technology

How I Listen to Online Videos of Interviews, Lectures, and Sermons as Podcasts

October 22, 2018 by Andy Naselli

Problem: I don’t have time to watch a lot of online videos of interviews, lectures, and sermons. I would happily listen to the audio from certain videos on my iPhone if there was an efficient way to do that.

Solution: There is finally an efficient way to do that (at least with a MacBook and iPhone—I’m not sure about other devices). I love this podcast system.

How to Set Up the Podcast System

1. Subscribe to the Castro podcast app on your iPhone ($8.99 per year).

You can use the Castro app as your only podcast app, but I prefer the Overcast app for podcasts I subscribe to. I use the Castro app solely for listening to online media I’ve downloaded as MP3s.

12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You

April 24, 2017 by Andy Naselli

This timely book releases this month:

Tony Reinke. 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017.

Here are the “12 ways” (which are the 12 chapter titles): [Read more…] about 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You

Updates to My Article on How I Set Up My Desks for Sitting and Walking

January 27, 2017 by Andy Naselli

I just updated my article “How I Set Up My Desks: One for Sitting, One for Walking.”

I tweaked the entire article and added two new bits:

I explain how you can use an iPad or iPhone as an external monitor.
I share information about my new treadmill and custom-built treadmill desk.

Social Media Can Make You Unhappy While Pressuring You to Always Appear Happy

December 13, 2016 by Andy Naselli

This book opened my eyes to how social media emotionally crushes so many people:

Donna Freitas, The Happiness Effect: How Social Media Is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

Freitas is a sociologist who previously wrote a book on the hookup culture among college students. The more she researched college students, the more she realized how social media is sucking happiness out of them. [Read more…] about Social Media Can Make You Unhappy While Pressuring You to Always Appear Happy

How I Set Up My Desks: One for Sitting, One for Walking

May 13, 2014 by Andy Naselli

Updated on January 27, 2016

I spend most of my waking hours working on my computer. I do a lot of reading, research, writing, editing, emailing, and planning. And I do most of that at a desk.

I’ve customized my desk setup for what I do. Of course, this isn’t how everyone else should set up their desks, but my setup may give you some ideas for how to customize your desk for what you do.

My Desk for Sitting

Here’s my desk setup:

I had not given much thought to organizing my desk until Matt Perman published a series of blog posts on it in 2009. Matt recently revised and expanded his series into a handy little book: How to Set Up Your Desk: A Guide to Fixing a (Surprisingly) Overlooked Productivity Problem. Here’s my endorsement:

Matt Perman has served me so well in applying a Steve Jobs-like approach to my workflow: simple, intuitive, elegant, and efficient. I’ve followed most of his advice about setting up my desk (as well as processing my email), and it works beautifully.

Here are five components to my setup: [Read more…] about How I Set Up My Desks: One for Sitting, One for Walking

How to Make Your Mac Read Text Aloud

February 11, 2014 by Andy Naselli

Did you know that your Mac can read text aloud? The feature is called “Text to Speech.”

I’ve been using it in three ways:

Listen to a relatively long blog post or email while doing something else that allows me to multitask.
Listen to something I’m copy-editing (whether it’s something that I or someone else wrote). This helps pace me, and it helps me spot typos. Sometimes my ears hear errors that my eyes miss.
Listen to an English Bible translation that I don’t already own as an audio-Bible. (On listening to audio-Bibles, see here and here.) This is especially helpful when you want to listen to a variety of English translations while looking at a particular passage in Greek or Hebrew.

So how do you do this on a Mac?

1. Open “System Preferences,” and select “Dictation & Speech.”

Update on 11/7/2016: macOS Sierra does not have a “Dictation & Speech” icon. For Dictation, select Keyboard. For Speech, select, Accessibility.

How to Listen on Double Speed with an iPhone or iPod

April 9, 2013 by Andy Naselli

I listen to a lot of audiobooks, lectures, and sermons on my iPhone. And I almost always listen on double speed. Here’s how to do it on an iPhone or iPod.

1. Import the audio into iTunes.

You can do this by simply dragging and dropping (i.e., copying) an audio file (like an MP3 file) into an iTunes playlist.

2. Change the “Media Kind” from “Music” to “Audiobook” in iTunes.

Click to enlarge

Right-click the track(s) in iTunes.
Select “Get Info.”
Select the “Options” tab.
Next to “Media Kind,” change the category from “Music” to “Audiobook.”
Select “OK.” [Read more…] about How to Listen on Double Speed with an iPhone or iPod

Logos App Now Includes Notes and Highlighting

February 6, 2012 by Andy Naselli

After buying an iPad 2 last year, I wrote this about the Logos app:

I anticipate this being one of my favorite apps in the near future, but I almost never use it now because I can’t highlight the text or add notes to resources. (Very frustrating!) I’m waiting for Logos to enable those features to sync with Logos 4 across all platforms. Logos is working on this and has promised that these features are on the way.

It’s now here.

Logos recently announced and explained its updated app. I’ve been testing it out, and it’s beautiful!

This 55-second video shows you how easy it is to use on an iPad and iPhone:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0fexsKJuEMo

That video doesn’t show the app’s most important feature: notes and highlighting sync across all platforms. So if you highlight words on your phone, [Read more…] about Logos App Now Includes Notes and Highlighting