Crossed Wires

With such a diverse range of stories being told online through platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and more, it’s crucial that we look at the journey to make the ability to share those stories more accessible.

It was great to chat with Pam about how things have changed so much in filmmaking over the years and get her valuable insights into why art and storytelling are so important in our digital age.

Please do make sure you check out her podcast, and of course if you have experience with digital storytelling, we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

As I hope comes across in the episodes, great audio is something I really believe is essential for any content creator; there’s nothing worse than a great-looking YouTube video that has audio that sounds like it was recorded in the bathroom.

That’s where the new Vocaster range from Focusrite comes in, and so with the kind help of Arielle from SquadCast, I was able to arrange a chat with Dan to go a bit deeper into what Vocaster is and why it may be the right fit for podcasters, YouTubers, and many other storytellers.

I want to say a huge thanks to Dan for taking the time to chat, and for how open and honest he was when we talked about the competition. You can genuinely hear Dan’s passion for audio and Focusrite come through.

It’s worth mentioning that this isn’t a paid promotion episode, no money has changed hands and Focusrite haven’t asked for any editorial control of the episode. However, for full transparency during our chat Dan did very kindly arrange for a Vocaster One to be sent out to me at no cost, but this was not based on any conditions or content requirements.

What’s your experience been with audio interfaces and recording setups? We’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods. 

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

As many of our regular listeners will know, I’m a bit of a smart home addict and my platform of choice is Apple’s HomeKit. To dive a bit deeper into the platform I invited Stephen Robles from the HomeKit Insider podcast to come and chat about the good, the missing, and the frustrating parts of the HomeKit ecosystem in 2022.

What’s been your HomeKit experience so far, good or bad, we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

For someone who can’t (due to my eyesight) drive, I think it’s fair to say I’ve picked up fairly substantial interest in the future of electric vehicles, as they’re the foundation needed for fully self-driving cars that someone like me could own.

Alex kindly came back to the show, albeit in a different role, to discuss where we are in 2022 regarding electric cars. We take a look at who’s making vehicles right now, beyond the behemoth that is Tesla, as well as factors like charging accessibility, range concerns, affordability, and of course environmental impact.

I’ll admit this is very much a UK-centric episode; that’s simply because that’s the experience Alex and I have to share. That does, of course, mean that if anyone has experience with electric cars in other countries and regions we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Note from James (November 2022): This episode of Crossed Wires was the catalyst for Charging Status, so do make sure you check out those episodes where Alex and I talk more UK focussed EV news every month.

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

Suppose you’ve watched any amount of online video, particularly on YouTube. In that case, you’ll likely have seen those ads for the ‘miracle’ tech products that claim to be able to do anything from cut your power bills to turning your internet up to 11. In reality, most of these are scams and don’t meet even half of the claims they make.

That’s why I invited Krazy Ken all the way from the secret Computer Clan lair to come and talk to us about his efforts to debunk these scams on his YouTube channel.

I’ve been a fan of Ken’s content for some time, particularly his scam busing series where he not only proves these scams don’t work but actually gets into why they can’t work. It was a genuine pleasure to have Ken on the show, I’m always really grateful when ‘larger’ creators are willing to come and chat on our fledgling show.

I really hope you enjoy this episode, I’d love to hear your stories of products that may not have lived up to their marketing, or if you’ve seen blatant tech scams online. This is exactly the sort of thing we want to help educate people on, to make being online and using tech safer for everyone.

Links are little light this episode, mostly because I don’t want to give any extra traffic to any of the scam products we mention!

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

This is an episode I’m really excited to have been able to record, and I’d like to start by thanking Chris Angel for their willingness to come and talk to me so openly about the things they’ve learned as both a member of the LGBTQAI+ community and as someone who is studying UI and UX design.

Accessibility is a real passion of mine, as someone with a disability I’ve always been keen to make sure sites, apps, application forms etc are as accessible as possible. As our culture is changing, we need to make sure that that same level of accessibility is afforded to everyone, especially marginalised groups like the LGBTQIA community

I want to make it very clear that whilst we at Crossed Wires always appreciate comments and feedback on episodes, we will not tolerate any form of hate or abuse levelled at either myself, or any member of the Crossed Wires team, or our guests. Any comments we feel don’t meet that standard will be removed, and similarly, any abusive social media posts will be reported to the relevant platform.

With that out of the way, please do enjoy this episode. Let us know your experiences of accessibility, good or bad, either here or over on Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

Not long after speaking with Cody from Mac Telecom Networks about all things UniFi, I reached out to Alex at HostIFi, as I’d heard about their cloud hosted UniFi controllers from several of the UniFi centric YouTubers I follow, to see if we could do a bit of a follow up.

Alex very kindly agreed and we sat down to have a chat about what HostIFi is and to understand a bit more about the use case and a typical deployment.

Networking is something that I really get excited about, even if I don’t always have the budget to afford the latest gear. If you’ve got any UniFi stories you’d like to share, we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

It’s been two weeks since Apple’s 2022 WWDC keynote, so myself and our newest team member, Jae, sat down to dissect some of the key announcements and the things that really got us excited.

Because we’ve had a bit of time to do some more research on some of the new features, I hope that comes across and you enjoy our thoughts and observations.

There’s lots we just didn’t have time to cover, for example there’s some very exciting things happening with HomeKit and Matter, but you can rest assured plans are in progress to have a full ‘State of HomeKit in 2022’ style episode.

Please do share your WWDC thoughts on things you found exciting, or if you think we’re downright wrong (it does happen) in the comments, both here and over on Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

In this ‘bumper’ edition of the show, I sat down with Andrew and Paul from the Addict magazines, which are wonderful publications focussing on the Amiga and retro culture and technology in general.

As well as talking shop, getting some genuinely interesting behind the scenes views into what making a physical (and digital) magazine in 2022 is all about, we go for a bit of a nostalgia trip on the subject of our memories of magazines and computer and video game shops of the 90s.

I really hope you enjoy this episode, apologies for any audio issues sometimes these can’t be helped when recording remotely. Do you have memories of newsagent experiences, or a favourite tech magazine, we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

As someone who has a visual impairment, and therefore is technically classed as disabled, accessible technology is something that’s incredibly important to me. So, when I saw a retweet about Enabled Play I reached out to Alex Dunn, their CEO, to see if he’d like to come and chat about the technology on the show.

As you’ve probably guessed, he said yes and so we sat down to talk about how important accessible, or assistive, technology is and get a great insight into what Enabled Play is, how it works and how it can make gaming, education, and work accessible to people with a wide range of disabilities, as well as being fantastically cool new tech.

I really hope you find this episode insightful, if you’ve got any stories of accessibility, good or bad, to share we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Episode Links

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW