Leo Laporte: It's time for TWIG, the latest news from Google.
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It's time for TWIG, 'This Week in Google.'
Episode 237, recorded February 19, 2014
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It's time for TWIG 'This Week in Google' and
today it's just the three of us, the core group. Gina Trapani
in her mom's house in Brooklyn wearing a Jets blanket. Hi Gina!
Gina Trapani: Hi!
Good to be here, as always.
Leo: Nice to see you.
Gina: Just getting the internet set up at the new
house, takes a while. Good to see you too.
Leo: Yeah.
Gina: Always love my TWIG.
Leo: Are you going with the XFINITY Comcast? Or
what are you going to use for your internet service over there?
Gina: We didn't have very many choices. It's
basically Time Warner.
Leo: Oh. It will soon become Comcast.
Jeff Jarvis: Soon to be known as Comcast.
Gina: Oh yeah!
Leo: That's Jeff Jarvis over there. He's at the
City University of New York, CUNY. Wearing the t-shit...
Jeff: Gina is in her blanket, I am in my warm
fleece. We are not in warm California anymore.
Leo: Ah! Did you have a good trip?
Jeff: I had a spectacular trip. Thank you for your
magnificent hospitality and generosity.
Leo: Well I didn't do much.
Jeff: And having us in and my boss in. She had a
great time, she now knows what fork means.
Gina: Nice! Now that's an education.
Jeff: There was a whole discussion going by about
forking Android.
Leo: She admitted it after the show, "I
didn't know what that was about."
Jeff: She figured it out. The next day I spoke to
the content team at Linkedin, and we saw Flipboard and then the next day, Friday, I saw Vic and
Bradley and Richard at Google and then I met with the head product for Google
Glass and then met with the strategy team at Google which is an amazing thing
and then spent two and half hours with Reid Hoffman which was just plain honor.
It was a phenomenal rest of the week.
Leo: Neat. Well it was good to have you out here.
Please come out anytime and it was really fun having her, Sarah was great.
Sarah Bartlett, the dean of the School of Journalism at the City University of
New York and we had a good time. So you're Pixel end of life, April 2017.
Jeff: They better have a new one by then.
Leo: I can't promise you a new one. Is this new
the Chrome OS end of life policy?
Jeff: Wouldn't you wish they do this for phones
too. They are committing to a date until which they will support Chrome.
Leo: Right. I guess that's one way to look at it.
Instead of saying end of life they should say, 'Here's how long we're going to
support this.'
Jeff: Yeah it would have been a better way to put
it. Because it is a commitment that goes beyond the life of
most Android phones frankly.
Leo: Right. So Microsoft does this. In fact, it's
in the news right now as April 8th will be the end of life for Windows XP, no
more updates. I had not seen this before...
Jeff: No, I hadn't either.
Leo:...with Google. These are Chrome OS devices
right?
Jeff: Yes. So my Pixel is till April 2017, that's
okay.
Leo: Now it says, "These are unofficial End Of Life dates. Official EOL for these models will be at this
date or later.” and the only exception there is the Samsung Series 5, which
that's the officially announced end of life, which is January 2016.
Jeff: I guess the difference here would be that
after the end of life, you can keep on using your Microsoft devices forever on
your own as long as it's fine. This thing it might say, 'Sorry your Chrome, we
update Chrome and we can't update you so bye.'
Leo: Will it?
Jeff: I don't know.
Leo: "When a device...", this is what
Google says, "reaches EOL, it means that the product model is considered
obsolete and will no longer receive full support from Google’s Enterprise
team. Additionally, Enterprise customers using devices that have passed their
EOL date may find that they cannot manage their devices as expected using the
administrator control panel or leverage new management features
released. Automatic software updates are not guaranteed." Doesn't say
it won't work anymore. This is what happens with Microsoft too, they are just
not going to fix it. So if there's exploits, that's bad. Chromebooks I would worry less about exploits. Is it possible having an old version of
Chrome will keep you from visiting some sites?
Jeff: Well the thing is I can't ever have an old
version of Chrome. Whenever you re start the machine after a
new version's come out, you get it.
Leo: Right but you won't after April 2017,
that's the point.
Gina: Not necessarily it sounds like.
Leo: Not even that. 'Won't' is not even right.
'May not.'
Gina: I have kind of mixed feeling about
this disposable computer thing. Doesn't Microsoft support
Windows versions for ten years and there was such an uproar with XP that they extended it?
Leo: Yeah. Obviously we both agree
you're a developer, you can't support software forever and ever and
ever. Comes a time when you got to move on.
Gina: Particularly software that is so
closely tied to the hardware. Microsoft doesn't support so many
different hardware configurations anyway by design over the years and part
of the reason why Windows is so kind of heavy is because it's got different
drivers for different things and Android kind of has the same thing. But the Chromebooks it's like, it's a hardware software that the package is tied together. I don't know, I kind of
feel like they could do better than 4 years. I would like them to do
better than four years. But then again their whole take on the Chromebook is that it's this disposable computer that you
can throw in the river and get a new one.
Jeff: Well when it's $200, not a $1500 machine.
Probably Pixel owners should be a little more upset. But when have I ever kept
a computer longer than three years.
Gina: Well right, that's true. But you know if
they are targeting developing countries or education, people just don't have
the kind of resources that we have or the competing demands that we have.
Jeff: That is a very good point Gina.
Gina: I mean look it's a lot better than Android right.
Android was reportedly supposed to be every 18 months there were going to
upgrade and that's shorter than even a two year contract. We talked about this
little bit last night on 'All about Android.' So 4 years is okay, but it's just
interesting to see that change, that commitment to backwards
compatibility which was very much a hallmark of Microsoft's approach to
software for better or for worse. It kind of flipped on its head, I think
because in its DNA, Google is a web company. And when you deploy web software
you deploy it and it's updated right, so like here's a web company trying to
distribute devices running desktop software and they are like, 'we are not
going to...'
Jeff: You know Gina, I was talking to somebody
when I was at Google, I won't say who but I was just talking to somebody at
Google and I talked about web stuff and they kind of just pooh-poohed,
'Ah! web!' They are a mobile company.
Leo: What? Oh wow! I wouldn't pooh-pooh web,
I don't think desktops going away.
Jeff: I wouldn't neither. I
think it was done for a fact, but wow! Where they are putting their resources
is mobile.
Gina: But yeah they are putting their resources
into GMS which is that layer on top of Android that interacts with the Cloud.
So I equate web with Cloud services and there's a difference between...
Jeff: Yes, I do too. But
browser, web browser. I was complaining about something I
wanted a web browser and I was kind of told, 'Ah, psst,
grandpa jeez!'
Leo: That's absurd, I am sorry, that's absurd.
People are going to use desktops for a long time to
come.
Jeff: Yeah of course. I think it was illustrative
of where their resources were going, where they see the importance of
development and given choices of priorities...we see all these numbers now
about these huge proportions of traffic to mobile. I think that's a
misnomer to a great measure, we've talked about this on the show before.
Because I think that bundles in things that are not mobile like tablets. And we
need to re define what mobile is. Mobile means a phone to me and you are gone
somewhere else. But even then, you're still using a browser; you're still using
the web. But I pointed to my beloved Pixel and was kind of 'Ah.'
Leo: Wow so maybe by 2017 you won't. You'll be
using...
Jeff: I'll be using my Google Glass of course!
Leo: It makes sense if you are Facebook or Google
or Yahoo to think that what you want to do is transition you're revenue to
mobile because that's how more and more, more than half now of all computing is
done on mobile. But it doesn't mean the end of the world for desktop by any
means. I don't anticipate that ever happening.
Gina: I am not asking you to reveal who you talked
to, but this depends a lot on who.
Jeff: But I had a very pleasant lunch with Steve
Lee who is the head of Goggle Glass product. I just asked as a condition that
he not punch me out when we sat down. And he didn't, he was very very nice. And I have ordered my lenses.
Gina: Ah! he turned you
around on it.
Jeff: Well, I kind of felt like a Schmuck. And i need to know how that thing operates in optimal
conditions and I have never had optimal conditions so my wife's not happy but I
ordered my lenses.
Leo: So we had two people in the audience
unbeknownst to me on Sunday, during TWIT, one of who does marketing for Google
Glass. And she was sitting there on her hands because I saying things like,
'every time I see somebody with Glass on, I feel like I just want to punch them
in the nose', but another person came up who was wearing with prescription
lenses and said 'you know, you really haven't experienced it.' And I wear
glasses like you Jeff and you really haven't experienced it and I think what
you were saying, unless you have tried it with your prescription glasses
on.
Jeff: I think that's just what I might have to do.
Or I should have gotten contacts, but I am too squeamish.
Leo: Then you really couldn't see it.
Jeff: It was over my glasses.
Leo: Oh so you were wearing it over your
glasses.
Jeff: Better with these glasses than horn rimmed
or something. People who have black framed glasses cannot use it at all.
Leo: How many geeks don't wear glasses? Seems like if you are a geek, the glasses go with the territory. Gina you wear glasses I am sure?
Gina: I don't.
Leo: Oh stop it, you are not a geek.
Gina: I got lucky with good eyes.
Leo: You have perfect eyes really?
Jeff: Gina is perfect in all ways.
Leo: I guess that confirms what we have always
suspected. Golly!
Jeff: Gina is an Android.
Gina: Oh I wish, I would
be much more efficient.
Leo: Gina is an Android. Gina is an Android. Wow.
Gina: Fueled solely by diet Pepsi.
Jeff: You have reached singularity Gina. A world
fueled by diet Pepsi.
Leo: I like it. I don't know if we want to
belabor this, I think all hardware has to come to an end. It does seem a little
swift, the Acer AC700 which is only a couple of years old ends July 2015, next
summer. Three years seem quick.
Jeff: So what's the number? Is five years good?
Leo: I'd say ten. The problem with computer
hardware is the hardware itself, especially a solid state drive never wears
out. I don't understand why you can't support it. Maybe it's going to get
slower and slower...
Jeff: New features...
Leo: What features?
Jeff: I don't know.
Leo: When you make Chrome OS...this is the
question, what is Google thinking they are going to do? That would make this
happen?
Jeff: Obsolete, I don't know.
Gina: It seems like graceful degradation.
Leo: If it gets slower big deal.
Gina: You know get it to work without that feature
on a slower hardware. I mean that slows down the development process and it can
add some complexity to your code base but...
Jeff: But Gina isn't the whole notion of Chrome
that every device is automatically upgraded to the same Chrome level and that's
what makes it secure because it is verifying. You always know it has the fixed
up latest version of Chrome, you have no choice but that. You have a choice of
which track you are one. But you have a blessed version of Chrome when you turn
the machine on. And if it's not blessed it will not work. And that's what gives
Chrome it's security and it's consistency.
Architecturally that's just different from Windows where I bought the OS.
Gina: Yeah. My favorite sort of little fun fact
about Chrome is that the first thing that the developers built, before they
built any browser functionality, was the auto update functionality. Like the
first thing that they built. People ran just a little executable on their
desktop that would auto update. That was the first thing they did because
Chrome was from the beginning supposed to do graceful, silent, instantaneous
updates that didn't require to restart. You know
Mozilla would do these giant big parties about new Firefox releases. We all
knew the versions of those. Remember?
Leo: Yeah that's right.
Gina: And Chrome doesn't. I mean Chrome version
numbers are insanely long, they are constantly pushing out updates, it happens silently you don't even know...
Leo: You do have to restart though.
Gina: Occasionally you do or the little hamburger
turns orange and says, 'please update Chrome.' At this point I really don't
shut down my computer or shut down Chrome very often so I'll catch that once in
a while. But it's a completely different paradigm than what it used to be. So
we came from a world of Windows updates that would be like multiple restarts
and service packs and then we had Firefox which was like also sort of very old
school version, big version drop releases to Chrome which was silent updates.
Yeah so silent updates that and speed were the two
things that Chrome really promised. So that's why this end of life thing seems
strange to me.
Jeff: From a hardware perspective, we have talked
on this show about the potential of the modular phone and Google's working on
that where you take an old chip out and put a new one in. Shouldn't a laptop be
like that? The screen is pretty much good for a long time, the camera is good
for a long time, the keyboard is buttery and beautiful, the track pad is
buttery and beautiful, what I need in Chromebook is
more RAM and there is a new chip that offers something.
Leo: I think you are missing the point here.
Chrome cannot ever get to the point where it won't work on the massive PC
hardware that's out there.
Jeff: That's the Chrome browser.
Leo: The Chrome browser, they are never going to
say, 'Oh, you can no longer run the Chrome browser on your Intel Core 2.' It
just runs slower. There is no way they are making Chrome incompatible with the
vast majority of PC's out there right.
Jeff: That's not an OS, that's the problem.
Leo: The Chrome OS is just the browser!
Jeff: Well but it does more with the
machine.
Gina: Yeah it's the browser on top of some sort of
layer that makes up the computer right?
Leo: What you are going to require finger print
reading or eye scanning? No.
Jeff: Maybe at some point.
Gina: You’re maybe poking at something there. Right?
Jeff: Yeah, security. Clearly what's wrong with
security in this world is that, we should get to the point where knowing your
name and social security number and one of the passwords you use for a service
shouldn't matter. Shouldn’t matter at all. Because they
are better security mechanisms so yeah it could be something like Leo,
yeah.
Leo: No. no. They are trying to make people buy
new computers I think.
Jeff: Well they just bought a company with a new
voice security thing.
Leo: That's bogus by the way.
Jeff: Oh it is!
Gina: Is it voice or I thought that...
Leo: Sound. So you go to a website and it plays
an inaudible tone that your phone picks up and authenticates you.
Jeff: Oh is that it.
Leo: And we were talking to Steve Gibson about
this, as he is doing something similar that's an open source project. But not with sound. It's his opinion and I think he's right,
this was an acquire. This was hiring the engineers.
Jeff: But it clearly shows the direction in which
they are...
Gina: But it's a lot better than entering a
freaking code from Google authenticator right?
Leo: Well it is if you have speaker; it is too
hardware dependent. It's called Slick Logging.
Jeff: Password dependent is no good wither.
Leo: They want the engineers. There are better
ways to do this that don't require holding your smartphone up to the speaker
that may or may not exist on your hardware. That's silly. I don't think that's
the actual reason they acquired this. I think they wanted the engineers. Well
see, Google may announce an audio authentication system.
Gina: What I go through for two step
authentication at this point like that experience can be improved so much more.
Leo: This is not two step.
This is something separate. A password free authentication. And that's what Steve is also doing. I'll give you an example that will ring
with you Gina where you use SSH, you have the keys
stored on the server that you are logging into. You don't use a password, it's
more secure. And this is something similar to that that Steve's doing. The
sound would just be like a QR code. I think this is not something Google is
particularly interested, but I am just guessing. I haven’t spoken to anybody at
Google.
Gina: Could we talk about Google I/O? I know I am
skipping ahead.
Leo: Hey Google I/O! It's in June this year.
Gina: Sundar Pichai
just
posted to his Google+ page less than an hour ago, the dates: June 25th, June
26th. And they are making changes to registration. "You won't need to
scramble the second registration opens", Sundar says. They'll be implementing a new system, where you can submit your interest
to attend Google I/O 2014.
Leo: Oh No! You have to apply!
Gina: Yes. "Successful applicants will then be
randomly selected and notified shortly thereafter. We’ll be following up with
more details."
Leo: It's like Burning Man.
Gina: If it is anything like Google
developers interviews, I am probably in big trouble. You guys saw the
scene in the Internship when it was like, if a tiny man was shrunk down and
stuck into a blender...
Leo: How would they get out? By the way I never did understand
how they got out? But okay.
Jeff: Let us go on the record right now, anyone watching
from Google, please please.
Gina: I'm pretty sure that Press...
Leo: Press is different from developers.
Jeff: Gina knock on
that paneling behind you.
Leo: But you know it's a measure of how popular this is
and I am glad that they did this because in the past, the whole thing has been
all gone in 30 seconds. It's like that Nick Cage movie, Gone in 30
seconds. So this is not who can click fastest. Although, it
would be kind of a good test. Who can write the best script to auto
register for Google I/O. The you would have to be a
good coder.
Gina: Right then you would have to get in just for your
efforts.
Leo: So this makes sense. So they have far more people
who want to go than they can fit in so they have to do a random drawing of all
entries, wow.
Gina: I think people want to go to Google I/O not for the
developer resources, not to be there when they make big announcements; they
want to go for the schwag.
Leo: Okay, can I make a suggestion, no more Santa, just
stop giving away crap.
Gina: Well they started to pull back. They started to reel
that in a little bit last year right. Remember that moment, I think it was Sundar who said, 'that all of this new phones you are not getting one because it is $179 in the Play store.' And everyone in
the room was sort of like...But that whole Oprah thing kind of freaks me out
about I/O. I think if we took away that element there will be less competition
for people to get in.
Leo: And that was a developer that must cheese you
off.
Gina: I mean listen, I like my toys too but I was in line
at Google I/O one time and I was chatting with the folks in front of me and
they were like, 'oh we are students so with the student discount we got in for
this much but the value of these that we got is way more than that so when we Ebay them we are really going to make money back.' And I
was like, that's why you're here? I mean I am not saying that these kids, they
were cute and they were smart. I don't think that they were necessarily
representative but it was a weird reason to want to go.
Leo: You know what there was a word for it in Yiddish, they are 'schnorrers'. I am a bunch of gentiles
around here.
Jeff: I am an honorary Jew.
Leo: 'Schnorrers' are chiselers
or spongers. A 'schnorrer' according to the Jewish
dictionary, "distinguished from an ordinary beggar by dint of his
boundless chutzpah. A 'schnorrer' is far
worse than a cheap or miserly person. He is often unethical to the point of
stealing.' Is stealing always illegal? No. In fact, more often stealing is
quiet subtle and perfectly legal. Legal but not ethical, you're a 'schnorrer', knock it off!
Gina: What's going to be interesting is to see
what kind of system Google possible could implement to make this...it
sounds like it's basically going to be a lottery.
Jeff: I think as much as it hurts me, you should be there
Gina because you are going to build stuff that's going to serve a purpose. The
truth is I shouldn't be.
Leo: No, you should be there as a journalist.
Jeff: But they should look at their self-interest in I/O
and they want developers who build things, who build this future and it should
be like an university admission.
Gina: How they know that I am someone whose going to make stuff. Like do they say only developers who've had...
Leo: Because you've made it.
Jeff: You know what, do it on GetUp.
You get in by your Getup.
Leo: That's true.
Gina: Or do you have to have an application listed in the
Play store or in the Chrome web store? Do you have to show your GetUp profile?
Leo: For all we know they are doing that. Because it
sounds like there's this pre-qualification a little bit right? Random, but for
all we know they are going to take everybody who asks, look at their GetUp account. I bet you they've got a Python script that
sorts them and then randomly picks them.
Jeff: Actually they already know who they want there and
they are going to put it in your brain that you want to come and they are going
to make you apply.
Gina: You know they are also trying to get new developers
in right. You don't want to have people who have already sold, who are already
going to do the work anyway.
Jeff: Let's put it this way, if you're not putting stuff
on GetUp, do they still want you there?
Gina: A lot of developers work for companies who don't
open source their stuff and their works' in the dark. That doesn't necessarily
mean that they are less worthy and a lot of developers work for companies and
build the Android app, but the company's Android app is listed as the company's
Android app because they are an employee. So this is tough, this is hard.
Leo: I bet you there's an algorithm. Google's an
algorithmic company.
Gina: I'm sure that there's some sort of algorithm, I am
sure there's also major selection bias. And i look
forward to critiquing the algorithm.
Jeff: In any case, Google please.
Leo: Don't be a 'schnorrer.'
Jeff: It's not about that, I bought my Chromebook.
Gina: That's right you did.
Jeff: I bought my Glass, I bought my frames, I bought my lenses.
Leo: Actually yeah you're no 'schnorrer.'
Jeff: Well no, I've got 'schnorring'
things. I've got my original Nexus phone. I've taken my Google schwag. I should have worn my Google+ hat today that I
bought. I got a Google+ hat yes. In the commercial break I'll go up and get
it.
Leo: Where did you buy it?
Jeff: At the Google schwag store.
Leo: Oh you went in, you have to go in.
Jeff: That and they have to escort you in.
Leo: What! It wasn't open to the unwashed masses?
Jeff: Oh God no! They have to take you in and luckily I
beat a big tour group. You've been in the store haven't you?
Leo: No! I apparently don't have the...
Jeff: Oh, next time you're on the campus.
Gina: That was there this summer. They escorted us as
well. I was there for the Google summer code the mentor summit and there were
scheduled times and we were escorted in. We had free run of the store, it was a
Sunday, they clearly opened it up for us. It
definitely seems like a guest thing.
Leo: Wow!
Gina: And it's kind of like over the river and through the
woods like to get there.
Jeff: It's over in 1950.
Gina: Yeah but you have to cross that little bridge...
Jeff: Across a little bridge, yeah. That's where Google+
is.
Leo: Wow, I've never been there.
Gina: Speaking of +, this New York Times story. Jeff did
you call this laughable?
Jeff: Yeah I don't know what isn't laughable. I was just
screaming about it because...it's going to set Leo off too.
Leo: I didn't see it so tell me and I can get mad now.
Jeff: It just starts off on the old 'ghost town' schtick.
Leo: Well I am one of the people who says, Google+ is a
great place to talk to people who work at Google.
Jeff: It is and I was with Vic and Bradley and Richard and
I am sure he won't mind me quoting to this effect because it is positive to
Google+, but Vic saying, "We’ve really grown a hell of a lot in hell of a
short time." And he likens it to the growth of an Android or something
like that. It's still on a spike. Very clearly the quality of what I do on
Google+ versus what I do on Facebook versus what I do on Twitter versus what I
do on Medium, they all have their roles. And it's not room for one...it's not
zero sum game in my life and so I use Google+, I like Google+, there are a lot
of people who use Google+ and just because you don't use it...I mean Claire
Cain nowhere is a tech writer and it was just...
Leo: Was that her thing? 'I don't use it so...'
Jeff: I guess that must be what it is because she said
it's a ghost town. But the real problem then was it comes around and says 'it's
not there for you to be social. No, they have a secret agenda. They want to
target ads.' No bullpucky! Of course they do! That's
their whole business model. You just discovered this? It was just stupid. It
was page one stupidity. And I can see what's going to happen. Bradley Horowitz
goes for an interview and he gets burned.
Leo: Oh is he interviewed in this article?
Jeff: He's quoted a lot. Pissed me off.
Gina: I've really turned the corner with Google+ I have to
say. If you go to my Google+ profile, it looks as if I don't use it at all. But
Google Hangouts has become a part of my daily life. The video conferencing with
my daughter is amazing. The little hats, the little effects cracks her up so we use that all the time. The other day I had forgotten to push some
stuff to get up from my home computer so I Hangout with my wife and said, 'hey can you just allow remote desktop access' and I wound up remoting into my home computer using hangouts. I turn on auto backup for my photos and
videos. I am never going to edit video, but I take video now only because of
Google+ because the auto-awesome videos are great. The auto backup of my photos
is amazing. So I use Google+ a lot but just in the dark. I use the private
features. So I am not using the social tool really but yeah for a while we
actually wound up switching to Slack but my company was using Google hangouts as
our internal chat. Speaking of Slack, it's really really good. It's in preview.
Leo: Who’s doing Slack?
Jeff: Stewart Butterfield
Leo: Flickr founder.
Jeff: Flickr co-founder and Stewart just as a side here, wrote a fantastic resignation letter from Yahoo! years
ago about how he was in the tin business and now he wrote a letter to his staff
about being in the saddle business.
Leo: He's a character.
Jeff: Yeah I love Stewart, he's just great.
Gina: It's a fine piece of software that Slack, I've got
to say.
Leo: Is it a project management tool? It's enterprise focused.
Gina: It's communications, it's chat. It's a really beautifully designed web based similar to IRC. I hate to
say IRC because IRC even the nice clients, like I am using Textual, it's so much better experience than that. You can attach files, you can have different channels or whatever. But it's been really great for my
team. The mobile apps are just gorgeous...
Leo: Is it invite only right now
or is it open?
Gina: I think it is invite only and I'm not sure actually
how we got...
Jeff: It's a fax machine problem right? You got to know
somebody to make it useful to you.
Leo: slack.com. Can you send me an invite Gina?
Gina: Yeah I'll see what I can do.
Leo: Seems like we'd like to use this here. We've tried a
lot of these things. I mean there's a lot of these things, there's a million of
them. There's Yammer...
Gina: Yeah we used Camp Fire for a while, then we're using
Hangouts and yeah it's really nice. Let's see what I can do. Anyway back to Google+.
I use Google+ all the time but it's not obvious from my page on Google+ because
I don't use it to post public updates. I could, I should. I have guilt about
it, just like I have guilt about not blogging, that's another thing. But I
think that people have to stop equating Google+ with the social product.
Leo: Actually I just signed up. It says I'll get an
invitation by February 28th so I can wait.
Gina: Oh cool, that's soon. Oh they are going to go live
that's great.
Jeff: That's really good of them to give you a date. I
like it.
Gina: Yeah that is really nice.
Leo: So Facebook just bought WhatsApp for $16 billion.
Jeff: Oh that just happened?
Leo: Just happened,
Gina: $16 billion!
Leo: WhatsApp has said for a
long time, 'We are not for sale.'
Jeff: Jeez $16 billion!
Leo: That's what they are saying in the chat room. Do we
have a link? Because I am look for it right now.
Gina: $16 billion that's a lot. WhatsApp is extremely popular.
Leo: Give me a link somebody. Maybe that's just bogus.
Here is it businessinsider.com.
Jeff: I used WhatsApp a little
bit. I still don't understand WhatsApp.
Leo: it's internet based
messaging. It's a very crowded space. People use Facebook, Apple's messenger
and other programs for it. It allows you to send media as well as text. Facebook for $12 billion in stock and $4 billion on cash according
to Business Insider. That is a stunning amount of money. Given that Youtube was just a billion some.
Jeff: You know what's going to happen. Facebook stock is
going to go up higher than...it will make it up in no time flat.
Leo: They got the cash. That's crazy money. And of course
remember Facebook started this all of by paying, jeez it seems so long ago, a
billion dollars for Instagram.
Gina: Right and we all went nuts about that.
Leo: WhatsApp which is a mobile
app for iOS, Android, I think they have it for
Windows phone, I'm not sure I have to check. It's cross platform, it's internet based text and audio and video messaging. It
is probably the number 1 of these programs. Remember they bought Beluga not too
many years ago as well, which was a very similar program. So it's strikes me
that the technology they probably already have. This must be, they are buying this for the users, which is a big user base. Facebook bought
Beluga in March of 2011, three years ago.
Jeff: The press release is just numbing. "Pursuant to
the terms of the Merger Agreement, Merger Sub will merge with and into WhatsApp, the first merger, and upon consummation of the
first merger, Merger Sub will cease to exist and WhatsApp will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Acquirer. The surviving
corporation of the First Merger will then merge with and into Acquirer, which
will continue to exist as a wholly owned, in part directly and in part
indirectly subsidiary of Parent. Upon consummation the closing of the
transactions..." Jesus Christ!
Leo: I don't know why they would release the business
deal memo as a press release. That's pretty stupid. But it might be, you could tell some stuff from that.
Jeff: Yeah you can.
Leo: It's not unusual that...yeah that's basically what
we are seeing is the SEC. It's not unusual for you to do something like this
when you acquire a new company. Because what you're doing is acquiring the
assets of the company without the employees. There's reasons that they would structure it that way but...
Jeff: It's just weird that they would make that the press
release.
Leo: We don't really need to worry about it. $16 billion. Most of that's stock though, $12 billion stock,
$4 billion cash.
Gina: Holy smokes!
Jeff: "183 million shares of Parent’s Class A
common stock valued at $12 billion based on the average closing price of the
six trading days preceding."
Leo: So now when Mark Zuckerberg gives
a record billion dollars to charity, you can just kind of say well
that's nothing. Mark common! I've got some ideas. I'll do it for $500
million, honest you know. Jeff wouldn't you and I get together to save
journalism for half billion easy?
Jeff: Oh yeah, easy.
Leo: I mean Pierre Omidyar only
paying a quarter of a billion to Glenn Greenwald. Jeff Bezo's a quarter of a billion to Wall Street Journal.
Jeff: Yeah those are just a few magazines; we'll save all
the journalism right?
Leo: We'll save all of journalism.
Jeff: All of it.
Gina: So Motorola sold for $12 billion and WhatsApp sold for $16 billion. Think about that.
Leo: You are buying the users. That's what you're buying.
Jeff: How many users does it have?
Leo: Tons. It's easily the most...
Jeff: But this is so replaceable.
Gina: I've had a serious addictive WhatsApp period. I've since graduated but it's a good app. It's for people who don't
want to pay for text messaging or don't want to use regular text messaging you
know. It's chatting on the phone. It's Facebook messenger basically.
Leo: It is, Facebook has the
technology. In December of 2013, WhatsApp passed 400
million monthly users regular users. 400 million that's all. That's double what
they had in April though. So they were growing quiet fast. In fact you might
assume that it's considerably over 400 million if they're doubling at that
point.
Jeff: Well and Facebook clearly sees its future as mobile
and that also eliminates that line from Google.
Leo: Here's a critical note. There's a survey that came
out in December that said at 44% of all smartphone users polled...I'm sorry, WhatsApp overtook Facebook as the leading mobile messaging
service back in December. They have 44% of all mobile messaging.
Gina: If you can't beat them, buy them.
Leo: 35% Facebook messenger. Now this was a survey of
4,000 worldwide in 5 countries. 4,000 users in 5 countries. 44% use WhatsApp at least once a week. Yeah that's a
huge amount of money. if you are just tuning in this
is kind of breaking news. Facebook has just announced the acquisition of mobile
messaging app, WhatsApp for $16 billion. $12 billion in stock, $4 billion in cash. That is huge. Huge. We are going to take a break; we'll come back with
more. You guys if you want can do a little thinking about what this means and
we'll return and we’ll show you WhatsApp. I have it
on a number of my devices, if you've not used it. I can't imagine anybody who’s
not use it. Somebody in the chat room said, 'at the current rate of WhatsApp it would have been able to buy Facebook in six
months.' So this was almost necessary. This is a defensive move.
Gina: Oh, they didn't have Facebook's cash.
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Gina: I am just watching my Tweets go by about this WhatsApp acquisition. About half a
billion dollars per employee.
Jeff: Total funding $8 million from Sequoia.
Leo: You're kidding.
Jeff: I think so. Go to CrunchBases and see if I got that wrong.
Leo: That's amazing. It's an Israeli company I believe,
is that right?
Jeff: It says Santa Clara.
Leo: I thought it was in Israel for some reason. Google
had offered them $4 billion earlier. WhatsApp has
consistently said 'No. We are not going to sell.'
Jeff: If you are Sequoia, you say take it.
Leo: Oh yeah!
Jeff: $8 million funded.
Leo: Now the revenue model for WhatsApp is probably sufficient. But it's a buck a year. It's not an expensive app
and the first year is free.
Jeff: Do they have a cost structure of having to fit into
SMS?
Leo: No they are not SMS, it's all internet.
Jeff: When I send to somebody, I am not sending into their
SMS?
Leo: No. Although, on Android you can determine what your
default SMS app is.
Jeff: Here's my dumb question because obviously I am not a
big user of it. How do I get Tribe on WhatsApp as
opposed to my Tribes in the other messaging apps. I
have to rebuild it from scratch?
Gina: If I remember correctly, I logged int WhatsApp and I had a message
that was like '16 year friends are all using WhatsApp.' Like they were there already.
Leo: Yeah it is very widely used.
Jeff: Nobody wants to send me any messages. I am a
ghost.
Leo: It's just that we know you are an old man so you're
not going to use WhatsApp. Everybody uses WhatsApp. I took it off because nobody I want to message
with uses it.
Jeff: Yeah that's the issue I have. Here's my obnoxious
moment. It was used as the party roundup for Davos.
Leo: WhatsApp was?
Jeff: Yeah. I got into the WhatsApp app site and I knew where the parties were. But I was too old to go.
Leo: Looks like a single round of Venture funding in
April 2011 for $8 million. Brian Acton, Jan Koum are the co-founders and they had a big payday today. Let's
see if the blog at WhatsApp...yeah here it is.
"Five years ago we started WhatsApp with a
simple mission. Building a cool product used globally by everybody. Nothing
else mattered to us." You see the platforms thy are on by the way. iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Nokia and
Windows phones. So they are very universal. "Today we are announcing a
partnership with Facebook that will allow us to continue on that simple
mission. Doing this will give WhatsApp the
flexibility to grow and expand, while giving me, Brian, and the rest of our
team more time to focus on building a communications service that’s as fast,
affordable and personal as possible." With Beluga it went out of business.
They just incorporated the Beluga engineering team and some of the code
interface and that was it, it was gone. We liked Beluga, we liked it for group messaging. See that's another thing
people use this for, group messaging.
Jeff: So was that Jan Koum or
however you say his name?
Leo: Yeah.
Jeff: He dropped out of San Jose State where he was
studying computers.
Leo: Another college dropout billionaire.
Gina: So Anil just tweeted a link to a blog post that Jan
posted in 2012, 'why we don't sell ads.'
Leo: Yeah they don't sell ads. In fact, they didn't want
to sell the app, they were very focused. And I guess
it's paid off. On a personal note he writes, "Brian and
I couldn't be more proud to be part of a small team of people who,
in just under five years, built a communication
service that now supports over 450 million monthly active users worldwide and
over 320 million daily active users."
Jeff: Brian appears to be the grown up. He was the VP
engineer at Yahoo! in 1996.
Leo: Wow, he's an old guy.
Jeff: Yeah, he's looking pretty spiritedly to me right
now. So he's got a Stanford BS computer science in '94.
Leo: They also support asynchronous messaging with voice.
So you can leave a voice message for somebody. You know what it's nothing
Facebook messenger couldn't do. Nothing.
Gina: Skype does that video message thing.
Jeff: Now all my Facebook users will now be visible to WhatsApp and WhatsApp will be
useful to me.
Gina: That's part of it.
Leo: So the question is and I get this feeling from the
blog post, I know the answer to the question is does it get folded into
Facebook messenger or does it stand alone as a separate app? It sounds like
they expect it's a standalone as a separate app which then really makes you
wonder what is the gain for Facebook that is worth $16
billion.
Gina: Yeah it's interesting. Seems to be
the refrain from acquired companies. From Nest and Motorola and we heard
this from, now WhatsApp, the 'we're not changing, We're going to operate.' Even the way they worded it, 'we
are announcing a partnership with Facebook.'
Jeff: It is literally 10 times the purchase price, if I
remember correctly of Youtube. 10
times. I don't see it.
Leo: Well Youtube was a
bargain. We didn't know it at that time. In fact it's kind of amazing but it
really was a bargain. I can't think this is a bargain in any respect. It is
definitely eliminating competition.
Jeff: Who could have gotten this is in a way that could
have hurt Facebook horribly? Google. Would Google have
bought this?
Leo: Conceivably Apple, Linkedin.
Jeff: Microsoft.
Leo: Microsoft might be the most credible.
Jeff: Because of Skype.
Leo: But they already have GroupMe and Yammer, two products very similar.
Jeff: As you said, there's nothing here Facebook messenger
couldn't do so it's not the product.
Leo: You know Gina and I could write this app in about a
week right?
Jeff: Gina why didn't you!
Gina: Because it's not about the technology. It's not
about the code. It's about users and being int he
right place at the right time and having the right branding and the right copy
and getting in the right hands and having that one lucky moment where somebody
mentions it right. This is a really humbling realization for me, different
parts of my career, I have to keep re-having it. The
code doesn't matter as much as I as a developer would like to think.
Leo: Is it design? Is it UI? What is it?
Jeff: It's the people who matter, it's the media, it's
everybody, it's the people who matter, the user
base.
Leo: It's virality. It's the
same thing as a viral video and it's very hard to bottle.
Jeff: it's like Mark Pincus'
company. It seemed like it owned the world and then nothing much.
Leo: That's the problem with virality,
what goes up must come down.
Jeff: Exactly. Let's go back to, what was the original chat company bought by AOL?
Leo: ICQ. What ever happened to them?
Jeff: You go to ICQ it still exists. The last I looked, it
still has that nice little pretty flower.
Leo: In case of something like WhatsApp,
it's the network effect. It's what made Facebook a success. Your friends start
using it so you use it. It's a snow ball that gets bigger and bigger and it's
just like lightning in a bottle. I don't know if you can make rules for virality.
Jeff: icq.com, just for the historical purpose of it. ICQ folks was bought by AOL early on. It was the first big
network-y, web-y, internet-y...
Leo: It was a daisy icon right?
Jeff: It was a daisy icon. If you go to icq.com it's still
up. Free calls for everywhere, It was a chat app,
that's all it was.
Leo: It's not AOL anymore.
Jeff: That's right, they sold it didn't they?
Leo: Yeah it's a Russian company.
Jeff: ICQ was going to take over the world, was the whole
world was everything in its day.
Leo: By the way, breaking news just coming in from the New York Times, Nick Bilton writing about
it. Facebook acquiring WhatsApp for
$16 billion. Wall Street Journal...the Journal got it at 2:12, we got it
about same time Business Week published it which was about 2:15-2:10 something
like that. 2:23 for NIck Bilton,
I love that.
Gina: Ben Evans tweeted that Facebook paid about $35 per
active user for WhatsApp and it's own evaluation is about $180 per monthly active
users. If you look at it that way, they got a deal.
Jeff: Then they are double paying for every one of those
users.
Gina: Yeah someone else tweeted and Mathew Ingram
re-tweeted, "WhatsApp is
a de facto SMS in many countries." So this is about spreading
beyond the US.
Leo: I think that's a lot of it. I think it has to be.
Jeff: So what do you say to this if you're Verizon or a
phone company?
Leo: maybe that's who the threat was from. Because SMS is
very profitable for them but it's dying anyway.
Jeff: But they have to capitalize that.
Leo: They know it's dying. Hey if you are in a market
where you don't have gigabit internet access, good news, this to me is a huge
surprise, Google is going to add new cities or at least investigate adding new
cities to Google Fiber. I had really thought that this was just a kind of...
Jeff: A Mason Dixon line.
Leo:...a demo. They launched in Kansas City, Provo and
Austin. But now they are investigating Portland,
San Jose, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, San Antonio, Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte Raleigh- Durham, yeah you're
right.
Jeff: There's lots of dots around Atlanta.
Leo: Yeah it's the Atlanta metro, Raleigh-Durham makes sense too for the same reason.
These are the actual areas.
Jeff: I would love to see...hey
folks in the chat room, look at those markets and see who the cable companies are who are major in those markets. Who are they going
after? Are they Comcast markets? Are they secondary markets that Google can win
in?
Leo: San Jose is a Comcast market.
That would include Santa Clara, Mountain View of
course...San Antonio is Time Warner cable and AT&T according to our chat
room. Nashville is Comcast, Phoenix is COX, Portland is Comcast and Charter.
Jeff: I used to work on the side of
the cable business and all the deal making there is to get clusters that worked
together efficiently. And so there is trading of systems that go on. So the
more you can cluster, the better off you are, economically.
Leo: That's exactly what they did
in the Bay area. Comcast has a fiber loop around the Bay area and they bought
all the regional cable that were there to make it a
100%. And regionality is what makes it economical. So
it would make sense. If you look at Atlanta there, there's a whole bunch of
suburbs...
Jeff: But Google also, but Google's
not doing that. Google's going scatter shot across the country. Are they trying
to go into every cable company's backyard?
Leo: No I don't think so. This
seems like it is a business. You're right, Mason Dixon lien heavy, south of the Mason Dixon line. Although,
there's Portland, Salt Lake City and San Jose. But the rest of it is in
the south. And these are by the way not guarantee. These are potential. So what
they are doing as they did with Kansas City is they are asking these
communities to step forward and get involved.
Jeff: Be nice.
Leo: Be nice. Boy I would love to
be on that list of cities.
Jeff: Oh so would I. Then there's
another story in there that even as they do, this is gigabyte right?
Leo: Gigabit, yeah.
Jeff: Gigabit I mean. The Google is
developing and testing 10 gigabit.
Leo: So does this mean this is
more than just a, 'here's what it should be cable companies, shape up.' This
sounds like they are going into the business now.
Jeff: A. it's a business. B. it's a serious threat to the industry that needs a
threat. I only wish they would have done the same thing with telephone
carriers, but then I kind of knew that.
Leo: Why not? They had a chance
and they didn't.
Jeff: And they just got out of the
phone business.
Leo: But you could be a carrier
without making phones.
Jeff: But it's the other carriers
they depend upon for sales and distribution.
Leo: What they say is, "we'll
be working close with the mayors and staff from each of these 34 cities. We'll
walk through details about the Google study and about the fiber ready checklist
and we'll answer any questions they have. After that we'll be working closely
with the cities over the next few months as we work on our study and they work
on the checklist. The the completed
checklist items will be due to us on May 1." It's not clear if
they'll all be selected or not. Google does say, "the process will take some time, but we hope to know by the end of 2014
which cities are going to get it. These cities are led by people who have
been working hard to bring faster Internet speeds and the latest technologies
to their residents." Remember when we were all campaigning for Google
fiber? If these are the next best cities, I don't know. "We believe these
are communities who will do amazing things with a gig. And they are diverse,
not just geographically, but in the ways they’ll give us opportunities to learn
about the wide range of challenges and obstacles that communities might face in
trying to build a new fiber network."
Jeff: So how far would $16 billion
take you in building this fiber?
Leo: Oh, I don't know it's a good
question.
Gina: That was a good
question.
Leo: Google has more than $60
billion in cash.
Jeff: What did Verizon invest in FiOS?
Leo: I was told $5,000 per
subscriber. So many hundreds of millions of dollars. Let me see if we can find a number.
Jeff: $23 billion.
Leo: Oh! Hello!
Jeff: So you are in the spiting
range.
Leo: Remember Google makes money
in a lot of ways from this. Lately there's been a great push and I've been kind
of run over the cause for defending Google for both on TWIT this week, on
'Security Now.' There is this growing anti-Google, Google is evil
movement. I think these people are going to say, 'yeah. Google just wants
to become your ISP's so they can know more and more and more.'
Gina: They can get your end to ends
internet experience right.
Jeff: The New York Times story
about Google+. They are presuming venal motives with no evidence.
Leo: Right. I worry, I really fear that this is becoming a drum beat that's going to be very strong.
Gina: Yeah it feels like that's one
of Google's biggest challenges going forwards, it's not the technology, it's the people.
Jeff: I think you're right Gina and
I don't think they know it fully.
Gina: No. Unfortunately they don't.
They are really good at a lot of things but...I don't know what they can do to
fix the creepy problem. The feeling of I am being watched. But every new
product it feels like that's the...
Leo: Jeff, in the book about Amazon, Brad is writing about Jeff Bezos talks
about, at the very end of the book he talks about a book Jeff Bezos made. He
sent out a memo amazon.love. The list he made is
attributes of companies that are loved versus attributes of companies that are
hated or feared. He actually included google, at the time of the writing, in
the companies that are loved and Microsoft in the companies that are hated and
feared.
Jeff: Yes, I think that is generally still accurate for.
Leo: But it is shifting
Jeff: Media has certainly shifted certain hostility here and in Europe
Leo: He was really, It was really interesting to read this, because here is a
guy that is very analytical, and very thoughtful about this stuff. Trying to
figure out, it is just like trying to figure out what makes something go viral.
What makes a company loved versus a company that is not loved? Is it.
Gina: Can I tell you. No go ahead Leo
Leo: No please
Gina: I was going to say, do people care enough about Microsoft to fear them.
I think in order to love or fear anything you have to not be indifferent. I
think if there is indifference
Leo: In the memo, Bezos says, he said why do not Microsoft
hundreds of millions of users support Microsoft against attacks, they do not. They
don't have any, there is a few, and I know this because we hear from them all
the time, Microsoft fan boys, but in general Microsoft users base is
indifferent to Microsoft.
Gina: That has not always been the case. People used to line up for the new
version of windows, the Microsoft discussion were heated. I think that google
is moving toward, maybe shifting company you loved to a company that maybe you fear.
Amazon is a company you love, because they bring you the things you need to
your door, right that is pretty straight forward and googles products. Are amazing, and I am to a point where I could
not live without them. Even for me who is very informed,
I think like hmmm. Could I imagine could I go google free? I do not' know that
I could. Jeff: I am in the same position. I am completely apple
free except for Skype. The only reason I am still on Microsoft or apple product
is you.
Leo: Don't look at me. Because those products work.
Jeff: If you whining about hang-ups
Leo: Those work. Here is from the book, here is what Bezos wrote, he talked
about cool and not cool. That some things are cool, customers consider cool, apple,
whole foods, Costco, Nike, and google. Others get piled on rather than defended
if things go badly; think Microsoft, Goldman Saks, Exxon mobile and Walmart. He
says the things that are cool, young risk taking, winning, polite, defeating
bigger unsympathetic guys, inventing, explorers, these things are all what
google is right now right. Empowering others, leadership, convictions, straight
forwardness, that is something google could do, I think they do very well, but
continue to do. He says pandering to the crowd is not cool, hypocraciy is not cool, Authenticity is cool, and thinking big is cooling, unexpected cool.
Jeff: Trust is cool
Leo: Trust is really going to be the big one for google. There is no trust on
this list, which there should be.
Gina: Humanity is the work that comes to mind for me and i guess that tells me authenticity. Some products in glass comes to mind, in
particular, there is a sense that google a cold bot, who is very efficient and very
good at what it does right, but there is I think humanity is the attribute.
Jeff: Your right Gina I think if you break down humanity, in a sense the
problem for google is that they have given you all this great free stuff, and
then we say now what are you doing for us.
Gina: Right and they want to drive your car with you.
Jeff: Incredible, Incredible free services, maps and mail and all this stuff
it's unbelievable, for free, what have you done for me lately. So you need some
human connection there I think.
Gina: Why are you giving me this free? I am from Brooklyn, you want something,
you are giving me something, and so I am thinking you need something from me in
return. What is the catch?
Leo: What is the catch?
Gina: Yes, exactly what is the catch? Also, you know they want to drive our cars,
they want to get everybody online, they want everyone online, and they want to
put a screen in front of your face. I think the perception about those things,
even though they are highly efficient, I am totally sold on a self-driving car
but it feels, I think people feel like, we are taking humans out of life.
Leo: That is what google needs to do more than anything else I think is
communicate, why they want, what's the deal. Why do you want this, what are you
doing with it, communicate, and be honest tell me what it is.
Jeff: Let's remember a conversation’s we had on this show back about a year
ago, Where we all said we trust google, we kind of don't trust Facebook. Now
right Facebook just spent 16 billion dollars to buy users, I have not heard yet,
uh-oh what is Facebook up to. I'm not hearing that yet and I don't know why.
Leo: Oh I don't know about that. I think about that a lot.
Jeff: I know I do, but not right today with this announcement, and by the way
I just put it up on rundownzucks announcement is up.
Gina: You can act out of Facebook and I know that is not true for everybody
but for us.
Jeff: The argument a year ago was you couldn't. The argument a year ago was
that you could opt out of every google service you could use Bing, you could
use Hotmail, you could use all these other services, but if your friends were
on Facebook, you could not opt out of Facebook. What has changed is that all
your friends are not of Facebook anymore, they are everywhere.
Gina: That's true, I guess for me, I can dip into Facebook once a week or once
every couple of weeks and catch up with who I want to and come out of.
Leo: You do not depend on it. Right
Gina: Google is a part of the fabric of every single interaction I have on the
web, on every web page, google analytics, every google product, Gmail, I’ve
opted into. I realize I could run my own imaps server
or email server sure, I went for the convenience over kind of rolling up my
sleeves and doing it myself.
Jeff: What I hear you say is you depend upon google.
Gina: Yes, very much like a utility.
Jeff: That vulnerability, so there is a vulnerability there that they need to
understand and deal with. They need to reassure you, they need to go over the
top with reassuring you because you are so dependent
on them as am I.
Gina: Yes, That whole thing you could use Bing, you could just incognito window,
I do not know, it kind of rings hallow to me at this point. I guess I could use
Bing, but I have been using duck go, for quite some time. I often switch over
to google.
Jeff: I have to use Gmail, I have to use google maps and ways, and I could not
use alternatives to those things.
Gina: Right
Jeff: I am on drive
Gina: Yeah, I have become dependent on drive.
Jeff: I would rather be on Android then IOS. I certainly am not going to Blackberry. Gina: I could pure Android aosp, like could run
Android without the play store and everything else, but it would be just a completely
different thing.
Jeff: Right, I for one welcome my new master
Leo: I feel like in a way, I just want to relax and let it go, let google.
Gina: Let It, We got a show title right there.
Leo: Just take me google.
Gina: Beam me to your island
Leo: I just, I think a lot of people rightly, especially in the last week,
have accused me of not paying attention to the threat posed by google. What O'Mallick talked about on Sunday on TWIT, maybe now they
are harmless but at what point does it switch and there is nothing you can do.
Jeff: You can say that about
Leo: He says they are too big, no company should be allowed to be that big.
Jeff: I just hate that argument, I just despise that argument. Then fine show
me the statues that say big enough, too big.
Leo: Maybe he is not statutory, I think, he says with power, absolute power corrupt,
power corrupts. The bigger a company gets, the more powerful it gets. Inevitably
it will get corrupted. There is just a natural size that a company should not
go beyond. There is no statutory, there is not a law, there might be a law of nature.
Jeff: (Inaudible) it is not size alone.
Leo: Can a company not be too big?
Jeff: What are we going to do, tell people you cannot do maps, sorry you cannot
do maps anymore. Well if you cannot do maps then.
Leo: I am not saying the government needs to come in and say google is too big.
Users could very reasonable say I am not sure I want to really continue to
support this company because they have gotten to be a behemoth and they have too
much of my information.
Jeff: The answer to it even for the users sake, I don't think is size, do
they stop doing some functions, it doesn't work as well, I want maps to tie to
my nest, to tie to my mail, to tie to my google.
Leo: I think that nest is the one that put people over the top, Oddly enough.
Goggle now knows when I am home.
Jeff: I think it goes, and I want that.
Gina: They know that anyways because your android phone has your location.
Jeff: I think that Google’s you know I was there on Friday, and every time I
am there I come away even more enthusiastic because they are so freaking smart.
Some would say that is the problem they are to smart, they are too big and too smart.
Leo: They are too big to smart.
Jeff: No
Leo: Your starting to sound like Ann Rand and this is objectivism, hey they
are successful they are big let them run the world because they are good at it.
Jeff: The same thing could be said about Americans
Leo: That is true
Jeff: We have been blowing that now haven't we?
Leo: Let me read Mark Zuckerberg's statement, we are going to take a break,
we have a lot more coming up including the google change law coming up. Boy as
always on this show we get in these great conversations, this has become the philosophic
heart of the twit network. I like it, it really is.
Jeff: The thumb sucker, what this week in thumbs.
Leo: I think we talk about big stories here. Mark Zuckerberg, by the way, I
would love to be able to write a post on Facebook and thirty minutes later have
98, 000 likes, no I am sorry 95. Well maybe not, he does have.
Gina: Every one of his words is analyzed
Leo: He does have 25 million followers. I am excited to announce we have
agreed to acquire what's app and there entire team will be joining us at Facebook.
They will stay the team, the product roadmap will remain unchanged, this team
will stay in Mountain View, and What App will continue to operate independently
within Facebook. Facebook messenger will continue, Facebook messenger he says,
is widely used for chatting with your Facebook friends, what’s app for
communicating with all your contacts and small groups of people. Since what’s
App and Messenger serve such different and important uses we will continue
investing in both and making them each great products for everyone. Credible?
Jeff: That makes less sense to me, if you are not going to integrate the two
Leo: What do you get, they did that with Instagram
Jeff: You spend that much money you can do with it whatever you want, it's
your
Leo: They did that with Instagram. What you are saying is we are not going to
play on the synergy; we are just going to run it.
Gina: Eventually they are going to integrate it.
Leo: Eventually
Gina: Eventually, when everyone's memory is short, in a few years down the
road they will start integrate it.
Leo: He says currently 1 million currently a day sign up to use what’s app, I
bet today 2 million might signed up. I just downloaded it again, I had removed it.
Jeff: Unfortunately there is no Davos party so I am not getting anything new
on it.
Leo: The process by the way for signing up for it, let's run through it
really quick, signing up for What's app is really simple, you download it, you'll
give it your phone number, which i will do off the air,
not that it really matter, all the people that hate me already have my number,
and then, I don't even remember my number so I think that is right, and then it
will send you a text message to verify. Apparently What's app gets permission
to read your text messages much like Facebook does and will automatically
detect the sms coming in and read it and say got it.
Gina: I have not approved that update by the way Leo
Leo: Did you really
Gina: I had not, after the show I had went and saw it was one of the ones that
needed permission. Anyways carry on
Jeff: Carry On
Leo: Might mention that, this is poor timing, there are four according to
panda labs, four android apps that are malware, what they do is sign you up for
paid sms services, one of them for instance is how to
lose weight, you know on your belly or something. It signs you up for an sms service gives you a quick ok, and you say ok, these are
very expensive sms services and the reason it can
instantly validate you is it can go into the what's app listing, the public
what's app listing, which has your phone number, and it can do that apparently
by looking at your What's App information. So what’s App is actually a security
hole
Jeff: I do not find you, Leo Laporte on my what’s App
Leo: I am signing up right now.
Jeff: Oh is that it, I do not find Gina Trapani on here either.
Gina: I have been there.
Leo: You have been there; it depends on what phone number of mine you have.
Gina: That was several phones ago
Jeff: I never call you.
Leo: Let me do a different phone number, now here is a question can I use my
google voice number?
Jeff: (Inaudible)
Gina: I think it has to be your native number
Leo: I think so.
Jeff: Gina if I want to talk to you, I just search for you by your name; I
have to know your phone number?
Leo: Here is Chad he is a young person let us find out what he does.
Chad: You can use your google voice number
Leo: Oh it did it
Chad: It will send you a text, sometimes do not automatically notice the text,
it will give you a call and you will have to write down this six characters
Leo : so that worked, So I gave it my google voice, so now it
says please provide your name and an optional photo, it knows my name of course.
Chad: Your already on here Leo under some other number, it says at the moment
that your sleeping.
Leo: I know because you can also do a status update, so let me do a quick what’s
App picture. There we go, oh wrong way, whoops, I am a moron a moron and a half.
Chad: You hit home instead of take.
Leo: Lets' do that again, how do I take a picture? You always want it to be
clever and creative.
Gina: Really show off your best attributes.
Leo: Really show off your best side. That is it next, and now it is going to
go you get a free year of service and after that it is.99/year. You know it does
not really ask you for anything, it goes out there and gets everything out of
your phonebook and fires away. It is very easy I think it is the reason a
million people a year sign up for this thing. Let us take a break and when we
come back the google change logger brought to you by Sutter stock images. Lisa
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the drums it’s time for the goggle change log. Sorry Sorry Sorry Here is Gina Triapani.
Gina: If your big google sheet's user, not as in bed sheets but spreadsheets.
Jeff: Those are 600 thread count sheets they know how you’re sleeping.
Leo: Egyptian cotton
Gina: They know how you’re sleeping. You'll notice a link on the bottom right
of your current spreadsheets, google sheets and google drive, that says try the
new google sheets and update to the app. Which you have opt to into your
settings, lets you edit spreadsheets while offline, which is very nice, scrolls
and loads faster which is nice. Has other new feature for spreadsheets users
like new filter views, easier to use formulas, advanced conditional formatting.
You can't convert existing spreadsheets to the new version, which by the way, I
tried to do for the TWIGS rundown today but failed. You can opt into the new
sheets for any new sheets you make going forward
Leo: Cool!
Gina: Doesn't look very different, just acts different, just scrolls better,
is faster and works offline, which is kind of nice. The google maps, which I
had forgotten was new, because I had been trying it, using it for a long time
now. This is the new google maps that google announced that the io developer conference. That has
been in preview mode this whole time. Well that is coming out of preview, you
had been able to switch back and forth from classic to the new mode. The new
mode is now becoming the default. It will be the default pc experience going
forward. Finally, I haven't actually gotten this on my phone yet, but goggle
has added detailed transit schedules to the google search app on android, so if
you have the update and you tap the microphone on your google search app and
you say from New York City to Boston by train, for example, google will display
detailed information for schedules and fares for the requested destination and
countdown timer that will show you how long until the next train or bus.
Leo: That's awesome
Gina: Kind of nice. If a train gets delayed, there's is a maintainer issue or
accident you will see status alert in the results. Much like google maps alerts
you if there is a faster route while you’re on route. This feature I think is
limited to users in the US, and like I said I tried it on my phone, but I
haven't gotten the update yet. I tried from New York City to Boston by train
but didn't get it. Just seeing goggle search getting a little smarter, it's
must be rolling out little by little. That's all I got. Pretty
short change log today.
Leo: Now the drums
Jeff: Alright Leo, my friend Josh Benton on twitter, I saw there is already a
What's App commercial,it 's
in the rundown. I put it in the chat.
Leo: Is this real
Gina: Uh oh
Leo: (Music) (sound effects commercial) that’s still a great commercial.
(Sound Effects)That's not the original one, I haven't
seen that one, that's good.
Jeff: Right above that in the chat, is (Name) description of why it's worth as
much money, very good post, from
Leo: Bernard gets the subway
Leo: Jim Gets from Sequoia. This company has only 32 engineers.
Leo: That’s because really, Gina am I wrong this is a trivial application.
Gina: This is not about the technology
Leo: Not about the technology
Gina: This is not a difficult, this application
certainly has some serious scaling issues
Leo: That's not trivial your right
Jeff: Yes but 9 months ago it had 200 million users and now it has 450 million
Leo: It's doubled
Jeff: 72%
Leo: The network engineers are good. I wonder though what does it run on,
does it run on amazon services? Maybe it's not, maybe they are not.
Gina: That's interesting
Leo: It's built in Erlang
Gina: Erlang yikes
Leo: That's why only 32 engineers, no one understand Erlang.
Jeff: They are all from Eralnina
Gina: Everybody that know Erlang.
Leo: That is Erlang is, do you know anything about Erlang
Gina: I don't
Leo: I think it is a functional language, it's very
popular among a certain group of nerds.
Gina: Yes, it's got that kind of a cult
Leo: It's a general purpose concurrent garbage collected programming language
and runtime system, According to Wikipedia. Designed originally, I did not know
this, by Ericson. This is one of the reasons it scales is it is distributed and
supports hot swapping. This is probably the perfect language for this
particular application. Erlang is a reference to a
Danish mathematician and engineer that no one has ever heard of. So there you
go.
Gina: The language doesn't matter either, I am highly disappointed.
Leo: It helps with scaling.
Gina: For sure, sure.
Leo: They have 99.9% uptime, and are another reason why users love them is
they just don't go down. 50 billion that's with a B, messages a day across 7
platforms, that sounds like the are perhaps, rack
space, amazon, and rasher
Gina: Seven platforms, that means host
Leo: Oh that means seven host platforms. Ok
Jeff: No, no Clients
Gina: Like, Android, Windows, yeah, yeah, android ios
Leo: What's App does not collect personal information that may change. Registration is authenticated
with phone number, once delivered messages are deleted from what’s
App's servers. Wow, they have grown to dislike there time at Yahoo. That
is why they hate ad's so much, they didn't like targeted ad', that is why they
charged a buck.
Gina: It cost more than a buck to run that, per user to run that server.
Leo: A buck for a year
Gina: Initially
Jeff: Do they have a business model, it's like utube,
and they don't even have a business model
Leo: So Yan grew up in Russia, under the soviets, he arrived in the US as a 16-year-old
immigrant living on food stamps. With the extra, wanting to stay in touch with
his family in Russia and the Ukraine, his mentor was Brian at Yahoo and that is
when he began to build what’s App.
Gina: That's a good story.
Leo: Yeah I am really curious what the network platform is. God, Sequoia has
got to be happy. An 8 million dollar investment, you guys work for Sequoia? They
are nodding, party at Sequoia tonight baby.
Jeff: One what’s app, supports 14 million active users a ratio unheard of in
the industry, says Sequoia's tweet.
Gina: Now that's incredible
Leo: They were so anxious to shun the spotlight there is not even a sign
outside their offices in Mountain View.
Jeff: But the secret Japanese restaurant that is there
Leo: Yeah, Wow, you know having used What's App for a long time and I don't
really having a compelling use case, and that is probably why I don't use it,
it is easy, straight forward, it just works, it's reliable. Do you use it, Chad,
on a regular basis.
Chad: No not on a regular basis but it is one of those products that every
once in a while you find its niche, for a weekend or a convention or something
like that.
Leo: Yeah Like Davos, Every time I am at Davos I use what’s app.
Jeff: I emailed my son Jake, and I said do you use it much. I didn't email
him, I what’s aped him.
Leo: Ahh
Jeff: And I said did you use it much, he said not much, just for group
messages, defiantly not worth 16 Instagram’s.
Leo: Now here is this. You'll like this Gina, on there What'sApp.com/opensource
page they contribute back into their erlang project,
which is open source. Free bsd, jq grid which is Ajax java script control. Lib phone
number, that is googles common java c plus plus and
java script library for phone numbers.
Gina: They probably have the most phone numbers of anybody.
Leo: Light open ID, a php 5 library for open id
authentication, oh they use light, i don't know how
you would say this, Light ttpd, that's the web server
they use. That's a very popular light web server, php
Jeff: How much cast does twitter have?
Leo: Oh no, I doubt it, even with their very successful ipo i doubt they have 16 billion to throw around.
Gina: It doesn't seem like it would be the right fit for twitter
Leo: By the way if you read Zucks post, the
implications was a lot of people were reporting what’s app. He say's and I
can't remember his exact words.
Jeff: What's app had every option in the world and we are thrilled that they
choose to work with us.
Leo: He did note, he says, Yan and I were friends, certainly doesn’t' hurt.
Jeff: Maybe they walked up the mountain.
Leo: All this someday will be you’re, except that part there that's Steve
Jobs, and that part over there that's Eric's, but everything else is yours my
son. Google tracker this is put together by Ron Amadeo at RS technical, this is a useful thing, all the projects we know google is
working on this year.
Jeff: A lot of pages.
Gina: I love Ron and I love r's but I don't love this article that is six
pages.
Leo: It could just be a list.
Gina: It could just be a list.
Leo: I'm just going to tell you if you really love R's you could just
subscribe. Which I am, unfortunately it uses flash to show the subscribers link,
which I don't have because flash is out of date on this machine. Then you can
get in all on one page or in PDF which I will do. I couldn't figure out why
should I give (..) 60 bucks a year, R's is so good
Gina: R's is good
Leo: It is worth supporting. The Q is still in this list by the way. That is
because the Q might have given away to a console set top box we have been hearing
rumors about that. This could be a crib sheet for a google ad. Why don't I make
a bingo sheet of all this and when we go to google IO
Gina: Yeah,
Leo: Get those stampers
Gina: Our predictions or just all the possible categories they could hit on
Leo: Exactly, God there is so much stuff, Google says how not to be a glass
hole, have you read this Jeff?
Jeff: Yes and when I was with this really wonderful woman really charming,
Anna Richardson who does comm's with them, who sat at
lunch with us to make sure we didn't punch each other last week told me that
this was coming out. They went to people, explorers and discussed this, very
smart use, I argued with them that they should have
done the same thing about the frames. They should use google plus as an example
how a company should reach out and interact. So they went to google plus and
they went to the explorers there and they discussed. Let's start talking about
the norms here, and this does go to this trust question here in a way. Google
should take a lead role in these kind of trust issues Say hello don't be an idiot even though I
think it's very close to insulting us, to say I know I don't into the bathroom,
and take a picture of your junk.
Leo: You might wear it though, a lot of people do, I would say put it up on
your head.
Jeff: Then I am going to miss the urinal because I have bad sight Leo.
Leo: It's your glasses, see we can't do that anymore
Jeff: That's the point, I'm going to cross-streams and that would be very bad.
Leo: That's not bad it's called sword fighting. Gina does not want to know anymore. No
Gina: I am pressing the mute.
Leo: You’re just jealous
Jeff: You have envy Gina admit it.
Gina: I have envy of the higher salaries, and testosterone fueled strength.
Leo: That's reasonable you should have that.
Jeff: I apologize, my fault
Gina: No it's fine
Leo: what were we talking about? I am
completely
Jeff: We were talking about
Leo: Glass holes, let's show a video, there is a
video
Jeff: Video of Glass holes so anyway
Gina: I never I thought I would see the word glass holes on an official glass
Leo: I didn't think they acknowledged the existence of the word
Gina: Kudos to them for claiming the word
Jeff: They are saying don't use this word, don't be a glass hole.
Leo: They are saying you can use this word and you deserve to be called a glass
hole if you do these things.
Gina: Although they did use the word creepy Jeff, don't be creepy
Jeff: I think they are trying to say don't be creepy, but that is fine
Gina: Yeah they are saying don't be creepy
Jeff: It's ok because they defined creepy, they said this is creepy and don't
be it.
Leo: Do you not like the word creepy?
Jeff: I hate it when it is just used as a generic, oh that's creepy and people
are not defining it as to what it is.
Leo: Right
Jeff: Right, Oh google know where you go to work every day, that's creepy, no
it's not you told them and you get directions from them.
Leo: I can't define creepy, but I know it when I see it.
Jeff: No not good enough with that bud.
Leo: No
Jeff: Because people are starting to try and regulate and legislate to this amorphous
notion of creepy
Leo: Right
Jeff: It's taken Europe where, Google is creepy, Well what the hell does that mean.
Leo: Right
Jeff: Now speaking of now so well, Maybe you will find this creepy, also
almost there is Anna from Glass said that marriage proposals via google glass
Leo: That's not creepy that's sweet.
Jeff: Take a look at, some people might find it creepy, very sweet
Leo: Let me pull up the link here, here we go, and it’s on uTube, so glass lets you record video. You would have to
save it at a time, and presumably people would know that you were. Well let's see, let's watch, let's see. Is there
audio? You know what you’re going to
have to do it Chad because I have issues. Wait a minute let me see if I can fix that. Here I think I can, let’s try it,let me try it and we will do it again, now you’re
getting it now, let me rewind it so we get.(Movie)(laughing)Wait a minute I am
going to pause this, this only works, no I guess he, ok sometimes
Jeff: both have glass, He can have glass
Leo: Some of these cases the bride has to be his glass
Jeff: If they both have glass they should marry cause they are not going to find cause they aren't going to find a couple that weird
on earth.
Leo: The first couple had orange glass which really means they belong
together
Jeff: They have to marry each other, it's a law.
Leo: So here is a guy wearing glass, I, this is not creepy but kind of dorky,
proposing in a restaurant. (Movie)
Jeff: This is the best one
Leo: They are cutting out the best parts
Jeff: They are getting to it
Leo: This is cute actually. Before we started dating that's
kind of creepy. How do you know
that, from google?(Movie) He is on his knees now. It
isn't a maker’s space now, what is that?
Gina: Picking up there glass
Leo: Oh they were getting there glass
Jeff: They were getting there glass
Leo: He said can I record
Chad: They may not of even owned glass, they may have
just been trying it on.
Jeff: They should now.
Leo: Yeah
Jeff: If anyone should get it for free, those two people should get it for
free
Leo: That's pretty cool
Gina: Yeah
Leo: It would have been better if the dog were wearing glass. Do they have
glass for dogs yet, I would get that.
Gina: I am kind of excited to get out and Eda wearing a glass.
Leo: What? Baby glass
Gina: Kind of fun to see the world from like 3 feet.
Jeff: There is a kick-starter project right now, I
forget the name of it
Leo: Ah it works, dog fights
Jeff: Somebody emailed it to me, it works, there is a kick starter project you
use, what are they called, what are the cameras call that are used
Leo: Go Pros
Gina: Go Pros
Jeff: so a bunch of kids, Go Pros, so you get to see the playground and their
lives from their perspective.
Leo: Oh that's neat
Jeff: Here is the problem, when I did that I was in the google strategy group,
if i ever wanted any job in the world it was to be in
the google strategy group. So I am talking to the whole strategy group at
google, and I forgot something like that a minute ago, and I said to them all
who were all very young, don't get old, and one of the guys without missing a
beat said we are working on that.
Gina: Wow
Leo: Now I am interested. I would all
of my, everything I got to the google fortune, overlords, if they just extend
my life
Jeff: It was a great timing
Gina: That's a great moment
Leo: There are a lot of go pro proposals by the way. Steve Pearlman, we know the name, Creator of
Web TV. Right and Moxi, he has done a lot of
interesting things. He has been working on a wireless broadband technology
called pcell. He is the guy that did online and then sold it.
Jeff: Yes, What was it, Anderson was signing his praises.
Leo: Brilliant guy, Pcell will enable according to Pearlman, full speed wireless
broadband to every mobile device regardless of how many users are using the
same spectrum. The startup is Artemis Networks, they have apparently been working a long time on
this. Pcell will enable mobile data users to enjoy faster internet with no congestion, dead
zones, weak signals. I wonder if it's a spread spectrum. He says you will feel like you’re on fiber, it's compatible with LTE.
Jeff: The... from the New Your Times today was that companies can't put cells
to close together because they conflict and what this technology is make that
an advantage. It passes it off in
smarter ways and you don't have to change your phone, you will still be able to
use your same phone.
Leo: Because it's on LTE
Jeff: Right
Leo: Here is Steve in his lab there, there is six
computers all streaming high def. video at the same time, in the same space, on
a signal cell.
Steve: We are
going to show you that by using actually lab radios, instead of using a LTE radio
that’s a commercial radio.
Leo: To bad his video is not streaming, see I need Pcell,
it's frozen, and I can't play it back.
Steve: Turn
off certain things built into LTE, like for example error correction, so if
there are any imperfections you will see them. Cause we want to show you them.
Alright, you can see each of these PC's back here
Leo: Alright, you know what, you are going to have
to watch this yourself because I can't play it.
Jeff: Considering the source, Anderson on Twitter, called him one of the
greatest Silicon Valley tech geniuses of all time.
Leo: This is his bid, if he can do this, apparently in his lab he shown iPhone
playing back 4k ultra hd versions of house of cards.
They are putting pcell transmitters on 350 rooftops
in San Francisco and now of course they have to sign up other folks. I guess if it works, it won't have any
trouble doing that. Oh it works on your computer, I
get like 800-year-old Mac Book here. He
is talking plainly. I am going to bring
in my pixel. Dennis Woodside the CEO of
Motorola has moved on to Drop Box. He was a googler for a longtime and they assigned him to Motorola mobility when they bought the
company. It's the first time they have
had a CEO at Drop Box. Peter Magnusson former engineering director at google is
now VP of engineering at Snap Chat, probably expecting a big exit anytime now. Snap
Chat turned down 3 billion, maybe they were holding out for 16. Alright we are
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start their own business. Let’s get Gina's tip of the week.
Gina: Really cool google search feature which made a brief appearance last
year and went away is back. It's the google timer.
Leo: I used that the other day.
Gina: Yeah, I'll admit I 'm a bit of a timer crazy person. Particularly
when I need to work on something and procrastinating. I'll set a timer
for 30 minutes and just make myself work on it.
Jeff: Oh you are obnoxious, I love you but you are obnoxious. Oh geez
Gina: Oh I know I am. I mean, honestly too, I have been trying to estimate how
many hours, a particular engineering task would take, are taking of think ups
and try to time myself. To see how close my estimates are. I know, I know, I have a whole sheet. But this whole timer feature is back. In
order to set a timer in the search box, you say set a timer for 30 seconds and
you will see in the one box a giant timer come up and live count down. Let's try it out.
Leo: This is so cool
Gina: You can set a timer for an hour and a half, set for 30 seconds, timer.
Yeah there you go. So you have a 30-second
timer counting down there. You can full screen it, there is that button on the right there. If you go full screen it's just a
giant timer which is actually really useful if you are doing presentations.
Jeff: I could use this for my students
Gina: Yeah you could use this for your students. In fact google don't they the timer up on the wall in certain meetings, in certain big meetings where
people are getting up and doing short presentations.
Leo: They did it at IO before the start of IO remember.
Gina: There you go the timer just went off.
Leo: Files done
Gina: Yep and it defaults to five minutes so if you just.(Laughing)
Gina: Make it stop
Jeff: Make it stop, I am going to wake up from this
whole dream
Leo: You know what the full screen has no ok button or maybe it did.
Gina: Ok there you go
Leo: That was weird, because I couldn't stop it, I didn't see it, maybe I
just didn't see it.
Gina: Full screen timer. So it defaults to five minutes, so if you do set a
timer it will be five minutes. You don't have to be as obnoxious as me, you can use it actually for presentations or for your
students Jeff.
Leo: That's cool, does it work on mobile too? Ok google now set a timer for 30 seconds. See
I think the problem is if I use google now it will do it with the alarm
application.
Gina: It sends it over to the alarm app
Leo: That's no good
Gina: Yeah
Leo: Ok google now set a timer for 30 seconds yeah it just sets an alarm and
that's no good. Whatever your default alarm app is.
Gina: It's sends it off to the alarm app
Leo: Ok it's going to go off in a second. What else, is that it?
Gina: That 's it
Leo: Now ladies and gentlemen we give you a number
Jeff: A number this week, by the way Jake said to me that in What's App it's
mainly international, Rafad Alee, the founder of Skifft and paid content said that every one of his relatives
in India is on What's App and this is where it is big. But I will use a different number. A new study from Ohio Wright state
university, finds that one of every thirteen tweets includes, in English, a
curse word. Most of them of course mine
Leo: And the rest of them have Justin Bieber in them
Jeff: Yes, Users swear the most on Monday's, Tuesday's and Wednesday's. Men
swear more than women though we, everyone swears more around there own gender,
and f-bombs are far and away Twitter’s curse word of choice.
Leo: That's not a curse word that's
Gina: We have to build (inaudible)
Jeff: You do, You do, a chart of naughty language
usage exists, it's a Washington post clip that's on their… Gina, I think you
have to, your usual cheery, yay good for you.
Leo: F, Yeah.
Jeff: Wash your laptop out with soap young man!
Leo: It's so funny that they swear more on Monday and Wednesday.
Jeff: I guess you can't show the chart
Leo: No because it has the words, go ahead and show it, you could show it, if
you have children cover their eyes right now
Jeff: No, no not that chart Chad, there is a link on there, Chad,
that says code, right there.
Leo: Everybody close your eyes
Jeff: F word is more than double the S word, which is about equal the A word,
which a little over the B word, which is a little over the N word. Now they
include hell as a bad word. I would not.
Leo: Hell beats Hoar
Jeff: I think that Dick Costello would not like the fact that his name is
considered a curse word
Leo: Dick Costello is in there?
Jeff: Dick Costello is a curse yes, you Costello you
Leo: You Costello
Jeff: What's this
Leo: That's a good list
Jeff: What's PUTA
LEO: PUTA, that means, you don't speak Spanish
Jeff: No, dam
Leo: A woman of the evening or man of the evening.
Gina: Tomato you would say in Italian
Leo: A tomato
Gina: Tomato
Leo: They say it in English
Gina: Well yeah
Leo: (inaudible)
Gina: I guess
Leo: Hey Pamadaro, quazi quazi pamadaro. Anyway that's a
good number
Jeff: That's my number that one wins
Leo: Excellent number, so I just got this in the mail. I got a couple of
things to show you. A lot of people have
been asking me about republic wireless. This is an interesting play, they offer
Moto-X phones, it's the only phone they offer, it's a
pretty good phone if you ask me. What they have done is integrated Wi-Fi
calling into the phone app in such a way that when you’re in a Wi-Fi area it
will make a Wi-Fi call, and it will use cell if you are outside the Wi-Fi area,
and by doing so they have very affordable plans. If you don't need the cell coverage at all,
which they get from sprint by the way, and the phone, I should check, they go
up and down, but sometimes it's as little as free. They have a ten dollar a
monthly plan that includes unlimited talk and text but no data, for twenty-five
bucks a month you get unlimited 3g data, for forty bucks a month you get
unlimited 4g data and you always get unlimited talk and text. So this is a really interesting idea for
affordable plans. Now I just got this today so I haven’t had a chance to use it
but it is a stock Moto-X, they only have black and white. I think this is a
really interesting idea, I would sure like to see this
take off, this do well. Right now two hundred dollars, I think this is unlocked
299.00 unlocked. So, I shall let you know but an interesting play. I am also
going to be reviewing a Sony Experian android phone for T-Mobile only, it has a 20-mega pixel camera with Sony processing. It's the Experian.
Jeff: Is it the one that has the, the play addition
Leo: No that would be nice, but I shall give you a review. It does have the Sony interface, which is not
a bad, it's a pretty straightforward interface. My app of the week is what’s
App. Have you heard of it? We thank you
everybody for joining us this week Gina Tripani lifehacker.com and also thinkup.com, let me just go to Leo Laporte,
I love thinkup, thinkup does a statistical analysis on your twitter and Facebook feed and tells you
what you’re thinking.
Jeff: I checked mine before the show and next week it will tell me how many
times I used the F work I am sure
Leo: Eighty-four
Gina: I will probably be talking about it in slack with my co-workers
Leo: Ninety-four people retweeted me today that's a
new 7-day record. Then I am apparently on a list called the useful Sword,
that's good.
Gina: You know where our code is open source but we are also trying to open
source our business model and the way the company works, so today on our blog
my co-founder and CEO posted our investor update, we send an update to our
investors every month and so we just were like our users are our investors, particularly
our cloud... backers. So we posted the full everything, it kind of made me
uncomfortable, I thought this would make Jeff proud, there is really nothing to
private here. The full
Monte everything that has gone well and everything that hasn't gone so well, everything
that we are working on.
Jeff: good for you.
Gina: So if you are interested in what a tiny little company in New York City
everyday looks like you can check out the post and we are working on watching
sign up soon.
Leo: thinkup soon for everyone. Thinkup.com by the
way I am currently 1,065 followers away from half a million. So that will be
nice.
Gina: Wow, very nice
Leo: I love round numbers, I love thinkup, really nice
Gina: I am so glad to hear that, it's rare insight, I’m
glad they gave you the hey you have an upcoming milestone.
Leo: You have a big milestone coming think up. Everybody should take a look
at it and soon you will be able to get it. Thinkup.com Jeff Jarvis's latest
book is public parts, life in public and why it's a good thing, he also lives
that life in public at BuzzMachine.com, teaches journalism at the City
University of New York and is always a welcome voice here on This Week In
Google. Thanks to both of you for a great show. We will see Gina back again next week on Tuesday for all about Android p.m.
PT. p.m. ET.
Gina: All About Android.
Leo: Thanks everybody and we will see you next week on This Week in Google!
