This Week in Google 292 (Transcript)
Leo: It's time for TwiG, This
Week in Google. Mathew Ingram joins Jeff Jarvis and me as we talk about the
latest news from Google. We'll talk a little bit about the Chromecast, Google
Now, some cool new features and what happened, yes, at Gigaom.
It's all coming up next on TwiG.
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This is TWiG, This Week in
Google, episode 292, recorded Wednesday, March 18, 2013.
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It's time for This Week in Google, the show that is all
about the Cloud, the Google-verse and all of the above, anything we want to
talk about because when you have professor Jeff Jarvis here, the City
University of New York. Dr. Jarvis to his friends -
Jeff: No, no. No doctor. Not even “master.”
Leo: Dockter Master Jarvis,
google.com/+jeffjarvis, blog at buzzmachine.com. The author of many great
books including Geeks Bearing Gifts,
his latest. Good to see you at home, Jeff, not the soggy office.
Jeff: I was going to do an unboxing of my Pixel but I saw
you did that with yours, so.
Leo: Well, you can unbox it later if you want.
Jeff: No, no, now it's already open.
Leo: Have you used it?
Jeff: Not much, it's just opened. But it's fast!
Leo: I'm reviewing it for Before You Buy tomorrow. In fact,
I think I have some other things to show you. We'll talk in a bit. But let me
tell you, having used it for almost a week now, I love it.
Jeff: Really?
Leo: I am converted. Save that.
Jeff: Okay, we will. An important guest to
get to.
Leo: We have a very important guest today, very important. So glad to welcome Mathew Ingram back, mathewingram.com. Of course, a many time contributor to the show and all our shows. We love having him on. Had a front row seat at the dissolution – desolation at GigaOm. But you're doing okay?
Gina: I'm doing okay, yes. Still here.
Leo: We just think the world of you. We think, actually,
the world of everybody at GigaOm. That was a terrible
loss. It happened while we were doing the show, I think. I think so, didn't it?
Jeff: Yes, that's right.
Leo: Anyway, great to have you, Mathew, and just want to
have your continued contribution. You're not going back to the print?
Gina: No. I don't think so.
Leo: That's what everybody wrote about you was how Mathew
Ingram boldly made a decision to go from a print newspaper – the Globe and
Mail, right?
Gina: Yes.
Leo: Which was Toronto's greatest
newspaper, actually, Canada's greatest newspaper. But
the Toronto metro – one of two. Toronto has two papers.
Jeff: Three.
Gina: It's got three, yes.
Leo: How'd that happen? Anyway. The Globe and Mail, I love reading it, but you decided to go digital. When did
you do that?
Mathew: Yes. 2010, January 2010.
Leo: Was there an internet then?
Mathew: There was, yes.
Leo: So GigaOm was your first
gig, so to speak, digital gig?
Mathew: It was, yes. I worked for the digital sort of unit of
the newspaper for a few years and then – yes, then made the jump to digital
only.
Leo: But no ink anymore?
Mathew: I'm sort of reviewing a number of options but I would
not go back to just print, no.
Leo: Have you all stayed in touch with one another, Kevin
and Janko?
Mathew: Oh, yes. In fact, we still talk daily. We use Slack.
We just started using that a few months ago and we sort of got used to just
talking all the time. So we're still doing it. You know, everybody's trying to
figure out what they're doing next and so it's kind of a support group at the
moment.
Jeff: I was also impressed with, I
think it was Stacey who as soon as the announcement happened, immediately was
tweeting the great talent at GigaOm. It's really
impressive to see a boss look out for her chicks and her colleagues before
worrying about herself.
Leo: Stacey Higginbotham.
Mathew: That was Laura Owen, I think.
Leo: Yes, because Stacey's one of the -
Jeff: That's right, one of the chicks. Yes. Well, that's a
bad word to say – I meant chicklings, little birds
and ducks.
Leo: One of the baby ducks.
Mathew: No, we're a pretty tight group.
Leo: I'm glad to hear that, actually. That bodes well,
frankly, in my experience. You know, Tech TV and the dissolution of Tech TV –
same thing. We all were tight and we've all since helped each other create our
own ventures. So that worked out very well, I think. Having a Tech TV mafia –
you have the GigaOm mafia.
Mathew: Yes, you know, it's one of the things I'm going to
miss. Obviously, the money is another thing but I'm definitely going to miss
that group. I think we all liked and respected each other, worked pretty well
together and enjoyed it.
Leo: That's really, honestly is why TWiT started is I wanted to keep talking to my buddies. Seriously, I missed the
conversations we would have.
Mathew: Good motivation.
Leo: Anyway, let's talk about – I have, actually, not one
but two new Chromebooks, and Jeff, time for me to eat crow.
Jeff: Oh.
Leo: Eat Chrome. You remember, I was
pretty dismissive.
Jeff: You've been nice. We've made a schtick out of it. But you've -
Leo: I've been dismissive of the Chromebook. A lot of
people still are. They say, “Oh, it's just a browser pretending to be a computer,
but a few things have happened. One is obvious, it's become more and more
capable over time and there's more and more Chrome
extensions. There's now Chrome apps, which act pretty – in fact, Chrome OS has
become in many respects a full blown OS. You've got apps, you've got a toolbar and all that. But what was missing, I think, was decent
hardware, to be frank. Most Chromebooks are $200-300 – they're junky. There's
not -
Jeff: They're tinny.
Leo: They're tinny. So I now, having played with the new Google
– let me log into this before you show it. The new Pixel.
Jeff: I have mine set up so I can login with my watch.
Leo: That is awesome. If you have Android 5 on your device,
your watch will do it?
Jeff: I mean my phone.
Leo: God, if the watch did it, that'd be really awesome.
But if you have Android 5 on your smart phone, yes. It'll just log in
automatically. The screen is spectacular, as good as any Retina Air. It's weird
– 3:2, still. In fact, in every way, this is the same except type C connector,
now, which I really like. There's two of them so you
can put power on either side, video on either side, USB still there. It still
has an SD card slot, which is kind of a bad tease because I can't really do
anything with it. I shoot RAW, so there's no point in putting a card in there.
Although, it does mount flush which means you could use this as extra storage
if you put 128 SD card in there. That's like a second hard drive, if you wish.
Jeff: I tried to go to Best Buy and Apple to buy a C2 HDMI
connector and you can't get them yet.
Leo: Not yet.
Mathew: Really?
Jeff: You can get them from Google but you can't get it in
store.
Leo: You can get them online. Apple sells a $79 dongle,
which is a bit overpriced. So there's a couple of
needed accessories. That's certainly one is a cheap, type C interface and I'm
sure Monoprice will do them because it's not
proprietary. It's not the Mac C adapter, it's everybody. Intel, Google and
Apple all involved with type C. It's the standard so as far as I can tell –
I've been doing a lot of inquiries. This is a standard, standard, standard.
Power and everything – you could, for instance, have a type C power adapter
from another manufacturer, plug it in and it would work fine, even if the
wattage isn't the same. It will trickle charge it, fast charge it or not use
all the power available. It'll work.
The other accessory that's needed – Steve Gibson came
up with this and if anybody wants to steal this idea and do a Kickstarter, I
encourage you. He says you need a type C condom because there is this issue
that type C is not just power, it's full USB data, so the bad USB hack, which
means you can use this to modify the firmware on USB drives and make them very
potent malware transportation devices is a potential problem here. Somebody
could put a charging station in a coffee shop that would in fact – now, the
good news about Chromebooks is, there's nothing really to infect.
Jeff: Right.
Leo: These are very, very secure but nonetheless and
certainly for the Macbook, you want this. It would be
simple enough to make a type C male-to-female cable that just carried the power
lines, not any of the data and you'd carry that with you, use that all the time. Then you could safely connect to anything.
Jeff: Oh, I see.
Leo: So that's a good market and they shouldn't be more
than a buck or two. There's no special stuff in that.
Jeff: I'm figuring $59 from Apple, then, before you know it.
Leo: Yes. By the way, it's March
18 today, Jason, not March 11.
Jason: Good catch.
Leo: I'm really impressed with the keyboard, screen, trackpad. Everything works very well.
Jeff: Are the hinges more solid? The hinge was good before
but it's really good now?
Mathew: You don't mind the screen, that its 3:2?
Leo: It's weird but you get used to it.
Jeff: It's fine for me.
Leo: One thing that has really improved in the Chromebook
is the ability to handle different-sized screens. I'll use that with this. I'll
use this as an example. This is a new – this came out today. This is a new Acer
Chromebook with a 15-inch screen and one of the things that's made it hard to
recommend Chromebooks, too, is the natural users of Chromebooks are older
people, right? They really don't need anything more complex than a browser, an
email program, things and stuff like that. Chromebooks
are perfect for them. They just can't get in trouble with them, but the screens
have been so crappy and small, it's hard to recommend it. Even I have a hard
time reading it. Can you hide the screen real quickly while I login?
This one – I'll show you what I've done. Because you
have 15 inches now, you can make this very easy to look at because you now have
two things you can change. You can change the standard browser zoom size and
you can change the standard text size.
Jeff: So it's not the small type problem of the other HD
Chromebook?
Leo: No. This is so easy to use. You see how big that text
is? I can make it even bigger. On a 15-inch, 1080 p screen, potentially, these
could be very small but they're actually quite usable, I think. So I think
Google has solved a lot of the kind of little things that -
Mathew: How much is that Acer?
Leo: $300.
Jeff: Amazing.
Leo: So I've customized the fonts to be very large, but you
could even go more in here. You can change the kind of font – there's a lot of
information there you can use to your heart's content to make it legible and
then you could set the standard page zoom, which I've set to 150% on here just
kind of as an example.
Now, these icons – some of the icons on the Chrome user
interface are still small, but usable. It's not touch, it's not nearly as good a screen as the Pixel. The thing that's great about the
Pixel is it feels so fast, so fluid, so easy and then
this isn't even the LS version. You kind of – some of the kind of qualms about
using a Chromebook go away. It feels like it's a real computer.
Jeff: The speed is already impressive.
Leo: It's amazing.
Jeff: I got the LS.
Leo: You did?
Jeff: Yes. It was my only machine, I might as well. It's
what I live with, so.
Leo: Why not, for $200-300 more? The Acer boots in seven
seconds. This thing – let me just do a reboot. It feels like it's almost instant, right?
Jeff: What's so great too – you mentioned this last week,
too. The setup is nothing. Every time I change machines, it was a day of this
and that. You turn it on and give it about four minutes and it's done.
Leo: So let's see how fast it takes to boot. I just shut it
off. Just tap – one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one
thousand four – did I tap it?
Jeff: It didn't shut off yet. It takes a second to shut off.
Leo: Okay, is it off? How do you even know? No light on the
front. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three – I love the
screen back – that's it. Almost instantly, four or five
seconds.
Jeff: Yes.
Leo: This is kind of fun, too, the rainbow little doohickey
here. You double tap it and you can see how much battery life is left, which is
great. So I'm 100% charged. The battery life – you haven't experienced this
yet, Jeff, nine to 12 hours, easy.
Jeff: Really? So it's legit.
Leo: Oh, it's legit and same thing with this Acer because
it's so big. It's all battery on the inside. That is fabulous.
Jeff: These are heavier than Airs, that's the one thing.
They're not – you know.
Leo: But it feels like something Google – it's a
utilitarian Air, square edges. You know, it's very Google-y. I love it. I'm
very happy with it and think you're going to like yours a lot. I'm curious what
you'll see with the ludicrous speed version.
Mathew: There's nothing you want to do on a computer that you
can't do on there?
Leo: There's a few things. I like
to do computer programming. I can't do most kinds of computer programming. You
can do App Inventor and stuff like that, web-based programming, but I can't do
the stuff I want.
Jeff: You could dual boot to – not dual boot, but dual build
to -
Leo: I played with Linux on this, I decided not to do that. The one thing I have done – I have SSH and so the one
thing I have done is I can SSH to my Linux box and have a Linux command line
easily.
Jeff: No, Mathew, the only thing is, you can't edit video on
it.
Leo: You can't video or photo – I mean, you can.
Jeff: Photo, you can't do what Leo does with his RAW files
but what I do for getting a photo for a Medium post, easy as pie.
Leo: You can also use remote desktop. So I'm going to
remote desktop into my Mac Pro at home and we'll look. You have a security pin,
which I've just entered, and now I can use my computer at home.
Mathew: Is it 1234?
Leo: Yes. You saw. I'm having some screen issues but that's
probably because I have my computer at home set to a ridiculous screen
resolution. But basically, that's my computer at home I'm looking at. This
screen is my Mac Pro. So you can, in fact, I guess do what you want but I think
what you need is a desktop that can do all that stuff and then this could be
your mobile.
Jeff: I think if you get – if I had Google Fiber at full
speed, you start to see doing video remotely.
Leo: There is a remote video plugin, WeVideo will do video editing.
Jeff: Listen, it's always taken time to download the video
to the machine. You just upload it to the Cloud instead and as long as you can
get response there. The rendering is going to be faster up in the Cloud than it
is in a local machine.
Leo: As more stuff uses HTML-5, as Chrome gets more
powerful, I love this little app drawer. By the way, you get this on Windows
and Mac now, too, where you have what looks like – for all intents and
purposes, this looks like the taskbar on Windows with all my icons here.
Jeff: Wash your mouth out.
Leo: I mean, it's – okay, the dock. You have a start button
where you have, you know – these are the apps I have. I can swipe through them,
which is great. These, you know, it's pretty much everything I want. The
speakers on this are pretty decent, still. I think the old Pixel had very good
speakers and these are still pretty good here.
Mathew: Then there is a lot of image editing and even minor
video editing that you can do in the Cloud.
Jeff: You know something, my Tweet
Deck app is great.
Leo: (plays Katy Perry's Teenage Dream) You see.
Mathew: I was assuming it would be all about the bass.
Leo: I can play that.
Mathew: No, it's fine.
Leo: I hate that song. So I think in general, this is like
90% of what most people do with their computing anyway, 100% in some cases.
Mathew: I was thinking – you go ahead, Jeff.
Jeff: I'm trying to talk students into doing it. Those who
need to do video editing, no, not yet. But for everybody else, it's far cheaper
and when I went last week to Madrid, I went to PRISA, the giant media company
there with [0:19:09.5?] and they have an education arm. They're doing
fascinating things in Brazil with a company that basically handles everything
for a school, from curriculum through technology. They of course, since this is
for well to do students or families, they have iPads. I'm yelling at them
saying, “No, no, get Chromebooks!” So much better.
Mathew: It makes sense for students for sure and I think for
older folks as well. I'm thinking about my mom, you know. I got her a shitty
netbook and it's garbage. I'm thinking, “Do I get her
a tablet? Do I get her a Chromebook?” I want something that she can do things
with but that's not going to cause a lot of problems where I have to do tech
support.
Leo: I think one of the things that's kind of intriguing is maybe we aren't paying enough for these, though. This
Pixel has shown me, kind of, it really is a better experience with a better
computer.
Jeff: My problem is, where is the
$600 option?
Leo: The $999, I think this is the one people should get.
It sounds expensive but this is going to last you for years.
Jeff: Leo, now that I have a Chromebook with lightning
speed, I think I should get mad about Skype. I'll add in Skype and go back to
it.
Leo: There's one thing you can't do, though I imagine
that's just around the corner at some point.
Jeff: Hope so.
Leo: Anyway, that's kind of – I scooped my Before You Buy
review but that's basically right there the review. I'm impressed, really
impressed and I feel like people should think about getting it. I know $999,
sounds like, “Jeez, I don't know.” But I've always said that this was a false
economy to be getting cheap hardware.
Mathew: Is it that much better than that Acer you showed?
Leo: Yes. Well, God, that's a good question. The Acer's a
pretty good choice if you want a big screen. What's nice, that's the other
thing, is there's an ecosystem starting to evolve where they're not all the
same. The Acer's the first 15-inch screen and that – I mean, it really looks
nice.
Jeff: The Toshiba is nice but it's HD and the type is just
too small for my old eyes. The one I want, which I think I've said on the show
before, what I really want is to go back to the original days of Dell where you
could truly customize your own machine. If I could get a machine from Dell with
a touch screen and LTE, lots of other things going, I think you can put
together the ultimate machine that probably wouldn't cost $999, but maybe about
$800, $750. It'd be a great machine. It would have everything I want.
Mathew: I was going to say, not having LTE, I think you mentioned that, Jeff. That's the -
Jeff: That's torturing me.
Mathew: And it's strange. Why not? Why wouldn't it have it?
Jeff: My guess would be is that 85%, they say, of the users
of Chromebooks are Googlers and they live enveloped by a warm cloud of WiFi and through their entire lives.
Leo: Most of us are now.
Mathew: Well.
Leo: Many of us?
Jeff: I go into offices – I was at a [0:22:04.1?] yesterday
and there tech department makes you give blood tests to get on or put a
Chromebook on. So, you know, the LTE just connects. That's it and I'm on, no
problem. But not any more. Now we have to pull out a little box and – who is your advertiser now for WiFi connectivity? MyFi? Don't you have one?
Leo: I don't think so.
Mathew: Didn't you get some new thing, Jeff?
Jeff: Karma, I got the Karma. The
advantage of the Karma is you pay for the gigs – no expiry, so if you want to
buy ten gigs, you buy ten gigs. When you use it up, you use it up. I think it's $14 a gig, which is a little high, but if you realize,
nothing ever expires and you're not buying a monthly, that makes more sense.
It's on Sprint.
Mathew: Is it good coverage?
Jeff: It's Sprint. I heard about Tingle – Tingle?
Leo: Ting?
Jeff: Ting, thank you.
Mathew: Tingle is that other service that you use.
Jeff: Right, with chicks. So Ting, I don't know whether they
have – now you can buy SIMs from them and do no longer just CDMA. But I don't
know if they have just WiFi and data accounts.
Leo: Why – if Google's going to do a wireless MVNO anyway,
why wouldn't they – maybe, you know what, that's what's going on. They're not
going to put LTE in there until they have their own LTE card to put in there.
That would be the way to do it, right? Then you're getting the best of
Sprint/T-Mobile/WiFi for very little money. Maybe
that's what we're waiting for. Maybe they are going to – have they said, “No,
we're not going to do LTE?”
Jeff: Reporters asked and said – it wasn't like they were
saying, as you thought last week, “It'll come out in two weeks.” Apparently not.
Leo: That I believe but I wouldn't be surprised at all if
they did something – or maybe they'll do a MyFi card
with their new MVNO.
Mathew: Because if you have a laptop that only works on the
internet, then you kind of need to give people some way to always have the
internet.
Leo: Right. This works offline in a lot of respects but it
is, of course, better with online.
Mathew: Can I tweet offline?
Leo: No. Do you need to tweet offline? Do you really want
to tweet from your flight? You can't Meerkat from it,
either.
Mathew: What?
Leo: What good is that? You could have a Google Hangouts.
That's so funny because Meerkat really isn't anything
new at all, is it? There's just something -
Mathew: No, not in any way, just the name.
Leo: In any way. Well, and the easy, I guess, on boarding.
I don't know.
Mathew: But the concept is not new.
Leo: No, and it's like, “Oh, we've
never seen anything like this.” It's so strange. All right, let's take a break.
Mathew Ingram is here, so great to have him. You want to point people to your
website? Mathewingram.com, best place to go.
Mathew: Sure. I'm currently reconfiguring it. Again, it's all
under construction but yes, please drop by.
Leo: Do what Jason Snell did and just create your own
thing. We're so close – people love you, you could do a Patreon.
You could figure something out and do your – are you tempted at all to go your
own way?
Mathew: I am, I definitely am. I
mean, I'm tempted. One of the last things I wrote about was about Ben Thompson,
who runs Stratechery. Super smart guy, way smarter
than I am, so that model might not work for me, but I'm – the fact that he's
got thousands of subscribers and he's making a living. He works on his own time
and does what he wants, writes a newsletter. That kind of thing is super
appealing but I just don't know, you know, I have certain income requirements.
I have kids in university, a wife and so on. I can't just sort of take six
months off and see if I can make money on crowdsourcing. But I've written
enough about it, it's hugely appealing.
Leo: Yes. I mean, Ben is like – he's an analyst, so the
stuff feels like analytics. You can see how people would say, “I'm going to pay
for that,” because that helps you make money. Pure journalism – I know, Jeff,
you talk about this all the time. Maybe that's a little harder to put behind a
pay wall, but there must be other ways.
Jeff: Oh, yes.
Mathew: It's really hard.
Leo: There must be other ways.
Jeff: I'm tempted to say you could do research reports but -
Leo: Yes, at conferences, that's the take. Well, one thing
Ben does, and Horace and all these people is they appear on TWiT regularly. We are very happy to promote whatever you're doing, Mathew.
Mathew: Great. Well, I certainly appreciate being on from time
to time.
Leo: Oh, we love having you. Our show today brought to you
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Google IO registration opened yesterday. Are you going,
Jeff?
Jeff: I don't know. I put in the request. We shall see.
Leo: We got the same thing as last year, too. We have about
ten people who want to go.
Jeff: I shouldn't take a spot for one of your guys'.
Leo: Well, we don't have to worry about Gina any more.
She's on her own. I think Jason Howell -
Jeff: If a few of you have heard, maybe I haven't.
Leo: I don't know. I think – it was weird, Robert Ballister was reaching out, Father Robert, because he
wanted to get a line of programmers for our Coding 101 show. Google responded
to him and said, “Yes, you have two for the entire organization.” Thank God
Robert is an honest priest and he said, “Oh, no, it's not me. It's up to you to
decide.” I'm sure Robert would like to go, but so would Mike Elgan, so would you, so would Jason, so would a lot of
people. I don't want to go. I want to stay here because I think they'll stream
the keynote as they usually do and we'll do our usual streaming coverage.
Registration goes until 5 o' clock Pacific tomorrow, March 19, and it's going
to be another lottery. You know, you'll have to apply when you get the
invitation. It's not free, $900 for an attendee, $300 if you're a student or
teacher. Everybody has the same chance.
Google IO is a lot of fun. May 28 and
29 at Moscone West.
Mathew: How do they decide? Just a lottery?
Leo: I imagine they have a computer that'll do that. You
know what, they have not said because -
Jeff: We know what we need to know.
Leo: You wonder if there's maybe more than just a lottery
involved. I wonder.
Mathew: That black box algorithm.
Leo: “We look at your page rank.” I don't know how they do
it. I don't think they say it's random.
Mathew: If they don't, then it's not.
Leo: That's a good question.
Jason: Starting last year, they started to say it's randomly
selected but I don't konw how close to the truth that
necessarily is.
Mathew: Random-ish.
Leo: Well, it does say, “We'll randomly select applicants
from among all qualified applications.” Qualified might be the word that is the
little – not randomly. So what they're going to do is go through a list of
qualified people and then randomly select. Presumably, they'll want you to be a
developer or someone who can bring something to the table, I would guess. But I
don't know. They don't say what qualified means.
“The order in which applications are received has no
bearing. You need to sign into Google.” So it has to be your real Google
account. Should I apply? But no, see, I don't want to go, so I shouldn't apply.
So Jason – here's the problem. We need to tell them before they tell us. Well,
we'll figure it out. Jeff, you applied?
Jeff: I applied through press. I'm not a developer, so.
Leo: “Submit through press, fill out this form.” That's
probably what happened, Robert probably filled out that form.
Mathew: Press are free, right?
Leo: Yes, but you still get the goodies. I wonder – I guess
they'll be giving away a Pixel maybe?
Jeff: We should get bonus points for having bought the
Pixel.
Leo: Yes, sir. IO will be fun this year. I mean, we heard
about Lollipop last year. I don't know what we'll hear about this year.
Jeff: I think you're also going to see Sundar's – I mean, Sundar was the strongest show last year but
he's really not been in charge of much.
Leo: Well, there you go. Google IO coming up. Interesting
Medium post about – by Astro Teller which I didn't know, for instance, was not
his real name. It's Eric. He's the head of Google X, the Moonshots. This is
part of the new back channel, which is Steven Levy's little corner of Medium.
This is the journalistic corner of Medium.
Jeff: One of them, yes. They did a good job. This is like Wired magazine.
Leo: This is basically a transcript of his speech, of Astro
Teller's speech at South by yesterday. So some very
interesting stuff in here if you haven't read it. They made an ECG vest.
That was his first startup in 1999. It was really cool. In fact, I think – I'm
pretty sure that this is the body media vest we wore – I wore or somebody wore
this during the Screensavers at Tech TV so you could see in real time, heart
rate, blood pressure, electrocardiogram, as the host was hosting the show. I'm
pretty sure, unless I had a bad nightmare, we did that. He said, “The problem
is, we've got a bunch of older people and people who would theoretically be
wearing this vest.” It would be 65-80 and they said they hated it. We said,
“Well, would you wear it if it would save your life.” I don't know, maybe.
“What if we made it so you could fly?” I guess, maybe.
Mathew: Old people are like that.
Leo: They're not going to say yes.
Mathew: What if you could fly there for free? “I don't know.”
Leo: “I'm happy right here.”
Jeff: I'm trying to get my parents a tablet. It's more than
my life was worth.
Leo: Are we going to be like that, Jeff.
Mathew: Oh, yes.
Jeff: No.
Leo: Mathew says yes!
Mathew: Yes. “No, I'm fine. I'm good. I liked the old phones.”
Leo: When will that happen?
Mathew: Before you realize it.
Leo: We harden in our ways, I guess. I'm starting to get -
Jeff: “I don't understand why I need a new computer. Chrome
is just fine, has been for years.”
Leo: I feel it's already happening to me. I don't want a
new one any more. So Google X – one of the first projects, he says, was called
Genie. It was to fix the way buildings are designed and built by building an
expert system of software. Did you ever hear about this?
Mathew: Never heard about that.
Leo: Worked on it for 18 months, spun it out to a
standalone business where it has been growing and thriving for the last 2.5
years. Then they did Flux – no, the company's now called Flux.
Mathew: I think Loon is one of my favorites, not just because
of the name because it's a Canadian bird, but the idea. I remember when they
first announced it, I thought it was April Fools'.
Leo: Right, which was great.
Mathew: It sounded satirical. It was so loony, you know?
“We're going to fly balloons around the world and give people internet. I was
like, “Sure.”
Leo: Project Wing, the self-flying delivery drone. The Loon
balloons actually – I think they're going to be real, aren't they?
Mathew: They totally are.
Leo: How about this – Makani, an airborne wind turbine, an
energy kite.
Mathew: Cool idea.
Leo: The higher up you go, the higher and more consistent
the wind is, so if you put the turbines up in the air -
Jeff: Stop right there - “The power of the wind goes up with
the cube of the wind's speed.”
Leo: That's interesting, that makes a huge difference. So
does the weight of the turbine. So that's the key, right? It's to make
something light. The Makani energy kites are 1% as much as a standard turbine
in a tower and the center of the virtual circle it draws in the sky is 250
meters, where the winds are stronger and more consistent. As
you said, considerably more powerful.
Mathew: The thing I thought was most interesting was some of
the places where he talks about how they failed and why they failed. Google
Glass, you know, got too much attention and was sort of seen as a finished
product when it wasn't, which was kind of my sense of why it
didn't maybe do as well. But the other one, I think it was Project Loon,
I think they said they massively underestimated the difficulty of keeping the
balloons aloft. Like, they're off by a factor of ten or 100, so not just a
little.
Leo: An order of magnitude wrong.
Mathew: I find it impressive that he would even admit that
they were off by that much.
Leo: That failure was followed by a success in which they
figured out how to make them stay up much longer than they had thought. So
that's the challenge, right? You take the failure and make it into something.
He said, “We mostly fixed this problem but the time was quite stressful. Now,
thankfully, balloons stay up for six months at a time, well beyond the three
months we need for a viable service.” And there's the self-driving car.
Mathew: His point about that is similar to – you know, all the great ideas when you're coming up with the concept
don't amount to a hill of beans. But it's not until you actually test product
in real world conditions you start to suddenly realize the things you got wrong
or the things that you didn't anticipate would be a huge deal.
Leo: He also says, as they get better at it, that's a
problem because it's failure that teaches them. So the
longer amount of time between our failures, the harder it is for us to improve.
That was an interesting insight.
Mathew: They're not failing enough.
Leo: It's too good.
Mathew: Stop succeeding.
Leo: So I think that is kind of great.
Jeff: This idea of failure is just so fascinating. I had a
long conversation with an Austrian journalist today who was talking to me after
I did the attack on Der Spiegel, we talked about two
weeks ago. I keep on saying, the Europeans have to
have more willingness to develop in public, which means fail in public. That's
a precursor and yes, we in America fetishize failure. I always make that joke.
But I'm not so sure that's true now. I think there's just a method of being
open and learning in public, improving something in public. You look at his
talk about saying, “We learned a big lesson about privacy in Google Glass.
People didn't like not knowing if their picture was taken.” So it wasn't, “Oh
my God, they've done something horrible. They're evil.” No, they learned.
Learning is okay.
Leo: Here's a good one they learned with the self-driving
cars. He said, “You know, we knew that if the car drove itself, people would probably
not pay as much attention as they ought to. They won't say, 'No, no, I'm going
to keep my hands on the wheel.'” He said, “As soon as we started doing stuff,
people were doing horrendous things. They were crawling into the backseat, it
was just horrible. We realized the only way this would work is to make it trule self-driving, so we took the steering wheel out.”
They said, “If it doesn't go from Point A to Point B without any human
intervention, it's no good. If it requires any human intervention, it's going
to be a horrific failure because humans, as soon as they
think the car's got it covered, just go, 'Okay, see you!'” It's like
they are not the backup system and you can't count on them.
He says, “People already do stupid things like texting
when they're supposed to be 100% in control, so imagine what happens when they
think the car's got it covered. It isn't pretty.” So that actually is a good
explanation – I was wondering, “Why are you taking the steering wheel out?
Isn't that a comfort factor for humans that there's a brake, a pedal, something
I can do if the machine fails?” Great -
Jeff: That's really interesting, the human engineering part
of a non-human device. That's kind of fun.
Leo: Probably always do, don't you? You always have to take
– humans are the things that screw everything up.
Mathew: I forget who said it, but my dad who was in the Air
Force used to love the line, “No battle plan ever survived contact with the
enemy.” So you can have all the great ideas and plans you want but people will
find a way to do something you didn't expect.
Leo: USToWhiz in our chat room
says, “Why does it have rearview mirrors, then, if the humans aren't
necessary?” Those aren't really rearview mirrors. Those are cameras. The little
wings sticking out, they aren't for you. I want this car and I will come to
work each and every day in it. I don't care, even – you know, Buckminster
Fuller, the great Bucky, created something called – remember the Dymaxion car? He said, “It's crazy, we're making cars that are
not aerodynamic.” He designed it like a teardrop. It had some very odd
features. It was a three wheeler, I believe, and it never got anywhere because
somebody got killed in it. It had a fatal accident.
Mathew: I did wonder about this car – is four wheels in those
specific positions, is that the best model for a car or is it just because
that's what we expect it to look like?
Leo: I think you have to – as you said, human factors still
come into play.
Mathew: As long as it has lots of cupholders,
I think it'll be pretty successful.
Leo: Without a cupholder, it's
not a car.
Mathew: The president or CEO of Ford, I think it was, said
they can talk about all the features they want in their new cars and all people
care about is more cupholders. Yes.
Jeff: That was the great thing about the Homer Simpson car.
It had tons of cupholders.
Mathew: It's important.
Jeff: And shag carpeting.
Leo: So Bon Appetit had an
article on the history of the car cupholder.
Jeff: Really?
Leo: Just in case. I don't know why it's in Bon Appetit. “Ever since George Washington crossed the Delaware
to go sign the lease on his new pickup truck, President's Day has been
associated with getting a good deal on a car. While some people buy a car based
on mileage and sporty looks, we all know the most important part of a vehicle
is its cupholder.” Look at that, a snack tray for
cars, from Modern Mechanics. Holds a Coke bottle. Real
demand for the cupholder didn't pick up until the
'50s when drive-ins and drivethrough windows became mainstays
of American eating. The earliest evidence of a complete cupholding comes from a '50s newspaper clipping that describes the snack tray for cars
that hangs from the dashboard.
Mathew: When I was in high school we still had an A&W that
would bring the trays out and hang them on the side.
Leo: High school – we had one in Petaluma until a few years
ago. Then the waitresses were on roller skates, yes.
Mathew: I thought it was cool. I liked going there.
Leo: It's the best thing ever. You roll your window down, she takes your order and skates back.
Mathew: Don't even have to get out of the car.
Leo: It's so great. The best beverage security system of
the year belonged to the 1950 Cadillac El Dorado Brougham. Plenty of
ultra-luxury limousines had built-in bars but the Brougham was the first to
come with a magnetized glove compartment door and metal tumblers.
Jeff: Jesus.
Leo: Perfect for keeping your cognac stable while you're
passing the Gitney on the way to the Hamptons.
Patents for the '70s for a more advanced version of Clyde Morgan's pull out
tray – customers looking for a car with a built-in cupholder were stuck in the wilderness until 1983 when Chrysler invented the minivan.
That is the first – if you're watching the video, that is the first minivan, the Dodge Caravan and the Plymouth Voyager – same car,
different names.
Mathew: Pure sex appeal.
Leo: Wow, that's hot. They had two cupholders sunk into the plastic of the dashboard but it would take another decade for
that to become ubiquitous.
Jeff: That shows what's so wrong about Detroit. If they had
listened to the public – we all would have told them, cupholders.
[crosstalk] – for our
Walkman.
Leo: You know what happened? In 1984, a 79-year-old woman,
Stella Liebeck, sued McDonalds for spilling 180
degree coffee in her lap in a stationary car. She got $2.7 million.
Mathew: That's a famous case. I believe that judgement was
actually reversed.
Leo: You're right, she only got
$640 thousand on appeal. The case became fodder for endless Leno monologues and
a national argument about tort reform, but also a strong argument for the
industry-wide adoption of the cupholder. If the car
she'd been sitting in, her grandson's Ford Probe, had even one single cupholder, the whole ordeal might have been avoided. So
there you have it, 1984.
Mathew: Such trauma.
Leo: The very first cupholder for
reals in the 1984 Chrysler Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager. Boy, that's an
ugly ass car. Even an ugly color, kind of dopey brown.
Mathew: We had a Caravan with the faux wood look on the side,
pure sex appeal.
Jeff: I'm not at all surprised.
Leo: How did we get to cupholders?
That's what I love about this show. It's about Google, the Cloud and cupholders.
Jeff: When you're up in the Cloud, you have low oxygen.
Mathew: Does your Chromebook have cupholders?
Leo: No, very disappointing. You know, I'm excited about
that Google now has API for Google Now or is going to.
Mathew: That's a big deal.
Leo: Huge. This is the article from the Next Web, Martin
Bryant writing, “Google Now will one day be able to work with information from
all the apps you use -” I didn't know there was a pilot program with 40
third-party services already.
Mathew: I didn't know that either.
Leo: This is from South by - “Aparna Chennapragada, director of product management for
Google Now, gave an interesting insight at South by at a Marketing Land -”
Danny Sullivan's session at South by. When asked by an attendee how Google Now
would handle competing data from rival apps, she said, “Individual user app
usage patterns would help guide what data should be shown.”
Mathew: I think it's smart. I remember when I first saw Google
Now and I thought, “What if this could show me not just things that are in my
Google Calendar but any type of information? News, weather,
sports, all sorts of things.” It's a potential pipeline for all the
information you need to know right now on your phone. That's huge.
Leo: Yes. I mean, one of the things she raises is the
notion of, you could have a card at the amusement park
that would then tell you, “Your ride is ready for you.” “Your auction -” Here's
some from the Wired slide. “Your auction ends in 1
hour, 22 minutes.” Or a QR code from Walgreens because you're near a Walgreens,
here's some coupons and your balance of Rewards Points. This is great stuff.
The Danny Sullivan panel was cut short at South by, by
a false fire alarm which happened to me, by the way. I went to a Mark Cuban
talk at South by a few years ago and Mark was being his typical nasty self.
Yes. The fire alarm went off and I took that as an excuse to get the hell out
of there and never went back.
Mathew: We had one go off at a GigaOm event, too at UCSF. I think someone from Tech Crunch pulled it.
Leo: There's some renegade competitor going around pulling
fire alarms. So there will be an API. That's pretty exciting.
Jeff: What's the difference, then, between Now and notifications on your phone. Don't they merge?
Leo: I get Now notifications,
don't I? I think I do.
Jeff: You know what I mean.
Leo: Now is push versus pull, that's what it is. So
notifications are pushed to you and get your attention but I love the idea of
saying, “Let me look at my Now dashboard and see what's going on.” So that's
pulled, right? Except it's pushed to the pull.
Jeff: Here's the other question. For the 40 that are doing
this, is that opted in now for us with Now?
Jason: Yes. You have to have the app of the service
installed, then it taps into that. As you can do with
any Google Now cards also, you can say, “Don't show me any more of this.”
Jeff: How do I turn that on? My beloved Ways, I don't think,
comes into Now for me, but I use Ways every day.
Jason: Is Ways one of the 40? I honestly don't know.
Jeff: It is. So do I turn on Now for an app?
Leo: Well, that's what she's saying. She's saying Google
looks at your usage to decide what to put in Now.
Jeff: This is where I do have a problem. Everybody else
raves about Now. I like Now but I don't get a lot of
Now.
Leo: Right. You need more.
Jeff: Yes. I don't get that much.
Leo: Google is also doing surveys to identify what people
want. She says, “We also use personal experiences.” A visit to Disneyland
inspired her to get the team working on support for theme park ride queue
times.
Mathew: I will say, I've used Google
Now a lot more when I was traveling. So I was in a different country, I didn't
know where I was going. I needed flight information, traffic information. If
I'm just going from my house to the shopping mall and back, or to pick up my
daughter, Google Now is pretty useless because it's not going to tell me
anything I don't already know.
Jeff: Right. “So are you interested in this new location? The 7/11 five miles away?” No, useless
feature.
Mathew: But when I was in Italy, it was a lifesaver. I mean, I
think I told you guys, I slid it up by mistake and it said, “Hey, your flight's delayed and there's traffic on the highway headed
to the airport.” I was like, “Thank you so much for telling me that. That is
the most important information I've found out today.”
Leo: Actually, this is a – I'm looking at my Now now and I've got Calendar appointments, new stories that
are referring to searches I've made in the past. I've got places nearby. But
I've just got one that was kind of interesting. It said, “I see there's
something going on at 1 o' clock tomorrow. Do you want me to add that to your
Calendar?” I guess it saw it in my email but it wasn't a confirmation. Because
I am flying to Vegas at 1 o' clock tomorrow. So I said, “Yes.” So it actually
added something to my Calendar. The parking thing is nice, it knows where I
parked.
Jeff: I get that one.
Leo: My AT&T bill is due tomorrow.
Jeff: See, I don't get any of that stuff.
Mathew: Mine says, “Tell Jeff that Google Now is really
useful.” Weird.
Jeff: Mine, you know what mine does all the time? Mine just
gives me – honest to God, I get this all the time. It gives me stories about
Chromebook and Edward Snowden.
Leo: You've got to do more searches on Google, I guess.
Jeff: And smart phones and tablets.
Leo: Yes.
Mathew: The Snowden thing, the NSA is pushing you.
Jeff: “We're watching you. You might as well watch back.”
Stories to read, that's it. That's all I ever get, and I get the card that says
it's some horrible amount of time to get home for you, you poor schmuck.
Mathew: “Take a helicopter.”
Jeff: If only.
Leo: If only. So is it you that put this Nick Bilton story in the rundown?
Jeff: Yes.
Leo: “The Health Concerns in Wearable Tech.”
Jeff: Jesus. It's driving me nutty. I put the two of them
together because you have on the one hand, Google just
got a patent for curing cancer with a watch. Then you have Nick Bilton, who's turned into the whiny nanny of the technology
world. Well, this story really bothers me because it's really fluffing around
the facts. It's saying, “Well, cell is bad for you.” Most smart watches don't
have cell. They only have WiFi and Bluetooth. By the
way, we all put Bluetooth in our ears thinking it's safer than putting the
phone by our ear. So now, suddenly having Bluetooth in your watch is going to
give you cancer and kill you?
Leo: Also, there is no evidence that cell phone radiation
is bad for you.
Jeff: That too, so he tries to use that. It's a real strawman with a match.
Leo: He's quoting Dr. Joseph Mercola,
who is not a credible -
Jeff: This piece – you know, Nick, I like Nick. Nick's a
nice guy, a smart guy. But he's tried too hard to go from future man to Fred
Flintstone.
Leo: “I live in the future and now I really hate it.”
Jeff: “I don't like it very much.”
Leo: He wrote this book, “I live in the future and now I
don't like it so much.”
Jeff: Yes. He's trying to shift off.
Leo: I wonder if this is the Times telling him, “We need an
anti-technology editor.”
Jeff: But don't do it, because this is not – this fluffs by.
I know what we're going to hear, “The New York Times says that these smart
watches are bad for you, you're going to get cancer. They're going to kill
you.” You know, my watch has WiFi. Does it even have WiFi? It has Bluetooth in it.
Leo: It does have WiFi. That's
something we learned, by the way, that's kind of interesting. The Apple Watch –
Apple made a big deal about how we not only use Bluetooth, but we use WiFi so that as long as you're within your WiFi network, your Apple Watch can talk to your Apple
phone. It needs an Apple phone so that it can do its thing. So you can leave
your phone in your bedroom and go throughout your house as long as you're still
in – or, conversely, in your office and go throughout your office. As long as
you're still on the same WiFi network, it'll work.
That was like, “Wow, that's great.”
Then soebody, I guess Google
said, “Yes, Android Wear watches all have WiFi in
that too. We're going to opt to turn that on with firmware soon.” I didn't know
this had WiFi in it. What?
Mathew: Might as well put it in, it's a tiny chip.
Leo: I guess it's the cheap chip and they can just stick it
in there. I think it's very intriguing – it seems like almost an intentional
effort to have hidden features that you slowly enable like the battery life has
gotten better, and better, and better and better.
Jeff: Yes.
Mathew: That's actually one of the things I'm fascinated with,
whether it's Tesla cars or – you know, there's more
and more things that are effectively getting smarter and better over firmware
updates that come over the air. So instead of having to take your car into the
shop, Tesla can actually change the height of the chassis of your car with a
firmware update. It's fascinating.
Leo: Everything we have, I guess, is kind of like that.
It's very intriguing.
Jeff: Wasn't there supposed to be a Tesla announcement
today, something that Musk said, “I'm going to solve all your problems with
battery worry?” Did we see that story?
Leo: Not yet.
Mathew: I remember him mentioning that.
Leo: Why don't you find it? We'll take a break while you
look. How about that?
Jeff: All right.
Leo: We're talking Google and the Cloud and all that stuff,
and cupholders, with Mathew Ingram, late of GigaOm, now at mathewingram.com, @mathewi on Twitter. Do you do Meerkat?
Mathew: I do not. I have not Meerkat'ed.
Leo: Just going to give you a chance if you do. It's
ridiculous. Here we are in a livestreaming studio. I do more streaming hours of
video than any human alive and half my staff is now Meerkat'ing everything. Jeff Needles is like number five.
Mathew: Dozens of people were watching Jimmy Fallon, yes,
rehearsing.
Leo: I had a thousand people watching me Meerkat, and I think I broke it because it stopped at 999
and never went beyond that. So what are you, number three? Who's number one –
Mashable, Jimmy Fallon, Jeff Needles, ladies and gentlemen.
Jeff: Jesus.
Leo: He wasn't even at South by Southwest.
Jason: He found his thing, his calling. It's Meerkat.
Leo: You know what he does? He does it all the time.
Mathew: Okay. There's a market for that.
Jeff: What happens on Needlevision?
Leo: What happens on Needlevision?
We talk. He interviews people. It's crazy.
Mathew: You know the best thing about Meerkat? The name.
Leo: Absolutely.
Mathew: UStream, whatever. But Meerkat?
Leo: Ustream sounds like a
urinary tract infrection. Meerkat is a cute, little fuzzy animal.
Jeff: Don't cross your Meerkats.
Jason: Getting really used to the Meerkat posture. You know someone's Meerkat'ing when you walk
around the corner and somebody's standing there like this. Or, sorry, you've
got to actually use the camera. When they're walking around like this
everywhere.
Leo: “I'm Meerkat'ing, I'm Meerkat'ing.” We actually had to formulate company rules
about Meerkat'ing.
Jeff: Really?
Leo: Well, because people are going around with screens
open with financials on it. There's whiteboards with show ideas on it. You
can't just go around all the time with Meerkat open.
You've got to have Meerkat rules. Soon you'll go to
the gym and it'll say, “No cell phones. No Meerkat'ing.”
Jason: “Leave the Meerkat at the
door.”
Leo: Periscope, Twitter's slow to emerge competition is
starting to – Kevin Rose tweeted today, “I saw it. It's amazing.” So.
Mathew: Dumb name, Meerkat is way
better.
Leo: Way better than Periscope. You think that's it? It's
just the name?
Mathew: I think it definitely helps.
Leo: Had Google put something like Meerkat on Google Glass, would it be – would it have been as big?
Jeff: It would have caused war in Europe.
Mathew: I think it's hard for Google or Facebook to do those
kinds of things because they're these giant entities that everybody kind of
slightly mistrusts. Whereas, if it's just a guy saying, “Hey, I came up with
the new thing. It's cool and you should use it.” People are like, “All right,
I'm in.”
Leo: We're going to take a break. When we come back, we're
going to talk about the New York Police Department and their new spot shotter system – this is a good one. Thank you, chat room. First, a word from legalzoom.com. You may be thinking right about now, “You know, I need a lawfirm.” Actually, LegalZoom is not a lawfirm, they're
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Mathew Ingram, Jeff Jarvis, Leo Laporte,
This Week in Google. Police officers – thank you, chat room, for this story
from MSNBC. Police officers in New York City now have a new technology called
spot shotter. You might be happy to hear this, Jeff.
With it, they can detect gunshots in real time.
Jeff: It's not that new. What's new in this story is that
they're installing it in new neighborhoods and they are finding there are more
gunshots than they knew.
Leo: The $1.5 million system uses 300 sensors to
triangulate the location of a gunshot to within 25 meters of where the bullet
was fired within seconds. It sends a notification to an operator who reviews
the audio file to determine if it actually was a gunshot or maybe fireworks or
an engine backfire. The system then forwards an alert to the NYPD with relevant
information about the number of shots fired, a map of the loacation and if the shooter was moving.
Jeff: That's a Twitter feed you want.
Mathew: It seems like sending it to an operator introduces –
it's going to slow things down a fair bit if somebody has to listen to the file
and then, “Is that a gunshot? Is that a car door slamming?”
Leo: I think it's interesting that there are people who can
tell the difference. In cities around the country, according to the chief of
police in New York City, Mr. Bratton, in 75% of the cases, they're not dialed
into 911. Because people go – exactly that, “Oh, it must have been a firework
or backfire.” So that's -
Mathew: For some reason, I'm now thinking of the Batman scene
where he has all the cell phones up on a screen and he can listen into any
conversation. I'm sure they're not working on that.
Leo: No. They would never do that. This is fine. This is
just gunshots.
Mathew: Only gunshots.
Leo: If they happen to hear anything else, they could just
throw that out.
Mathew: They would ignore it, sure.
Leo: That's a good point, Mathew. They now have an array of
microphones in every burough of Manhattan, of New
York.
Mathew: If you said, “Stick 'em up.”
Leo: No, they send that to an operator to determine how
serious you were. That's a good point. They have microphones now all over New
York.
Jeff: “They're listening to us!”
Leo: Well, they are.
Jeff: Well, there are going to be sensors of all kinds. You
know, just everybody's phone is going to be listening to these kinds of things
and -
Leo: If you could get Google Fiber, wouldn't you subscribe
in a heartbeat? Why is it that only 29,867 people have subscribed?
Jeff: That's for the TV package, I
think that's what it is.
Leo: You're right. I misunderstood. They don't say what the
penetration is for the internet. So they have almost 30 thousand TV subs in –
so Google Fiber is in Stanford, they're conducting a trial in Connecticut. In Kansas City, Kansas. Kansas City, Missouri. Provo, Utah. Number one city, Kansas City, Missouri. They've been there
the longest. 20 thousand subs, then Kansas with 7000 subs. Goes down pretty
quickly, Provo which have only been there a couple of years, 2507 and 194 users
in Stanford. But the penetration is not great, only 13% in Kansas City subscribe
to the Google TV, 13% of the Google internet subscribers. I guess that's less –
I thought that was Googel internet. That's not,
that's less interesting than I thought.
Jeff: If you're going to sign up for a wire-cutting, no
cable TV, who are you going to sign up with? You're going to sign up with
Google.
Leo: If I had Google Fiber, I'd sign up for their TV, but I
guess only 10% did.
Jeff: I would too.
Mathew: So why isn't it higher than that? Yes.
Leo: That's a good question. Is it not a good deal?
Jeff: Well, I think at first, they didn't have all the
channels that – you know, it was a roll out issue, I think.
Leo: ScooterX is saying, “No AMC
on Google Fiber, no deal.” That makes sense. You can't get Mad Men, don't want
it. You're going to keep your cable. You also have to put down a $300 deposit,
it says.
Jeff: Google Fiber channel line up in Kansas City, let's see. What would you call AMC, entertainment?
Leo: I don't know, American Movie Channel sounds like
entertainment to me.
Jeff: Yes, I'm not seeing it here.
Leo: Does it have the Hallmark channel?
Jeff: Oh, boy, I'm signing up for that. Jesus,
treacle and trickle.
Leo: It sounds like one of your reviews, treacle and
trickle.
Jeff: Well, in fact, Hallmark got so mad at me when I was at
People magazine reviewing, they pulled all their ads
from People magazine. Believe me, People magazine had
a lot of Hallmark ads.
Leo: Wow, what's wrong with you, Jeff, you curmudgeon?
Jeff: I'm a just a growly cuss.
Leo: Google Code is shutting down. This kind of saddens me.
According to one of the members of the team, “When we started Google Code,
there was a real need for this. It was SourceForge and nothing.” He said, “There's really a risk that open source communities have
this great risk of SourceForge – if SourceForge shuts down, all these open source projects will
be out of luck.” So they created Google Code but now, he says, there's so many
places you can create and host open source projects, there's no need for Google
Code. So there's GitHub, but that's a commercial project. It launched in 2005,
so there would be an alternative to SourceFOrge since
then, “We've seen a wide variety of better project-hosting services such as
GitHub and Bitbucket, Bloom. Many projects moved away
from Google Code to those other systems to meet developers where they are. We
ourselves migrated nearly 1000 of our own open source projects from Google Code
to GitHub.”
Mathew: That makes sense. I mean, there's no point in keeping
it going if users are going somewhere else.
Leo: So there is a Google Code to GitHub exporter tool.
Probably with GitHub, it's a for-profit business, right? There's still somebody
else hosting your stuff.
Mathew: GitHub is pretty cool though.
Jeff: Have you ever been to their headquarters?
Leo: GitHub's headquarters? No.
Jeff: It's amazing because they have this World Economic
Forum event there – they have a replica of the Oval Office as their entrance
way. All this crazy, crazy stuff. They have this huge bars that the founders serve from it. There's
hardly anybody working there because who better to be virtual than GitHub? The
place is practically empty.
Leo: GitHub is pretty awesome. I use it and install it on
most of my computers. Yes. You can do more than just programs, you can do it
for writing a book, youc ould use GitHub.
Mathew: Actually, I was going to write and never wound up
writing about it, but Clay Shirke had an interesting
– he posted something that basically was a blog post on GitHub. I think it was
about the demonstrations in China -
Jeff: The demonstrations in Hong Kong, exactly. He had tons
of photos and stuff, and I was so mad at myself, like, “Oh, of course Clay
would do that first.”
Mathew: A bunch of people sort of – I forget the term, but
they pointed out things that needed to be changed. I forked it but then didn't
know what to do with it. But I still thought it was interesting.
Jeff: This is a dumb question. Do you have to download
GitHub?
Leo: Yes. You need GitHub – well, no, you could do it on
your Chromebook, you could do it without.
Mathew: It's just a site.
Leo: It depends how you're going to use it. So for
instance, on my Mac, I put GitHub software so if I'm writing software, I can
put it up on GitHub. Even if you're just – if you're multiple people, then it's
very useful because it really is a version control system. So you can check in
and check out changes to the code so they don't conflict.
Jeff: Then there's ZenHub for
GitHub on the Chrome web store.
Leo: I'm sure there's ways to do it.
Mathew: That's what's interesting about using it for text is
that version control. Anyone who's ever tried to collaborate with people using
Microsoft Word, it just makes you want to put a bullet in your head. GitHub is
really great at tracking who's got the different
versions of the file and what changes have been made, condensing them all into
one file. It works for code, should work for words.
Leo: Yes. I remember my first book that I was going to do
with Gina Smith, we were going to use SVM, which was
the very common way to do this in those days. GitHub, you can also use it for
free but – yes, I think that's interesting, though, that Clay used that. That's
wild.
Jeff: Yes, that is. Damn him.
Leo: Did he do that again or was that a one-time bit?
Jeff: I think it was a one off but he didn't need to. He got
his cool merit badge.
Mathew: But he didn't come up with a cool term – he didn't
make up a new word for what that is.
Leo: Gitpublishing.
Jeff: I think, Mathew, GitHublishing.
Leo: Wow. Google Flight search has gotten even more useful.
We talked about this, actually, on the radio show with our travel expert. It
now has RouteHappy information, so you can see what
flight amenities you will get. We are in an airline tomorrow called Spirit,
ever hear of them? There are so few amenities on Spirit, you actually have to pay to carry on a bag.
Mathew: That's becoming more common.
Leo: If you don't pay ahead of time, it's $100. If you just
show up with your carry on, it's $100.
Jeff: What do they charge you to check it?
Leo: I think it was $25, something like that. It was $200
for four of us.
Mathew: Just show up late with a big bag and they'll gate
check it for nothing.
Leo: I don't think Spirit does that. I don't think there's
nothing for nothing on Spirit.
Mathew: They'll leave it on the gangway.
Leo: “Oh, I'm so sorry, sir. Your bags won't be going with
you.
Mathew: At one point, Ryan Air was talking about charging
people for the bathroom on the plane.
Leo: They fortunately thought better of that, thank
goodness. Did you see the Danny Sullivan reporting on Search Engine Land, what
happens now when you use Google Search in Firefox? It's a big banner, “Switch
your default search engine to Google, learn how!”
Jeff: Little desperate for Google.
Leo: Did Firefox change to Bing, is that what happened?
Jeff: Yahoo, yes.
Leo: Wow. I'm going to have to – I don't use Firefox but
I'm going to have to give it a try. “Switch your default search engine.” Wow.
That must be costing them a lot of money that they're not -
Mathew: Those default serach deals
are good money.
Leo: The tyranny of the default. Wow.
Mathew: He says that since the deal, Yahoo search share rose
like two points, two percentage points.
Leo: Yahoo making money on anything is a story.
Mathew: Yes, anything going up for them. Wait, that's going
up? That's not right.
Leo: What's this? I don't understand but maybe you can
explain to me, Jason. We're doing the change log kind of ad hoc, here. You can
send a Hangouts message with your voice in Google Now? What does that mean?
Jason: That means you can do a voice command inside Google
Now to send a message through Search. You can do it with SMS before, now you
can do a Hangouts message.
Leo: Okay, Google, send a Hangout message to Jason Howell.
So it'll -
Mathew: Don't switch user.
Leo: Okay, it found him, which account? Don't show that.
What's the message? Hey Jason, it's Leo. I'm over here.
Mathew: Get to work.
Leo: Oh, now I have to type it. Well, if I'd done the whole
thing, it probably would have.
Jason: Yes.
Leo: But that's cool. That's opposed to saying, “Send a
message,” for SMS. “Send a Hangout message,” will send it via Hangouts. I don't
know if that's a big thing or not.
Mathew: I have to say, the easier they can make it to start a
Hangout, the better, because I've felt like an 87-year-old man when I've
started a Hangout with someone. I literally could not figure out how to do it.
Leo: I don't do Hangouts. I know, I know.
Mathew: I can't figure it out. You do it.
Leo: It's begun, Mathew. I'm wearing bowties and you're
going, “What's this Hangout all about?”
Mathew: “Why don't we just get on the phone?”
Leo: “In my day, we just used the pony express.” We mentioned
that the new Pixel is using a type C connector, like the soon to appear Mac
Book. Jon Gruper has decided that Apple invented the
type C connector, which has caused an interesting lash and backlash. A lot of
tech blogs have picked up Grupers assertion and
asserted the same. A lot of other people said, “Wait a minute.” Google actually
put out a video. There's a video – here's the Google type C video. It doesn't
say, “We invented it, but they kind of imply that it was – here, let me turn on
the audio.”
(video plays)
It's a pretty cool idea. See, “We worked with the
industry to come up with this standard.” There's an engineer drawing on a
whiteboard. So it did come from Google.
(video continues)
By the way, the same technique used to make the Apple
Watch.
Mathew: And your coffee mug.
Leo: And B-52 tires, but okay. I do like the type C
connector but I do have to say, it's a little hard to get out.
Jeff: Really?
Leo: It doesn't fall out. It's harder to get out than a
micro USB connection but I love that it goes either way.
Jeff: You're getting weak in your old age.
Leo: “Another thing, it's so hard to disconnect my laptop
now.”
Mathew: “Why don't the plugs come out easier?”
Leo: “Why don't they fall out easier? I don't like it.”
Jeff: “Do you ever wonder why...”
Leo: I am turning into Andy Rooney. It's true. It's true.
So Google has decided to pay a little more attention to the app submissions in
the Play Store. Humans will now review – this is kind of an Apple-y response. I
don't know what this means. App submissions on Google Play now reviewed by
staff and will include age-based ratings. That has to be a huge new department.
Jeff: What happened before – I mean, they wouldn't put up
malware in the app store. How did they determine before – it just was the basic
standards they had, technological standards.
Leo: I wonder if they some – [crosstalk]
Jason: Bouncer was what that was called, it was a security thing going on automatically, security scanning for known
potential threats. As new ones would be discovered, it would expand to that.
Verify Apps runs on Android. You can have that check every app installed and it
compares it against that list. This is something different that's actually been
going on two months now undetected and Google is just now announcing it,
saying, “We've been doing it for two months and you guys haven't noticed yet.”
So there you go.
Leo: There's going to be E for Everyone, G for General –
what is the – oh, it varies by region. So -
Mathew: Is there an R?
Leo: There's M for Mature. So in the U.S., E, T and M, just
like gaming. Everyone, Teen and Mature. Other
countries will do it the way that they do whatever it is – games or movies.
Mathew: I wonder, were they getting
flak for kids installing things that weren't age appropriate?
Leo: I don't know. There isn't anything that sexy on
Google.
Jason: You know, Google just in
general as of late has been paying a lot more attention to the kid angle of
thing with Youtube Kids, restricted profiles in
Android, all that kind of stuff. So I think this kind of falls in line. They
modeled this rating system, I understand, closely to the ESRB that already
exists in video games.
Leo: Yes, that's the video game rating. It does sound like
it's somewhat up to the developer. They have a questionnaire the developer
fills out and then they determine the rating based on that. So it's still not a
heavily manual process, but you know what? There was just a published study
about the Freak exploit that showed that – you know, so what Freak is, we talked
about it on Security Now if you want to get all the details. But the idea of
Freak is, it's a downgrade of encryption that a man in
the middle attack can force by sending circling crafted packets so when you
have an encrypted connection, you can have really weak encryption. This was
encryption that was created when the U.S. Government 20 years ago banned export
of encryption, remember that?
So they allowed 512 bit encryption, which is just no
good. It's easily cracked. But most SSL Suites, apparently, continue to support
this low-grade encryption just in case they meet somebody that only can do it
that way. They shouldn't. Operating systems are being patched, Android has been
patched, iOS has been patched, so they no longer allow
downgrade to that low of a level. But if you're using an older version of
Android or iOS and you install one of these malicious apps on your system, you
could be vulnerable to getting Freaked. That would
allow a bad guy to see all your encrypted traffic including credit cards, so
forth.
So FireEye, which is the security firm that did this research, came up with
1999 titles that allowed – that left users vulnerable to this encryption
downgrade attack. Here's the interesting thing – 1228 were on Android, 771 were
on iOS. So it's not like – I think a lot of times, people think, “I'm using an
Apple. I'm safe.” Not particularly true, not a lot safer. So the big takeaway
is, update your operating system. Now, that's easy with Apple because unless
you have a fairly old device, you can easily go to the latest version of iOS.
8.2 has been patched against Freak.What version of Android? 5.02? Not sure when they patched it.
Jason: Not sure on that.
Leo: But that will leave out – I mean, my Note 4 is still
at KitKat, so that will leave some people out. So be careful, I guess, about
what apps you download and update your operating system as soon as you can. To
test if browsers are vulnerable, visit the SSL Labs' page and it'll tell you.
Freakattack.com – uh-oh, let me do that. Everybody, do that now on your Android
device, freakattack.com. Now I'm curious.
Jeff: What's it going to do?
Leo: It'll tell you if you're vulnerable.
Mathew: It'll install it.
Leo: “Warning, your browser is vulnerable to the Freak
attack. You'll be tricked into using weak encryption if you visit a vulnerable
website.” So you have to have an out-of-date operating system or browser, visit
a vulnerable website and you have to have software on your – well, I guess this
browser is vulnerable is what it's saying.
Mathew: Doesn't your Chrome update itself automatically?
Leo: I thought it did. What's your Nexus 6 say? It should
be all right. Let me try it with the Samsung browser.
Jeff: “Good news, your browser appears to be safe from the
Freak attack.”
Leo: So I think it's an OS level update.
Jeff: Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh-nyeh-nyeh.
Leo: Oh, stop it.
Mathew: I'm vulnerable. I feel vulnerable.
Jeff: Here, popular sites that are susceptible to Freak attack. Npr.org, AirTel,
Kohls.com, MIT.edu? Who put this site out?
Leo: TwiT, by the way – the
Samsung browser is also vulnerable. So I'm happy to say, TwiT is not. TwiT.tv and techeyelabs.com have both been updated for vulnerability.
Jeff: Who – GigaOm – no, sorry. Mathew, just joking. Who did this site?
Leo: SSL Labs, it's a reliable firm that does SSL testing.
Wow, yes. Look at all these.
Jason: I just tested it on my Nexus 6 that I got yesterday
and it's vulnerable but I'm installing the Chrome update now. So I'm going to
check it again and see what it says before and after.
Leo: So your credit card company came through and got you a
new one?
Jason: Yes, I finally received it. It's true, about time.
Leo: So that's good to know. The Freak attack is possible
when a vulnerable browser connects to a susceptible web server. So the key is,
update your browser – but I – maybe I need to update it too.
Jason: The update fixed it. Everybody update.
Jeff: Are you using the Chrome beta?
Jason: I'm not on the Chrome beta, no.
Leo: I'm on the Chrome main channel. Why didn't I get an
update?
Jason: You know, I very well may be in the beta, actually,
because if I did that, I probably did it a couple years ago and at this point
have just forgotten.
Leo: Who knows?
Jason: But, no, I mean, I checked before the update and was
vulnerable. After the update, I'm good.
Leo: Cool.
Mathew: Okay, if my Skype slows down it's because I'm
updating.
Leo: I do, I see a Chrome browser update. Lots of bug
fixes, I see, but I bet that's exactly one of them. So I'm going to update my
browser and I'll let you know. So there you go. Interesting.
In the UK, there's a Google tax.
Jeff: There is indeed, 25%.
Leo: What?
Jeff: Of what, I'm not exactly clear, but yes. This is the
political move, the new budget. They've been threatening this - “Google's not
supporting taxes.” Well, the law, they're doing what's legal. So now they're
saying, “We'll tax you anyway.”
Leo: What is the tax?
Jeff: It's 25% tax on – how are they determining it?
Leo: Diverted profits. Oh, this is to avoid the Dutch
sandwich and the Irish turnaround.
Jeff: The whatever, yes. You know, once again – if it's
discriminatory and aimed at only one or two companies, that's -
Mathew: It's the, “You're too big and make too much money
tax.”
Jeff: Damned Yankees.
Leo: Wow. Apple, Amazon, Facebook and
Google, a 25% tax on the profits. That's higher than the general 20%
corporate tax.
Jeff: Yes, come on. What's – it's discriminatory.
Leo: It's unclear how easy it will actually be to implement
this tax and of course, how did they know? So it's not everybody who has to pay
it?
Jeff: How can you legally do that?
Leo: It seems just certain companies have to pay a higher
tax. All right, we're going to get out of here.
Jeff: I'm good.
Leo: Mathew has to go. And I don't want to live here.
Jeff: Are you tired of us?
Mathew: Don't stop just for me.
Leo: I will stop just for you. No, actually, we're done.
We've gone right through it.
Jeff: This was not a heavy week. I've got to say.
Leo: Though Microsoft is developing – there's one more store.
Software that converts Android phones to Windows 10. Is that malware?
Mathew: Yes, that's the definition of malware.
Leo: Is that something somebody would choose to do?
Mathew: Why would someone want that?
Leo: It's testing power users of Windows 10 with the Mii 4, which is an Android smart phone. The initiative,
which Xiaomii, who makes the Mii 4, stressed is not a partnership.
Mathew: That's a nice clause.
Leo: So apparently, you can – it effectively overrides Andoird, turning the Xiaomii device into a Windows 10 with Microsoft services. This is a story by Tech
Crunch by Jon Russell. What? The software does not offer a dual boot option.
This is a ROM based on Windows, like Cyanogen or some other ROM – wow. You can
just put it on your phone.
Mathew: Super great idea.
Leo: That's one way to get people to make Windows phone. So
here's an update from Microsoft, “As part of the Windows insider program,
Microsoft will partner with Xiaomii to offer Windows
10 to a select group of Mii 4 owners. You will be
able to flash your phones with the new Windows 10 OS and provide feedback.” So
you're not getting the current version, you're getting the future version which
is fairly -
Mathew: So it's a beta testing.
Leo: It's a beta testing on another platform. It sounds
like Xiaomii only, right? This headline implies more
than just Xiaomii, but as far as I can tell, it's
just the Mii 4.
Mathew: Xiaomii says, “We're not a
partner.”
Leo: Just to let you know.
Mathew: What is it then? Why are you doing it?
Leo: We thought, “All right, go ahead. Knock yourself out.”
What's of interest is that technically, it's possible. If it's possible, others
will do it. It will be – you know, you'll get your new boot manager and among
other things in your Android phone, you root it and install a new recovery
partition. Among other things, it'll say, “Okay, you can now install Cyanogen
12 or Windows 10.” Wow. That's interesting that it's even possible.
Our show today brought to you by lynda.com. Part of the
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Mathew, do you at this time have a free tip or tool? You don't have to but if you have something?
Mathew: You know, I'd given that some
thought before the show and this is probably going to come as not news to lots of people in the chat room and lots of
viewers and listeners. But I got a Chromecast, I think it was for Christmas and
I've just started using it a lot. You know, I played around with it and I used
the backdrop feature to show photos and whatnot. But I didn't find a compelling
use case other than my daughter trying to show me the latest funny Youtube video on the TV.
But I set up a Plex server
and now I'm basically just streaming Plex through the
Chromecast. So instead of – so the Plex server is
somewhere else. Pull it up on my phone, Plex has
Chromecast built in. Take the Chromecast with me, throw it in a pocket. I'm in
a hotel or somewhere and I can stream it.
Jeff: Doesn't the Chromecast have to be on the same WiFi as you?
Mathew: It does, it has to be – yes. So the WiFi works great in the house but as long as you're -
Jeff: In hotels?
Mathew: I'm trying to think if I've actually used it in a
hotel.
Leo: They said they were going to do – I don't know if
they've done it yet, but so you didn't have to have access. Some weird sound
thing they were doing – I don't remember how it worked.
Mathew: Maybe it wouldn't work in a hotel.
Leo: I haven't tried it in a hotel.
Jeff: There's something else about the Chromecast in the
rundown.
Mathew: The remote control thing.
Leo: Yes, yes. Janko decided,
“I'm going to keep writing, I don't care.” So he's writing on Medium. This is
an example of somebody – am I saying his name right by the way? Janko Roettgers, former GigaOm guy, decieded, “I'm just
going to write it on Medium. Who cares?” This is exactly what it would have
been like had he written it on GigaOm. It's a great
article, nice job. So because Chromecast supports something called CEC – I
think my Samsung TV calls it Any Link. But CEC is an extension of HDMI that
lets you send control commands between your TV and an attached device. So in my case, when I turn on my TV, it turns on my receiver using
CEC and vice versa, tells it, “You handle the audio,” and that type of thing.
It turns out in the latest firmware upgrade to
Chromecasts, support for CEC was added to the Chromecast which means that you
should try it with the TV remote you have already for maybe your Blu-ray or
your TV. It might work with Chromecast.
Mathew: You should be able to switch to the Chromecast and it
can switch inputs on your TV and start streaming.
Leo: You can press pause or play.
Mathew: But your TV has to support it.
Leo: I haven't tried it yet but that's fantastic. Janko got this from the Chromecast subReddit, Reddit /r/Chromecast. So actually, it's ready to cast
and people have a list of things that work, that they've been using. It works
with my Samsung TV, pause and play. BBCI players are working, Brava TV, Play and Return seem to work. Pause does not. So it really has
something to do with how it's implemented on your TV and so forth. So it's kind
of cool. Try it, I guess. You know, you can use your phone and Android device
as a remote, but it's nice to have a remote remote,
and they don't come with the Chromecast.
Jeff, your number?
Jeff: I'm going to go with the number two. Eric Schmidt told
a story at South by Southwest. The Washington Post has the full version story
of this, a Google Translate love story. Two lovebirds met in Haiti, an American
and a Frenchman. He spoke no English but they were attracted to each other and
used Google Translate. Finally, moved in together and got married.
When I was in Madrid last week, it was quite amazing.
As I was sitting through these presentations in Spanish, I didn't understand a
word but they had Powerpoint. So I would point my
Google Translate phone app at the Powerpoint screen
and it would translate into English pretty damn well and incredibly fast. It's
amazing. Before long, we're going to have simultaneous audio translation on
Google Translate, I'll bet you.
Leo: I hope their divorce lawyer has Google Translate. I'm
sorry, that was cynical. It would get tiresome after a while, going, “I love
you.” “I love you.” “Te amo.” “J'taime.” That's –
so two is the number, two people?
Jeff: You stole two of my other numbers, so I went with what
I have.
Leo: I did? I'm sorry.
Jeff: None of the other numbers were very good. I thought
the cube of speed was interesting but I didn't know what it meant.
Leo: I like two. So we showed you the Earth View extension
from Google Maps that was really cool, that when you
add a new tab to Google Chrome, a blank page, it would show you a random
satellite view from Google Maps. It was called Earth View and I still recommend
it. It's free from Google but they've released another one that's cool too.
Remember every time I added a tab, I'd have a neat
satellite view? Now every time I add a new tab, I have a great work of art in
all my new tabs. It is kind of fun. It doesn't have to just be great works of
art. This extension is the Google Cultural Institute and you can choose what it
is that shows up and how often it shows up, things like that. It is an
extension, a silly extension but you know, on the Chromebook, you can't really
rotate wallpapers and stuff, which I kind of miss. I liked the idea of having
different desktop wallpapers. But this kind of solves it because every time you
do a new tab in Google Chrome, you get a new fullscreen thing. So let me show you, there was the Earth View.
Mathew: I was going to say, on Chromecast, the backdrop thing
where you can show your photos, it mixes in my photos with Google photos. So
art shows up, NASA shows up, then you can say, “Okay
Google, what's on my Chromecast.” It'll tell you about the picture.
Leo: But you have to leave your TV on, which is kind of a
drag. So this has some – it's called Google Art Project, an extension for
Chrome. It shows you what buttons are there and how often it changes. The
default changes your artwork every day, but I decided to change it every tab. I
like that. So it's kind of cool. Isn't that nice? If you like
having interesting backdrops.
Jeff: Remember the days of screensavers?
Leo: It's kind of the opposite of a screensaver, you have to have your screen turned on. So that's a new Chrome extension.
Somebody's saying in the chat room, “What's the other one? I like the satellite
maps.” That one is called Earth View from Google Maps and you'll have to choose
– I disabled that so I could use Art Project. But if I get tired of that, I can
just switch back and now I get more satellite images. These are very beautiful.
It's just whether you like – you know, you have the same wallpaper all the time
on a Chromebook. It's nice to have something different.
Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes this week's
edition of This Week in Google.
Mathew: With Andy Rooney.
Leo: With Andy Rooney, a bunch of old farts. Great to have
you guys. Always a pleasure, find more at mathewingram.com, @mathewi on Twitter. We wish you the best. Come back soon.
We'll set up a little thing so we can help with the college fund. I think
that's only fair.
Jeff Jarvis, he's the professor of journalism at the
City University of New York, CUNY, to be exact. He also has written many books
and blogs at buzzmachine.com. Geeks
Bearing Gifts is his latest must-read.
Jeff: Going up chapter by chapter on Medium at
geeks-bearing-gifts.
Leo: Boy. We had several Medium stories today. I'm starting
to think, it's interesting Janko decided to publish on Medium in the interim. It's funny.
Mathew: It's a great place if no one goes to your blog or you
don't have one. Or, you haven't sort of fixed it up. Medium's right there, it's super fast. Writing is really
easy, lots of people see it.
Leo: I guess so. They even have a top stories thing which
is kind of cool. So yes, there's some discovery there.
Mathew: Okay, I've got to run. Thank you, Leo.
Leo: Thank you all for being here. We do This Week in
Google Wednesdays, 1 p.m. Pacific, 4 p.m. Eastern time, 2000 UTC at
live.twit.tv. Watch live or get your stuff after the fact at TwiT.tv/twig and
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