As a big fan of TedTalks I attended a local Tedx event that had the theme "Courageous Creations" for guest speakers.

Many of you know that TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design and these events are attended by inspirational people with amazing stories to share both speaking on the stage and in the audience.

I was interested to hear there was another Neil Hughes at the event who was an author of Walking on Custard: The Book For Anxious Humans and was also appearing on stage for his first ever TedTalk.

This podcast is about his story and the day Neil Hughes met Neil Hughes.

In this episode, Neil talks about how Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer game is getting a free-to-play version and also discusses how some Facebook Quizzes such as the hugely popular 'Most Used Words' quiz reveals more about you than you probably realise.

Over the next few weeks, big businesses will be relying on their IT infrastructure to have no downtime during their busiest shopping period.

Predicted figures:

With potential costs of £200k an hour for website downtime, will those outside of IT begin to see the ROI of investing in security and network infrastructure?

Meanwhile, Ash Smith from London asks:

As corporate IT departments receive criticism for their sluggishness in a digital age how can we balance good solid effective guardianship and management of IT services vs adopting new technologies that are changing faster than we can implement them in a large organisation.

Inbox Zero is a rigorous approach to email management aimed at keeping the inbox empty.

Unroll.me is an app that brings a Tinder-esque way of cleaning up your inbox by just swiping to unsubscribe and undo years of damage within a few minutes. For example, I somehow have notched up 167 email subscriptions of newsletters, social media alerts and stores that I brought a Christmas gift from in back in 2007 and all have now gone forever after only 5 minutes of swiping.

The app is an incredibly easy way to regain control of your inbox by following the simplistic swiping options and certainly makes you wonder why it has taken this long for something like this to arrive on the scene.

By simply swiping left you can unsubscribe from the email subscriptions you don’t want and no future emails from these senders will land in your inbox ever again.

Waking up in the morning and not having to delete a mountain of emails is certainly a blessing. However, this new super efficient method of decluttering inboxes of newsletters will be seen as a curse to freelancers and entrepreneurs who are desperately trying to build email lists to increase their following or promote a product.

Are We Reading Less?

The literary tug of war between physical books and their disruptive nemesis E-Books continues to divide passionate readers and remains the topic of many a heated debate in book clubs across the globe. But are we actually reading less?

Will You Broadcast Yourself from Periscope to Apple TV?

Despite my initial reservations, there is no doubt that Periscope is becoming a massive game changer that allows anyone to build their own community or digital tribe in a more visual real time manner that even podcasts cannot compete with.

Apple’s Tim Cook famously said “We Believe the Future of TV Is Apps” but the success of Periscope suggests that it could be tuning into each other's living rooms rather than traditional TV channel hopping.

When your favourite artist is playing a gig on the other side of the world, Periscope also enables music fans to tune into the performance and sample the atmosphere via someone else's smartphone.

As live television becomes more and more produced, it can also become less genuine. This is what excites us about bringing Periscope to the Apple TV — the notion that you, your friends and family can share what’s happening in the world right now, together - Periscope

The Periscope launch on Apple TV looks set to be a real game changer.

I have received over 20 E-Mails from listeners who are worried at the dramatic dip in readership figures and their work being featured on one of the LinkedIn Pulse channels.

These are just a few of the questions that I have received, so I reached out directly to them to find answers to the questions that writers are currently asking.

Neil looks at the tech and apps available to bring Halloween into the 21st century.

The show also contains a must listen interview with the creators of Rindle that allows you to manage your increasingly growing list of productivity apps such as Gmail, Slack, Trello, GitHub, Basecamp, WunderList etc in one place.

Rindle empowers you to stream information from the tools you already use, automatically generate tasks, and move them through your workflow. 

Being able to organise all your tasks in one place is something I am quite excited about and urge all my listeners to sign up to the early beta before it closes. I have a feeling we will be seeing great things from Rindle in the near future so remember who told you about it first.

This week on a special podcast, I bare my soul for my favorite people, my listeners. The results may astound you, or induce uncontrolled narcolepsy... There's only one way to find out! Click the Play button.

Spencer and Neil discuss a wide range of topics such as Star Wars, Dune, earliest tech memories, video games, writing, music, politics, fanboys, trolls, online security, technology and much more.

Spencer Taylor

Neil looks at how Shadow IT is responsible for Slack becoming the fastest-growing enterprise software in history. Will it kill E-Mail? What are the pro's and cons?

This week's question is from Sam Lattimer who wonders why there is greater engagement online from our American friends.

Neil experiences life away from Microsoft Windows and gets to grips with OSX for the first time, only to discover he is a digital hoarder during his digital transitional stage.

This week's question is from Lifestyle Entrepreneur Wellness Coach Robin A Henderson who asks about the importance of online authenticity and Neil tries out the new social media app BeMe.