This Week in Google 289 (Transcript)

Leo: It's time for TWiG, This Week in Google. Jeff Jarvis and I are joined by Kevin Tofel of GigaOm. We've got a box in the mail. I don't know, what could this be? A mystery, a mystery box from Motorola. We're going to open this on the air and talk about the latest news from Google. Yes, TWiG is next. Stay tuned.

Voiceover: Netcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT! Bandwidth for this week in Google is provided by Cachefly.com.

Leo: This is TWiG, This Week in Google, episode 289, recorded Wednesday, February 25, 2015.

L'il Rick

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It's time for TWiG, This Week in Google, the show were we cover the Google-verse, the Cloud. We cover journalism. We cover anything we darn well please, pretty much. We've got Jeff Jarvis - between Jeff and me, we're cranky enough for everybody. Grr.

Jeff Jarvis: Grr.

Leo: Buzzmachine.com is his blog and his books are many including Public Parts, What Would Google Do?, Gutenberg the Geek, and beware, Geeks Bearing Gifts and all of that. Actually, it's just Geeks Bearing Gifts. That's the latest.

Jeff: Yes, you don't have to beware them.

Leo: Good to see you again, Jeff.

Jeff: Good to see you.

Leo: At home, on your Mac.

Jeff: Well, that's because our office flooded.

Leo: What?

Jeff: Brilliant building turned off, on the holiday weekend, a very horrible, cold time. They decided to turn off the heat on the sixth floor, two floors above us, and it went (shooshing noise).

Leo: Did the snow melt and come in the window? What happened?

Jeff: No, the fire extinguisher pipe burst.

Leo: Oh, it froze!

Jeff: So they've torn up my office. I have no home. I'm whining. I'm complaining. I'm grumpy.

Leo: Just stay here at home. Stay in the library.

Jeff: I'm home. I'm on the new Mac you sent me, on the new microphone.

Leo: Look at that. You look great, you sound great.

Jeff: I'm not pink.

Leo: Kevin Tofel is also joining us from GigaOm. Yay, Kevin!

Kevin Tofel: Howdy, howdy. I am not cranky. We were talking about the Beatles before the show and how can you be cranky after talking about the Beatles?

Leo: He's happy now.

Kevin: Absolutely.

Leo: I noticed he has John, Paul, George and Ringo on the wall behind him.

Kevin: Yes.

Leo: What's interesting - those are originals.

Kevin: Those are. In fact, those are from a Kickstarter. There was a documentary on Rolling Sherman, the photographer who took those, and I got them as part of the Kickstarter.

Leo: Nice. This man is so serious, he went out and bought a turntable so he could go out and play the original Capital 45s.

Kevin: I do actually have the first pressing from the UK of Help sitting by the turntable.

Leo: You're not going to put the needle on that, are you?

Kevin: I have not yet. I have not.

Leo: It's like opening an 80-year-old - a 30-year-old bottle of wine or an 80-year-old bottle of port. The moment you touch it, you play it, it's going to lose some fidelity. It's gone.

Kevin: No, it's just a keepsake.

Leo: I remember when I was a kid, we had the 45. I'm trying to remember. It was “I Saw Her Standing There” on one side, “Oh, she was just 17,” on the other side. We played it to death. Loved it, loved it.

Jeff: This week in nostalgia.

Leo: This week in Beatles. Hey, a little - give me some German help here. Is it Schadenfreude? Is that the right word, I'm looking at lenovo.com right now.

Jeff: Oh, yes, that's Schadenfreude. Whatever it is. It's Schadenfreude.

Leo: We cached it. They probably fixed it. In fact, I know they fixed their DNS entry, but they were hacked. Lenovo.com was hacked by, it looks like, the Lizard Squad. If you go to their page or link back to their page, it goes to a Twitter account @lizardcircle. Don't know if the people who acted have anything to do with the slideshow, the images of the people in the slideshow or even what's going on. But this is not - if you went on here to buy a ThinkPad, think twice. This is not Lenovo. This is weirdest - this doesn't have any text as far as I can tell, it's just a slideshow of images.

Kevin: So what are the odds they've got Superphish installed on their servers? That'd be funny.

Leo: Of course, there's a java update. “A new version of java is available.” I - yes, let's skip that. Thank you. In fact, let me close that page. Oh, I clicked and it brought me to the Twitter. Isn't that interesting? Of course, Lenovo - the news in this week, Lenovo selling laptop with software they claimed, “It's for your benefit.” Software they've been putting on there and stopped in January, stopped last month - extensively, they claimed, was to help you in searches with image recognition was in fact, merely just intercepting all traffic including SSL traffic so it could add ads to the webpages you are visiting, ads that presumably benefited Lenovo. Turns out that SuperPhish had gotten this technology, didn't bother writing it themselves. They got it from a company called Kommodia. We talked about this yesterday on Security Now. Kommodia apparently was run by 14-year olds. We're not sure, because it's just the worst software ever.

Jeff: Leo, explain something to me. Was this - this was just junkware no matter what? This was not software anybody wanted, right?

Leo: Lenovo says that people want it. In fact, I just had this argument earlier with Paul Thurot on Windows Weekly. He said every time he talked to the OEMs making these Windows PCs loaded with bloatware, he says the - and to a man, they say, “No, we know people want these.”

Jeff: Oh, BS. The B'est of S's.

Leo: You could say that with an antivirus, because all of them come bundled with McAfee, and you could say - it wouldn't be completely bizarre to say, “Well, we know people want an antivirus so as a customer convenience, we give them six months free of antivirus X.”

Jeff: Kevin, Kevin. Do these things happen on your Chromebook?

Kevin: You know, it's funny you say that, Jeff. I did my public service announcement and said, “Hey, if you need to remove SuperPhish from your Chromebook, here are the steps. One, buy a Chromebook. Two, done.” That's it.

Leo: Even the Lenovo Chromebook, right?

Jeff: Touche, Tofel. Touche.

Leo: As far as we know, no Lenovo has SuperPhish on it. Well, no Mac does either, but I have to say, you're right. This is something that Chrome OS doesn't suffer from.

Kevin: These OEMs, I mean, they have to be getting money for these apps to get put on there, I would imagine. That's what the benefit is, I would think. Right?

Leo: Yes. You know, the first thing that I thought was, in a way we're kind of to blame because we pushed the price down so low on Windows PCs. I just bought a $59 Windows 8 tablet. The HP Streams are $200 and pretty decent laptops. So because this cost of goods is the price they're selling it at, at some cases, they have to make a profit somewhere. So that's what the adware - I would presume that's why they put the adware on. Although, you've got to look at Chromebook. It's the same price for a Chromebook, right? And they can't put adware on a Chromebook.

Kevin: No. There's very little that OEMs can do or have done in the past. I think Samsung put a couple of small apps on one of the Chromebooks. Yes, I'm sure they had Google's blessing. I don't think it's something you can just go and do or I think we'd see this become a bigger problem in the Chrome OS area and we're not seeing that.

Leo: I'm sure Google controls this. I just got the new Samsung Chromebook 2 and reviewed it yesterday, by the way, on Before You Buy. Really nice, $229. Really nice and no - I mean, no presence of Samsung at all on it.

Jeff: That's typical for the - [crosstalk]

Leo: Yes, yes, yes.

Jeff: But while you're on the topic of Chromebooks, since I brought it up and Kevin can back me up here, the big news.

Leo: Big news?

Jeff: Pixel 2. All three of us want it. Google admitted that 85% of the use is all Googlers but Kevin, you and I are the other 15%.

Kevin: I think so.

Leo: Everybody who went to IO has a Pixel.

Jeff: I got all kinds of tweets immediately afterward saying, “Jeff, your dream's come true!”

Leo: This, by the way, was in a briefing Google did and has since pulled down. So Google's not admitting to it publicly. This was not a public admission but who were they talking to?

Kevin: This was the Teamwork event, wasn't it?

Leo: Teamwork is for people who -

Kevin: I think it's the Google for work-type stuff.

Leo: And the presenter said, “Here's some good news. Yes, we're working on a next-generation Pixel.”

Kevin: And actually, that's the second time this month that this information has kind of gotten out and been pulled, because we do a Chrome show over at GigaOm and we had noticed at the beginning of February several mentions of a device that was being worked on. We looked into the Chromium OS Bugtracker. That's where Google is tracking bugs for all the Chrome stuff they're working on, and there was mention of a new laptop that had a light bar, a touch screen with the same resolution as the Pixel. There were even screenshots and we were like, “Uh-huh.” They pulled the screenshot and so we kind of figured two or three weeks ago this was coming. We should - I don't know if you guys want to talk about what to expect but I really expect a big, big change here at least in the out - [crosstalk]

Jeff: I expect just better specs, don't you? I really want LTE on it, that's one thing. Google? Google, are you listening? Keep the LTE, it's very important to me. Otherwise I think, yes, it's probably a faster processor and better memory, and things like that. But it's - what are you going to do? There's not much to do with the Pixel.

Leo: Well, one thing is battery life isn't very good on it, on the Pixel, I should say. And it, of course, is pre-Haswell, so putting a Broadwell chip into it, they should be able to double the battery life, easily.

Jeff: Which will be amazing.

Leo: Because right now, what do you get, three or four hours? I don't get more than that.

Jeff: Oh, no.

Kevin: It's about five is the advertised, but these Pixels are about two years old now so I'm getting about four because it's been used so much.

Jeff: I can get six out of mine.

Leo: Really?

Jeff: Yes. I mean, I turn the light down a little bit, close it once in a while and that kind of stuff. Yes. The other thing is, my touch screen is just starting to get a little dinky at two years old. But I love the thing, still.

Leo: I actually brought mine out to compare to the Samsung Chromebook. You know, $1300-1400 versus $229. I have to say, with the improvements that have been made in chip sets and so forth, the screen is not as good. That is a beautiful screen on the Pixel. It's weird because it's 4x3 aspect ratio and nobody makes screens like that. In fact, it's one of the main reasons I can't use it on the air here is because we never were able to make it work with our equipment because it's such a strange aspect ratio. But in most other respects, keyboard, trackpad, speed, battery life, the $229 Samsuck - Samsung, not Samsuck! Samsung, is pretty comparable and better in some ways. So it is time to update this.

Jeff: Well, the Toshiba one is the high-res screen, the only problem is the type is tiny.

Leo: It's 3x2, not 4x3. That's why it's really weird. 4x3 is TV aspect ratio. It's 3x2 that's like a surface - [crosstalk]

Jeff: But, Kevin, they do say they do this as a demonstration to show what a Chromebook can do. So there's got to be something in it that revs the engine, doesn't there?

Kevin: Well -

Jeff: That makes people say, “Oh, we can do that too.”

Kevin: I don't know about that. I don't know that there's that much more you can do with the hardware that's out there and available and still keep the prices down to where Chromebooks are going to be attractive to people.

Jeff: That's what I'm saying. This is the $1600 Chromebook.

Leo: Where if price was no object, you could do what you wanted.

Jeff: What could you do?

Kevin: You know, I don't know what they could do. I almost want to see them to get rid of the touch screen or offering non-touch screen options and have us cut $200-300 off the price.

Leo: That's one thing they could do, make an $800 Pixel.

Jeff: Well, here's what I want. I was thinking about this. And I actually tweeted them and didn't get an answer, considering. But my old goombah Michael Dell - you go back to the early days of Dell. What was Dell's specialty? You know, Burger King, you have it your way. Why doesn't Dell make a Chromebook that you can touch screen, no touch screen, LTE, no LTE, this memory, that memory. Somewhere there should be a customized Chromebook and that would be your $800 machine.

Kevin: Well, and Dell does it now at the low end. I mean, there's six brand new models of their Chromebook 11 where you can get touch screen, no touch screen, 2 gig ram, 4 gig ram, 16 gig of storage, 32 gig of storage.

Jeff: No LTE, though.

Kevin: No LTE, but that's geared toward the education market and I think that's part of the problem. In that, is there enough of a demand for a customized Chromebook that an OEM will take the risk and invest that time and effort? I don't know.

Leo: I think the lax mid-range Chromebook proves that one point of the appeal, not the entire appeal of Chromebook is its low price. So anything Google makes -

Jeff: No, and -

Leo: I know, security and simplicity.

Jeff: What about ease of group installation? For a school, it is pretty amazing. You don't have to worry about crapware. That's important to those guys. So that goes together with price for a school, but yes. The other thing I think, Kevin, is I ran the Linux Distro on it for a while but you could only do it in the dev mode on the machine.

Kevin: Crouton.

Leo: I used to call it Cronut because it's tastier than Crouton.

Jeff: That's right. It was just too flakey to run in dev mode as my main machine. But I can imagine that if you had a Pixel that really was easily just switchable back and forth -

Leo: No. They're not going to do that. Why would they do that?

Jeff: Because their geeks run Linux. That would be hot for geeks. Renee Niamee, who is the one who said there would be a new Pixel, she did say that 85% of users were Google employees. What she neglected to say is nevertheless - they didn't make very many. The vast majority of Googlers don't use Chromebook, they use Macs.

Jeff: Well, the vast majority do, yes. But I know lots of people who use their Chromebooks.

Leo: Yes. But I'm just saying, it's not even the laptop of choice at Google.

Jeff: [crosstalk] - she admitted it. This is a laughably small - whatever it is, there is a laughably small number. We've know that. We've always known that.

Leo: I have to say, though, every time I review a Chromebook, like the Samsung, it's so easy to set up. It's just great. Because I spend a lot - probably most of the time I spend reviewing stuff is setting it up. Installing stuff, getting it to work like I like it to work, especially with phones. There's nothing easier than setting up a Chromebook. You just sign in and sit back. It's awesome.

Kevin: I don't think I've ever spent more than 5 minutes to get a Chromebook up and running from one to another.

Jeff: Amazing.

Leo: So great.

Jeff: Well, not only that but to rebuild it entirely.

Leo: Power wash. Love the power wash.

Jeff: So that's what? 12 minutes. It's done.

Leo: Well, I've got a new product for you. Just got the box. I got a mysterious email from Motorola, a Lenovo company. Although to my knowledge, there is no Snapfish on Motorola phones yet. But I just got an email last week from Motorola saying, “We'd like to send you a box. It's embargoed til 6 to 8 a.m. Pacific time Wednesday the 25^th, today. Your box will arrive.” And I think their hope was that people would have live unboxings all over the internet. I wasn't going to rush in so I came in at my normal time and opened up the box. This is what we got.

I think this is aspired. I wish more companies would do this. From the point of view of a tech journalist, this is a wonderful thing. So I open up the box and here it says, “Slide to start. Fragile.”

Jeff: It would be great if it had a timer that you really couldn't open it up til a certain time.

Leo: I know, wouldn't that be great? Well, it arrived - when it arrived, I guess that wasn't really an issue. I couldn't open it til it arrived. So you slide it open - actually, I'm sure it came out this way. It said, “The new Moto E.” So this is the second generation of Motorola's really inexpensive phone. This price is $150. It's kind of cool. It says “start here,” so you open the flap and actually, in here were these.

Jeff: “Put your hand in and something will bite it off.”

Leo: There were these bumpers. This is one way you can customize it. They have an array of colored bumpers. Then you flip this open. I thought this was really cool. Here's the welcome desk. I also had a badge that had my name on it and said Motorola. So I already got my badge, thank you, at the welcome desk. Then it's so cool. There's a door, you pull open the door and there's seats for you and the other press to sit in. And there's, what's his name?

Kevin: Rick Osterlow.

Leo: Hey, Rick! He's a little Rick. Then there was a phone in here that I have since taken out. But that is so cute. Thank you, Motorola.

Jeff: And the phone was getting very good notices today, that they've done a lot at a low price, yes.

Leo: This is remarkable given - now, somebody said it was for sale - actually, let me unlock it.

Kevin: I think Best Buy might have leaked the price and information last week.

Leo: I think somebody said it was for sale at $120 -

Jeff: That's for the 3G.

Leo: Okay, so this is the new one. Full 4G. It's a small screen, a QHD, which is 960x540, 245 pixels per inch which is small but not tiny. Now, it's only eight gigs of storage. In fact, the first thing I had to do was take apps off because of course, it immediately uninstalls everything - but once you take apps off - but it's a good looking screen. It's fairly snappy. It has, you know, “OK, Google.” The standard. It doesn't have a lot of the Moto stuff but it does have the watch while you're driving -

Kevin: The Moto Assist.

Leo: Yes. I really love that. It was - and it's supposed to - now, I don't know anything about battery life because I just got it but it's supposed to have a fairly hefty battery for something this size. Here, it says, “Meeting, have a productive meeting.” So it won't ring now because I'm in a meeting which is awesome. And it's Lollipop, not only Lollipop but clean Lollipop. It is effectively a Google version of - [crosstalk]

Jeff: Is there any Moto ware on there at all?

Leo: There's just the Moto Apps that are needed to do Assist and I think there's probably the Connect app or Migration app to migrate stuff over.

Kevin: It's like a mini Nexus. It's pure Google.

Leo: It's pure Google. So in fact, for people who want a really cheap Nexus for development, this is a great choice. They're saying, in the press kit, it's for first-time phone buyers. It's for kids. This comes off and you can customize it. There's a black version also and there's also a variety of these little colored things. Oh, this is something nice. Even though there's only 8 gig of storage, it does support a microSD card up to 32 more gigs.

Jeff: Why don't more phones do that?

Leo: It's such a nice feature. I think it's hard to do in the OS but I think Google's figured it out now. So if you wanted to store music - it would be more music, not more room for app storage. So now I've made it a pink phone because I like pink. I think this is, for a first phone - it's also third world oriented. There will be a dual SIM model and there is an FM radio in it. I think that's something that -

Jeff: Already?

Leo: [crosstalk] But for anybody who wants a cheap, unlocked phone?

Jeff: Think about it. Just remember back to our wonder of smart phones, what this costs, $129 for a phenomenal phone and also compare it to the prices being rumored for the new Samsung.

Leo: Over $1000! Unbelievable.

Kevin: I give Moto a lot of credit here. They came out with this Moto E last year. I got one sitting here as well.

Leo: It's a great little disposable phone.

Kevin: Absolutely. Great backup phone.

Leo: You've got the purple thing on yours.

Kevin: Yes, I've got the purple. My little Rick Osterlow, he won't stand up. I don't know what happened to him but he fell down. But they added a front-facing camera, which last year's model did not have.

Leo: Five megapixels front and back.

Kevin: No flash on the back, which is a little unfortunate but that's okay. You mentioned the Moto Assist - it also has some notifications stuff that the Moto X has. You can't put your hand over it and have notifications up here, there's no sensors for that, but if you nudge the phone when it's sitting down and the screen is off, the screen will actually wake and show you notifications. So they're doing what they can with this, with very limited hardware. I mean, this is up to a quad core chip as compared to last year's dual core chip inside.

Leo: It's a Snapdragon 400, 410, something like that.

Kevin: Yes. It's not going to set the house on fire. Last year's model only had four gigs of storage, so this, the eight gig, is almost doubling. Really, it's almost the same price as last year, plus it has LTE.

Leo: I think this is remarkable. I think for a kid - it's also - it feels indestructible. It's Gorilla glass, very plastic-y, but boy, somewhat water resistant. I feel like this is the kind of phone that somebody would give a kid or your first phone if you're in a budget constraint. Kudos to Motorola. I think this is really pretty impressive. Kevin, this is probably coming out of Chicago, not out of China? With the design and sensibility and all of that.

Kevin: Well, it's hard to say. If you look at it, you can see the band that I have, it looks like the Moto X design which really originated back here.

Leo: You even got the dimple.

Kevin: Yes. It's got the dimple and everything. It's just a reuse of a very smart, elegant design. It's a little bit of a chunky monkey because of the battery life, but they say 24 hours of battery life is to be expected.

Leo: See, that's remarkable. I actually cast my Moto X aside, my 2014 Moto X, because I couldn't get through a day. As much as I loved it, I had a leather back and everything. But you know, if I can get all the features and last a day, this thing is compact. This isn't a bad choice at all.

Kevin: You could actually buy one of these outright for $149, never put a SIM in it, just use it as a WiFi Android iPod.

Jeff: Yes.

Leo: The unlocked, unsubsidized price.

Jeff: Well, then $129 because you don't need the 4G. Why did they release this before -

Leo: Because there's going to be a lot of noise from Barcelona starting on Saturday and the best way to avoid that is to do exactly what they did, which is send this clever little box with a mini Osterlow and by doing that, they got our attention, didn't they? Hi, Rick. Yours is falling over?

Kevin: Yes, there's glue holding him but my glue never set, so Rick, I'm going to put him on my desk somewhere, I think.

Leo: I really like Rick and I really think - I hope Lenovo doesn't screw this company up. Nice job.

Jeff: That is the Thinkpad pad?

Leo: It didn't have SuperPhish. That was only on the cheap consumer-grade products that - here's some masking tape.

Kevin: Rick Osterlow even has a back. They went all out on this.

Leo: Oh my god. Wait a minute, holy cow.

Jason: This changes everything. I love how this is kind of thumbing their nose at the big, what's kind of become a tradition now, which is just that in order to get attention, these companies feel like they need to throw these huge announcements filled with, you know, glamour and Broadway music and all this stuff when really, all you need is a clever kind of campaign to send out at the right time, which in this case is before Barcelona. They're going to get a pretty decent amount of awareness and coverage out of it.

Jeff: You know something else about that, if you go on video. For the sake of TWiT, I've gone to the big Samsung event at Radio City.

Leo: Oh, god.

Jeff: Which, number one, is an awful event. Number two, they don't give away any phones. Number three, I'll bet it cost five times what giving away that phone in the cube box cost.

Leo: I think they sent a lot of these to bloggers and people who probably can't afford to go to Barcelona. They don't want to go to Barcelona. So you get more attention by doing that. Yes, smart. The Moto X this year - or, last year was in Chicago.

Jeff: I think you need him on your shoulder, Leo.

Leo: I can do that.

Jeff: Is he the good angel or the bad angel?

Leo: He's the good angel. He's holding on for dear life, I can tell you that. Rick, Rick, Rick.

Jeff: Not long ago, you would have stuck him on your head.

Leo: I can - oh no, maybe not.

Kevin: Free action figure with every phone purchase.

Jeff: Imagine if you could've gotten your own Steve Jobs in the day.

Leo: Let's take a break. When we come back, I think we're going to do a mini changelog because Google has announced some big things, neat stuff. We'll talk about what's new with Google in a second. Kevin Tofel is here from GigaOm. It's always great to have you on, Kevin. I don't know how we got into the habit of having Kevin on all the time.

Kevin: I'm a bad habit to break.

Leo: I don't want to break this habit. Kevin's great as is everybody from GigaOm.

Kevin: I will let them know. I appreciate that.

Leo: The ameritus. Is he Om ameritus?

Kevin: “Omeritus.” Yes. He's always good for a King money quote.

Leo: Yes, just call him up. Also, of course, Jeff Jarvis. We have more coming up in just a bit.

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Okay, a mini changelog. You don't have to play the trumpets or anything.

Jason: I kind of figured. The trumpets belonged to Gina.

Leo: So Google just announced that they are updated Google's Play Music online storage to 50 thousand songs. Oh, look, Kevin Tofel has the story. Do you want me to call you Kevin C. Tofel?

Kevin: You could. I answer to a lot of names.

Leo: Devorak says you have to use the C., as though there's another John Devorak. But that's his brand. So I'll call you Kevin C. Tofel if you wish. This is good news, tell us about it.

Kevin: Yes. This is great news because up till now, Google Play Music only allowed 20 thousand tracks in the Cloud for free. Now for free, you get 50 thousand tracks which is - God, I can't even imagine how many albums all that is. I haven't even come close to my 20 thousand, but now you've got 50 thousand. I actually was an iTunes radio guy for a while but I moved over to Google Play mainly because of the free storage. Now they've got the Songza integration, which I love. A lot of the songs that I listen to are not available on Google Play, like my Beatles, so I upload those from elsewhere. I upload those there. The big thing to me is cross-platform services. I can use Google Play Music on Android, iOS, Chromecast, PC, Mac, whatever. So this is really nice news for people who are Google Play Music listeners.

Leo: They also updated the iPad app so it's a full native iPad app, which really makes it - because it's got such a great UI. They're definitely a material design, I think that's really nice. They bought the Songza service. We've mentioned this before. I think that's incorporated in, so I think in terms of radio, they absolutely compete very well with Pandora. The fact that your own music is in there, that's like Amazon Music which does the same, but now with 50 thousand songs. I was not able to get my whole library in there. I do now.

Jeff: How much do you have?

Leo: 38 thousand. Having everything in there - you know who loves this? A friend of mine is a professional musician. He has a lot of his own music that's never been released on his hard drive and he was really concerned about losing it. Google Play Music uploads it. So he ended up - this is the service that he uses because it not only gives you everything else, all of his own music is stored on Google Play Music and available anywhere he can listen to Google Play Music. So that is huge. I used the - you can get on your Android phone a little widget that's the dice, that says, “I'm feeling lucky,” button and you touch it and the dice goes tumbling.

Jason: Or the, “I'm feeling indecisive.”

Leo: I like, “I'm feeling lucky.”

Jason: “I don't know what to listen to.'

Leo: You know what's kind of neat? I thought at first, “Oh, it's just going to be a mish-mosh of all my stuff.” But they do make a station that, as a whole, each time is different. But let's see what it starts with here. Frank Ocean, then Mac Miller, Absol, Kid Cudi. It's all kind of - Drake, ASAP, Rocky. A lot of this is my own music, which is fun, mixed in, I supposed, with the all access.

Jason: I expected it not to work as well as it does for that very reason, because often, if it's just purely random. You know, I've got - I have music in Google Play but I've also got very random stuff in Google Play for not-so-intentional reasons. If that comes up in a playlist, that's not ideal.

Leo: I think my son's music is ruining my Google I'm Feeling Lucky. There's a lot of hip hop in there.

Kevin: You know what they have to fix is the device authorizations.

Jason: Amen.

Kevin: Right? Because people who switch phones a lot - the first thing I did with the new Moto E is I removed the Google Music icon so I can't even see it. Because if I hit it, I'm going to authorize this device and you can only de-authorize four per year. I actually had to work with Google to de-authorize all of mine so I could start with my personal devices. They were very gracious enough to do that and I appreciate that, but it's got to go.

Leo: So what's the total? Four devices? Five devices?

Kevin: You can do ten devices. Five of them can be mobile, such as tablets and phones. It's pretty much an unlimited amount of computers because you can use the browser for that and it doesn't really count. But for people who review devices, all you do is open that app and all the sudden, you just authorized a device and that's a mess.

Leo: I refreshed my radio and finally, I'm getting my music. You can turn this up if you can get my audio, I don't know.

[music playing]

I love listening to Navy Seals marching cadences when I'm in the gym. So after this, we're going to get the Marine Corp marathon song, Airborne Ranger's “Where Have You Been?”, Rescue Ranger. Somehow I got -

Jeff: Jesus.

Leo: I got the “American Patrol” by the American Military Band. The US Army Green Beret singing, “Oh Lord, I Wanna Go Home.” I have a military cadence channel made for me.

Jeff: There's a drill sergeant telling you to get off your fat ass and exercise.

Leo: Made for me by Google.

Jeff: Where did that come from?

Jason: What a strange playlist.

Kevin: I got to go do some push ups.

Leo: I confess to having a few cadences in my albums.

Jeff: Oh, you really do? Wait, wait, wait. You really listen to that stuff?

Leo: It obviously saw that, picked it up and ran with it. And I mean ran with it. Because I've never seen - I didn't know this all existed.

Jeff: No kidding.

Leo: Apparently this all is from Modern Military Cadences Volume I.

Kevin: There's multiple volumes.

Leo: Then somehow I got Scotland: the Best of Traditional Scottish Music mixed in with it. Here's the CB's “Pump Me Up.”

Kevin: This should start your show.

Jeff: This is our new theme song.

Leo: No. This is how Google wins the internet. There is no other music service that could put this playlist together. That's amazing, okay? Ah.

Jeff: That's so wacky.

Leo: It is. You know, to go from ASAP, Rocky to the US Army, Airborne, Benning, Georgia, “One Mile, No Sweat.” Pretty impressive. This is in the Google collection. Some of that was my own. A very small amount was my own.

Jason: I'd add that to your library, Leo.

Leo: Now, can I save this radio station? I should be able to save this, shouldn't I? Sure.

Jason: Pin the station.

Leo: Pin the Airborne Rangers station. Man, that's good stuff.

Kevin: Put that on an Android ware smart watch and go run. Have that thing in your ear. Wow, go for it.

Leo: Massive thumbs up. 50 thousand songs - Kevin, you must have that many. It's not just me.

Kevin: No, I don't think I hit the 20 thousand limit, no. I've been buying CDs and keeping them on CD. I bought Beatles on vinyl and haven't digitized that yet.

Leo: Oh, I get everything on to my computer one way or the other. So the other thing that's changed. This is less of an exciting change. Apparently, the porno is leaving Blogger.

Jeff: What do you think about that?

Leo: I think it's smart. It means that Marisa Meyer owns pornography now, which is great. Starting - I'll explain that in a moment. Starting March 23^rd, you cannot publicly share images and videos that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity on Blogger. Google says, “We'll still allow nudity if the content offers a substantial public benefit.”

Jeff: See, that's the problem.

Leo: An anatomy lesson or something?

Jeff: Well, I don't want Google to be our nanny. I really don't like this.

Leo: The problem is that porno takes over. Look at tumblr.

Jeff: Yes.

Leo: So that's the real problem.

Jeff: See, I think on Blogger it's sequestered. You know, there are warnings.

Leo: That's true. Don't you have to go through a block that says, “You're going to see adult material?”

Jeff: Of course, if you're 13 years old, you go looking for that. But my issue is that I don't want the Google nanny. I don't want Google to become our [40:27.4?]. It puts Google in a position where, you know, pick your country. The problems are going to happen. If you do that in America, you're going to get rid of porn in America, why don't you get rid of pictures of women in the Euro? I'm not comfortable with Google putting itself in this position. I was always kind of proud of them that they allowed it. Not saying you've got to like porn, but they allowed it because it's speech. And Google, I'm - what's going on here? The only thing I figured out is that it's maybe tied to the Youtube for kiddies.

Leo: Oh, which was also released this week.

Jeff: However, at the exact same moment, Reddit does the same thing.

Jason: I was just going to say, Reddit did - [crosstalk]

Leo: Well, Reddit didn't do exactly the same thing. All Reddit did is say, if you're going to put explicit content up, it has to be from the person who was in it or you have permission of the person who is in it. Which is a direct response, I think, is that Reddit was being used to upload upskirts, for jailbait, for revenge porn and of course, for Jennifer Lawrence images. That's a reasonable response.

Jeff: Yes, but here's the thing - I get the scourge of the crappy stuff going on, but if you go to tumblr, to find the providence of the main shot.

Leo: Which means you can't put that up.

Jeff: What that means almost is that it almost becomes weirdly more intimate and you have to prove you have the permission. Yes, Reddit is dealing with something slimy and awful that was going on.

Leo: I think what Reddit's doing it reasonable, I do. I'm not sure I agree with you on Google. If Google were the only place - if Blogger were the only place you could get this stuff, maybe. But tumblr - now, if tumblr says, “No more adult material on tumblr.” Then maybe that's a general shutting down.

Jeff: My issue is, Leo -

Leo: I understand. Google shouldn't be the business.

Jeff: Google shouldn't be the arbiter of what's good and bad for us.

Leo: Then this is a challenge because Facebook, Google+, all of these sites, to a degree, do have to become arbiters, don't they? Not everything goes.

Jeff: I think Facebook and Google+ are a bit different.

Leo: Facebook won't allow people breastfeeding.

Jeff: I've always thought is awful. It's always been ridiculous and I've never liked that on Facebook. You know, part of what it is, is we're spreading our American, puritanical view of the world. If you go into a French subway or German subway and look at the billboards, you see breasts. Women have them. I'm not talking about gore porn and all that kind of stuff.

Leo: But that, truthfully - there's not just incidental pictures of breasts on Blogspot.

Jeff: I understand. But now, where's the line? They're not saying, “Tasteful.” They're basically saying just nudity, right?

Leo: That makes it a little difficult.

Jeff: That's the problem, because - [crosstalk]

Leo: It's just as bad if you say, “Tasteful.”

Jeff: It's an American standard and now it's set to the world. I think in a diverse and open world, that's wrong. The problem here is the reverse can happen. Iran can say, “No, no, use our standard for the world.” Indeed, kind of tries to.

Leo: Does that mean there should be no standards at all?

Jeff: Of course there are standards. This is the free speech, fire in the theater argument, child pornography - yes. You don't allow it. I agree with that. There are victims to it. There's a play that I just read a review today for in the Times called “The Nether,” that came from London to New York about a - evidently, a very disturbing but very well-done play. I'm now eager to see. It's about the idea of having a made-up world. “The Nether” is a new world for the internet where you go into this wonderful place where you don't see this, perhaps, but you are part of child pornography and violent crimes against children, but they're made-up children. So they're trying to play, obviously, with how far do we go. That's a fine discussion to have.

Leo: Kevin, what do you think? I need to hear from both sides.

Kevin: The bigger news to me is that people still use Blogger, to be honest. I didn't even know about this until it hit the headlines and whatnot.

Leo: A lot of people do.

Kevin: No, I know. I still had my start way back on Blogspot. You know, I see where Jeff is coming from. Because I don't know that I want one singular company, especially in the US, to dictate what's happening in the world, how these tools are used and so on. The question is, though, does Google not want to be held responsible for the content that's on there? If they're going to be held responsible for the content that they're hosting, they want to lay down the law. I'm not saying I agree with it but I can sort of see.

Leo: Apple doesn't get any heat for doing this. They - well, they get a little bit of heat, I guess.

Jeff: Apple had to do a special arrangement with Bilt, the largest newspaper in Europe, because Bilt has - my line about Bilt is it's tabloid at heart, but the paper is bigger, so the breasts are bigger. It's on big paper. That's part of Bilt. And so they had to get dispensation for breasts in Germany.

Leo: And Apple said, “Okay, because you're a newspaper in Germany, we're going to let you put boobs in your app?” See, this is what happens. This is the radio ad absurdum that we're dealing with. Where do you draw the line? And it keeps getting sillier and sillier.

Jeff: You know, as I said, it's culture. If you go to Germany and you turn on TV at 10 at night and you've got the ads for the sex call channels, it'll blow you away the first time.

Leo: I used to go to New York to watch public access - Dirty George?

Jeff: Ugly George, yes.

Leo: Ugly George. I was blown away by that, and that's on freely available television.

Jeff: For you kids that don't know the reference, not that we should spread this reference, but Ugly George was this very odd guy who would walk around in short-shorts wearing foil and in the earliest days had a huge VCR on his back and a huge camera. His whole schtick was to wander the streets of New York and attract, as he put it, “goils” to follow him into a hallway or room somewhere to show off their body. That's it.

Leo: It was on Manhattan public access TV and now, by the way, it's on Youtube.

[video plays]

We should be very careful here. Although, this is Youtube. How far can they go? In fact, doesn't that raise the issue of what do you do with Youtube?

Jeff: That's a good question, Leo. Well, how far does - I don't even know how far Youtube goes. What does Youtube do?

Leo: I have to say, I live with a 12-year-old now and he watches Youtube all the time. I'm shocked by some of the stuff that's on Youtube. But no sex, no explicit nudity, which makes you wonder what I'm going to see here. Should I just keep going? Here, I'll play it and watch and let you know. Coco Crystal posted this, that was the woman at the beginning. Apparently, she was an advertiser for access television, I guess. I don't know.

Jeff: There was another talk show where they just sat around nude talking.

Leo: Yes, yes. There was a woman - I can't remember her name.

Jeff: I would visit New York and be at a friend's apartment, and say, “Whoa. Television.”

Leo: Yes. So this video, they cut away as quickly as they can from the nudity but apparently they're not as swift as they think.

Jeff: Well, okay, now I'll argue your point. So if Youtube had allowed sex, then it would have turned entirely into Youporn.

Leo: We have Youporn. There literally is a place called Youporn and if you want that, you can go there.

Jeff: There is a precedent on Youtube. You've got a point there.

Leo: I can understand not wanting this in my background.

Jeff: I get that too but again, Google is in a particular position where it is a gateway to content. Now - and they're in such hot water all around the world. Everybody's trying to get them to salute their local standards. Whoo. So -

Leo: I am not a prude, as everybody knows, and I'm very sex positive and like nudity. But I also think that it should - it's not necessarily a bad thing to segregate it so even I, who enjoys all of this, don't want to see it everywhere.

Jeff: I understand that. Labeling all that kind of stuff, I think, is only wise. But I think what's going to happen is some German nudist club - there's lots of them because it's a cultural belief, is going to come in and find their site taken down when, to them, this is not pornography. This is a beautiful body.

Leo: Let me point out, you can still have it. It just has to be private, by invitation only. If you're in the club, you can invite everybody in the club and see it.

Jeff: Okay, what if you're trying to use it as a marketing tool to get people to come to your nude beach?

Leo: Use somewhere else.

Jeff: It just - well, you can't be on Google. Here I am defending pornography today on the show. Thank you very much.

Leo: No, you're defending freedom of speech.

Jeff: No, I'm defending Google against the precedent of being the world's nanny. I see the unintended consequences and danger about that.

Leo: Then, you know, I look at tumblr and it's infested.

Jeff: That's an issue. It's a brand issue, I get it.

Leo: I don't - Marisa Meyer owns pornography. Yahoo is home to - everybody goes from Blogspot to tumblr where anything goes. They actually, come to think of it - they do not. Anything does not go on tumblr. They've done a variety of things to reduce the amount of adult content on tumblr. So I don't know.

Jeff: I took my daughter's class from her school. She's a high school senior. It's a class around women in media, they're doing a three-week project. So I took them in to meet Katie Couric yesterday. It was wonderful, delightful and fun. It was really great.

Leo: Wow, what a treat for them.

Jeff: It was and they also got to talk to Margaret Sullivan of the New York Times. My media connections came in handy. But anyway, as we're heading up the elevator to Yahoo, which by the way, you know, is in the old New York Times building.

Leo: In the Great Lady. It's so funny.

Jeff: They went from visiting New York Times in the new building to Yahoo in the old building. They didn't understand my delight at the irony. As we're going up the elevator to Yahoo, they're going, “Tumblr, can we see Tumblr? That's what we want to see, tumblr!”

Leo: They do love tumblr. Of course, to my mind, and I agree with you. Weber says, “We can show all sorts of violence. When it comes to nudity and healthy sexuality, no, no.” That's the kind of world we're in. By the way, I don't want to see violence everywhere I go on the internet either. I think, I don't know.

Jeff: the problem is, offense is a terrible standard. Crime is a decent standard.

Leo: It's very hard. As every court knows.

Jeff: Child pornography is illegal and has victims. You get rid of it because of that. But to get rid of something because it could offend someone. (whistles) It's the slipperiest of slopes.

Leo: Nightmare in our chat room raises a good point which is, in workplaces, you absolutely cannot be looking at adult content, period. The workplace is liable. You can lose your job or the workplace can get sued for making a hostile work environment. So maybe this is just an attempt by Blogger - if they use those standards to say, “We want to make sure all our sites are work friendly.”

Jeff: So I was sitting at a faculty meeting and I must confess, at faculty meetings, I have the tweet deck up.

Leo: Don't go to tumblr.

Jeff: No, but I had it up and there was a guy who - I don't know how he ended up in my feed. There's all those things you put in your Twitter feed three years ago. There was a guy who had great jokes about the Jets. It turns out he also runs a strip club or service in New England. I've had him on there for three years, only like last week did he start putting up naked pictures on Twitter. The first one popped up as I'm in the faculty meeting with faculty on either side of me.

Leo: So you see what I'm saying.

Kevin: But shouldn't that have a warning that you would say, “I agree to see the potentially offensive material?”

Leo: There's a setting in Twitter that you can say, “I don't want to see offensive material.”

Kevin: I think I have that set, because I've never seen any of those popups just show up because that could be, obviously, embarrassing.

Leo: But that's a good point. Twitter doesn't have any rules, do they?

Jeff: I never get - that was the first time I saw a naked picture on Twitter, I swear. I never get them. To me, I'm just with ancient old prudes.

Leo: If you follow people with “xxx” on their handle, you're more likely to see something.

Kevin: That's a hint.

Leo: All right, a good discussion. I don't know what the answer is, frankly. I guess you've swayed me, Jeff. But I do understand how a company would -

Jeff: Well, you swayed me, too. The Youtube does set a precedent, I get it. But - (whistles) Only, you know, societally redeeming breasts may be seen. So who's job is it to go be the breast blesser?

Leo: That's the problem and Google faces this in all respects They have to decide on this all the time. They're always an arbiter to some degree.

Jeff: The difference, of course, is they're not juts linking to it. They're hosting it.

Leo: Yes. Oh, that's probably a number. I shouldn't steal this number.

Jeff: No, you're all right. You can have that one.

Leo: 535,752,000 hours are lost to driving every day. That's an amazing number. Half a billion hours a day.

Jeff: I'll tell you, Leo, 500 thousand of those are mine.

Leo: This is from a 2007 study done by Harvard Health Watch. The average American spends a whopping 101 minutes a day driving. That's crazy. What's your commute?

Jeff: Two hours now, each way. Pulaski Skyway is being repaired and -

Kevin: It's a mess.

Jeff: Yes. It's god awful, so I am two hours away. You know, today, I could have stayed home because I knew I wanted to do this here because my office is flooded. But a student had a meeting with me today, no higher priority. So I drove in two hours to have a meeting for a student, do some other stuff while I'm there, and drive two hours back.

Leo: This is a great article by James Belfoy, who is on Medium. He's the founder of Viewswagon, which is a rideshare advertising platform. That's kind of interesting. He says one of the incentives for Google to do a self-driving car is that's 101 minutes they'd get back of you surfing the internet.

Jeff: Not only that, but -

Leo: If you add that up, half a billion hours a day recovered for Google is a lot of revenue.

Jeff: Yes. In fact, he calculated, it's $4 billion.

Leo: Nice.

Jeff: It also gives Google something else, which is what your Android gives you, ways it gives them, is your destination, where you're going and what's on the way. Google Now just started going - I don't know if this is in the changelog. Did we break out of the changelog? Did you start one changelog thing and then just lose it? “Squirrel, squirrel!”

Leo: I did two whole changelog things. That's all we had.

Jason: There are some things in the actual changelog block down there.

Leo: Oh my god. How did that happen?

Jason: You went rogue on the changelog.

Leo: I went rogue. We will do more changelog. Go ahead, finish your thought. I didn't know we had a changelog block, I'm sorry.

Jeff: “Squirrel!” So Google Now will tell you gas stations along the way. The future I want, because people told me on Twitter - when I'm going from here to there, I don't want it to say - don't tell me nearest Starbucks where there's no exit here. I want you to tell me the Starbucks on the way or the kind of restaurant I like on the way. Tell me the next one at the next exit.

Leo: All you'd have to do to your autonomous vehicle is say, “Stop at the next Mexican restaurant.” Don't even have to search for it.

Kevin: Sounds like you need a Starbucks on the Pulaski Skyway, Jeff.

Leo: You need a Starbucks on the Pulaski. Kevin, are you in New York too?

Kevin: I'm in Pennsylvania but I head into the city, which is a three-hour drive for me, for events and such. One of those is on the Pulaski Skyway, yes.

Leo: I feel so bad for you.

Jeff: Right now it's broken.

Leo: I make a living on people stuck in their cars, I might add. But I feel so bad for you. I am so sorry. My commute, five minutes and I could walk it if I felt like it.

Jeff: I hate you.

Leo: It's so funny when Google pops up that it'll be seven minutes because there's traffic on the way to work. It just makes me smile. For many years, I had a two hour plus commute, so I know what it's like. That, to me, is one of my strongest motivating factors to moving to Petaluma, once I moved here, to not working in San Francisco. That's how TWiT came about.

All right, Inbox by Gmail now in more places. This is the Gmail interface that I prefer but a lot of people don't like an awful lot. They've added, as I said, Google Music and now they've added - both have native iPad apps. Also, Inbox supports Firefox and Safari. You don't have to use Chrome any more. Have you come around on - you don't like this, Jeff, do you?

Jeff: I'm afraid of it. Because you remember how much you scared me when you had me, in Gmail, put up these tabs and I didn't know how to get rid of it? I freaked. I don't know what it's like because it's only good on  my Gmail account that I don't use. I use my Apps account. So when it comes in - I'm afraid it's going to be like an autonomous car. “Where's the gas pedal? Where's the brakes on this thing?”

Leo: I don't know why, but it's the first thing I've ever found that gets me to Inbox 0. It's easy, I use it on all my devices. I even use it on my laptop. It is the app for me.

Jeff: Kevin, do you use it?

Kevin: You know, I try it every now and again, Jeff, and I struggle because there's not a lot of information density there. I don't get a ton of information. I guess that's the whole point of it but I'm so used to being drowned in Gmail for the last ten years that I can't break out of it.

Leo: I don't know. I seem to be the only person who likes Inbox. It is missing a lot of features. There's no signature. I have to use a macro to put my signature in. There's no encryption. I think that's very important - Google needs to add that. Nevertheless, it's just the fastest way to do Triage for me.

Jason: There's no undo, undo send which for me in Gmail -

Leo: There is no undo send in mail.

Jason: There is in Gmail.

Leo: That's because Gmail just holds on to it.

Jason: Exactly, and I use it all the time. How many times do I send something and the minute I send it, I read the thing that I wasn't supposed to type in there. I undo it and I change it.

Leo: You know what I love? When I get an email from somebody who sent something wrong to me and then I get another email from them saying, “Darlene wants to retract that email.” I just laugh. If everybody's using Exchange in Outlook, you can do that. But only in certain circumstances.

Jeff: The other problem I have now is that I use “Mark as Unread” like crazy because that's my way to say, “Okay, I know what this is. I'll deal with it later. Let me mark it as unread.”

Leo: Well, you can use a pin. There's a pin thing that's better than mark as unread. You can mark as unread and move it to the inbox, but the better way to do that is to pin it. There's a little thumbtack icon.  Stuff you pin sits there forever until you unpin it or sweep it.

Jeff: Well, I don't want that either. Because I tried to use the Star in Gmail, but it's like a to-do list to me. I just can't do it. So it'll stay there for a little longer, but then if I don't do anything with it, God didn't mean me to.

Leo: I noticed that people are - Inbox and Gmail are very personal and the more that you have customized it and got it just right, the less likely you're going to use a new system, frankly. It's interesting how personal everyone's email habits have become, especially when there's information overload and we have to have some solution. So my email system wasn't working for me. It was easy for me to shift. I have filters and over 1800 Udora filters, all that stuff.

Google launches Invite program to bring Inbox to Google App for Work customers. So I guess I can now invite people who will use apps for work.

Jason: Well, we have Google Apps for our email here. You can apply to be one of the first companies to be able to integrate Inbox into Google Apps. Let's hear from our staff. Who wants me to do that?

Jason: I do.

(background voices)

Leo: Mike Elgan, and you do, Jason? You like Inbox.

Jason: I like Inbox. I think it would be incredibly useful, moreso in business than it would be in my personal emails.

Leo: Needles, you don't want it? Selena? He doesn't care. Jason?

Jeff: It's just an option? Jason, you don't have to use it?

Jason: No, no, you don't have to use it. Everybody's not forced into Inbox, it just means that it supports it.

Leo: So I should apply.

Jeff: Where do you apply?

Kevin: I think your admin has to, your Google admin.

Jeff: The company is me.

Leo: He has his own personal Google for Work.

Jeff: Yes, on Apps. It's just me.

Leo: Yes, I should apply. Russell - is Russell still here? I don't know who our admin is. It must be Russell. Russell's the admin? Inbox - okay. So you have to email Google at inboxforwork@google.com. The first invites will be going out next month. Only admins can ask. Make sure you do something nice for your neighborhood sys admin on July 31. Nice plug for Sys Admin Day.

Jeff: What was that again, Leo?

Leo: inboxforwork@google.com. Google says, “Companies that should consider signing up for the early adoptive program are those that want to use Inbox as their primary email service, whose employees are heavy mobile email users and want to partner with Google on user studies to learn more about how employers use this service.” We do use - you know, we have @TWiT.tv as our domain and we use that. The truth is, I don't ever check my email @TWiT.tv because I can't use it.

Jason: I was going to say, there's no such thing as Inbox 0, except, of course, just deleting all your emails, shutting down your email accounts entirely and to go offline.

Leo: You remember seeing my Inbox with 25 thousand unread messages? By the way, the way I fixed that is I used - that was the most satisfying sweep of the day. I used Inbox. I pressed, “Sweep,” whoosh. Was that nice.

Jason: Did you suffer any consequences from doing that?

Leo: My mother thinks I've died.

Jason: Okay. That's a big consequence.

Leo: No. Zero, no consequences. Because anybody who hasn't heard back from me by now -

Jason: That's the thing. I hold on to these emails for so long, like I really do need to get back to this person. This email is three months old. I guarantee this person is not losing sleep over not hearing back.

Leo: There's a word for that, declaring email bankruptcy. You send an email out to everybody or you post it somewhere, saying, “Hey -”

Jeff: That's every day for me. I'll tell you when you hit Inbox 0. When you die.

Leo: I plan to have an auto-responder when I die.

Jason: No, you have an inactive account manager after a year.

Leo: Adwords app for Android, but it's only in Canada. Next item.

Google expands Flight - I didn't even know there was a Google Flight. Now this helps you decide where to go. This is the Flights shopping service. Did you know about Google Flights?

Jeff: Yes. I use it, actually, sometimes.

Leo: Instead of Expedia?

Jeff: Yes, I was starting to get frustrated with Expedia. It's very good.

Leo: This is using their ITA - they bought ITA?

Jeff: It's more aimed for people - when I'm doing a business thing - this is going to sound obnoxious. When I'm doing a business thing and I've said, “I want this flight, I want it business class. I want this. I want that.” These are all meant to find you better prices. But if you go in and try to search for some destination, it will give you a very nice visualization of flights. But what was just there, Leo, on the last screen, is suggested destinations. That's what's new here is Google knows what's best for you.

Leo: “You're looking to go to Fort Worth, but maybe you'd rather go to Honolulu.” You're so right, Google. That's pretty fun, although it is a little devilish, isn't it? Perhaps - let me do this, flight.google.com. So let's say this is a flight and I'm a round-trip San Francisco to Fort Worth, Texas. I'm trying to decide. There's a Podcasters Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony July 31. I'm trying to decide if I want to go. I don't think I can because it takes forever. Where does it suggest better places to go?

Jeff: It already did that a minute ago. Go back to the main page, the Flights page. See, that symbol for flights and it does the nice visualizations?

Leo: This is nice. I'll be using this from now on. “Show 12 more expensive flights.” You know, I use Kayak and Hipmonk and all that stuff.

Jeff: This is competing with that.

Leo: Yes. Because they're not - I imagine if I choose this flight, I'd get sent to Alaska Airlines. I can book with Alaska.

Jeff: I don't know what the business deal is, if Google gets a split.

Leo: Probably. Travel agents do.

Kevin: That's what I was thinking because usually you book reservations, flights, whatever, all that stuff comes through email. So Google Now has that information. So I know they're not getting additional information they didn't have. What's the angle here?

Leo: Barcelona, let's go right now. Well, that's fun. I'm not getting suggestions here but I did on hotels. What are they going to suggest better than Barcelona? There's nothing better than Barcelona. Yes, they didn't bother. No, there's nothing better. Last searches, Barcelona and Forth Worth. Suggested searches - I see. So it's when you first enter, it will give you some suggestions. I'm not sure what they get out of that. Does Paris give them a little kickback for everybody who goes to Paris?

Jeff: It's also the philosophy that Google wants to give you the core information, not send you searching all over. Because it pisses off those sites where you went searching before. What I want is, “Okay, Google, get me the hell out of here.” Then it just does it. My self-driving car takes me to the airport and I get on a plane. I don't know where I'm going but Google knows best.

Jason: You want “I'm feeling lucky,” for travel.

Jeff: Yes.

Leo: That's a great idea.

Jeff: I want that every time I'm on a plane.

Jason: That would be fun, actually.

Leo: The Google Calendar app has changed on Android. I always - I use Sunrise, but apparently now you can get a seven-day view, pinch to zoom and more on the Calendar app. You know, on a small phone, the seven-day view is not - I guess it hasn't been implemented yet on mine. A seven-day zoom is -

Jason: A lot of people complained about the fact there was no seven-day view on the phone. It was appear on the tablet screen but it wouldn't on a phone.

Leo: You can't even tell what you're looking at, but I guess people are used to the seven-day.

Jeff: I am. You can tell what's most important, “Oh, that day's free.” What happened is I'll have a haircut on Saturday and I won't have looked at the Saturday calendar because there's no business appointments and then I say, “Oops.”

Leo: “Oops, I missed that.”

Kevin: You know who had the calendar right was Palm's Web OS. That was the - I don't mean to beat a dead horse there but it would, according to your calendar, an accordian fold and it would show you where you had open slots and where you didn't. It was really nice on a mobile screen.

Leo: Maybe we'll get it on - somebody's using Web OS now on their -

Kevin: There's LG on their TVs, I think, so my calendar on my TV? Boom.

Leo: That's the Google changelog.

(collectively imitates trumpets)

Why did Google buy Toro, which is not fatty tuna but is a Facebook marketing startup formerly known as Red Hot Labs. Toro is used to make launching and optimizing a Facebook ad campaign as easy as possible. Maybe it's an acquirer, right? It's these two guys.

Jeff: Right, because it did seem a little odd, doesn't it?

Leo: Who cares about how hard or easy it is to launch a Facebook marketing campaign? They raised $1.5 million from investors - we don't know how much they sold for. In its announcement, Toro writes, “Joining Google would give team members access to more resources of distribution, allowing them to continue our mission of making the lives of app developers easy.” I think they'll apply it to Google sites, Google properties, don't you think?

Let's see what else. Google Glass news. It's not dead yet.

Kevin: Sounds like Monty Python.

Leo: “I'm not dead yet. Get in the wagon. Not dead yet!” Google is shuffling engineers in the Glass project.  A new team developing the new version under new leadership. Hm? So the project graduated out of the Google X lab into the hands of Tony Fidel. Tony, of course, went on to other things. Google has been ceding prototypes of Google Glass to Glass at Work partners so it's not dead yet, but there is a new, fresh strategy. We're starting to see posts - people like Steven Lao, according to this article, 9 to 5 Google, the face of the secret San Francisco Glass Foundry Developer's Event last year or two years ago, engineer and technical lead on the Glass software team for four years. He was part of the group that built Google Glass and he says, “It's been a wild and crazy ride, but after three years and eight months, I'm leaving to start a new episode of my career over at Youtube.” Wow. Jeff, you don't pull your Glass out any more, do you?

Jeff: No.

Leo: You don't show your Glass?

Jeff: No, I'm embarrassed. It was my peak of Google fanboy foolishness, I will fully confess. “This could change the world, look at all it can do.” It was as if it was done just to make us big fools of ourselves.

Kevin: Hook, line and sinker.

Leo: You never got suckered into Glass, Kevin?

Kevin: Actually I did, and to be honest, I buy all my devices. GigaOm does not reimburse me. They actually reimbursed me for that and I'm kind of glad they did. It's the only thing they've ever reimbursed me for.

Leo: That's $1500.

Kevin: Yes, and then I got the extra with the prescription.

Jeff: So did I.

Kevin: I paid for that.

Jeff: $2200 with that.

Kevin: If they are ceding any types of prototypes and such to Google at Work partners, that's probably the best possible partnership they can work with at this point because as a consumer product, it's just not there yet. I'm not even sure people want it. But there are a lot of places in vertical markets where it could be handy.

Leo: You know what I want right now? Snacks.

Get your NatureBox out, everybody. We have this new thing that we do. Everybody who has NatureBox at home breaks out the NatureBox ad. That way you won't feel left out with your deliciously awesome snacks. NatureBox is giving you the chance to get a free trial box of their most popular snacks - you know, is this pineapple? No, it's Fuji apples. Oh. This is reminiscent of the pineapple rings, which are our favorites. Now in Fuji apples, too. Crunchy and also delicious.

The neat thing about NatureBox - wait a minute, I've got to chew.

Jeff: Don't plug with your mouth full, Leo.

Leo: Oh, it's so good. Man. It's like a burst of apple flavor in my mouth going right to my head. So you'll see on all the snacks, first of all, nutrition is to prove, because NatureBox is really trying to make delicious snacks that are healthy. It's nice to have the choice that's not a snack machine or candy bar. Hundreds of delicious snacks approved by nutritionists, zero - on every one of them, zero artificial colors, sweeteners, flavors, no trans fats, no high fructose corn syrup. They're bold and delicious. They have sweet, savory and spicy snacks. Hundreds to choose from - next time, don't get a candy bar. Get an orange apple fruit chew or antioxidant boost. Actually, that's a delicious one, mixes nuts, dark chocolate, dried fruits. Gorp, never had it. So good.

You know you snack every day. I'm trying to be good about it and NatureBox really makes it a lot easier. So don't take my word for it. Visit the NatureBox site, take a look at their snacks, naturebox.com/TWiT and get that complementary box of their five most popular snacks for just $2 shipping. Stay full, stay strong, start snacking smarter. If Steve Jobs was here, that's what he would say. Doesn't he, “Stay young, stay foolish?” No. Stay young, stay strong. Start snacking smarter at naturebox.com/TWiT and we thank them, not only for their support of This Week in Google, but for all the great snacks.

Kevin: I got a box with a crunchy Rick Osterlow.

Leo: Oh, yum. It's a very special prize in side. Wouldn't that be good? They should do that. “A free Rick Osterlow in every box.” Poor Rick. He stayed at Motorola though. I was pleased to hear that because I think he's a great guy. I think - was he the one - no, he was another guy I met at one of the Moto X events to design - no, maybe it was Rick, Moto Blur? Ugh.

Kevin: Ugh. I don't think I would have admitted that even if I did it.

Leo: I know. That's a shocking admission. I said, I think it was Rick. I said, “Rick -” You know, I had a Droid X, Droid, all the different horrible. He said, “We had to do it because Android 2.2 Gingerbread just really wasn't very good. So we had to, all the OEMs, do what we could to make it a more usable operating system.” But I think I might argue that it did not improve things.

Kevin: I picture a whole product team sitting around. (mimicks smoking) “So what do we want to do? Let's just make it blurry and have lots of things come into the phone and use up their data.” Yes. It was - I know you have to differentiate, but that wasn't the way.

Leo: To be fair, Blur didn't actually make it blurry. It just felt that way. I mean, it really wasn't blurry. You've got to commend them, under Rick Osterlow's direction, they are now as pure Google as you can get in a company that isn't Nexus.

Kevin: And that's how you differentiate because - [crosstalk]

Leo: It's a great way to do it. Mobile World Congress starts in a couple of days. We've got Miriam Schwar flying out tomorrow, Mike Elgan flying out Saturday. The Congress officially begins March 1, but there's, of course, press conferences. All the big phone manufacturers have big announcements, although maybe not Motorola. I guess they've shot their wad but we expect to hear more about the Samsung Galaxy S6. It's beautiful. We've all seen the teaser but I'll play it one more time. You've probably played it yesterday on All About Android, right? It doesn't tell you much about the phone. It's apparently some sort of liquid-y, flowing thing. Samsung, really? Sit back, get a NatureBox and enjoy the ride.

[trailer plays]

Jeff: I expect a bunch of monkey apes to be gibbering around it. (imitates monkey)

Kevin: The phone! I can't believe how much glitz and glamour.

Leo: Color will live and things will fly.

Kevin: It's just a phone.

Jeff: Well, Kevin, if this were the first smart phone you ever saw, then - [crosstalk]

Kevin: [crosstalk] - would feel like monkeys staring at the monolith, yes. I agree. I've seen phones for how many years now?

Leo: When you actually see images of the phone - this is from an XDA forum, in bubble wrap. It's not quite as sexy, is it?

Jason: Take it out of the bubble wrap, what are you doing?

Leo: You know, it's a Galaxy.

Jeff: So what's our bet? It's $1100. Is Samsung going to redeem itself?

Leo: I don't know. Kevin, you cover this, don't you?

Kevin: Yes. I'm shaking my head because they've taken such a beating lately because they've focused so much on the high end. They've crammed so many features and things, starting with the Galaxy S4. I'm thinking there will be three different additions here, Jeff, in terms of price. The dual display -

Leo: Tri-display now.

Kevin: Yes, tri-display, both left, right side and front, so all three of your eyes can see things on the phone, that may be very expensive, yes, because of the curved glass on both sides. You know, I think the bigger thing here for them is to get rid of all their touchwares, bloatware, which rumor is that they have done that. Also, talk of Microsoft apps preinstalled, which is good for Microsoft to build -

Leo: I like that idea. I do like it. They would not replace the Google apps, right, they would just replace the Samsung apps?

Kevin: I don't think they can replace the Google apps by licensing agreement. No.

Leo: So that would be nice, because who needs the Samsung calendar or Samsung anything?

Jeff: The other thing that disturbs me, when I try to help a friend with a Samsung phone is that it's just so off putting. Even the settings, I can't find anything on it.

Leo: Let me say this. I do have a Note 4. It's my daily driver. It is, in many respects, the best hardware out there. Many would agree, the best camera phone out there. I love the stylus and I love the screen - there's no better looking screen. I played with the Edge for a while and it did not woo me. But that's a good hardware device and they, to their credit - Samsung is backing off on TouchWiz, bit by bit. So your own launcher and a Lollipop skin, you could almost think that you're using Lollipop.

Jeff: Do you see any benefit to the, you know, added curve?

Leo: No. I played with the Edge screen. It was crazy and didn't make any sense. Adding one more -

Jeff: Can you imagine the benefit?

Leo: Yes, I imagine the benefit, the benefit that they sold at their announcement which is, you're sitting in the meeting and have the phone on the table in front of you, you can read the Edge - except the way they've set it up, the Edge is upside-down that way. There was no way to turn it around and I thought, wait a minute. I guess if you put the phone - no, there's no way to read it. It was like, “Why is it upside down?” You're supposed to look at it like this? That makes no sense.

Jeff: There was an extra navigational - [crosstalk]

Leo: Yes, and you can actually have the bubbles up the side. There's screensavers on it. There is an extra navigational, so there's other icons there. But I don't find that particularly useful.

Kevin: It's also one-handed. I mean, if you're right or left-handed, it's going to depend on whether you can use the device or not.

Leo: With three screens, they want it to be wrapping around on each side. Then you have to be what kind of hand?

Kevin: I'll have the thing strapped to me in front of my face and use both hands to drive on the phone, I guess.

Leo: (with phone in mouth, garbled) Like this. So … but I -

Jason: It's not waterproof, Leo.

Leo: Oh, it's not. To be fair, Miriam was telling me that she talked to people who had seen the trifold design and say it's surprisingly elegant and attractive.

Jeff: Oh, I can imagine that, but I think I told you on the show last week, or week before last, the problem I have with every phone I have, including my Nexus 6, is when I pick it up, I've got to go through this whole little ballet of whether it's right side up or upside-down.

Leo: Samsung devices do have physical home buttons, so it's actually easier to do than it is on many other phones.

Jeff: True.

Leo: That would be a selling point. I hate the physical home button on phones, I think that's so pathetic. Here, by the way, from Samsung Norway, are some pictures of what the Samsung Galaxy S6 will not look like. At least the Norwegians had some funny senses of humor about this. They had some images of - let me see if I can - this is rumor six. Samsung was expected to release a flexible, foldable phone. How can I see the other rumors, is it the left one? Here's rumor five, an all glass Galaxy. These are the concept drawings you see all the time on the internet and I like them, but they made their own.

“It is rumored that the next Galaxy will feature a larger display.” That's a blueprint. Three sides, the three sides version. It looks like a Pono player. “The new Galaxy is expected to be durable.” This is one with forward facing stereo speakers. I think that's for you, Kevin, and your Beatles collection.

Kevin: It's the Firefly edition. It looks like a ladybug or something.

Leo: I like that they had a sense of humor about it. We'll find out. We're going to have coverage of the Samsung event, the LG event, the HTC. I like the M9, the new HTC. Both of these will be using the Snapdragon - no, actually, the S6 will not be using the Snapdragon 810.

Kevin: The Exynos.

Leo: They'll be using their own octo core Exynos. But the M9 will be and I think many others will. Are you an Experia fan? You mentioned that you liked the X3.

Kevin: The Experia Z3, I actually liked. It's completely waterproof, plays high-res audio, Sony sensor. It actually has the same internals as the 2014 Moto X, so it's not bad at all, it's just that Sony has not had the carrier support here that other brands have. So that's - [crosstalk]

Leo: I think they announced they're getting out of the business now, right?

Kevin: There's talk about that, yes, breaking that out, selling it off and getting out of that business. But there was a leaked Experia Z4 tablet that's apparently coming out at Mobile World Congress. So they're not completely done yet.

Leo: Good. I hope so. Pebble did announce a kickstarter to raise money for a new Pebble watch. Back to the well again. Pebble did, of course, raise $10 million. It was one of the first really successful kickstarter projects. The new Pebble watch - what is it at now, I'm wondering?

Kevin: I think it's over ten.

Leo: They only launched it two days ago. I wouldn't be surprised, it went to five million, almost. It's called Pebble Time. Almost $10 million, they're at $9.6 million. This really shows you that people treat Kickstarter as a preorder system.

Jason: And a marketing driver.

Jeff: For devices, yes.

Kevin: Pebble was taken to task on their Reddit AMA today for -

Leo: Good.

Kevin: I mean, I see both sides on this one. Yes, Kickstarter should be for projects that are ready for sale and such but the flipside is, Pebble said, “Look. If we go through a big box store, we've got to deal with their marketing and so on. This builds buzz for us in our userbase. Also, big box stores want a 50% profit margin on these devices and such.” Pebble, through Kickstarter, they're just paying a little fee to Kickstarter and the payment processing.

Jeff: They're in Best Buy. Pebble is in Best Buy.

Kevin: Yes. They are, and they will be again with Pebble Time, but they're trying to get as much bang for their buck and as much profit margin out as they can in the first 31 days with this Kickstarter project. Why give those profits to Best Buy? It's a smart question.

Leo: You know what the real clock is, the real countdown is, to the Apple watch release? They're trying to get as much as they can, right now, before the Apple Watch is out. Because once it's out, I have the feeling that all the oxygen is gone from the room for every other smart watch. Of course, if you're an Android user, what are you going to use?

Kevin: Exactly. I actually backed the Pebble Time. I did not back the original but got review units. I backed the Pebble Time because I switch between Android and iOS on a weekly basis.

Leo: I'm going to switch back to iOS just so I can get a watch. I bought the original Pebble on Kickstarter and pretty quickly gave up on it.

Jeff: You know what? I bought it and I saw all the grousing about it. I sold it for a profit on eBay, unopened. Somebody wanted it.

Leo: There are people who love their Pebble watches. You only have to charge it once a week. This one is going to be color. The other one wasn't. So we'll see. Mobile World Congress is, I think now, the most interesting show, much more so than CES. So we'll see a lot of good stuff coming out of there and I will look forward to seeing that, including, probably, some new Android ware devices. What else?

Twitter's While You Were Away feature. I don't like this. It's now on Android. It was on iOS.

Jeff: I'm not getting it yet. Do I have to change the app?

Leo: I don't like it one bit. The idea being - see, to me, the thing that Twitter taught us that was a valuable lesson, was that you don't have to read everything. When I started using Twitter I tried to read everything I missed but pretty soon that becomes untenable and you realize, quickly, that's the way that life is. That's the way the internet is. It is a stream, a river of information you can't possibly gulp, so dip in and dip out. That's fine. It's okay to miss things. But Twitter has decided, apparently, no.

Kevin: When I'm away from Twitter, I'm away for a reason.

Leo: “See what people were talking about during the Oscars.”

Jeff: And that's where Snapchat obviously changes the paradigm.

Leo: Right. Stuff dies. You know what? I have to say, I got away from doing Snapchat only because I want to create stuff that people can read after 24 hours. I feel like it's a lot of work.

Jeff: I wonder - I was thinking about that today, Leo. Is that kind of an old fart thing where we care about archives, and file cabinets and stuff like that? Is that just an old habit of ours?

Leo: I think if you're - some content really has no shelf life. Katie Couric's news updates on Snapchat, ESPN sports - there's no shelf life. But I like to think the stuff that we do - I admit, it doesn't have a year shelf life, although TV shows I made in Canada ten years ago are still airing. This I do not recommend. But I hope that we consider that our shows have at least a week's shelf life. 24 hours just seems too short for me, especially if I put effort into creating a video and stuff like that.

So tomorrow's the big day. It's - okay, I finally figured out. We're talking about the net neutrality thing. The FCC commissioners will gather and will vote. It is expected - certainly the proposal in front of them is that the FCC adopt a Title 2 regulation of broadband providers, making them a utility, allowing the FCC -

See, the real problem has been that Congress did not give the FCC the explicit control over internet service providers. The FCC tried to implement open internet rules. Verizon sued and won, and the court told the FCC, “No, Verizon is right. You don't have a mandate from Congress to do this unless you do.”

Jeff: Hint, hint.

Leo: “If you invoke the Title 2 Telecommunications Act and say that they are common carriers. Then you would.” The judge clearly - in this decision, the judge really clearly said, “Title 2.” Tom Wheeler fought it back and forth. Now, for a long time I thought, “Wow, this is great. Tom Wheeler is listening to the people.” Then I realized this has nothing to do with the people. This has everything to do with which lobbyist brought the biggest chunk of change to the table. So for a long time, the cable companies and wireless companies ruled the roost. Then Google, and Facebook and Microsoft decided some years ago to hire their own lobbyists and get in there, and all this shows is a changing of the guard in Washington DC politics. The money is now coming from Silicon Valley in greater amounts than it's coming from the broadband providers.

Jeff: You don't think the political pressure of -

Leo: It's not the people.

Jeff: Nothing, no impact at all?

Leo: I really - I had an epiphany yesterday. Because the New York Times had a great article on how the internet providers had lobbied for this.

Jeff: Well, and others like, what was it, Freepress, EFF, Mozilla and others had some objections to that because they were saying, “Hey, we had a role.”

Leo: They're overstating their role. I mean, there were five million comments to the FCC.

Jeff: Another part - I didn't know about this. 30 top FCC executives got 50 thousand protocols. Their direct numbers were hacked and found.

Leo: Awesome. I also see, which is very interesting, a concerted effort from conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh and others, to fight this and say, “Whoa, hold on there.” But they're a little late. They missed the boat.

Jeff: Well, it'll be fought in court now.

Leo: Of course. Verizon and AT&T's already prepared its brief.

Jeff: I don't know if you saw, I added this to the rundown right before. Now, Google, in the 11^th hour, is trying to get a change in the regulation.

Leo: What do they want?

Jeff: I think, the way I read it, I could be wrong here. I need you to read this and see. I think what they're saying is the peer-to-peer charges made to the likes of Google and Netflix are neutral. So they're trying to go not for just the front-end, consumer-end to find neutrality, but the back end to find neutrality. I think. You've got to look at it and see.

Leo: I'd love to, but it's part of the Financial Times and there's a pay wall. Since I'm not a subscriber, I cannot read this article.

Jeff: On mine, I just had to answer a survey question and I was in.

Leo: Oh. Survey says - boxers. Enter your email address, select an access level. Well, free.

Jeff: If you register, you get some number of articles free.

Leo: I have a minimum of $6.45 a week. Sign up for quick access to three articles per month. No, I'm not going to give them my information. Screw them. I'm not going to read their articles. They put it behind a big old brick wall.

Jeff: “In its filing, Google said the regulator risked encouraging broadband providers to charge companies such as Google and Netflix for sending content through their pipes while the same broadband groups already charge retail customers for internet access.” Does that sound like a peer issue? “Such would not come to defeat the purpose of net neutrality rules,” Google said in the FT. “Its effort has revealed cracks in Silicon Valley's rapport.”

Leo: I think what this shows - remember, Google kind of held back lobbying on this. Although you could probably say they let their PACs do it. They let their companies do it a little more anonymously. I think what this is about is the so-called forbearance provisions. I think something people were worried about with Title 2, I myself included, is that it does allow the FCC to do things we don't want it to do, like for instance, set prices and charge tariffs.

Jeff: Yes, which the FCC has said it won't do.

Leo: So there's a doctrine called forbearance which the President proposed the FCC adopt and the FCC agreed to that says, “We're going to enforce these but not those. We're going to enforce here and not there.” One of the items, I remember, in the forbearance, was this peering stuff. “We won't mess with this.”

Jeff: So the key paragraph in explanation, “Net neutrality centers on the ability of broadband providers to control video streaming and other content delivered to customers' screens. But Google's lobbying is about a different set of relationships, the informal back-end links between broadband providers and content providers.”

Leo: That's the Netflix, Cogent, Verizon argument.

Jeff: So it sounds like Google is trying to say, “Okay, what the - we're winning, let's go the next step.”

Leo: Well, Google doesn't want ISPs like Comcast to charge it for access to me. But it also doesn't want Youtube, I would guess, is the big one. It doesn't want Youtube to have to - it wants to make deals with, let's say, Cogent or Comcast, to have access to the network or to have appropriate peering. I consider that all part of fast lane. I'm not sure exactly what they're talking about here.

Jeff: Here's the odd thing about it. So Austin Schlick, Google's director of communications law, talked about this as a practice of double recovery that could do serious long-term harm to the internet circle of innovation, blah, blah, blah. All right?

Then a lobbyist for another big Silicon Valley group said, “Here you see that Google is not a big supporter of net neutrality. Everyone thinks it is.” Well, they're - what? They're trying to make it even more neutral where you can't charge anybody for anything special.

Leo: So complicated, frankly, that I don't think anybody understands it, including the FCC. I think that's one of the reason big money wins is because they know that the public really doesn't have any idea what's going on. I think what's really interesting to me, also, is how the tone has shifted once the right-wing demagogues started to weigh in, like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh started weighing in on this. They really galvanized their base and all of the sudden, even in our chat room which was once very strongly in favor of Title 2, people are horrified with the notion, including Mark Cuban, horrified about the notion of Title 2 regulation. It's a mess.

Jeff: It is. But I still think this, Leo. I think the teleco's and cable companies brought it on themselves.

Leo: Absolutely. [crosstalk]

Jeff: If they had not misbehaved, if they hadn't tried to screw us, this wouldn't have been an issue. The reason this is an issue is because you greedy bastards tried to nickel and dime us, make us think we're your prisoners in a case where there wasn't competition, where you went overboard. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Monopoly corrupts and you did it to yourselves. If you corrupt with your own standards of decent behavior long ago and held to them, given us decent service without this kind of crap, it wouldn't have happened. It came about only because you're a-holes.

Leo: I agree and some who blame the FCC for creating the duopoly that we have ignore the fact that they were pressured into it by the big cable companies and telephone companies who said, “Well, in that case, we're not going to invest.” So you'll notice that in the language Chairman Wheeler has used, he wants to have it both ways. “We want to make sure there's incentive for the broadband providers to invest, that they can make money. But we also want to make sure that the internet is not divided up into fast lanes so the best internet goes to the highest bidder content creator.” I agree with that.

Jeff: Leo - [crosstalk]

Leo: The other thing he suggested and I see great movement from the FCC on this is that there should be competition. I think that ultimately, that's the only real solution. One of the things he said is we're going to stop these companies from getting state legislatures to block municipal WiFi. I think that's a huge part of it. We've talked about that before.

Apparently I say Chatanooga. It's not Chatanooga. Apparently Baumer says it's, (mumbled) “Chetnooga.” In Chatanooga, they have a very good, very successful gigabit municipal internet access and this is the kind of thing that cities could foster to create competition. It would solve the problem. We'll have to wait and see. We're not going to know what this means for a while.

Jeff: I also put a link up on the run down that Google has now said to cities, “Treat us better. Get rid of some of your stupidity and you could attract us for Fiber.”

Leo: “First, don't make it hard for us.”

Jeff: The first thing it said is, “Get rid of your fax machines.” For all this regulatory BS, come on, people.

Leo: I love that Sebring.

Jeff: Isn't that great? I also love that there's a Verizon ad on the Google Fiber story. Right there on Google - what is that story?

Leo: We're going to take a break. When we come back, I don't know if they warned you, Kevin. We like to do a tip or something.

Kevin: I planned ahead.

Leo: You know, the greatest Beatles album of all time, anything like that. Are there any great Beatles apps? We just talked on Tuesday about Beethoven's 9^th, or is it 5^th, there's a beautiful iPad app for that. Anything like that for the Beatles? Maybe not.

Kevin: I'm trying to think. I think Ringo did a photography book that was part book, part app for the iPad. It didn't come out in print at all.

Leo: You'd have to be a hardcore Beatles fan to really want that. (sings) No, but it's a rights thing. This is where it's unfortunate - the Beatles, I think whoever owns the Beatles catalog. I don't even know any more. I don't think Michael Jackson still owns it.

Kevin: I don't even know.

Leo: Yoko's got something to say in that.

Kevin: I don't have any, I'll tell you that.

Leo: They really need to let go. Make the Beatles public domain at this point. Have you not made enough money yet?

Kevin: Let it be.

Leo: Let it be. Imagine a world where the Beatles music would flow freely. “Probably Disney owns it,” says somebody in the chat room. Probably right. Ultimately, Disney owns everything, don't they. You know what they don't own? They don't own my inkjet cartridges, my toner cartridges.

Sure, you could get the whole little scheme that the printer manufacturers have. “You have our printer, keep buying our ink at $3000 a gallon.” Or you could save money and save the earth with LD Products, ldproducts.com. Sells remanufactured inkjet and toner cartridges that will work perfectly in your printer at prices 75% off the original equipment price. They've been in business 15 years and their business is BizRate customer certified, a Google-trusted store with a million orders a year. This is a great company. We've been buying our ink and toner from them for a while now and what's great is these are remanufactured cartridges so they keep the oil, the plastics, the waste our of our landfill. Compatible with almost any kind of printer. Yes, they do sell the name-brand manufacturer's tools if you want to buy those. But if you haven't tried it yet, try these. They will save you so much on your laser and inkjet cartridges.

If you're not sure what kind to buy, you can talk to a real person seven days a week. By the way, that's from the warehouse; the call center, the warehouse and the headquarters are all together in Long Beach, California. They have a 110 thousand square foot facility that is Platinum Lead certified. These guys really care about the environment. Platinum Lead certified means that it's absolutely eco-friendly with a two-year customer satisfaction guarantee. Although, with 75% less than the OEM cartridge, you might think, “This is almost free. I can't believe it's so much less.” You should try it. We will get you 10% off your ink and toner plus free shipping, excluding OEM cartridges, if you go to ldproducts.com/TWiT. Ldproducts.com/TWiT and if you use the offer code TWiT. 10% off and free shipping in the US, excluding OEM cartridges. This is a really great deal. Coupon code is TWiT.

You can see it all at their website, at ldproducts.com/TWiT. We've been using them - I mean, has anybody noticed any difference? No. Print is print. Works great. The printer is happy and my bottom line has much improved.

Jeff Jarvis - well, maybe we'll start with Kevin. He can do a tip or product, then your number, then I have something.

Kevin: Sure, sure. I can do that. My thing was going to be little mini Rick Osterlow but we've already done that.

Leo: We've gotten so much mileage out of that.

Kevin: I know. I love it.

Leo: “Hello, I'm Rick Osterlow.”

Kevin: Here's a tip I actually found through somebody on Google+. If you're on Google+, I highly recommend you follow this person. He is a Google evangelist. His name is Francoise Beaufort. He is based in France and he puts out all kinds of tips, tricks about what's coming out in Chrome OS and in Chrome, and so on. Today he said, “Here's how you can add a reader mode to Chrome on your desktop. There's a secret switch you can use.” Now, I've used Evernode's Clearly to do this, but it'd be nice to have this natively in Chrome and you can basically do that. By Reader mode, we mean stripping out all the superfluous stuff, the ad, the pictures, the photos, the junk and get you right to the content. SO it's something I think every browser should really have and it's nice that you can do this. So it's an experimental switch, however, so the instructions are on Francoise's Google+ post, maybe we can put a link in the show notes for that?

Leo: Good. We will. Francoise Beaufort. Just like it sounds. He - I just circled him in Google. This is great. You can just find this in his Google+, right?

Kevin: Yes. He's constantly putting tips, tricks and new features for the dev channel in Chrome.

Leo: Neat stuff. Wow. Look at all this. This is juicy stuff.

Kevin: This is all Chrome stuff, behind the scenes. It's like he's a Chrome paparazzi.

Leo: Thank you, Kevin. By the way, always great to have you.

Jeff: It is.

Leo: I just think the world of you. Kevin is at gigaom.com and now that I know he's a Beatles fanatic, we'll have lots of great conversations.

Kevin: I'll show you the tattoo next time.

Leo: What part of your body is it on?

Kevin: Upper right shoulder.

Leo: And is it just the Beatles like this?

Kevin: It's the Beatles drop-down team logo.

Leo: Oh, man. I just fell in love with those four lads once again reading that Tune In book, “All These Years.”

Kevin: That's a big read.

Leo: It's a long-ass book. I'm listening to it on Audible. It is long. I mean, Ringo hasn't joined the band yet. They still have Pete Bast.

Kevin: You've got a ways to go.

Leo: I know. Well, here the first volume ends, but before their first record deal.

Kevin: This is Mark Lewinson we're talking about as the author here. He - I said this before the show, he is probably the most knowledgeable person on the planet that's alive right now.

Leo: And yet, it's not written like a fanboy is writing it. It's written like, just a biography. You get the voices - it's nice on Audible because the reader does all the Liverpool accents and stuff. You can - if you read this book, you will know what the Cavern Club smelled like. It's amazing. What a great book.

Kevin: It's that good.

Leo: I'm glad to hear that somebody who is a serious Beatles expert agrees. I thought it was great. It is a big book, I mean 47 hours or something. That's how I measure book. Rick says, “Hi.” Jeff, you have a number for us?

Jeff: Hi, Rick.

Leo: “Hi, how you doing?”

Jeff: Hi. I have two of them. So the first, you know, the Google Looter Xprize, get to the moon, win $20 million. You know, spend $80 million to get there but - so you know that you not only land, but there's steps. You have to get out of orbit, get on the moon, have to land something and then you have to travel, I think it's 500 - you know, 500 meters on, above or below the surface, then send back an HDTV video signal to earth. So what happened here is there are two of the teams that have agreed to share a ride to the moon and then when they land, their rovers will have a race and whoever does the 500 meters and sends the signal back first is going to win $20 million.

Leo: What? $20 million. Do you think it'll be close like within feet of each other?

Jeff: The thing is, it'll be like the great George Costanza, being chased in Seinfeld. It'll probably be a bunch of tiny little slow things going.

Leo: Riding this Rascal down the street. Because they probably don't go very fast. It might take a couple days to go 500 meters.

Jeff: One of them might do a bouncing trick or something like that. I don't know. So that's one number I enjoy. So Google, a company that it bought, has created the machine that taught itself how to play and win at 25 classic games. What that means, people, is that we've finally invented the machine that can waste its own time.

Leo: Wait, I want this.

Jeff: It's AI software that watches a dev play 25 winning games and then gets its own strategies.

Leo: “Shall we play a game?” I think that's what Whopper did, didn't it?

Kevin: I don't remember the Turing Test having anything to do with video games.

Leo: Pong?

Kevin: It plays Pong and Pac-man?

Leo: It's Deep Mind, that's the British company they bought.

Jeff: As I remember, the Turing Test, it's something you do when you're a teenage boy. So what better to do than games?

Leo: So Deep Blue, which is the chess-playing computer, actually had to be taught how to play chess, but Deep Mind learns on its own. Here it's Atari Breakout, right? You know, Deep Mind, the best thing is to get in the back.

Kevin: Think of the Xbox One achievement points I can get with this.

Leo: Oh, man. Actually, it's quite good. But of course a computer is good at this. That's the whole point, it can never miss. I mean, really. It's got better reflexes.

Kevin: [crosstalk] - kind of knows where that little ball is going.

Leo: It's talking to its brother computer. By the way, they cut that video short. I'm wondering, did it win or did it lose?

Kevin: It's still playing. It never ends.

Leo: I played so much Breakout I can actually hear the sound of that ball going (makes noise). So you were talking about a clean reading mode in Chrome. This is for mobile, it's called Flynx. I think it's very interesting. This is for Android. They were in a public beta for a long time. It's now out. It allows you to modify your default browser on here, although you don't have to to use it. It's kind of like Pocket in that it can save articles out and it saves them without ads, which is awfully nice. But I'm sure the creators of the blogs won't be too happy to hear that. It does the saving in the background so you can continue browsing. I've had it, for instance, just to use Twitter. So if I see a link on Twitter - in fact, that's what he's going to do right now. When he clicks a link on Twitter, the Flynx bubble pops up. He continues to browse Twitter and Flynx meanwhile is going to save that article in your browser which you'll then be able to go to and read in a clean formatted fashion, kind of a medium-style read on the phone.

So I thought this was a nice little app. I think it's free. Flynx for Android and I like it a lot. Have you guys tried Flynx?

Jeff: No.

Kevin: I have not. I'm a hot Pocket user, but -

Leo: Yes, I use Pocket like crazy. I'm not sure if this would eliminate the need for Pocket because it does show - it does allow you do to sharing outside so you can still share to Pocket, if you want, afterwards. So it's really more - I use it more not like Pocket, which lets me read everything at the end of the week. I use it more to have a news gathering mode on the device in that single session and then continue to share it back to Pocket or whatever you want it. I actually share it to Pinboard most of the time because that's where the links come from for the show. It's worth taking a look at.

I also have to say, with my early impressions on the Moto E. If you want to get someone an Android device but don't want to spend big money, or if you're a Google/Android developer who doesn't want to spend $600 for a Nexus 6, this is the pure Google experience that would be perfect for that at $150. I'm very impressed just at the first day of using this. Amazing what you can do for $150 these days. This is the new second-generation Moto E which both Kevin and I got along with our little paper Rick Osterlow in the mail this morning.

Jeff: So the advances in phones, really, are not in new features and new things because they've kind of - nothing's been terribly new. It's going to be in getting it cheaper, and cheaper and cheaper - better, and better and better.

Leo: Not necessarily. You know, the Chromebook conversation we had, there are other places you can go.

Jeff: Yes, you can have high-end, but there's only so many places you can go.

[crosstalk]

Jeff: You know my theory I keep saying on the shows. I think the phone itself is going to be an accessory to a computer you constantly have that it itself then communicates with all kinds of screens and devices that you want to happen.

Leo: I finally got my order in for the Amazon Echo, having played with it now. That is - have you?

Jeff: I asked for it but I haven't gotten the invitation to buy it.

Leo: Check your email. I almost missed it. They said, “You only have 24 more hours to order it.” Because I got the $99 Prime deal. But I played with Mike Elgan's, actually, it's Tony Nielsen - not Tony, Anthony Nielsen who lent it to Mike Elgan. But I was so impressed. I just love it. It's like a little buddy in your house that you can talk to. If we can just make little Rick Osterlow talk like that.

Kevin: Well, chips are getting smaller. You could fit one in there pretty soon, I think. Put it in his back pocket.

Leo: I think in all seriousness, though, that's where you can go, internet of things and stuff. You say maybe there's a central computer running all those things. There's no reason that central computer couldn't fit in your pocket. It doesn't have to be a desktop. It's all about interface. That's why the Echo's kind of neat. Doctor Mom says the novelty wears off.

Jeff: Aw, jeez. So my Amazon Echo purchase expired on January 13.

Leo: See? You didn't see the invite.

Jeff: This is insane. I sign into Amazon literally every day. Why didn't they say, on the Amazon site, “Hey Jeff, want to buy this?

Leo: It's even worse than that. When you're on the page, it says it's $199. It's only after you put it in your cart that you see they gave you the discount.

Jeff: This really pisses me off.

Leo: I'll send you mine.

Jeff: No. I don't actually really want it. Take that, Amazon. I don't really want it. I was curious, you know? $99, I thought it would be fun to play with it, talk about it on the show and that kind of stuff. But it's not worth it. Do you have it?

Leo: Not yet. I only played with Mike's.

Kevin: Yes, and we had one under review at GigaOm and I decided to pass on it when my invite came because really, Google Now does a lot of the same stuff. So I decided not to accept the deal and order it. I'm kind of glad I didn't, not just because of the money, but I received my invite in January and they said I would get the device in May or June.

Leo: Yes, mine says July, but I don't know if that's real.

Kevin: Oh, I think that's real. Because I think they're only producing as many as they really have demand for because this is not -let's put it this way. After the Fire Phone, I think they're hedging their bets here.

Jeff: I want to have it in the classroom so I can turn to it like we do the chat room and say, “Hey, Echo, give me the answer to that tough question.”

Leo: I think that'd be cool.

Kevin: Why not just put a Google phone there that's always listening and say, “OK, Google.”

Leo: It doesn't have the same speaker. Frankly, I just want Sonos to integrate it into their Sonos and then I can say, “Okay, play the Beatles, Alexa.” I didn't say it the right way because I know there are a lot of people watching that would be listening to Beatles music instead of us. It is the ideal podcast player, by the way. You know you can just say the name of a podcast and say, “Hey, I want to listen to this.” It's awesome. Mr. Kevin Tofel, you're the greatest. What do you want to plug? Plug something.

Kevin: Plug something. What can I plug? I write all my mobile stuff over at gigaom.com and do a Chrome show once a week with my friend Yanko Retgers there.

Leo: There you go. Everybody should listen to that. I love Yanko.

Kevin: Yanko's a fantastic guy.

Leo: I call him, “Yank-oh,” just to bother him.

Kevin: “Yank-oh your chain.” We've actually, to tell you, this is kind of funny. We'll have been doing the Chrome show podcast for two years in April. I can't believe we can sit there weekly and talk about nothing but Chrome, Chromebooks and so on.

Leo: Dude, you're talking to the wrong guy. I do 30 hours a week.

Kevin: I hear you. That's your main gig. This is my backup thing.

Leo: That's all I do. I don't have to write any of this down. That's, to me, a virtue. I just talk my way through it.

Jeff: I was on - you know, Neil DeGrasse Tyson has his Star Talk podcast?

Leo: You were on that?

Jeff: Better than that, he has a new National Geographic TV show. I taped that the other night. It was cool to be on that with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. It was great.

Leo: You were with him?

Jeff: Yes, I was with him for an hour.

Leo: Next time will you ask if he'll give us an interview?

Jeff: I told him all about TWiT, oh yes. I said, “I'm delighted.” I told his whole crew about TWiT.

Leo: Oh, good. Thank you.

Jeff: One of the guys who was doing the show was a big TWiT fan, so hello! In the end, I said it's amazing. I'll go to his people and say, “Let's have you on.” It'd be great. But it's kind of cool too, I hope he doesn't get grumpy. It's going to be a TV show on Nat Geo, ten episodes. It was kind of cool to see the reverse happen, a podcast to mainstream.

Leo: So wait for that call from the National Geographic, folks.

Jeff: Well, I was talking to him about you. I really was. I was also looking at the structure they had. They had cameras on tracks and dollies, all this other stuff. I thought, man. Go visit TWiT.

Leo: We're making in-roads. We will soon be available in many, many places thanks to the internet. No, we're thinking about another delivery platform. Can't talk about it in any greater detail. It is great to have you here -

Jeff: Are you serious?

Leo: No, not Sirius. Not XM either. Jeff Jarvis, it is great to have you from the City University. Buzzmachine.com. We think you're great and I hope you both will come back soon and do this with me again.

Jeff: Kevin, wonderful to have you.

Leo: Yes, a very nice show.

Kevin: I appreciate it, guys.

Leo: I love it.

Jeff: And tell GigaOm not to quit the day job and go into fashion.

Leo: Who, you?

Jeff: The hat.

Leo: Oh, I like the hat. It's adorable.

Kevin: Oh, I've caught grief for the hat. I was on with Mike Elgan last week and people were saying, “Your hair is too long, you big hippie. You're old. Cut it out.” I put the hat on today and I'm not even going to tell you what they said. It was totally inappropriate.

Leo: That's so unfair.

Kevin: It's product placement, people. Come on, it's my company.

Leo: You look like the guy in Scooby Doo.

Kevin: I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.

Leo: What's the guy's name?

Kevin: Are you talking about Shaggy?

Leo: You don't look old.

Kevin: The magical Mystery Bus.

Leo: Everybody knows what Scooby Doo is, everybody. Ruh-roh. Doesn't he look like Shaggy?

Kevin: I've got to shave, then. That's what that means. Ruh-roh.

Leo: Kevin, Jeff, thank you so much. Everyone, thank you for being here. We do this show every Wednesday afternoon, 1 p.m. Pacific, 4 p.m. Eastern time. We're going to move to 1:30 to allow for a little flexibility, I think. Or was that not? I don't know. Forget I said anything.

Jeff: What, what, huh?

Leo: We're changing the schedule March 1^st and I do not even know what the new schedule is. So let me check to see. Some shows are changing, not by a lot. We're just moving things back a little bit. No, we're still at 1. Good news. 1 p.m. Pacific, 4 p.m. Eastern time, 2100 UTC.

Jeff: I feel like I was on the need not know list!

Leo: No. Some of our shows, Security Now, moving back half an hour, because some of the shows go long and get in the way of the other shows. I don't know how that happens. Everything is staying the same, Wednesday is not changing. Tuesday is the day that's changing. So forget I said anything. Can you cut this part out?

Jeff: I was going to say, are we still on the show?

Leo: This is very confusing.

Jeff: It's an example of how it goes long.

Leo: Thank you so much for joining us. We do this show every Wednesday, 1 p.m. Pacific, 4 p.m. Eastern time, 2100 UTC online at live.TWiT.tv. You can watch after the fact too if you get our on-demand audio/video at TWiT.tv/TWiG or anywhere that you get your podcast. If you want to be in the studio, email tickets@TWiT.tv and we'll put a chair out for you next to our producer Jason Howell who does so much great work. You can catch him on All About Android every Tuesday.

Jason: Yes, thank you.

Leo: He looks just like, look, here's Shaggy. He looks just like Shaggy. [video plays]

Kevin: I made a sandwich just like that today.

Leo: We'll see you next time on TWiG!