I enjoy listening to Leo LaPorte’s tech podcasts (http://twit.tv). With his growth the last year he is looking to expand beyond iTunes distribution, and also make the leap from audio to video (not to mention making the leap from the internet to your TV via the Roku player).
So he has teamed up with MediaFly (http://mediafly.com) to distribute for him. The hows and whys are more complicated than I want to get into here.
I used to listen to the podcasts in the Zune software on my laptop when home, and on my Zune player when out (via the generic RSS feed functionality built into Zune).
Now there are MediaFly “apps” for both the iPhone and the Droid for “accessing” (streaming/downloading) the podcasts. I am using them both, and I can’t help comparing and contrasting.
Let me cut to the chase.. they both are very young, but right now the Droid app is more useful to me. Let me soften that by saying I realize how fortunate we are to be living in an age when we see advances like this – streaming and downloading mobile audio and video without having to sync. MediaFly is getting this attention because they are breaking ground, and we are the winners either way.
Both apps have drawbacks around the GUI, with the iPhone one being very busy-looking, with mystery pauses in navigation, and controls that don’t act like standard iPhone controls.
The Droid app is very touchy – over and over I lose where I am or exit the app altogether just in handling the cell phone normally.
There are a couple of issues they have in common – for instance the inability to move around in the media. I often want to back up 30 seconds or one minute in an hour-long audio or video, and that is impossible with these clients, where the Zune made it dead-simple. They need to add buttons to the slider already present. Also, if you exit the clients, most likely they will not remember the media you were playing, where you were in it, etc.
Now for my reasons for preferring the Android client at the moment - (1) Twit video – android app has it, iPhone app does not, and (2)the GUI is a little cleaner.
Actually to really make this fair I should download the full beta Android client, because the one I have is just for the Twit network of shows.
MediaFly - http://mediafly.com/
iPhone app - http://www.mediafly.com/DigitalLifestyle#SelectedDevice
Android app - http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-mediafly-android-video-twit-zzBt.aspx
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