Using Android Devices with Google Chromecast

Applications on the Nexus 7

The first application to be installed is the Chromecast application and it didn't take much to get the Nexus 7 talking to the Chromecast device. It just asked me on the Nexus 7 if I saw a set of numbers on my TV, which I did. All I had to do was to click on okay and things started working. Then what is necessary is to have some other applications that you can use to send media from the Android tablet to the Chromecast with the TV. The first one that I tried was Google Play Movies and I was surprised that I didn't really have too many options in there apart from buying movies from Google. I have been automatically connected up to the Spanish Google Play store and it is only offering me movies that are in Spanish. I will have to find some way of connecting to the UK store instead. There was one movie available that I could watch for free, this was a Disney Pixar movie called La Luna of only seven minutes in duration, but was very enjoyable. The quality of the video was absolutely stunning I thought and I have high hopes of being able to watch top quality video content using this Chromecast.

Plex on the Nexus 7

The way that this works is that the Plex application on the Android device connects up with the Plex application that you have on your desktop computer. I had already set up a few TV shows to be available using Plex on my Mac and these became available in the section called My Library. There is another tab called On Deck and these are videos that you are in the process of watching, so maybe you started but didn't see it all. This is a very quick handy way to be able to get back to that movie. Then there is also a tab for recently added movies and another tab for a queue. I haven't yet worked out how to queue movies up, I think that will be my next task. Then we have Channels and for some reason or other I have two iTunes channels and no clues on the icons as to which one is which. One of them is the music, audio podcasts and audiobooks that you have available on iTunes, while the other one gives you access to your movies, video podcasts and iTunes U. Every time so far when I have tried to play any videos to the Chromecast I just get a message on the television saying unable to cast. The information that I got was that it was down to DRM issues concerning videos that you have bought from iTunes. This was a little bit odd because all of the videos that I tried to play and also the video podcasts were not the paid for types of movie. The way that I was able to get around this was to set up collections of video that were based on folders on my Mac and I was able to get videos playing that way.

The NoStylus verdict on the Google Chromecast

After I had found the application LocalCast I was very pleased with the Google ChromeCast altogether. Right at the very beginning it did seem to be a little bit confusing. I thought that all I needed was the application Chromecast on my Nexus 7 or my Galaxy S3 and then I would be able to just use the thing. I have found out since, that it is necessary to have Chromecast enabled applications to be able to complete the circle. So there is Google Play Movies where I can get content that is available to purchase. I can Cast movies that I have on the device itself using LocalCast and then there is AllCast that I have used for sending photos to the TV. For the price of the device and considering what it can do, I have no hesitation in saying, just go and get one.

Podcast Listening for a slider iOS and Android - Pocket Cast

The thing that I do most with my Samsung Galaxy S3 is to use it for listing to podcasts. The Android application that I use for that is called Pocket Casts and generally I don't have a complaint about how well it works. I can have settings in there which are specific to one podcast and different from the rest of the podcasts. Sometimes it is handy for a podcast that I keep the last three episodes of the podcast so that I can go back to listen to them again if I want. With other podcasts, generally once I have listened to the podcast it can be deleted and that would be my default setting. So there are granular settings within the application that allow me to go in and change settings just for a single podcast. I see that there is a version of this for iOS too. Good if you want to sync between them and keep the playlists and podcasts the same on two or more devices.

Video and Audio Podcast Consumption

I can download video podcasts as well as audio podcasts and I can make a various playlists to suit what I want to listen to. Maybe I would like to have all of my comedy podcasts all in one playlist and then I can go to the playlist and listen to all the comedy one after the other. I could do the same for the tech and science podcasts and maybe another list of drama downloads. Often what I like to do is just to go to the downloaded playlist which is a default playlist that comes with the application and have it sorted so that the latest podcast is at the top. Once I start the podcast playing then it will go onto the next one when that has finished and so on. I know it makes it a little bit like radio where you're not necessarily choosing directly what you are listening to next, but I'm not too worried about that. It can be a good thing for me to have a laugh listening to a comedy podcast such as the Comedy of the Week from the BBC and then afterwards go into something like The Maccast so that I can get the latest news about Apple products.

There is a button in the top toolbar of the application that allows me to mark all episodes as played and to delete files from storage. If I am in the playlist for one particular podcast then there is a chance that I might choose that, otherwise I leave that button alone. There is also a share button and I can choose to share to whatever other applications I have on the phone, that could be to Google+ or Facebook, or maybe I want to send it out as an email to let specific persons know what I was listening to. Plenty of options in Pocket Cast for the sharing of Podcasts.

Finding podcasts to listen to

When you press on the plus icon at the top of the application you can go to the Discover section of Pocket Cast. In Featured it gives you suggestions and those seem to be based upon whichever podcasts are popular generally. It would be nice if these suggestions were based upon the podcasts that you have already subscribed to. At the moment I am getting featured suggestions for Planet Money, Iterate, Stuff You Should Know, and This American Life, none of these are particularly interesting to me. Slide across and you can see the Popular podcasts and then there we have the Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4, Android Central Podcast, Football Weekly And the Sceptic's Guide to the Universe which I have just subscribed to. Usually when you first subscribe to a new podcast it will download the latest episode so that you can quite soon be listening to, or watching that podcast.

Fiddling with the settings in Pocket Cast

It might well be that you want to have the podcast download it only when you are on Wi-Fi and you could further narrow that down by saying that you only want it to download when you are charging the phone. I have application set so that it will check for new episodes every hour, but you can choose from a list of doing that manually through to doing it daily at a specific time. The application gives you notifications if you want them, in the status bar of your phone and it can also let you know with the default sound and even with a vibrate.

Listening to podcasts on Android

There are a number of different applications that you can choose from and up till now I have tried to or three. I can't remember the name of the others because once I had found one that I liked, I have stuck with it. I do wonder sometimes about the Pocket Cast application because the phone has been doing unscheduled reboots and most often when I have been using this application. That could be down to the fact that I am very often to be found using this application more than anything else. So the problem could be the application or it could just be the fact that I'm using a custom CyanogenMod ROM on the phone which is having a problem from time to time and I notice it while using Pocket Casts.

How to Screen record on Android

Screen Recording On Android

What I do is to make tutorial videos showing users how to get the best from their Mac, iPad and iPhone and also now Android devices. Recording from the Mac is very easy because I use an application called ScreenFlow, all I have to do is to start the recorder and do my stuff and everything is recorded, video and audio. Recording from the iPad is also extremely easy because I have available to me an application called Reflector which wirelessly sends the data from the iPad to my Mac and once again I can use ScreenFlow to record whatever I am doing. After having got myself a couple of Android devices I have had to do a search for something that will work for recording the screen as a video.

BBQ Screen

This BBQ application works in the same way as Mac app Reflector, but not as good. Sometimes it works fine and other times it is finicky and occasionally completely unresponsive. I have successfully made a couple of videos with it using the app on my Samsung Galaxy S3, but as yet I have been unable to make it work on my Nexus 7. I really wanted to be able to do the recordings from the Nexus 7 due to having a larger space to work with so that it would be less fiddly.

SCR screen recorder does the business

So something had to be done to find a successful way of recording from the Nexus 7. Today I tried out a free application called SCR Screen Recorder and immediately it worked fine on the device. The quality of the video is just spot on and it also recorded the audio without any problems. I still have to see if it will record when I have my good microphone plugged into it. (Yes it does) Another thing that I might do with the audio is to also record into my Mac at the same time using Amadeus Pro and then I can use the facilities within Final Cut Pro 10 to match them up.

In some ways it is not as convenient to use SCR Recorder because I have my video editing on my Mac. So far I have not found any good video editing applications that are good enough to use for the Android. What I have to do is to move the video from the Android device to my Mac. I can plug it in as a USB storage device and easily copy from the application to a folder on my Mac. I'm not too keen on using this because I have found that if I do this via USB its messes up the connection to my USB microphone. I would have to do a reboot of the system to get the microphone working again. The other possibility is to use AirDroid and although it is slower than using a cable it works well enough for moving the file to my Mac.

Good quality video screen recording on Android

The quality and the size of the video is just about okay for the screen testing given me a 720 pixel high HD recording. The width of the video should be 1280, but isn't so I might have to do a little bit of letterboxing to get to the exact size it should be. Not a huge problem! The first video I did as a test of this way of recording the screen from my Nexus 7 I have put up onto Google plus and you can see it in this post below. I have now completed a couple of tutorials using SCR Screen Recorder and I am pleased with the results. I was able to get around the slight mismatch in the size, video ratio of the video clips and in the end it look quite good.

Boo hoo Audioboo

Making an audio boo

Today I created an audioboo on my Mac at home using my Samson CO3U microphone and Amadeus Pro, but I didn’t have time to upload it before I left the house so I moved the file to an application /service called Dropped. I use this on my Android device when I want to quickly have a file sent to Dropbox and for it to be automatically syncronised to the other computers I have. It didn’t seem to work so well going from the Mac to the Android as I still have to download the file to the devices.

Sending from Dropbox

The next trick I have to perform was to have that file uploaded to Audioboo. My first try from Dropbox was only going to send a link to the file and not the actual file itself, so that wasn’t going to work. I think that was because the file hadn’t been downloaded to the device beforehand. So I downloaded the file into my downloads folder and then tried again. I still had to go to an application that I use for looking at the files on my Android. ES FileExplorer is an application which is very useful to have that lets me get into files in a way that I’m not able to do with iOS. It requires a press and hold down to select the file and then I was able to share out using Gmail.

Or direct out of Gmail?

I did wonder if I would be able to pick up a file to share out from within gmail, but it didn’t work out that way. I was given the option of sharing out a picture or a video, but there is nothing in there to let me share out any other file or specifically some audio. In any case I was able to get the file uploaded to audio boo by using e-mail. There is a special boo mail e-mail address and with that it goes straight to the audio boo servers.

Work arounds

There is a specific audioboo application for Android, but it is still in beta and it doesn’t really work very well. So I have had to find out a workaround , so that I can record an Audioboo and send from my Android devices.

The range tool in the Audio editing app for Android

Audio Evolution Mobile on Android

Nice update to the look of the application and it looks more professional and makes it a joy to use. In the video I look at how to use the range tool. Basically you can use this tool to cut copy and paste sections of audio and that means one one track or multiple tracks too. Very easy to use and I am pleased that I bought this app to use for recording Audioboos on the Galaxy S3 and now on the Nexus 7.

Nexus 7 or What?

Apple News

SO all that Apple could manage was a fingerprint scanner and a faster chip. Well I suppose the camera is a bit better too.... Still not impressed enough though to warrant me changing back to the iPhone from my Samsung Galaxy S3.

So tempted to get a Nexus 7

I have nearly pulled the trigger on getting one a couple of times. So many people saying that it is brilliant and well worth getting. Such good kit and great value for money. Even as I am writing this I can feel the tugs on my credit card to have one sent to me. Trouble is, I still love using the iPad and I know that if I get the Nexus I will more likely pick up the smaller lighter and easier to carry around Nexus 7. Would be great to have a device that always will be getting the latest upgrades of Android as soon as they become available.

What do you think? Should I do it?

Draft App for Android

After getting to really like the application on iOS called Drafts I was looking to see if I could find an application on Android that would perform the same purpose. So what I was looking for was an occasion that let me put in text quickly and easily and let me show it out to various places just as easy. It is quite likely that the developer of this Draft for Android has had the idea of copying the ideas and philosophy of this application. Draft isn't as good as the app that is trying to emulate but it is still quite good to use.



You can easily create text documents and markdown documents from within the application or by using a widget. Having the wishes on one of your screens on your device makes it very simple and quick to get into creating your text. This is what you want in a notetaking application.

Sharing out is very easy and it works in two different ways depending upon whether you are the viewing mode editing mode. You are anything you see the option to export as as perfect as HTML.