very important. Now tell us a little bit about your background. Were you developing apps before this? Do you do your work as developer or is this just a hobby passion project for you? Give us a little bit of your background.

Ben: 2:22

yeah. Sure. So I'm a developer, twenty-five years I've been a professional developer mainly Java backend web front end, and the mobile stuff so far has been be more of a hobby since I've discovered Android many years ago and started tinkering with it. I discovered that she building mobile apps is, there's a lot of fun and trying to get some that's useful and in a screen that's very small and a device that's not quite constrained is it is quite a good challenge. Yeah. So I've been tinkering with Android for awhile. And then how about, I love a podcasting, always fancy building a podcast app, but put it off for a few years. But then I discovered a while ago, this UI talk it from Google called gold flutter or silver cross-platform multi-platform tool kit that you build with dart. And in trying that, I thought this thing, this is great. You can be, can build from one platform. That language is really nice. So I thought, I'll be putting off building the podcast proliferation, so let's get on and build it. And I started working on the anytime player.

Gene: 3:16

very cool. So your motivator sounds like was. Your own interest in listening to podcasts. And were there features that you just couldn't find in existing apps that you wanted to make sure were in yours or what drove you to actually spend the time? And I'm sure it's quite a bit of time. It usually is for projects this size to actually create something of your own.

Ben: 3:37

Yes. I'd say it's probably taken about a year altogether to get to where it is now. It's been starting Bita for some time and it rolled out to version one this week. It's a project about a year, the first sort of six months product leans over the last six months. And there's all giving it some more time. But yeah, I just have a general level of audio, whether it's, radio music and particularly podcasts, I've listened to podcasts for years. And I just thought, just fancy and idea, building my own app to see what it's like to do. And if I could, build some that other people like and want to use and then with the podcasting 2.0 overs come along and all the features, and that's all get me more motivation to putting some of these features, just to make it a little bit different.

Gene: 4:15

1.0, just release. Then you've been working on this about a year, so you're doing it as a hobby, a sort of part-time what would just give us a general estimate of how many hours that actually translates into.

Ben: 4:30

that's a good question. I probably wasn't. I suppose every year I probably spent. Probably the last six months is all three or four hours a week. So nothing too huge but enough to adds up, but it's been good, fun, particularly the last few months, putting in some of these different features for the podcast in 2.0, it's kept it SL kept me motivated and kept it interesting.

Gene: 4:48

and Which of the podcasting two features are currently supported by the anytime player?

Ben: 4:54

So at the moment you can, it supports the keyword search on the podcast index. So you can switch between iTunes, which is why I started with where we bought the podcast index. It supports the funding links and the chapters currently.

Gene: 5:08

and when you're saying the the searching feature you're talking about searching, not just for the name of the podcast, but actually for the content inside or.

Ben: 5:17

At the moment, it's just the key. So it's just the, sort of the basics, basic search. But now that there's a hierarchy, start looking more at the API as a whole and see what else I can bring in because yeah, it'd be great if I could get search content and people and that sort of thing,

Gene: 5:31

well with the number of podcasts that are starting to include the transcript like mine does, for sure. It certainly opens up the possibilities a lot more for. Podcasting apps or even just search engines in general, being able to bring results back that are coming from the content of the podcast, not necessarily the name or even the index.

Ben: 5:50

Yes. And I think it gives the, this sort of the smaller podcast apps sort of an edge in something different that, that makes you want to go to them rather than the. The big ones, that the Apple player and the Google podcast player that probably won't do any of these features for some time.

Gene: 6:04

Yeah, I would agree with that. I think there's less incentive for the players that already have larger market share and come pre bundled with every hardware device you buy.

Ben: 6:15

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 6:17

But the smaller podcasting apps can certainly differentiate themselves by including. A lot of these features. So is there any particular area that you found to be more difficult than other while creating this app, but is it pretty straightforward to do the actual playback? W where did you end up spending the most time trying to figure things out?

Ben: 6:37

I spend the most time on was getting the player to work, whether it's in the foreground or in the background, actually the fiddly bit was getting to remember the position of every episode you've listened to. That was one thing. I want to put in a lot of comments I see from other podcast apps is that it might remember the position of when your current listening to, but maybe you've got 10 in a queue where you flip between them. I want to make sure it remembers the position of every episode you're listening to, but actually that was quite tricky trying to make sure it works when the apps in the foreground where your lock screens on or your phone switched off. But the rest of it is been progressive. It's just taking time. The flatter framework is great, but it's still relatively new. It was when I first started working on any time, the first thing I needed to do was have some way of searching initially the iTunes API. But there was no library in dance for searching for podcasts. The first thing I needed to do was build this library to do the searching and put that out.

Gene: 7:29

Oh, wow.

Ben: 7:30

And then having that, having done that, I discovered that perhaps some RSS feeds don't store the length of the episode. In the item tag. So you don't know how long it is. So then I had to write library that would interrogate the message of the MP3. So it took a little while to get started because I had to actually build the libraries that would then support the anytime player. So it took a little while to get going. But most of it's been quite, I won't say straightforward, but nothing apart from the saving, the position of episodes, nothing too challenging.

Gene: 7:59

now you mentioned that the flutter platform is cross-platform. So is the anytime player both iOS and Android or just Android.

Ben: 8:09

Just the moment. It's just it's on Android. Yeah, I'm it won't take much to get it working on iOS.

Gene: 8:14

And is that in your future plans?

Ben: 8:17

It is in my perhaps longer term plan at any daily Tyneside with iOS is that you need a Mac. To build on you, you meet Apple hardware with Android, you can build it on a PC Linux, Mac, anything in life, but with iOS, you need to have Mac hardware, which I don't have. And I haven't quite taken the plunge yet to where to spend the money on getting a Mac and the developer account and everything just to essentially

Gene: 8:40

I tell you that am one chip based a Mac mini is a hell of a deal at the price point.

Ben: 8:47

yeah. It's it sounds pretty good. Yeah. So

Gene: 8:49

on that thing is, you're it's like a 1500,$2,000 PC level of performance.

Ben: 8:54

that's right. But yeah it's on my radar, but actually there are other things that are more interesting. You can also build flatter for the web. It's not quite interested in me having a version that runs in your browser or perhaps a desktop app or the other day I managed to get it running on the Amazon fire stick. So you can, it was a bit crude, but you could have it on your TV. So there are other platforms though. That are interesting. I just haven't yet decided which one to pursue first

Gene: 9:18

Yeah. And certainly I think along with the other podcasts or have developers that I've spoken with when you've got a really, it's a project you're doing aside from your main day job. And so the amount of time that you're able to dedicate to the further development is limited. And you want to make sure you pick wisely where you

Ben: 9:39

That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 9:40

For example have you thought about adding the the value payment system, the Bitcoin payments to them? Some of the podcasting apps are just starting to do.

Ben: 9:50

I haven't yet. No. That may maybe longer term that's. There is essentially a version of any time that does that. This is awful to backtrack slightly. What introduced me to the whole podcasting 2.0. Was I received an email at the blue at the beginning of the year from Roy over at breeze and said, Adam Curry and Dave, James are doing this, this great work of him on podcasting 2.0, we've got this breeze. And they were lightning wallet and payment system. And we really want to, bring in podcasting. We've seen a rapid cycles also when we'd like to. Integrated into breeze as a library. Now, would you like to support us in this journey? So we had know, looked at the focus on 2.0, looked at the lightening. Cause I hadn't heard of that and thought yeah. Okay. Yeah. That sounds really interesting. So yeah. So I'm actually so actually,

Gene: 10:33

the breeze podcasting feature is actually your player.

Ben: 10:38

yeah, so they take, so the work I've done in some, a lot of the pull requests and the work that they've done open breeze allows them to use anytime as a library, And then to do the core, if you like podcast parts and then all the clever bits, the bits that's all over my head to do with lightning, they then add on. So it's so yeah so when you look at breeze, you might think, I want you to get that looks familiar. Cause some of it is based on any time and some of it's their own

Gene: 11:04

Right.

Ben: 11:05

to work with lighting. So I suppose technically there is a version of any time out there that can do that but

Gene: 11:10

Yeah. No,

Ben: 11:11

so.

Gene: 11:11

that's

Ben: 11:12

So at the moment, I'm gonna leave that to the breeze guys. Cause they, they mean they like clever

Gene: 11:15

You could ask them to create the library that does the Bitcoin, that you can integrate into your player.

Ben: 11:21

well. I think that's what they want to do eventually because all their stuff is open source. So you know that they're putting it out there for anybody to look at. But short term I'll leave it to them cause they nailed it. It's the

Gene: 11:31

And certainly my experience in playing with lightning for this for the podcasting 2.0 stuff is very much showing that the infrastructure is as much, if not more of a struggle. Then the coding portion of it because very little as documented. There's a lot of examples, but there's very little documentation. So you really end up having to either just build things and then run them and have them crash and then try and figure out why they're crashing. Or hopefully you can find other groups of people to talk to other developers that have done this in the past. That can point you in the right direction on things. But if you just want to read documentation it's virtually impossible and pretty much every product just says we're in beta. The documentation is forthcoming at some point in the future.

Ben: 12:22

yeah. Yes. Awesome. Beat you in a but it's very interesting. And seeing some of the comments that have been sent to breeze when they put out the. Lots of glass beads. So people are really excited about being a paper paid for the podcast they love. So

Gene: 12:34

Now are they going to keep integrating your features and doing polls as you update your code into breeze? Do you know?

Ben: 12:42

I would imagine so, yeah.

Gene: 12:43

So we should be able to see, and I'll be speaking with Roy shortly as well, but it sounds like we'll be able to see the benefits of your future developments through their app as well.

Ben: 12:55

Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. Yeah.

Gene: 12:57

Very cool. So in working with them, have you have you ended up changing the way that you're you built Your podcast player, have you found that there are better ways to do things?

Ben: 13:08

A lot of the change they've submitted. And think that suggested to brings some UI tweaks, which have been greatly suggested like perhaps different icons and font. So they give, they've given a bit of, a bit of Polish, but it hasn't been too bad. No. A lot of it is the sort of stock anytime. And then. The changes we've made as to enlighten them to implement certain parts with their own code. But it's been quite a straightforward experience and the guys that at breeze have been there, it really goes,

Gene: 13:34

Very cool. All right. That makes sense. As far as the, then now that you're at 1.0 what is the next feature that you're working on? Give us a little preview of what's going to be in version 1.1.

Ben: 13:45

okay. So at the moment, yes, this is version 1.0, and it works, but it is still quite a basic player. There are other few things I'd like to add. So in the core stuff, I'd like to add some sort of playlist support. Cause at the moment you play an episode, but it's just one at a time. So I'd like to add some sort of, queuing thing as you would expect. And he's all by the forecasting yet to be able to. Queue up a whole load of episodes. Similarly at the moment, when you go into a podcast listing, if you want to fetch the latest episode, you have to do a sort of full day on the pull to refresh action, to full set. So I'm looking at perhaps adding auto updates. So either for all, some podcasts, we'll just pick up episodes on the overnight or at some specified time to keep the feed fresh rather than you having to do it. And then there was some other tags in the podcast entry point I would like to implement. Perhaps not the person tag I'd seasons episodes. So those sort of four things that I'm looking at the moment, see what

Gene: 14:35

Yeah. And the seasons is going to be interesting because like my type of podcast, I really don't have a need for a season stag, but I think. A lot of podcasts that go into one area for a number of episodes and then shift, focus, and going to something else for them. Seasons makes a lot of sense.

Ben: 14:54

Yeah, and I see it as a way of also to filter the episode. So if you've got a feed with, hundreds of episodes and you can tie them to a season. And have some sort of filters that, show me season one, show me season two or some sort of subject to help find the episodes you want. I think I can think of be used spray, useful tags.

Gene: 15:11

okay. So can I give you a a suggestion and I've made this to a number of different podcasting apps and I hope my suggestions will end up being a standard, frankly. And here. So here's a suggestion, how you have the skip forward and skip back buttons.

Ben: 15:25

Yes.

Gene: 15:26

And for many years, we've had a skip forward 30 seconds skip back 30 seconds button. That's been the most common, sometimes it's 15 seconds, but usually it's 30 seconds forward or back. What I found is much more useful and I didn't create this, but I found this in one app and I thought this is brilliant. Everybody should be doing this. Is instead of doing 30 forward and back or whatever the same amount of time is to do 30 forward and then 10 seconds back

Ben: 15:53

10 back. Yep. Yep.

Gene: 15:55

having that asymmetric relationship saves you a lot of clicks and frustration of finding just the start of something. And usually you're looking for the start of whatever the start of the thing is. And so if you click the same amount forward and back, you'll keep clicking forward until you overpass it. And then you have to click on the back button and Murphy's law is that you're not going to click to right where it starts. When you click that back button, you're going to click 27 seconds before it starts. And so having a smaller value back then forward I really believe is the the best way to do it. With Sue, you effectively have the least clicks and the biggest chance of actually hitting what it is you're looking for. So I would very much encourage you along with all the other podcasting apps to adapt that as the standard

Ben: 16:44

I would agree with that. That's something I've looked at myself because. And as you say you hit, you want to try and find a spot. You want to go forward 30, but not back a bit less to find the bit you're looking for. So my idea was to have a valuation settings to say, go forward 10 30, 60. And it's yeah, if they go forward and back and I did have it working except some, for some reason that only worked when you started an episode. So for whatever reason, you decided to change it halfway through it, wouldn't pick it up. But yeah, I agree. It'd be much. Much better if you can have an adjustable forward and back to have a fun spot you want.

Gene: 17:16

Yeah. Yeah. And certainly adding into the options, what those values are is great. And techie people will utilize that. But you also want to just for regular folks that are never going to go in and tweak the options. I think just have that as a good standard from the get

Ben: 17:33

good. Start. The other thing you do is this is the slowing down. If you on any time. Anyway, if you drive, if you tap and hold the slider, it's like dragging around. It'll tell you where you are in episodes. So you can drag it across and let go. So

Gene: 17:44

Oh, I hadn't tried that. Okay.

Ben: 17:46

if you want to go to a specific point, you can, yeah, you can drag it across and it'll show you the time as you drag it. And you can just let go. No, carry on.

Gene: 17:52

Yeah, no, that's a good idea as well. And having loaded up so many podcasts and gaps on both my iPhone and my Android. Over the last few weeks in preparation for doing this week of interviews that I'm doing they do yeah. Start to melt in my head, into who's got what then? How are they different? And a lot of them have very similar things. Like when there's an episode playing, it's usually there's a bar towards the bottom with the image of the episode and it's playing, but it's not a hundred percent, it's not a mandated standard. So for some of them. They'll that piece will be missing. And then intuitively I click on whatever's down there thinking it's just every other app. And then, Oh, wait for it's different for this app. It doesn't do the same function. Typically I think the behavior is certainly the way it's been for me in the past. As you do a little bit of searching, you download a few apps, you try them out, you see what works and then you stick with one for the next few years.

Ben: 18:45

yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 18:46

More typical, I think a behavior, but podcasting 2.0 with the new set of features that are starting to be included, I think is going to force a lot of people to reset, to relook at their choices. I know I've had to do that. They have, I've been using on my iPhone for ages that I actually paid for was overcast. And it had a great UI, which was one of the reasons I really started using it. But overcast is also being extremely slow in the end, adding podcasting 2.0 features. I think it only supports one or two of them. And no word from developer on anything coming down the pike. Consequently it's made me have to start looking again because I do having a podcast that supports all the features of podcasts that I'm creating that literally utilizes every feature available in podcasting 2.0. It, it would be pretty silly for me to be still using an app that doesn't let me see things in my own podcast.

Ben: 19:45

yeah, that's right. Like rent and, and having things like now we have chapters. I don't know how we did without them for so long at this store. I can't go back now. Any app, I try. No, it's gonna, it's gonna have chapters in it. Cause that's a really useful feature. Even if I'm not going to skip the chapters, like at least see what was coming up when it was likely what's going on.

Gene: 20:01

Yeah, and I really did not like the idea of chapters initially. I think I've got some posts very much against chapter saying, this is ridiculous. I don't want people grabbing clips. They ought to be listening to the whole podcast because the whole podcast sort of forms, an idea from start to finish at least for my podcast and the way that I do it. And so I was very opposed to the idea of chapters, but what really sold me on chapters, I have to say is the changing of the image, because now all of a sudden, whatever I'm speaking about, you can have a visual reference for it on screen as well.

Ben: 20:37

Yeah. And on the links, I think the links were useful with it yeah. So yeah.

Gene: 20:40

Yeah. And I'm very curious. Yes. I'd love to find some stats on how many people actually click on links because I certainly put them in there when they're available. But I, when I listened to podcasts, my phone is usually in my pocket and if I pull it out and I'm looking at the images, certainly that's more interaction and that may be happens half the time. But rarely do I want to click on something else because the way I consume podcasts and I understand that everybody does the same way, but. The way that I typically do it is while working on something else or while eating lunch, or, like it's an add on activity, not the primary activity.

Ben: 21:20

Yeah, I'm the same. I know my device in my pocket quite often, if I go for a walk, I've got no signal anyway, but what I tend to do is I'll listen to them. Listen to the podcast, I think. Oh yeah, that was interesting. I'll look, I'll go back to, but I know you've got chapter, like I think what I can go back and find that particular spot. And at that point I can then click through the links afterwards. So it was all consuming at first and then go back by the chapter staff towards it

Gene: 21:41

Yeah. Yeah. And that's a very good, and also emailing people, certain portions of the podcast, because I have a lot of friends that just, they tell me just don't send me anymore podcasts because I just won't have time to listen to anyway. But if I send them a link and specifically say, start a chapter four and just, that's the thing that I was really wanting you to hear. There are a lot more likely to actually just listen to chapter four, then. If I just give them like, listen 30 minutes and it was like, I'm not gonna spend the time to scroll back and forth 30 seconds until I get to 30 minutes in,

Ben: 22:16

Yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 22:17

Yeah. Let's just talk a little bit about what you think podcasting 2.0 is going to move towards, because certainly with the changes that are happening right now, we were already had a lot of things introduced to the podcasting standards, but it's still in progress. There's still updates being proposed. There's still a opportunity for people to suggest. New features and changes. So there's room to grow. What do you think is going to be coming into podcasting? 2.0 potentially at least that isn't in there already.

Ben: 22:47

good question. Some of the things that we talk about recently had been quite interesting, sort of recommendations tag. That's sort talked about a lot trailers, tags, I've sourced stuff that's been discussed already. I've been following, but in terms of where do I think it's going? I just want you to know this. There are so many things you could add to it really.

Gene: 23:03

That's the beauty of having this opportunity from the standard to be updated. Is, it gives us a chance to think about what are all the things we wish were in there that haven't been up to this. So like a tag that I'm a. A big supporter of that I added in and hopefully it'll make it to the final version of the standard is a recommended speed tag. I think I just called it speed B because like I, I have a comment in my path cast and the description that just the first thing you see is I recommend listening to this 1.2, five X. And originally when I started the podcast, I was actually doing that acceleration. In post-production and then putting up the episode already, slightly accelerated. And Adam Curry is actually the guy that kind of talked me out of that. He says it's, it really should be up to the people. So it's okay for you to recommend what it should be and what you would've put it at if you were doing it in post, but. Not everybody is going to necessarily want to process data any faster than it's recorded. And some people are going to want to slow it down. Other people are going to be wanting to speed it up a lot more than 1.2, five. They might want to listen to two X. So you never know. And with most apps having that functionality, I think yours does as well. It's important to allow the person to control that, but I still think it. I like, I have an opinion on the, how fast would be the right speed and having the ability to preset that speed and then the person that can certainly tweak it from there up or down. But if I can have a tag in that the podcast player reads the first time, the episode is loaded that would certainly translate my recommendation directly to the user.

Ben: 24:47

Yeah, I can see you spot me. Me personally. I'm very much. Yeah, let's listen to it at normal speed.

Gene: 24:52

okay. So you're like a hundred percent. Okay.

Ben: 24:54

Yeah. I've tried listening faster, but I can't 1.2, five, maybe, but most of them, I like it at normal speed, but yeah, anytime cloud got up to speed and some comments I've seen recently requesting someplace get rid of the, for three times the speed. I know how you would listen to that, but

Gene: 25:10

Yes. Three X would be funny. And I have a clip of Ben Shapiro actually saying of course, if you really want to understand what I'm saying, you have to listen to 0.7, five. And th I dunno if you're familiar with Ben, but Ben has a reputation for being an extremely fast stalker. So like his 100% is like most people's 125 or 1.5 speed. and so I think maybe some people have slowed down, but for me, what I found is that the clear, the speech that I'm listening to, the faster I can listen to it with full comprehension. And this has been done in studies formally as well as that people's comprehension speed is much faster than their ability to speak. Like most people just never learned to speak at the rate at which they can hear. And you could, it wouldn't take much for you to get up to 200%. It would feel weird because you're not used to it. But your ears and brain are fully capable of understanding everything in there. Now, if you're consuming podcasting as a sort of a side activity, along with focusing on something else, then you'll probably not want to listen to two X, but I still find that listening and exactly 100% at 1.0 it just feels like things are dragging on. And so for most podcasts, I will listen to between one, a quarter and one and a half. But for audio books, I always listen to two X or faster because the people that are speaking in those audio books, they are professional narrators. They're super easy to understand, these people have spent their lives learning how to speak clearly. So everything you hear. It's supposed to be there and w what's not supposed to be there. You just don't hear. And consequently it's easier to listen to that at higher speeds. People that have not spent their lives learning how to be very precise and clear in their speech.

Ben: 27:08

Maybe I need to put that slider up, then I'll give it a

Gene: 27:11

You don't have to but I think you certainly could if you want it to, and it really is. I think for most people what the experience will be like is it will sound a little weird, a little strange, but what you realize after just five or 10 minutes is that you're still getting a hundred percent of everything that they're saying you're not really losing anything. And the flip side is, you guys like Adam yeah, absolutely thinks everything should be listened to at 100% because he when he speaks and he's a radio guy, right? He's been doing this for pretty much. His whole life is speaking into a microphone. And his idea is the way that I produce it is the way it ought to be consumed and nobody should be messing around with it. And my counter example that I used with him is okay that's fair enough. So I've written several books and typically most writers when they're writing nonfiction, they'll take somewhere between. 15 and 20 minutes per page of a book to write. How fast do you read books, Adam? Because I, and I say that smiling, because I know he's a speed reader, so he actually will read a book in one day quite often. He used to do book reviews like that. And because it was so quick and easy for him to read books. So if you're going to read the book so much faster than the book is written, But yet you've prevent somebody from listening to you faster than the speed with which you speak. I don't know. That seems little odd.

Ben: 28:31

I guess it's each their own.

Gene: 28:33

Yeah. Yeah. I it's a preference ultimately. And as long as you comprehend at whatever speed you're comfortable with, I think that's the important part. And ultimately, most podcasts are there to entertain you. They'll maybe inform you a little bit as well, but certainly mine is I consider it to be mostly entertainment and whatever you learn while you're being entertainment as a bonus. All right. We talked a little bit about your app and about you and your experience. And then certainly touched on some of the podcasting 2.0 features and future. Is there anything that I hadn't brought up that you think it would be interesting to the listeners or at the very least let us know where people can find your app.

Ben: 29:14

Sure. Can we get you from a find my app? The it's yeah, it's on the Google play store. So just search for anytime podcasts playing, you should find it there. And all the source code is on GitHub at mocha Java, which is my handle. So it's all in there.

Gene: 29:28

what's the handle again?

Ben: 29:29

of Java

Gene: 29:30

A mug of

Ben: 29:31

My day job is a Java developer first. So I had to come up with a handle at some points. I felt a muck of German.

Gene: 29:36

Nice. Okay. Very cool. And nothing else that you think we haven't covered that you want to touch on?

Ben: 29:42

no, I think I think we're good.

Gene: 29:43

all right. Perfect. I appreciate you coming on. This has been a pleasure. And as I mentioned before, I think that the app is very much worth checking out. The UI is absolutely brilliant. And I've learned now that it was so good that the breeze developers actually ended up using your code. To add podcasting to their apps. So that's very cool.

Ben: 30:04

yeah, it's been good. Fun doing that.

Gene: 30:07

This episode has been brought to you by a couple of anonymous donators, being people that are donating under$50 range, I should nonetheless say that I'm very appreciative of all donations coming in, not just donations coming in from people that are willing to donate larger amounts that will have their names specifically listed on the podcast. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. There are several more interviews to come and then I will resume my more standard podcasts where you will hear more of me speaking about political topics, philosophy and news.