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Comment by lukeman | Hacker News Reader

So Mule now has The Talk Show and its new iOS app is really a reskinned 5by5 app that never was released (check inside the app bundle and you'll see the class prefix is FBF and the 5by5 logo is even in there—presumably unused).

Nerd drama.

edit: here's a screengrab of the Mule Radio app bundle if you're curious: http://cl.ly/1E240C0C272c2R3L2N19

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Hi there, I'm Dan, CEO of Black Pixel. I'd like to clear the air on this issue.

The application and the source code in question belongs to Black Pixel. We designed and developed the application in-house, at our own expense, and were going to license the binary for free, non-exclusive use on the 5by5 network, but that deal didn't work out.

Quite some time later, we got to know the folks at Mule Radio, and felt like there might be a good opportunity for our work to see the light of day. So we discussed things with them and licensed the binaries to them for use on their show.

So, to be clear, this app belongs to Black Pixel. We've never received a dime of money for it from anyone, because we wanted to have complete creative control over the product. We're happy that our app has found a home and are donating our time to support and add new features to the application as time goes on.

We hope you enjoy it.

-Daniel Pasco, CEO Black Pixel

Thanks Daniel. The app is great, as we expect from you guys.

Thanks for clarifying that.

You guys definitely should have refactored the class prefix and removed the 5by5 assets though, right?

@dlpasco:

You have never received a dime of money for your app. So did you donate your app to the Mule Radio Network?

I had never heard of Black Pixel before. Now I know that you (or at least one of your developers) is rather of the lazy kind. Comm'on, renaming 5by5 to mule should have been a no-brainer!

Jim here, I work at Mule Design, host a show on Mule Radio and had the pleasure of working with the fine folks at Black Pixel on the app.

> I had never heard of Black Pixel before. Now I know that you (or at least one of your developers) is rather of the lazy kind.

You know what? It was a bug. Bugs happen. We actually discovered it a few days ago but, the app store being what it is, we couldn't get it swapped out in time. We have nothing but the highest confidence in Black Pixel and would jump at the opportunity to work with them again.

No one involved in this is being lazy and your insinuation is not only wrong and rude it's completely unnecessary.

Duly noted, thank you.

Glad the app was able to see the light of day. It's a wonderful app and it's great that it was able to be used for a network, and people worthy of it.

> We've never received a dime of money for it from anyone

"Fuck you. Pay me" - Mike Monteiro.

Damn.

I listen to the talk show (and a lot of other podcasts) while I work. <gossipy>It seemed like there was some tension from John's perspective on the last episode</gossipy> Then it was strange that there wasnt an ep last week. Now we know why.

Wasn't there a sense of tension in like half of all episodes?

Hahah yeah. I thought it was just Gruber's personality. There were probably problems when Gruber slammed Readabliity as a scam while one of their investors is Jeffery Zeldman, another 5by5 host. He talked bad about it for a few episodes

I remember that episode and Dan seemed uncomfortable when John kept going and going about the topic. I don't know Dan personally, but I honestly think that he didn't like the fact that John called the "Readability guys" scumbags several times.

Or that he wouldn't like anyone saying that kind of stuff on his shows. I understand him.

I gotta say though, kudos to Dan for exercising superior patience throughout

Jeffery Zeldman gave Dan an interview on the latest episode of his show (#70, http://5by5.tv/bigwebshow/70 ), coincidence?

Mule Radio was started by Mike Monteiro who used to do the Let's Make Mistakes podcast on 5by5. Not sure what that means but it might explain why they could've originally been building a 5by5 powered app and then switched to a different thing.

EDIT: As I suspected there's nothing shady going on, but my guess as to the ownership was wrong. It's explained here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3994053

Anyone who listened to the shows last year knows Dan was working with Black Pixel on the 5by5 app. Why that fell through we won't know, but this app is clearly the result of that.

If true, it's funny that John published another post a few minutes after the main one saying this about the new Mule Radio app: "The interface is simple and beautiful"

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/05/18/mule-radio-app

It would be interesting to know who paid how much of the app development. I hope Dan Benjamin did not get screwed by Gruber, the Mule Radio Network AND Black Pixel …

No need to speculate in that direction. These are big companies and smart people—I'm sure they came to an agreement. I just found the whole thing odd.

Big companies? What big companies? Everybody involved works for himself.

Maybe not the best wording on my part. I meant that they're reputable folks all around. There was no reason to speculate negatively about the app and Daniel's explanation above confirms that.

It is only an explanation from ONE of the parties involved (although following Occam's razor I am willing to believe it).

Can someone please explain the whole story from the start? I do not understand anything.

5by5 has an app, only recently released. Why would there be another one? Is the app 5by5 has the same as this Mule one? What is this Mule thing? Is it completely new?

Dan was talking about iOS app for long, long time - it was (presumably) nearly finished, but never released - app that was released recently is new project/rewrite of the old one.

Now we know what happened with that version.

I don’t understand what you mean. I’m even more confused now. How many different 5by5 apps are there?

There's only one. 5by5's app is for listening to live broadcasts of shows on their network.

Presumably, they were previously working with BlackPixel to do a podcasting app for the 5by5 shows, which was never released. The Mule Radio app appears to be a re-branded version of that unreleased app.

According to this tweet by Dan Benjamin about adding podcasting to the 5by5 app, he feels other apps already do it better. This may have been the reason why they scuttled their own podcasting app and went with a live broadcast app instead:

https://twitter.com/#!/danbenjamin/status/203466535107440640

@klausa: Wouldn't it be standard practice to remove any references to 5by5, if only for legal reasons?

Note: I listen to Talk Show only occasionally, I'm more of Hypercritical guy.

So, Dan wanted an iOS app for some time now (year? more?) - and he was working with Black Pixel (http://blackpixel.com) on that.

We don't know exactly why, but that app was never released - Dan stopped talking about it (I'm not actually sure about this, somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.). Recently, he (again, not sure) wrote new app - that's what's on App Store as 5by5 app.

Parts of "old" app were apparently reused by Black Pixel while working on Mule Radio app (also by Black Pixel.).

This app?

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/5by5-radio/id520847556?mt=8

Ah, ok, now the picture is becoming a lot clearer. Thanks for the clarification!

The 5by5 app is a lot more live-listening-focused than the Black Pixel one. The Black Pixel/Mule app is a curated podcasting client. The current 5by5 app is specifically focused on live broadcast/notification/listening. It's an interesting contrast, IMHO; I wish each app had some of the features of the other.

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