If you missed it: A few weeks ago Lisa Tobin and I launched Audiofiles, a new way to share and discover great radio. The project is part-curated, part-crowdsourced, a place to collect all of the best stories ever told. You can browse our huge database of recommendations or submit your own favorites on Twitter with the #audiofiles hash tag.

In the last month we have introduced great new features to the site. You can sign in with Twitter (no need to a create a new account) to bookmark stories for later listening. You can browse stories by mood (dreamy, scary, strange), topic (art and culture, music, science), and length (short, medium, long). Lisa has created a series on our blog called Audiophiles, which invites professional storytellers to share their all-time favorite pieces.

We have received a lot of attention from the public radio universe, including This American Life, Radiolab, and the Third Coast Festival. WHYY’s Fresh Air is now a regular contributor to #audiofiles. Hope you enjoy it.

Here are six headlines I’m sick of seeing:

• 6 Ways Toothpaste Will Change News Forever
• Did Some Person Just Do Some Crazy Thing? (Yes.)
• This Minor Event Marks The Certain Death Of A Large Company
• Um, Seriously? This Is Snarky
• How Such And Such Pulled Off This Unbelievable Thing
• Hey I’ve Got This Mildly Interesting Infographic [INFOGRAPHIC]

Just stop.

For the record, I got it working. Kinda.

Love it or hate it, Twitter only allows you to send a direct message if the recipient is following you. I can’t (and don’t want to) follow everyone following me, but I don’t want to keep anyone from reaching me.

So I created a “public DM” tool that allows anyone to send me a direct message. Include your screen name so I can start following you and resume the dialogue on Twitter. Or remain anonymous, if you like.

How does it work? There is nothing illegal or underhanded about this; it’s not a hack or an exploit. You’re actually sending the message by way of @PhelpsBot, my personal robot. Because I’m following my robot, he can send me anything wants. Public DMs are limited to 124 characters to allow room for PhelpsBot to include the screen name of the sender.

Twitter’s API limits PhelpsBot to 250 direct messages per day, which means my public DM tool cannot be used more than 250 times in a 24-hour period. That leaves open the possibility for abuse, since I’m allowing anonymous users to send authenticated DMs by way of a simple PHP form. (Please don’t abuse it.) I will be adding an authentication layer that requires a real Twitter user to log in before using the form (though the user will still be able to remain anonymous, if desired).

Check it out. Send me a public DM.

Amazingly, Adobe’s minor update to Creative Suite — version 5.5 — is not available at a discount for owners of version 5. Adobe will continue gouging creative professionals until a competitor can unseat its monopoly.

Maybe the company’s forthcoming “subscriptions” are the solution to upgrade fatigue. Adobe will let you rent Creative Suite 5.5 (or any individual app, such as Photoshop) on a yearly or monthly basis. You don’t own the software, but you automatically have access to the latest updates.

A one-year rental of Adobe CS 5.5 Master Collection will cost $1,548, or $129 per month, with a contract. Purchasing the software outright costs $1,399 for upgraders (people who own any previous version of Creative Suite) and $2,599 for everyone else.

Subscriptions appear to be targeted at newbies or small businesses with less capital to spend. Even the upgrade purchase price is only slightly less expensive, if you were able to divide it into 12, at $117 per month.

Dreamweaver subscriptions start at $29 a month, Photoshop $49 month.

For Mike Pesca:

The University of Georgia today announced the winners of the 70th annual Peabody Awards, the most prestigious prize in electronic media.

Of the record 39 recipients this year, more than half are public or nonprofit media:

1. “Great Performances: Macbeth” (PBS)
2. “Radiolab” (WNYC-FM)
3. “Sherlock: A Study in Pink” (PBS)
4. “Lucia’s Letter” (WGCU-FM)
5. “LennonNYC” (PBS)
6. “Trafficked: A Youth Radio Investigation” (NPR/All Things Considered)
7. “Independent Lens: Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian” (PBS)
8. “The Promised Land” with Host Majora Carter (American Public Media Stations)
9. “Covering Pakistan: War, Flood and Social Issues” (NPR)
10. “Wonders of the Solar System” with Brian Cox (BBC Science Channel)
11. “Seeking Justice for Campus Rapes” (NPR and npr.org)
12. C-SPAN Video Library (cspan.org/videolibrary)
13. “My Lai” (PBS)
14. “The Moth Radio Hour” (Atlantic Public Media)
15. “Behind the Bail Bond System” (“All Things Considered” and Morning,” NPR)
16. “Elia Kazan: A Letter to Elia” (PBS)
17. “Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Children” (BBC Four)
18. “William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible” (PBS)
19. “POV: The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” (PBS)
20. The Lord Is Not On Trial Here Today (WILL-TV)
21. “The Wounded Patrol” (PBS)

I’m sure the Peabody people just have a liberal bias, though.

Update: WHYY’s “Fresh Air” posted links to all winning performances by public broadcasters, if you want to watch or listen.

Dear Google: I am requesting a Gmail “feature” that would serve as a simple workaround for another common request: to be able to send from multiple addresses with a single Gmail account on iPhone.

There is an excellent walkthrough of a way to set that up here. (Essentially, the user puts all desired e-mail addresses in the “Address” field, separated by commas.)

However, that method requires the iPhone user set up an IMAP account instead of a native Gmail account, which means losing out on archiving and conversation threading. That’s because iPhone’s Gmail setup screen treats the “Address” and “User Name” fields as one in the same; the Gmail server sees the comma, thinks it’s a bogus user name, and refuses to authenticate.

My request: Gmail could solve this glitch (effectively a workaround for a workaround) by simply ignoring the comma and all characters that follow in the user name. A comma is an illegal character anyway, so presumably it would not negatively affect any existing Gmail users.

This would be a hugely useful feature for me because my work e-mail is a virtual address that forwards to my Gmail. I am currently unable to send e-mail “from” my work address on an iPhone, and it’s a real handicap on productivity.

I would request this feature of Apple, but they’ll never listen. You guys will.