Technically Working
4 days ago

#174 – Live from BITS HQ: Earshot Hits the App Store

Michael and Damashe record live from the ACB Convention in St. Louis, in a suite generously loaned by Larry Watkinson and Kayla. This one is a room full of people, a passed microphone, and a lot of new tech announcements.

The two hosts also met in person for the first time this week. Handshakes, no hugs.

In this episode

Earshot was accepted into the Apple App Store during convention week. Michael is now officially an app developer, which is still a little strange to say out loud.

Taylor Arndt, COO of Techopolis, walks through Start Testing, a project she has been building for three years. It handles bugs, issues, and tasks, syncs with GitHub, and can pull in TestFlight feedback. There is a free plan for a single solo project, and a new Techopolis for Open Source tier at $3 a month or $30 a year for three projects and three contributors. Their AI agent, Lyra, can turn a long transcript into a full set of issues and a working plan.

Michael Doise from Techopolis introduces Start Navigating, released the same day. It is a free indoor navigation app that lets you record a route from point A to point B, add markers along the way, and follow it later using compass directions, step counts, and ARKit. There is route recovery if you are not standing at the start, plus early support for sharing routes to a public database so others can download them. Think elevator to Starbucks, recorded once and shared with everyone arriving later in the week.

Jeff Bishop gives an overview of BITS, the Blind Information Technology Solutions, a 501c3 affiliated with ACB focused on training, mentoring, and encouraging people to build things. He also talks about BITS Connect, the new iOS app built with Techopolis, which brings members and non-members alike into one place.

Also in this episode: the BITS Blinky, barbecue at Sugar Fire, a review of the mac and cheese, and why the Simple PTT radios made convention comms much better this year.

Gear used for this episode

Zoom H6 Studio, Audio-Technica AT2005 for Michael, Shure Beta 87A for Damashe, both wired XLR. The XLR cables were paid for by tip jar supporters, so thank you.

Links

Thanks to Larry and Kayla for the space, and to everyone who crowded into the room to be part of it.

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