This Week in Google 239 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It's time for TWIG 'This Week in Google'. Kevin Marks joins Jeff and Gina. We are going to talk about the latest news from the Google verse. Samsung spent a lot of money, did they get their money's worth? We'll talk about the Oscars selfie and a whole lot more. It's all coming up next on TWIG. 

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Leo: This is TWIG 'This Week in Google'  Episode 239. Recorded March 5th, 2014

He Pinched My Pixel

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It's time for TWIG, 'This Week in Google', in which we talk about anything we damn well want. Somebody said we should just rename it TWIT 2. The crows are cawing. I hope it's not a crow with three eyes, it's Kevin Marks out in his garden once again. Hey Kevin, good to have you!

Kevin Marks: Hi there, very nice to see you again.

Leo: Our honorary regular. He's of the irregulars. The TWIG irregulars! Jeff Jarvis is also here. You are in Brussels.

Jeff Jarvis: Brussels. I flew in this morning, spoke this afternoon; I fly back tomorrow. 

Leo: Is this where the sprouts come from?

Jeff: No, I think that comes from some strange nuclear reactor somewhere. They are not made in nature.

Leo: Well we know which side you fall on in the Brussels sprouts debate. 

Jeff: God cannot stand them. 

Leo: I find it funny. I love Brussels sprouts. Lisa hates them too.

Gina Trapani: I do too, I love them.

Leo: Gina you love them too?

Gina: I do. I embrace the healthy foods. I like Brussels sprouts, yes. 

Leo: Gina Trapani is in Brooklyn.

Gina: I am. 

Jeff: Still with the paneling Gina, what happened? What you don't have a...

Gina: Still in my mom's basement. Yeah we got the Internet hooked up but you know the reality of doing construction in a home with an 18 month old baby who has to nap during the day, kind of sank in. 

Leo: I love it. A blogger who is actually in her mom's basement. 

Gina: I am actually in her mom's basement. So it's going to be a couple more weeks before we are into the new place. So you can enjoy the paneling. 

Jeff: My kids got so used to the hammering that when they left, they couldn't sleep. 

Leo: Where's all the noise daddy? The noise stopped. Now the scary monsters are going to come. Well it's good to have all of you here. We were all talking about House of cards, of course. That is the geek topic of the hour, of the week, of the year. But no spoilers, we won't do that to you. You say the slightest thing and I will get hate tweets for days. People are very...I don't blame them. I wouldn't want to give away the ending of it or anything. 

Jeff: But the thing is there needs to be a statute of limitations. 

Leo: There is none. We discussed this and there is none as far as I can tell and there should be. Now it's true Detective time because the last episode of True Detective is on Sunday. And the debate rages of whether this is a crap show or a great show. And I am not sure myself. 

Jeff: I so couldn't bare McConaughey's Oscar speech that I don't care how good the show is. Like people were saying, 'Oh he's a good actor', but I just cannot bear the guy. I just can't. 

Leo: It was the strangest speech and declaring yourself your hero is very odd. But I give him a lot of slack as I just love the guy. I thought he was brilliant in Dallas Buyer's Club, deserved the Oscar and I am really liking him in True Detective. 

Jeff: Is he not on next season right? I think that was a rumor I saw. 

Leo: I don't think Woody Harrelson will be there either. 

Jeff: Oh wow.

Leo: But the real debate is, is it just a police procedural in ghost clothing or is it actually going to be something different and weird and we really won't know till the last episode, I think.

Gina: So I should be watching this?

Leo: You should watch it. It is really good in the beginning although some say slow. But dramatically interesting and the acting is just wonderful. 

Jeff: Do you watch Banshee?

Leo: No. 

Jeff: Howard Stern said he liked it and I just started watching it. 

Leo: I never heard of it. 

Jeff: Cinemax. 

Leo: Oh I don't get Cinemax. 

Jeff: Oh, I don't either but I bought it on the Play store. 

Leo: Oh alright, I have to check it out. 

Jeff: Because I need airplane watching, at least things I can download.

Leo: Yes exactly. You know I think we live in a brave new world where I think that these long form dramatic episodic television shows are Dickensian in ways. They are like Dicken's novels. 

Jeff: Yeah, they also remind me of my days as a TV critic, because I would have to watch the May series straight on through. The worst torture of my entire career was A.D.

Leo: I don't even remember it. Was it about Jesus?

Jeff: No. It was kind of horrid Rome's Caligula with no sex. it was the most incredibly boring thing on Earth. i think I watched 17 hours. 

Leo: Oh God!

Jeff: No, 24 hours. 24 hours.

Leo: I interviewed....I have sung the praises for this book, it's by a guy Brett Martin, who writes for GQ and New Yorker and vanity Fair. He's a features writer but he wrote a book about The Sopranos and you know he calls it the third golden age of television. And he says he is very grateful that he is not a television critic because for that very reason. Especially now you'd have to watch you know....Sopranos you could watch maybe one or two or maybe three episodes, however many they'd produced before the opening, but now you'd have to watch the entire House of Cards before you could review it. That would be tough.

Jeff: Yea, I would have to fight to get episodes of things and scream to publicists and I would scrape together and not have enough to review and now there is...now you can do it the way people are doing which is, 'hey I never saw Banshee, just looked at it, looks interesting, here's what I think...', blah, blah, blah, you can do that now. 

Leo: Right and buy the whole thing. 

Jeff: Yup.

Leo: So I guess we can mention the Oscars since there is a Google angle in this. Samsung paid a considerable amount of money. I think it was...

Jeff: Do we know what the business deal was? And was she paid for it or not?

Leo: Here's what I read in the Wall Street Journal and I think they probably have some good sources. First of all, Samsung bought 5 minutes of TV time on the Academy Awards. That's worth about $20 million at $1.8 million per half minute. When Ellen said, 'You know what would be fun is to do a selfie,' the ABC producers said, 'Oh.'

Gina: Right and she initiated that. 

Leo: It was her idea to do it as content.

Gina: Yeah she said she wanted to do selfies throughout. She's huge on twitter, she's very active on Twitter generally, she's very kind of connected to this so she said, 'I wan to do slefies throughout the show with celebrities' and it sounds like Samsung said, 'Oh okay.' well she used her iPhone backstage.

Leo: She or her team, we don't know who. 

Kevin: It was her assistant who had the iPhone. 

Leo: Yeah that's the question. She has a team...it was such a sad thing when I learned George Takei, Mr. Sulu, does not create his own social media entries. He is speaking at SXSW, I hope somebody asks him about that. And I would imagine that anybody as big as Ellen...in fact, her twitter handle is not Ellen Degeneres, it is The 'Ellen Show.'

Gina: Right it is definitely her writers on the show...

Leo: Her people.

Gina: Yeah, it's funny, it's good.

Leo: Her Youtube channel is one of the most watched Youtube channels. It is right up there, because people want to see clips and stuff. In any event, she wanted to do the selfie. The Journal says, the ABC producers said, 'Can you use this Galaxy Note 3...

Kevin: I can barely lift that. 

Leo: It is huge and the nice thing about it is that it is very distinctive. As soon as she lifted it up, I saw the white pleather with the stitching and the size of it, I said...rightly so, I said, 'Note 3', i knew immediately and I imagine quite a few geeks did. And apparently a Samsung representative was brought in to train her how to use it. The first selfie she shot right at the beginning was all blurry. But then you got to admit, inspired moment when she gets these great movie stars to gather...

Jeff: And the quality was good. But it was funny how she didn't...Bradley wanted to take the picture, she like, three times tried to stop him. I am thinking, does she get paid more if she takes the picture?

Leo: No.

Jeff: Is it copyright?

Leo: Believe it or not, there have been blog posts saying that because Cooper took the picture, it is his. Not hers. 

Jeff: Yeah there was some discussion about the copyright. Vivian Schiller, who is now an executive at Twitter was speculating about that on Twitter. Did you also see the saddest picture on Earth? I just put it up on the rundown chat. Liza Minnelli...

Leo: Trying to get in.

Jeff: Oh it is the saddest thing on Earth. On the rundown chat to the side. 

Leo: So she was a few rows back. Ellen was sitting on Meryl Streep's back. So this was one of those Buzzfeed GIF's. 

Jeff: Once you scroll down, there it is. She is in the blue dress.

Leo: Oh she is standing there but you can't see her because she is four foot tall. There is Lupita, the Oscar winning actress from Twelve Year's a Slave, Lupita is in the back there, her brother was in the front. He got the exposure. 

Jeff: Liza and went hugged Lupita as if she had known her for decades.

Leo: Well it is Hollywood so you know. Ever been to the Oscar's Jeff?

Jeff: Backstage yeah.

Leo: Yeah. I figured.

Jeff: I had to wear a tux.

Leo: Must be quiet the scene. 

Jeff: Well this was so many years ago my children it wasn't quiet the scene it is now. 

Leo: Oh common.

Jeff: It was fun.

Leo: Huge ratings, huge tweets. Close to 3 million re-tweets of that selfie yesterday. 

Gina: Yeah 1.8 million favorites. 

Leo: The most re-tweeted of all time. 

Gina: Yeah it blew away Barack Obama's most re-tweeted by a lot.

Leo: I wonder what Ellen Degeneres' Cloud score now is. And if anybody cares or not, I did see a heat map actually on Cloud's blog of course. Here is the impact of three million re-tweets on your Cloud score. So there is the tweet. There is the people in it. I love Jared Leto who is trying to get in there, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep.

Gina: Shame that Angelina Jolie's face is partially blocked though.

Leo; Kevin Spacey is doing the weirdest photo bomb in there. There is Lupita way in the back. Anyway her Cloud score, here is the heat map. Jeez! So this is supposedly an animated GIF. So when she does the Tweet, watch the explosion as she gets re-tweeted. It suddenly goes nuclear.

Gina: Oh that's funny the west coast took a little time to catch up there. It was live. But people are still eating dinner it is early on the west coast. 

Leo: I love Ellen. yeah.

Gina: Yeah basically whatever Ellen says, I would do. 

Leo: Yeah. I remember going and seeing her in San Francisco when she was a little known comic and had these long descriptive stories which I thought was hysterical. So yeah wow, that's quiet something. She said triumphantly, 'we broke Twitter', not realizing that's not an accomplishment everybody Twitter. So Wall Street Journal conjectured that this was more valuable than the Samsung ads on the Oscars.

Jeff: Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Leo: Was it?

Jeff: It got news coverage too, every local news station was putting it up there. The earned as they say coverage was huge. 

Gina: I think the greater value was making selfies legitimate as a cultural force. 

Leo: Oh my god, they are already. President Obama did it with Angela Merkel, I mean whoever the Danish Prime Minister.

Gina: There was no Samsung hash tag, nobody except us is going to look at the back of the phone and know it's a Samsung phone. It was clear that it was not an iPhone right. Because you can kind of tell, I don't know. I would know that's not an iPhone right. It looked big, big and white. She had a white suit on so it kind of matched. So yeah I don't know. I don’t know if it was a good thing for Samsung. I thought it was interesting she hash tagged the first photo blurry, which I felt like it was her kind of way to make fun of the fact that it was blurry....I don't know how much that helped Samsung. 

Leo: It's a meme now, there are a lot of animated GIF's. This one with Kevin Spacey and all the faces. 'If Bradley's arm was longer', he did get the copyright though. 3.2 million re-tweets, 1.8 million favorites, that's pretty amazing. 

Jeff: I just put up also another...

Leo: That's the other one. She needed more training apparently. Does that have a hash tag or anything? Does that say Samsung? No.

Jeff: Blurry. Secondly, there are FTC laws about this. If it was paid for, you go to reveal it. 

Leo: I think that proves it she did not get any extra...

Jeff: Well here's the question, does the host get paid to host the Oscars?

Gina: Doesn't the network pay the host?

Leo: Of course, it’s a job. There's a lot of work. 

Jeff: I know, but it's also spotlight. I presumed they got paid. She get paid extra to do that?

Kevin: It’s an union event. She got paid. They donated money to her charities. Samsung did that after that selfie. 

Leo: That's right. She gave away Samsung Galaxy Notes on her show to everybody in the audience and announced Samsung was going to give a buck per re-tweet for up to $3 million to her charity. So $3 million was raised, that's pretty cool. 

Jeff: Meanwhile, Twitter put up a chart, I put this also in the run down. The anatomy of a Tweet. One tweet, 13,000 embeds, 2.4 million re-tweets at the time, 8. 1 million saw it and then it has this other weird stat I have been going back and forth with Twitter. 32.8 million total views and I am saying to Twitter, I don't understand the difference between that and the people who saw it. 

Leo: Those are uniques, 8.1 million and the total views, each of them look at it roughly 4 times. 

Jeff: But no that's like saying, I saw the New York Times on the kitchen counter, my wife who moved it to the couch I saw it again, thus, I saw it twice. It is lot like a pass along rate of more people seeing, which is what you do with a magazine like People magazine. 

Kevin: But the point is, it is reinforcement. It is like multiple impressions of an ad, right. It gets more based into your head if you see it four times instead of when you see it once, which is one of the things they say is the reason yo should buy more ads. 

Leo: We count impressions and we count uniques and they are two different things. That's not unfair. That's how it's kind of done in digital advertising anyway. I understand that maybe not for circulation purposes. But in digital advertising, you count both uniques and impressions. And clearly this is very good for Twitter's monetization strategy. I mean I can see why Vivian Schiller is tweeting this because...

Jeff: they had to be hooting that night. 

Kevin: it's like Samsung paid that money and we got the free publicity. 

Leo: I think Gina is right. This is less Samsung and more selfies and twitter. Twitter probably got the most promotion out of this, right? Not that they need it. How much would Bradley Horowitz have paid for them to say, 'okay everybody Google+ this.' People would have said, 'What? You mean to tweet it?'

Gina: Twitter and celebrities has always been...it's one of the things Twitter did right. 

Leo: Yeah, although Google search is now going to let you vote for American Idol. Yeah and Facebook will offer real time voting with progress updates. So American Idol not the show it was one time in the 13th season. little bit less popular. Now you can...Let me do this search. Visit Google and search for American Idol or Idol during the voting window. So let's try it here, I don’t know if we are in the voting window, No we are not, but we will be. 

Jeff: I wonder does it know your time zones so it adjusts.

Leo: No. In fact, this is it. I get a sponsored box at the top of the search results. This is the thing we were talking about where this is the knowledge graph on the right but there is a sponsored box that says, 'American Idol airs tonight on FOX.'

Gina: At least it isn't a giant image. Although it could have been. 

Leo: Well and let me show you what you will get during the voting opportunity. You are going to get all the contestants and you are going to get to vote I guess by clicking their heads, I don't know. 

Gina: Really. And Google is enforcing unique votes and everything. 

Leo: No, no they don't care about unique votes in American Idol. 50 per contestant. 

Kevin: Yeah you are allowed multiple. But what they care about is Geo location demographics. 

Leo: Oh yeah that is much more valuable than a text message. 

Jeff: Oh interesting. 

Leo: Where we are going to get a lot of votes, that's where we are going to send Dexter. 

Kevin: Because few years ago when I was at BT, we built a voting vote on American Idol app for Facebook. So you would go there during the show and you'd say I want to vote for these people four times each and it would do the dialing for you and make it work. And there are two things about this. One was we had that built and other thing is we actually had a really good statistical sample of people and so we could predict the votes for next week, which was kind of fun, although not sure we could place bets which was kind of a shame. 

Leo: Were you pretty accurate?

Kevin: Oh yeah. We got a few thousand people voting so that was enough to get a reasonable start sample. But eventually they told us to stop because all the dialing was coming from our out bound access number and they said, 'No, no, we actually want the area codes.'

Leo: Right, right. Wow it's amazing. If you are good at manipulating this stuff it's a brave new world for marketers and researchers and data and all that stuff. It's amazing. Speaking of, two new Samsung Chromebooks. In fact, very interesting, they are going to make them pleather, at least one of them. Let's see if I can find it. I got to get the link. Do you have it there Chad? For some reason I can't click this link. There it is. They'll be...one of them will be Exynos powered. Or maybe all of them will be Exynos powered. 11.6 inches and a 13.3-inch, faux leather finish starting at $319.99. These are the mid...I think, we'll have to see when we get them, but I think this is perhaps the mid-range Chromebook we've been asking for. 

Jeff: The only thing I want is LTE. I was solid connectivity with them. 

Kevin: You can just use your phone for that. 

Leo: That's true you can do that. 

Jeff: Ugh, pain in the butt. I just hope the machine works. 

Leo: They are both based on Samsung's own ARM chip, the Exynos. They will both have 4 gigs of RAM which is probably the primary way they...

Jeff: it is really important. 

Leo: Yeah that could...that's mid-range. There's the 11 inches, 1366×769 but the 13 inch is a 1080 p display, 1920x 1080. Not  touch, 8 hours battery life. $319.99 and $399.99. 

Jeff: You know what made me think about this Leo is that back in the glory days of Dell, I could have gotten the machine I wanted. I could have said touch screen and LTE and I want 4 gigs. You know whatever happened to those wonderful days where you could customize your machine. 

Leo: These are not...these are the opposite of the 4:3 pixel, these are 16:9 screens, they are wide screens. Samsung just loves that stitched faux leather, oh. 

Jeff: Yeah I don't get that. 

Kevin: The thing is that screens that shape are cheaper because that they are used for TVs, so they make more of them.

Leo: I like the wide screens, I don't mind them.

Kevin: I like them on the tablets, I don't like them on the laptops because it's the wrong shape for text. 

Leo: But you could have side by side documents couldn't you? or can you?

Gina: Jeff what's the slow down on the Chromebook. Where are you feeling you need more RAM?

Jeff: Yeah 2 gigs, versus the 4 gigs at least with the original Samsung, it would just hang up with too many tabs as soon as you hit more than about 8 tabs...

Leo: Too many tabs. 

Jeff: And 4 gigs works and I don't know why they keep putting out 2 gig Chromebooks. 

Gina: 2 gigs of RAM to run a browser...

Leo: Your son has pinched your pixel? That's sounds painful.

Kevin: So he was using the older Chromebook and he borrowed the pixel one day and it hasn't come back so. 

Jeff: You are a nicer dad than I am. 

Kevin: Well I got the Mac Pro so...

Leo: I think what's telling is that your son wanted it. 

Kevin: Well he originally he got a Windows machine because he had particular thing he wanted for a speech debate and he wanted a game on it and when he broke that I gave him the Chromebook and I said hang on to it, you can use it. And he actually liked it. 

Jeff: What does he want to study?

Kevin: Andrew my older is in King's College, London doing English and Theater and Film and stuff and Christopher is applying for economics at various places. 

Jeff: Oh my. 

Leo: I think it is very important to start planning for the old age home and who is going to pay for it. So this is always timely. Samsung Galaxy has released a couple of Youtube videos on the Galaxy Gear and Gear Fit, as well as the Galaxy S 5. 

Jeff: Here's a question for you. Will the Gear work with non-Samsung phones?

Leo: No. However a wide range of Samsung phones than the original Gear. 

Jeff: I don't get it. I mean I get it for the first generation because they had to control it enough, but when you have supposedly Google and Apple coming out with them to limit it that much I don't understand from a business perspective.

Leo: I can promise you that the Apple will only work with iPhones. 

Jeff: Well, yeah that's in its own little world.

Leo: And the only one that is completely cross platform right now is the Pebble. So that advantage Pebble on that and it also has the best battery life. But it doesn't do as much, the Gear Fit is gorgeous. 

Jeff: Is it that the Google will work with an iPhone?

Gina: That's interesting question.

Leo: It should. I think if you are Google it should right. 

Jeff; You know what, I am not so 100% sure on the Apple either because iPods works with anything. 

Leo: Apple no, I promise you. 

Jeff: I think you are right but I could argue that Apple is feeling a little closed in and needs to get back into the lives and bodies of other people no?

Leo: They'll be chattering down below if Apple ever makes anything that works with Android. That seems highly unlikely.

Jeff: 'Chattering down below', what does that mean?

Leo: Because it's frozen in hell.

Jeff: Oh, oh oh. 

Leo: I thought that was a little obscure, I agree. Chattering down below, that's what happens after your Pixel gets pinched. Let's take a break. We have the Change Logs still to come now that Gina is back, we didn't do a Change Log last week, we just said screw it. Google is getting into the real estate market and  Bing books! get ready for the Bing book. This just broke, the guy who created the Scroogled campaign is now in charge of strategy at Microsoft, Mark Penn. 

Kevin: See he collects the Strategy Tax. He's the Strategy Tax inspector. 

Leo: He also came up with one of the worst, we were talking about this on 'Windows Weekly', one of the worst current television campaigns, the Microsoft Honestly campaign, in which you go to microsoft.com/honestly, you can see these ads they are airing everywhere now. In which people say, 'honestly Windows isn't that bad.'

Gina: Oh my God! Ugh, painful to watch. 

Leo: It's sad. 

Gina: The entire premise of our ad is either someone else is worse or we're not that bad. 

Leo: Would you respect Microsoft? But this is a Mark Penn created...you've seen the one with the teachers who says, 'I don't like computers.' here I'll just play a little bit of it. 

Teacher in ad: I am a little old fashioned, I love chalk and erasers, but change is coming. 

Jeff: It was so awful, so awful. 

Leo: 'I don't really like computers, but I guess if I have to use them, I'll use these strange tablets from Microsoft  because that's what we got.' Anyway that's the, there's a whole bunch of these honestly. How's this for a stunning recommendation; 'I couldn't find a reason not to buy it.' That's a triple negative now. 'Honestly I needed a laptop and a tablet, and I was confused. so I don't love change, I couldn't find a reason not to buy it, honestly.' Anyway, this guy is now in charge. 

Kevin: This is like dinosaurs, isn't it?

Leo: It's very strange. One thing Mark Penn was known for when he was a pollster for the Hilary Clinton campaign was data. And he is very data driven. So my presumption is that both the Scroggled campaign and the Honestly campaign come from research on what people are thinking about Windows and so forth and responding directly to that research, I would guess.

Jeff: And someone else said that he picks his data selectively to make himself look good. In the Hilary world, he was controversial too. Because the 3am campaign he didn't humanize Hilary enough, there were other reasons...

Leo: He was fired halfway through the primary. 

Jeff: for a reason.

Leo: Well he's found a home. We are going to take a break and come back for more as I mentioned. We've got a greta panel here. the lovely and talented Kevin Marks in his garden. His microphone is under a blanket where it is safe and warm. Gina Trapani in her mother's basement. Jeff Jarvis in the capital of the free world, Brussels, Belgium. They do say that Brussels is not exactly an exciting town, is that...?

Jeff: i walked forever to find a restaurant tonight. I got a very good restaurant but jeez it took forever.

Leo: But you are in the land of beer and chocolate, I mean how could you go wrong there? 

Jeff: I know. You know what I had? I had really good steak tartar. In fact, I went to this place that had different tartars and the one I had was loaded with anchovies and the anchovies were not salty they were sweet. 

Leo: They were fresh anchovies, yeah. That is very good. 

Jeff: I will also admit that I now have my Tums. 

Leo: You eat raw meat and anchovies in a ball you probably need some Tums later on.

Jeff: And then I ate tuna, a shrimp croquette and a cheese croquette.

Leo: And everything was raw?

Jeff: No the shrimp croquettes weren't. They were so clever with the salad. They did long strips of cucumber and that was the bowl for the salad. 

Leo: Wow. Did they weave them like a basket?

Jeff: No, no, no. Just put it around and put the salad on the side and then the tartar and my nice demi wine and I was very happy.  

Gina: Man we are got to wrap this up. I am actually Googling steak tartar and I want to see this. 

Leo: You need a nature box snack, we are going to get that to you. This is my dream. My dream was someday we'd be sponsored by pizza, snacks, sugary drinks. 

Chad: I've already bought two boxes.

Leo: It's the easiest thing to sell in the world. But that is not what I am talking about today. I am talking about legalzoom.com, it should be easy to sell. You know March is national 'start your own business' month. And I think a lot of people look at what's going on, they look at WhatsApp and they say, 'yeah I'd like $16 billion please. I'd like to start my own business.' The truth is it's very satisfying. Start your own business, do it right now. But make sure you protect your business. Incorporate and do your LLC, make sure you trademark it and Legal Zoom makes this all affordable, you don't need a white shoe law firm to do this. $99 to do an LLC. Incorporate Chapter S or Chapter C, $99 bucks plus the state filing fees. You could do a trade mark for $169 plus the federal filing fees. There's also for your family, last will and testament. They even have a pet protection agreement, should you pass away. This is actually very important, health care power of attorney, a living will. All this stuff you can do at Legal Zoom for a lot less than it would cost to hire a law firm. Legal Zoom is not a law firm but they will help you by connecting you to the right attorney. These are self-help services but if you need to speak to an attorney, you'll get legal advice from an experienced attorney licensed in your state for a low fixed flat monthly fee. Don't put off the things you need to do. Go to legalzoom.com, use our discount code TWIG at checkout, you'll get $10 and we'll get credit. National 'start your business month.' Take advantage of it and you will also get when you do, a 3 month trial free of the all new Quick books. that's cool, we use them online for our business. 3 month trial, making it much easier to run your business. That's a $119 value free. Again you have to use TWIG int he referral box at checkout. Legal Zoom provide self-help services. They are not a law firm but they can connect  you with the right attorney. Don't put off the things you need to do and start your own business. It is challenging but it exciting, exhilarating and now is a good time to do it. Legalzoom.com. 

Why don't we do the thing with trumpets and the drums and then Gina says stuff. What do we call that?

Chad: The Google Change Log. 

Leo: That's it!

Jeff: Oh what a throw, what timing! Broadcast masters at work, oh!

Leo: Chad and I, we're on a wave length. Now from her mother's basement, Gina Trapani.

Gina: Oh my God! I am just going to own it. 

Jeff: Gina you can now charge for tours of the basement. It's a new revenue industry, I am telling you. 

Gina: Someone in the chat said, I should start a kick starter to re panel my mom's basement. 

Jeff: I think it is like the Berlin Wall. You can sell pieces of the panel to TWIG fans, they'll just buy it. 

Gina: So, I wasn't here last week, but we've still got a bunch of things going on. I am not going to get two weeks in here but I will get the last week of changes in. First we've got hands free Google Voice search in the new Chrome Beta. So you can search by Voice on Google now, no extensions required, this is on your desktop. Used to be had to install special extension and then enable it, no more in the Chrome beta. You can open a new tab or visit google.com in Chrome and you say, 'Okay Google,' and then start speaking your search. This is going too, this will be rolled out to English, US only users on Windows, Mac and Linux over the next few days, which should be happening now with support for additional languages in Chrome OS coming soon. 

Leo: Okay so get ready for all the people saying, 'Chrome is always listening to me, always! Constantly!' 

Gina: Yes, right...

Leo: It has to.

Gina: Yeah right, it has to be listening locally to hear the, 'okay Google', trigger word. 

Leo: That's the key 'locally'.'

Gina: Yeah, but it is not transmitting everything you say to the Cloud. At least, not that Google knows. The NSA, I can't speak for.  

Leo: So what do I say, 'Okay Google'?

Gina: 'Okay Google.' This is on Chrome Beta. 

Jeff: I want some more Easter eggs. I want a 'Newman!'

Leo: Isn't 'Okay Jarvis' one?

Jeff: It was.

Leo: See I don't have it. I am on Beta, I am up to date, maybe it just hasn't pushed yet. 

Gina: Yeah, maybe hasn't gone pushed yet. I’ve got to say I have been cooking here at my mom's house, I don't know where any of her stuff is. I don't know where her timers are, her measuring cups, I've been using the Google search, the voice search to set timers and to say, 'how many ounces in a cup', and I get those results. My wife laughs at me because I am like 'Shhhh', I’ve got to do a search...

Leo: 'Search for mom's measuring cups'. 

Jeff: They will soon be a house search.

Leo: I am letting Google into my house, take pictures of everything if they were to just do that. Where is that serving dish? Google where are my keys?

Gina: 'Where are my keys?' exactly. 

Jeff: Leo don't you have to turn on the voice search? I don’t think it just happens. I think you have to turn it on. 

Leo: Do I Gina?

Gina: I don't believe so. I am actually not running the Beta...

Jeff: I cannot imagine they would just put that on by default, it would freak people. 

Gina: Oh no you are right, you are right.  So I am looking at the screen shot of Google Chrome blog, and so when you first get this and you go to Google.com, there is a little pop-up that says, 'Say “Okay Google' to start a voice search and there is a button that says 'Enable Okay Google.' You would have to click the button. Yeah so you are absolutely right.

Leo: I am enabled. Oh it says, 'Sorry this experiment is not available on your platform.' Oh that is the app launcher. I am just searching for voice, that's the only one I have.

Gina: I think the microphone kind of fills in, it is hollow when it is not enabled and it fills in when it is. 

Leo: Okay chat room, find us the link. I know it's 'Chrome://flags', and then there is like a hash tag that would get me directly to it. Let's find that, so we can enable it. I don't see it and I am on the Beta channel, on the latest up to date. Version 34.0.1847.45 Beta. 

Gina: Yeah you should have it. So when you go to Google.com, do you see the microphone in the search box?

Leo: Yeah.

Gina: And it is filed in? Or it's hollow?

Leo: It's hollow. 

Gina: Oh okay.

Leo: Like that right? If I click on it, it works. 

Gina yeah, if you click on it, it works. 

Leo: 'Where is Gina's mom's measuring cups?' At Kmart apparently. 

Chad: go back to Google, go back to Google. 

Kevin: Don't search for 'where are my keys', because that gets an unexpected result. 

Leo: Don't search for 'where are my keys?' Oh let me close that quick! I'll do that later in private. 

Gina: Moving on, Google redesigned Hangouts for the iOS. This is the first update to the Hangouts app for the iOS since they released it in November. This adds video messages, animated stickers, and just basically re-designs the app for iOS. New loading screen, menus, cleaner look, different typography the kind of that flat iOS 7 design. You can now attach  map to your current location, your conversation which is something that has been available for Android for a while. You can also record and send video messages for up to 10 seconds long in Hangouts for iOS. That's definitely a welcome update for iOS users. We were using Hangouts at work and my co-worker said that the experience on iOS just was not good at all. 

Leo: I have a big problem. I am getting spammed by attractive girls, and I put that in air quotes because I know that they are probably, in fact I know that they are not. They are bots and they say, 'hi' and you can't turn that off, you can't say don't...I get it on my phone all the time. And I don't use it as SMS but if I go to Hangouts, and look at invites or Hi's, because you can't block those.

Gina: You can't say only let people on my list...

Leo: See Marteen sent me a message, she is a very fetching young lady. Jessica DeLa Torey has invited me to a Hangout. Linda Lopez sent me a message. 

Jeff: Leo for the heck of it why don't you just say 'yes' to one of them right now. Let's see what happens. 

Leo: Really? Alright. Let's see her message, she says, 'Bonjour moi... I am looking for a serious man', says Marteen.

Jeff: Well you found one. 

Kevin: Tell her 'yeah'.

Leo: I say, 'yeah baby!' really. Lisa yo are watching, I am doing this on the show. It's for research purposes only. Yeah, 'ma petite, yeah baby,' okay let's see if she responds. If she is a bot she will respond right away right. 'Bonjour, moi...' (reading French). Nothing.

Gina: Yeah no, she looks offline, that's why her icon's kind of...

Leo: Oh she is offline. Well how dare she be offline. What do you think she really wants. Now it's going to get worst right because I have responded to one of these. 

Jeff: You’re welcome.

Leo: What's the setting, I don't see. 

Kevin: Okay so go to ' settings', click on...

Leo: 'My account', yeah.

Kevin: The one on the top, yeah. Scroll down a bit, and it says 'customize invites.'

Leo: 'How others get in touch with you. Here are your choices. Everyone else.' I can either have 'Hangout with me' or 'invite only.' So I am getting invites and there is nowhere to say, 'I don't want invites, from somebody who is not in my circles.' See what I am saying. 

Kevin: Oh, I thought it implied only you could invite them. 

Leo: No. They can invite you my friend and they do.

Gina: Oh that is interesting. I have gotten a ton of invites, but I haven't gotten any of the notifications for them and I definitely shut this off. 

Leo: Well I did turn off notifications because I was getting a lot of them. But that doesn't mean you still don’t get invites and they show up in other spots and they certainly show up in your Hangouts and I have to explain to my girlfriend that I really don't know Linda Lopez and I don't why she is wearing her underwear or why she messaged me the words 'L.U' Seriously Lisa, I have never met that women. Should I add her too?

Gina: No, no no. 

Jeff: No, no.

Gina: Your research is done. 

Leo: Yeah, I just wanted to point it out, yhat's really annoying. Enough said.

Gina: that is annoying.

Leo: And if I didn't have an understanding girlfriend, well I do have an ex-wife so there maybe that explains it. This could be embarrassing to people right. If somebody didn't understand, 'why are you getting all these invitations from attractive young women', right? I would have a problem. So stop it Google, I don't know them. 

Gina: Google+ for Android updated with new photography enhancements. The app gives you to ability to start editing the photo on one Android device and continue the process on another Android device. Nice cross device editing. Couple of new filters and editing tools. You have seen them from before from Snapsneed. Couple of interface tweaks such as a new 'view all' option which displays your entire photo library, local photos and Cloud photos in one central interface. And then there's a new option to quickly view photos by date, there's a slider and you can...

Jeff: That's a biggie. I have so many there and I have tried to go back and it just is a pain. That's a big one. 

Gina: Yeah. In fact, we were talking about this last night on 'All about Android.' I literally started going through my photos and lost track of the show because I was like, 'oh look at the baby, he was so little...'

Leo: 'It's 3 A.M., did I miss the show?' Yeah very easy to do. 

Gina: And last thing, the Google Now Launcher which shipped on the Nexus 5 is now in the Play store and is available to all the Nexus and Google play edition devices. So Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10 and Google Play edition device owners like me, my HTC 1 Google Play edition. You can go to the Play store, you could download the Google Now Launcher. It is exactly the APK that you may have side loaded which is kind of available everywhere. It gives you Google Now if you swipe to the right, it gives you wallpapers and a couple of different ways to kind of organize your widgets. It's really nice launcher, in fact it's my default launcher now as i like it so much. It gives you some transparency in the status bar, really nice. So it's pretty limited still, just Nexus and Google Play edition devices. But really nice option if you got one of those devices you don't have to feel left behind by the Nexus 5. that's all I have got.

Leo: Boom!

Jeff: Hello Chad, you were a little slow on the uptake of that one.

Leo: I bet you on Howard Stern does that it happens right away. One more thing if you have a Moto X, there's another Spotlight that just came out. remember that hat that was blowing around? Now there's a...you have to have a Moto X. You know what, don't show it, well you can show it Chad because I don't think. If you don't jump on it, there'll be a little Spotlight floating around, if you don't jump on it, I don't see it now. So...

Gina: is this auto download or?

Leo: Yeah, auto download. I think it is an update, you get an update to Motorola Spotlight, which is not an app, so I don't know exactly how to launch it. So the way these work is, their sensitive to the accelerometer in the phone and as you move the phone around it advances the story. It's got music and stuff, it's really cute, I really like them. But i don't know how to launch it now. It's frustrating. It's just floats in and out all the time. Maybe I disabled, but no I saw the little bug but maybe I didn't click it in time and it went away. I guess they are sensitive to it all. Here is from Iain Heath via Mike Hellgren a Lego version of Ellen's selfie.

Gina: Wow, that's special.

Kevin: What?

Leo: What?

Kevin: I installed this new thing and it messed up my layout. And it's given me one fewer rows of icons. 

Gina: Oh the Google Now Launcher?

Kevin: Yes on the Nexus 7. I have a dead row of icons that I can't put things into anymore. 

Leo: Oh the Nexus 7 does not have a bottom row. 

Kevin: No it does have a bottom row but they will lay down in a particular way and they've all been scrambled. 

Leo: well yeah because you put a different launcher. Go back to your old launcher right? Or does it replace your launcher?

Kevin: It's replaced my launcher. 

Gina: Oh no, you can choose.

Kevin: No, it said import your icons and it imported them but it didn't import them to where they were. It just like...

Leo: Are you coming from the old Google launcher?

Kevin: Yeah, it just imported them at the top. Like my spacial memory is all gone bad. 

Leo: Oh, I hate it when that happens. 

Gina: It lead you ashtray. 

Leo: what's it called? It's just called Google Launcher? KitKat launcher? But then I don't see it on here, maybe I can't put it on a Moto X, I thought that was the point though.

Gina: No it's Nexus and Google Play edition only.

Leo: Oh you go to be Nexus, never mind.

Kevin: It's called Google Now Launcher. 

Leo: Oh so you do get a choice, see that's what I thought. So you can go back to your old, not your old...i don't know what's the opposite of 'now'?

Kevin: Google Then.

Leo: Yeah, 'Google Then' launcher. 

Kevin: But yeah that's what it did. It took a row of my things and put it on the next screen which is kind of...

Leo: Yeah, odd.

Gina: Oh yeah this looks totally different. 

Leo: And thanks for Kevin Marks for sending along David Cameron's tweet. I have been...can you say it in a posh ponzi British accent as David Cameron might say it.

Kevin: He said, "I have speaking to Barack Obama on the telephone..." 

Leo: Yeah and then there is a picture of him very seriously on the telephone, can you get it? I don't think he is really talking to Barack Obama in that shot. 

Kevin: this is very posed.

Leo: It's so bad. 

Kevin: It's a very old telephone as well.

Leo: "I've been speaking to Barack Obama about the situation in Ukraine."

Kevin: People are now making fun of this.

Leo: Oh this is going to be a meme. 

Kevin: People holding phones. 

Leo: I think we should submit it to Shutter Stock, it can be a great stock photo. 

Gina: 'I have been speaking to Ellen on the phone about this situation with Samsung/'

Leo: Quick somebody tweet that. The ARA phone. this is the phone the kind of the...

Jeff: Modular.

Gina: The modular phone. 

Leo: It is the part of Motorola mobility that didn't go off to Lenovo and for the first time we've seen the demo of it. This was at the launch event. Jason Calacanis' launch event last week. Paul Eremenko from Google demonstrated it and showed off prototypes but non-functional, so it's just like bricks. 

Gina: Yeah sounds like Legos. But it sounds like consumer release early next year and with a big focus with aesthetics and styles and making you phone look the way you want it, so Moto Maker like, which surprised me. It sounds like they are targeting people who want to customize the look of their phone as well the functionality. 

Jeff: Well, what's your bet, will these things ever be on Verizon?

Leo: No, common Jeff, get real. The point of it is very cheap, $50 to get started. 

Jeff: Which evidently is Wifi only, I think.

Leo: Yeah it's very basic right. But that gives you the endoskeleton on which you can then add more stuff. it comes with a display, a low-end CPU, a Wi-Fi module, a small built-in battery runs Android. But then as your budget allows you can add modules to it, which I think is a really interesting idea. The modules are hot swappable so you don't have to shut down the...

Gina: Yeah and if you think about these devices as more than phones, if you want to build your own baby monitor or you want to video, somebody to attach one at the bottom of the skate board to map their route or if you think of them as Wifi connected device, it's modular and can potentially get all sorts of different sensors. You can use them for anything. It's kind of like you know  a more consumer friendly in a way. 

Leo: So it's not just a phone, I see what Aaron is saying, it's a maker thing. 

Jeff: And it also means people like us are not throwing out phones every nine months. 

Leo: But imagine you are on the phone and it crumbles in your hands, the parts fall off. 'My phone's falling apart. Oh look I can put it back together.'

Gina: I mean how much time do we spend with our phones like this you know? We don't. We use them for other things. 

Leo: I think it is best not to think of this as a phone but to think of this as a device in the internet of things. As a thing that's connected so you can do stuff. I think this is really cool.

Gina: Yeah running Android with lots of different apps, doing lots of different things, depending on what sensors that you have. It's a little bit one of those catch all...it can do anything but what will I use it for? Anything! But what?

Leo: I can put it on my mother's measuring cups and they will call me. 

Gina: Yeah it's one of those. it can be everything and then nothing. 

Leo: I think though that we are in a mature enough environment in the maker world. Thanks to Raspberry Pie and the Match Modules and all these other things that people understand that a connected device has all sorts of wonderful uses and they will use these.

Jeff: Is there a consumer market device like that yet or is this the first one? Is this the first maker consumer device?

Leo: Yeah if it's pretty easy. I think it sounds like it'll be easy enough. What is that snap together thing for the kids? But imagine I saw my kid...father and son and we want to make a balloon that will do aerial photography what you do is just put a camera module on it, you put it in the thing and then you go...there's all sorts...this is very intriguing, I love it.  

Gina: yeah, now I am more excited about it.

Leo: It's somewhat specialized market but not so much so. But I was just at the Make magazine on Thursday and we got the tour and stuff. What's interesting is how they tapped into something and it just grew almost instantly.

Jeff: What's so exciting about this is that you now get an after-market for the guts of the phone. 

Leo and Gina: Yes.

Jeff: Yeah, that's what's amazing. Now it becomes open source hardware. 'Hardware is the next frontier', i don't know if I by that yet but it's a exciting opportunity.

Leo: But if the internet thinks it's really going to be a thing then the Google has to have a position in it, a stake in it and it's not going to be Glass which is $1500. It's not even going to be Google watch. Much better to have a generic vanilla thing that you can use to prototype ideas and maybe you are right Jeff, maybe become a market as well. I love this idea. This is exactly what Google should be doing to me. 

Kevin: You can already buy lots of bits and pieces that do certain things like this.  You can buy little cameras that stick to the wall.  You can buy extra screens and so on. The question is, can you make these pluggable modules cheap enough – cheaper than them buying one of these things outright?

Leo: Not yet

Jeff:  I think it’s more than that, Kevin.  I think it creates a framework for devices. So now you go to the aura store, as Gina would say, and you can buy more of these modules. People like us will have 20 modules and 5 spots for them and we’ll have wives and husbands and people yelling at us.

If you can get the price down it will help, but $50 to start is how you seed the market.  That makes sense.  The Raspberry Pi is $25 – 30 and that’s certainly selling very well. It’s a tinker toy phone

Jeff: I like that iPhone. Erector set. Heathkit.   

Leo: Danny Sullivan calls it SEO’s Oreo moment.  A Tweet relating to search engine optimization  is getting as much attention as Oreo’s SuperBowl blackout.  Remember that last year at the SuperBowl. The lights went out at the Superdome; And Oreo said you can still dunk in the dark?  And it was huge success for social media marketing.  Yesterday Matt Cutts announced a new Google scraper report for publisher’s to use if the see a site that is scraping their content. Right On!  It’s a big problem.  Of course, immediately, people pointed out – “scraper?  You mean like Google?” 

It was the particular screen shot – as well.

He said, I think I’ve spotted one Matt, note the similarities in the content. 

Jeff: I’ve got to give point to Joe

Leo: He was of course pointing out that the knowledge graph uses Wikipedia  And scrapes it.  Although I would guess that google has a deal with Wikipedia. To do this.

Jeff: doesn’t matter, because

It’s a bad example

It is, but it’s funny.

The screenshot was perfectly timed. It was funny.  But when he gets down to it, it wasn’t a great example

Leo: There’s a big difference, too, because really the scraper sites are doing is taking Jeff Jarvis’s blog post and putting it on their site with ads around it as if they wrote it. And it happens a lot.

And Wikipedia is taking it and

Jeff: Wikipedia’s license allows it, Kevin

Leo: But but but,

Kevin: What it does say is - it does highlight how hard it is to do this. We wrote this – with cool blogs and stuff like that. Typed pages that were showing up in Google results.  There was always a slight tension back and forth about would they decide we’re a scraper site and throw us out as a result so I’ll be adding value.  There’s a bit of tension there. The challenge now, it’s actually quite hard to write a crawler – because so many sites will actually block you directly or require log in.

Leo:  And that’s why we’re moving towards social search and others, better forms of search anyway. Crawling is going to look as antiquated as Yahoo’s human editors.

Kevin: No it’s the other way around. I think crawling recording is going to come back as people realize they’re missing it. As the social stuff gets more and more polluted with its own weird rankings and its own odd priorities

Leo: Maybe that’s what we’re doing is just trying to stay ahead of the pollution. Stay upstream whenever possible. The reason Danny Sullivan calls it an Oreo level tweet is because as of his writing, 14000 retweets and 12000 favorites for Dan Barker.  That’s pretty good. That’s pretty good. That was within 24 hours. I wonder what it is now. Oh that’s Apple calling me form Texas.  I’ll take it later. Long story.  The MacPro.  Somebody has been calling me from Apple Austin, which is where the MacPros are made.  They want to figure out why there’s a footprint on my RAM. 

Leo: Google invests a million dollars in getting more female entrepreneurs.  It sounds like a lot of money, but I don’t know.

Jeff: It’s not much

Gina: It’s really not much

Leo: It’s million dollar grant to Galvanize, which is a Denver co-working hub and start-up center.  They’re giving a million dollars to them, and others, to increase the number of female entrepreneurs by 25%.  Galvanize has a program to do that, I guess, to increase the involvement of woman and there are others.  But it’s a million dollars and not just to Galvanize, but to 40 programs worldwide, so they’re relatively small grants. Maybe they’re enough, though.  Sometimes a lever positioned exactly right can move a mountain.

Jeff: It makes a statement.

Leo: Yeah, I would hope they do more, even.  Keep it up.

Jeff: So Google, we also need more journalistic entrepreneurs.  I’m just talking, I’m just saying.

Leo: Google, you could support internet broadcasting television you know.  That’s a useful thing, too, you know.

Jeff: CUNY – we’ll do the show at CUNY, with our students.  We are very serious.

Leo: I’ve talked to Sarah Bartlett about that, I’ve talked to Lisa.  We love that idea

Jeff: We’re on.

Leo: All right, because CUNY wants to do more of the kind of stuff we’re doing here in the Brick House. We would like to have a little base of operations in New York, NY.  I hear that’s pretty big city, so maybe there’s a little synergy possible. 

Jeff: And – Gina could do her third show.

Leo: Gina - get her out of the basement.

Gina: Get me out of the basement, Leo!

Leo: Ironically, she’ll be in CUNY’s basement, but that’s okay.

Gina: CUNY’s my alma mater, so - -

Leo: OH!!

Gina: I graduated CUNY in graduate school.

Leo: What’s that program called, in the basement there Jeff?

Jeff: What’s the program called?

Leo: Isn’t there - I think Sarah said there’s a name for it, maybe not.  It’s just some kids in the basement with a camera. I don’t know.

Jeff: No, we’re going to make something.

Leo: Oh, there isn’t something there already?

Jeff: No, we’re going to make something new.

Leo: Oh, this is something new?

Jeff: You inspired us.

Leo: Because when your dean, Sarah Bartlett, was here, she mentioned that they really like to, in the school of journalism at CUNY, they really like to get kids doing real world journalism.

Jeff: And the other thing is, actually I won’t say this on the air.  I’ll wait.

Leo: Save it for offline conversation. Well, the Google barge just found a new home.  This is funny for anybody who knows the Bay area.  It’s moving to Stockton.

Gina: Okay, why is this funny? I don’t get it.  Why is this funny?

Leo: Well, it’s not exactly the headquarters of the world.  I think its inland – isn’t it in the valley?  There’s no water in Stockton.  That would be a problem.

Kevin: Well, I think there’s a lake.

Leo: I believe Stockton – we call it in the valley, do we not?  Which would imply it’s in a valley.

Gina: There is a port in Stockton.

Kevin: At the tail end of a river.

Leo: The Port of Stockton at the end of a river, okay.

Kevin: The San Joaquin

Leo: It has two miles of dock space. It’s just outside the jurisdiction of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission.

Gina: Well, there you go.

Leo: That’s the advantage. So they’re going to take that barge and they’re going to go all that way up that river to Stockton.

Kevin: So they’ve got to go all the way around through Martinez and the delta, right.

Jeff: And if the drought were still on, I wonder if they could do it?

Leo: I think that that’s not really a river, it’s a tidal slough.  Bay Ship and Yacht is subleasing their pier to Google. So there goes the barge sometime in the next 24 hours, weather permitting.

Jeff: I think you need live coverage of this.  I think you need a drone over it. 

Leo: That’s really kind of pathetic.  I don’t think there’s going to be a huge wave of people heading to Stockton to see Google Class.

Gina: So you need to do a stand-up at the empty pier.

Leo: “I’m standing here …   Leo Laporte from Treasure Island. This water used to have the Barge. Not anymore.”

Jeff: Good, Gina, good.

Leo: I will do a stand-up just for you.

Jeff: If you were a real TV guy, Leo . .

Leo: I know, why am I sitting in a studio – what’s wrong with me? I’m ambitious.

Gina: Nice thing with the internet is you could time it so that the barge was going by you while you’re talking.  You control your own schedule.

Jeff: Slowly

Leo: Actually, the San Francisco Giants play in AT&T Park which they relatively recently built, a beautiful downtown ballpark in San Francisco, I know you all know it.  And there’s a giant coke bottle, beautiful huge coke bottle out in left field. And it’s got a slide in it so kids can go down it.  The thing is massive. It was made here in Petaluma, and barged down the Petaluma River and I was, in fact, there for the barging of the coke bottle to the ball park.  Why didn’t I do a stand-up? 

Gina: That’s live action television right there.

Leo: I just stood there and watched it, me and the kids.

Kevin: So you can actually go by canal all the way from Petaluma to San Francisco.

Leo: Yeah. That’s why Petaluma exists. We are a finger of the Bay that – you know, the gold and the lumber and the chicken and the eggs can go right in the  . . .

Jeff: Is it still a chicken capital, Leo?

Leo: No, it’s now ducks

Jeff: Really?

Leo: Yeah, we still have the Butter and Eggs Day Parade, we still do that, but in fact .

Jeff: Wait, wait, wait, Leo. Wait, wait, wait. Have you ever dressed up as a chicken?

Leo: Uh – no comment.  They have a contest called the cutest little chicken town, in which parents and their children dress as chickens.

Jeff: I want pictures.

Leo: Many a moon ago.

Jeff: Somebody search for that.

Leo: So we were, actually in the early 1900s, what was happening is Jews who were being persecuted in Russia by the pogroms by the Czar, were rescued by do-gooders in Northern California.  But these Jews were, for the most part, peasants.  They didn’t have any skills. And what were we going to do with them? And they realized that a very low capital business they could start them up with was chickens. Chickens and eggs.  So the whole countryside around here is dotted with these 100 year old chicken coops.  Giant chicken coops!  We had two on our old property. Giant chicken coops! But that kind of died out as a business – we were for a while the number one producer of eggs in California. But, what has survived – why am I telling you this?  What is this, a tour? A travelogue?  We have survived as the home of fine, high-quality ducks.  Theres’a restaurant you can go to , you New Yorkers, called Petaluma, in Manhattan, that  serves Petaluma duck. And every duck you get in Chinatown, San Francisco comes from Petaluma.  Liberty Farms up here - fabulous, Peking duck.  Just saying.

Jeff: They always look so sad in the window of the Chinese restaurant.

Leo: Well, they’re dead.

Jeff: They’re dead, yeah.

Leo: I don’t know if they’re sad, or sleeping.  It’s sleeping. Let’s take a break and talk about something else.  And when we come back – that’s a dead duck!

Leo: Yahoo is turning off Google and Facebook.  We will talk a little bit about Google Maps as far as Apple is concerned, with CarPlay. Android‘s a big seller worldwide.  And a lot more. Oh and the CNN Zite story.  But first

Jeff: Yaaawwwnn!

Leo: Yeah!

Jeff: Sorry I had to yawn.

Leo: Yeaaaaah!

Jeff: It’s late where I am.

Leo: Your yawn sounded like a YEAAAAAH.

Leo: Brought to you by 99 Designs, the world’s largest graphics design marketplace. At last count there were 285,389 talented designers waiting for you to start a design contest.  What do you need?  You need a book cover, you need a place mat, you need an info graphic, you need a landing page, a Facebook page, app design, maybe you need t-shirts or hoodies.  www.99designs.com , go there, create a design contest.  There are currently 2,358 open contests.  Last month, payouts to 99designs was 1.98 million dollars to designers at 99 designs.  And, ladies and gentlemen, I am going to debut for the first time today our very own TWiT hoody designed at 99designs.com.  There’s the arm, there’s the graphic, these are going on sale today.

Jeff: Whoa.

Gina: Nice.

Leo: We liked – I don’t know how many designs we got, like 20 or 30.  We liked five of them so much that we bought five of them and we’re going to make other stuff.  This was the winning one – we had a vote and this was the winning design.

Jeff: Keep voguing.

Leo: Strike a pose! And we have a women’s sweatshirt too, so not just a hoody.  There you go, oh, look at that.  They’re naturals – Glenn and Chad.

Jeff: When do you get the TWiT underwear?

Leo: That could be next.  We realize the way to do this – I think Jeff is asking you to model underwear. I am wearing Scottevest underwear, should I show you that?  I already did that, okay.

Gina: Scottevest has underwear, huh?

Leo: They got little pockets in the boxers.

Gina: Oh, so you can get wired up. It’s the meat sensors down there.

Leo: What was that joke that Ellen made. It was very funny. About  - the wolf of wall street?

Gina: Oh, she had a couple of really good ones.

Leo: She’s funny.  I liked her.  There you go. Stop showing that!  Me in my Scottevest boxer shorts. It does not have meat sensors in it.  Is that what you said?

Gina: No, that’s not what I said – but that’s funny.

Leo: Mom, I’m trying to find your meat sensors.  What drawer so you keep those in?

Anyway, back to the commercial.  So, that’s where we got the hoodies.  99designs.com. That’s where you can get a designer to do something great for you. They are really talented, really good.  Here’s how it works. Tell 99 Designs what you need.  Dozens of designers from their community of a quarter million, more than a quarter million, will submit designs created just for you.  You’ll love seeing those ideas rolling. Give the designers your feedback, help them refine the design, and select and pay for your favorite.  It’s a great, great deal.  Starts as low as $199, you set the price.  And by the way, we’ve got a special offer for you. Visit www.99designs.com/twig and you’ll get a $99 power pack of services for free.  Giving you more designer time and attention, bold highlighting and featuring, Your design project in their market place.  You’ll get nearly twice as many designs.  99designs.com/twig.  We thank them and the designers, too, for their support.  Are those hoodies on sale yet?  Teespring.com/twit – the campaign for the bobble heads is thankfully over.  Bobble head will be replaced by those hoodies later in the day. We got the second batch – they ship next month.  There are actually 600 of these in the world today, but we hope to sell more hoodies, frankly. We don’t make a lot of money out of this, but it’s fun for us and it gives you guys a chance, if you want, to buy TWitT memorabilia and merchandise. 

No more guac at chipotle?  What is that story?

Jeff: Could be it’s a threat!

Leo: You’re saying that thanks to man-made global warming, my burrito bowl is going to be free of guac? 

Jeff: Could happen

Leo: NO, really?  Chipotle, in its annual report, said in the event of cost increases with respect to one or more of our raw ingredients, we may choose to temporarily suspend serving menu items such as guacamole or one or more of our salsas, rather than paying the increased cost for ingredients.

Jeff: Meanwhile, they added tofu!

Leo: That’s not going to do it!  They added the Sofritas Vegan Tofu dish.  Actually, we have vegans here in the studio. One of those two people posing for you is a vegan, so I’m sure he’s very  - -

Jeff: Was that a squeal from you?

Leo: You get to guess which one. Not the one you’re thinking. Stop it!  Chipotle uses 97000 pounds of avocados a DAY.

Jeff: I remember back in the day, there was an avocado glut.  Every doctor in California bought avocado ranches.  Remember that? It was the great tax dodge and doctors and dentists – so there was a glut of avocados.

Leo: Did you know?

Gina: There can never be too many avocados.

Leo: I agree.  Although, Chipotle’s doing 34 million pounds of avocados a year.  The story goes on to say that while the avocado industry is fine at the moment, scientists are expecting drier conditions which could have an impact on California’s crop.

Gina: That would be sad.  Chipotles guacamole is serviceable.  It’s not the best, but it’s not fake.

Jeff: You know it’s an accessory.

Gina: Yes, it’s an accessory.

Leo: It’s so easy to make your own guacamole.  Everybody should go out, get a couple of very nice avocados, you want them to be a little soft to the touch – not hard, but now mushy.  Look for hollow parts – you don’t want that.  Cut them in half, mash them up with a little salt, some pepper, some garlic, some onions, maybe a little salsa

Jeff: Hot sauce

Leo: A little hot sauce if you want and it’s a fabulous dish.  Easy to make and good for you!

Gina: Seven years in San Diego, that was my big takeaway.

Leo: Can you get avocados in New York City?

Gina: You can. Actually, Fresh Direct. I’ve been using Fresh Direct a lot.  They didn’t deliver to me in San Diego, so it’s kind of wonderful. They’re great, like the avocados are great.

Leo: Is that Amazon Fresh Direct or is that something else?

Gina: It’s just grocery shopping.  And more important Chipotle news, perhaps? Have you heard about the quesarito?

Leo: What?

Gina: MmHmm. The burrito wrapped in a cheese quesadilla? There’s a link right below the guacamole crisis link in the rundown.

Leo: OH, no. Chipotle burrito made with a quesadilla. 

Gina: You wrap your burrito in a cheese quesadilla.  All the rage, apparently.

Leo: Sounds like something from epic meal time. That is disgusting.

Gina: That was not the reaction I was looking for – oh!

Leo: Why don’t I just wrap THAT in a piece of pizza!

Gina: And then deep fry it.

Leo: And then deep fry it and then put croissant dough around it and call it croritto.

Jeff:  Put that inside a Petaluma duck inside a chicken and inside a turkey.  Turduckchurrito! I watch the poor person at the end of the line at Chipotle. They really stuff em - trying to get the tortilla and the foil so you can still wrap it into something.

Gina: And then there’s the blowout situation which you never want to happen.

Leo: Any time I go to Chipotle, I worry about the blow-out situation.

Jeff: Then they get another tortilla, so that actually works better because it mixes everything together.  So the blow-out is okay.

Leo: By the way, we should point out that the quesarito is not on the menu at Chipotle, it’s part of their secret menu, so you have to know to ask for it.

Gina: I think for research for the show, I really should try it out and let you guys know how it is.

Leo: Can I get somebody to go there right now and get us one before the show is over? 

Jeff: Live shot!

Gina: The Google Glass!

Leo: Send a truck – you could have the quesarito, but you could also have the burritodilla – it is a diet-friendly alteration of the quesarito.  It is essentially a chipotle quesadilla except only half the fillings of a regular burrito are sandwiched between heaping handfuls of cheese.  They will make this for you.

Jeff: I have a hard enough time to get them to listen to me to put the right salsa in there.  I can’t believe they’re going to do all that.

Leo: It says if the server is not aware of the secret recipe, have them place a handful of cheese on one side of the burrito and order about half the amount of fillings of a regular burrito on top of that cheese.  Then place another handful of cheese on top of the fillings, fold it in half and place it in the giant warmer for a few minutes.

Jeff: Now that I’d like – a GRILLED.  Like Taco bell had the grilled stuffed burrito, but they ruined it by putting tons of lard in it – fat.  The grilled stuffed burrito was a wonderful thing, at Taco Bell.

Gina: Now I’m really hungry.

Leo: This is the torture, Gina, segment of the show.  Did you know that originally the Chipotle secret menu was only known to a few lucky diners?  Who knew about the quesarito and the burritodilla.

Jeff: I’m envisioning in about 20 minutes Gina Tropani going around her house saying “Damnit Mom where is your meat thermometer”?

Gina: Where is the meat thermometer?  AAAAAh

(All laugh)

Leo: The double wrapped burrito – did you know about that one?

Gina: No, I didn’t – there’s all kinds of  - yeah.

Leo: Double-wrapped burrito is a delicious creation if you crave the warm tortilla shell more than anything else, you’re in luck. Because Chipotle actually lets you get your burrito wrapped in two tortillas if you wish.  And ask them nicely to warm up both the tortillas – in the giant warmer.  This is your fault.

Jeff: One problem here. When – my one gets really slow – so the worse the line is at the checkout, the colder your meal is by the time you get it.

Leo: Yeah, that’s no good.

Gina: Yeah

Leo: All right, here’s a quiz question for you?  Who spent more for acquisitions in 2013 – Apple or Google? Surprise!  The answer may surprise you.  Apple has reported –

Jeff: We should turn that into a buzz feed!

Leo: Yeah – what would the headline be?

Gina: “YOU WON’T BELIEVE”

Jeff: “YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHO SPENT MORE”

Kevin: In stock or what?

Leo: Ah, that’s the question.  “Apple over the past 5 quarters has officially reported total acquisition investments of $11.12 billion, in addition to the $1.02 billion in cash "business acquisition" payments.”  So I think this is all cash – Apple has certainly enough cash to do this. 

Google reports spending $7.36 billion for “property and equipment”, and $ 1.45 billion for acquisitions. That can’t be right. Google spent more than that on the Nest thermostat.

Jeff: What I’d want to know is are investments put into this?  Because I know that with Google Ventures, they put

Leo: No, you wouldn’t count Google Ventures, that’s different. That’s not an acquisition.

Kevin: But also Apple bought a huge amount of their own stock back, so they’re maybe counting that.

Leo: Maybe. Yeah.  That’s Apple Insider. Zite – which for some reason CNN owned - has now been flipped to Flipboard.

Jeff: And you might say, “Oh they made such a good deal”, but Rafat Ali of Skift pointed out that it wasn’t really.  It was bought for 20 million, supposedly sold for 60 million, but not much of that was cash.  It was assumption of options; it was stock back and other things.   I think CNN didn’t know what to do with it and got a good deal getting out.

Leo: It’s good though.

Jeff: FlipBoard can do wonderful things!

Leo: Zite really was a Flipboard competitor.

Jeff: But Zite was also adding more of the personalization stuff and they can get that in. When Sarah Bartlett and I were out there, we visited Flipboard and met their chief scientist and they’ve got neat stuff going on there.

Leo: Yeah. So Yahoo is turning off both Google and Facebook connect sign-ins.

Jeff: I think that’s a mistake. Here’s why.

Leo: Is that because they feel that’s competitive – why support competitive search engines?

Jeff: I bet they do, but that also means – they could get some level of signals – if you signed into a Yahoo service using Facebook, now Yahoo can know something about you from Facebook and now they lose that opportunity.  That’s silly of them.

Gina: Yeah

Kevin: I think it’s also short-sighted, given they’ve already got these sign-ins, these accounts. It would make more sense to link multiple accounts together and give this more isolation 

This is the idea of saying okay, we’ll let you sign with more than one account and that way you’ve got some protection against accounts going down or whatever, but you’ve also got the ability to draw information from the one source.  And there’s definitely value for both sides. I didn’t get this.  And the other thing is that Yahoo’s login has historically been pretty bad.  If you used them for an ID login you would get like a 27 digit hex string rather next to your name showing up when you try to logon.

Leo: That’s not good.

Kevin: So there’s a bunch stuff they could improve.  I find that it keeps logging me out. And then I have to reset my password.

Jeff: Yahoo used to kill accounts regularly if you weren’t loyal.

Kevin: So they would kill a bunch and they said they would recycle the name space, so you can now get the names of abandoned accounts, which seems like a good thing, but then you start getting old mail.  So it’s messy.

Leo: So I just went to Yahoo as of now – if I go to yahoo.com I can create a new account or sign in with Facebook or Google, so it’s still turned on.  Yahoo apparently is doing its own thing.  Is this OAuth?

Kevin: They have done OAuth-based stuff in the past. They’ve been involved with OpenID Connect, which is OAuth- based.  Certainly I’m not sure how much they still are.

Leo: So right now, if you say Google, it says Yahoo would like to view your Google email address and view basic information, so this would pre-populate my Yahoo account with stuff from my Google account.  Oh, it says, “Do you have a Yahoo account?”  To continue, you need to create a Yahoo account.  So then I could create a new one, or log in with my existing Yahoo account. So now if I do that, I’ve just channeled stuff from Google into Yahoo. Now they know more about me, as you pointed out.

Kevin: Yeah

Leo: Not a bad thing – for them.  On the other hand, if they’re trying to promote their own OAuth logins, maybe -

Jeff: But here’s thing. If I have a relationship with you, cherish that.  I went through this - I am staying at a Sheraton hotel, it’s a very nice hotel, absolutely fine and dandy.  I had not used my SPG – who owns it?  Starwood. I hadn’t used the Starwood number in a long time, so what happens?  They de-activated my account.  It’s a fine way to treat me when I come back – to say you can’t use it.

Leo: Yeah, no that’s the wrong -

Jeff: Course I went to Twitter and whined and they fixed it and that’s fine, but whether you’re Yahoo or Starwood or any of these companies, if somebody leaves you and they come back, don’t slap them around!  Welcome them!  Say, “Oh good we missed you.”

Leo: I agree, unless as is the case with the airlines, these affinity groups are losing the money just trying to get rid of you. They don’t want you.  They were hoping -

Jeff: They already fired my miles.  Starwood already has fired me.

Leo: That’s probably what they wanted to do,

Jeff: They didn’t also have to kill my account.

Leo: Yeah, keep the account alive.

Jeff: Yeah that’s all I’m saying. Same with Yahoo. Is there a cost to maintain it?

Leo: So Google’s go the balloon project, Facebook has the drone project.  Now how afraid are you?  I don’t mind Google balloons over me

Jeff: Godzilla vs. Mothra in the skies over the world!

Leo: I love the headlines from Wired. Facebook Drones to Battle Google Balloons in War of Airborne Internet. 

Who is it: I want to see a cartoon

Leo: It might be a great video game.

Gina: Can’t the amazon drones get in there too?

Leo: All the drones

Jeff: Kind of like rock, paper scissors.

Leo: Yeah. Facebook wants to buy a drone-maker whose solar-powered aircraft could operate as high-altitude wireless hotspots circling in the stratosphere for years without refueling. So this is similar to Google.  You know, I always feel like Mark Zuckerberg has a serious case of envy, like he wants to do everything everybody else – if you have balloons, I am going to have drones.  Actually it’s part of his internet.org effort – which is actually a philanthropic effort – to bring in people around the world

Jeff: Philanthropic, yes.

Leo: So that’s a good thing.

Jeff: That’s it, Leo.  Make fun of the charity.

Leo: Oh, well, you know. What’s new? I’m a jerk.

Jeff: I had the same reflex.  I had to stop myself and say, “Oh, there goes the punch line.”

Leo: Well all right, Google’s donating $6.8 million to fund free transit rides for San Francisco youth. 

Jeff: The story just doesn’t stop, does it?

Leo: What could possibly go wrong?

Jeff: Next, Google employees will be throwing candy out of the Google bus to the urchins in the street.  Like WWII going through Belgium.

Leo: “Hey, chewing gum, here – silk stockings!” Free money for low income youth program, previously paid for by the city of San Francisco.  31,000 low income youth ages 5 – 17 have taken advantage of the program. It’s a good program.  I think they should let them use the Google bus.  Seriously, what’s the bus doing, after it gets all the employees there, brings them back, it’s just sitting around all day.

Jeff: Could take them on field trips

Leo: Take them on field trips

Gina: Give them phone books, they could just lounge in the bus and

Leo: Free Wi-Fi

Jeff: Travel classroom, I like that, Gina.

Gina: Travel classroom, ha hah

Kevin: Except at the point, all the buses are down at Mountain View

Leo: Well then drive Mountain View youth around.  They’ve got kids in Mountain View. It doesn’t solve the problem though. Maybe send the Google buses to Stockton. That’s where we need them.

Jeff: Let me just say this: Startups, geeks come to New York and be here.  We’re not going to make your lives difficult; we’re not going to go picketing you because you create jobs here.  We are capitalists in New York.  We believe in innovation, just to heck with this Silicon Valley stuff, it’s over.

Leo: Well you did see Nick Bilton’s article in the New York Times, about the San Francisco housing market.  Nick is a great writer. Listen to this, first couple of graphs:  “Not long ago, the pink house at 1829 Church Street, in the Glen Park neighborhood here, hit the market for 895,000.  It sold for 1.425 million - $530,000 over the asking price in two weeks.  It’s a fixer-upper: three bedrooms, two baths, linoleum floors, Eisenhower kitchen. It’s a dump!”

Gina: Wow

Leo: But it’s two blocks from the Google bus stop. Location, location, location!

Jeff: Free market, man.

Leo: Yep. But a number of people have pointed

Kevin: It’s not a free market. Problem is you can’t actually build anything in San Francisco.

Leo: That’s exactly the problem, right?

Jeff: What’s needed is more housing that’ built in places, and that’s what the government can do. But if I owned a house in San Francisco and suddenly somebody wants to depress the market for it - not going to work.

Leo: According to Redfin - -

Kevin: The problem is they’re not handing out permits to build new housing and the people who have existing housing say “no”.

Leo: Even if they try to sell the housing for less, Nick says, “You’ll have a bidding war between 20 different people, that’s how you get it so much over the asking price.”  The average teacher in San Francisco County earns 59,700 a year.  Not a single home on the market in San Francisco is within reach of the average public school teacher.

Jeff: But it’s been pretty much always been that way. When I lived there, I left in 81, dating myself badly – I don’t want to know, Gina, how far away. And you couldn’t find a place in San Francisco.

Leo: It was hard, but it wasn’t impossible.  Five years ago, police officers and teachers could’ve afforded 36% of the homes on the market.  Today, not one home for teachers. And for police officers who average 80,000 a year, there's one house in the whole county that they could afford.  One house!  They all live in Novato!  Down the road a piece.

Jeff: Manhattan, too! Gold coast to Chicago.

Leo: Like Manhattan, bordered not on four sides by water, but on three sides by water. 

Jeff: And the other side by Daly City and nobody wants to live there, so - -

Leo: Nobody wants to live in the ticky-tacky houses, so. . .I think that’s bad for a city, though, when the people who teach your children and keep you safe can’t afford to live in that city.

Jeff: The thing is, in Newark, Cory Booker put up a whole complex that houses teachers.

Leo: Yeah

Jeff: The city could do that!

Leo: We need a teacher ghetto!

Gina: My mother was a public school teacher, and I grew up in Brooklyn. And I take a train across every day to get to my office in Manhattan. Growing up here, rich people live in Manhattan.

Leo: It’s getting to be that way in Brooklyn, too, isn’t it?

Gina: Brooklyn has changed a lot!

Leo: Very gentrified.

Gina: Trying to buy property in Brooklyn was ab eye-opening experience for me, for sure.

Jeff: What did your mother teach, Gina?

Gina: She taught remedial reading for 25 years in public school. 6^th, 7^th and 8^th grade students who were reading at the 2^nd  and 3^rd grade level.

Leo: So where do you stand on the deBlasio charter school issue?  What was her name  - Ava, Eva what’s her name? The Success Schools?

Gina: I heard a little bit about this, - I honestly don’t know enough about it.

Leo: Success schools, which was a charter school movement that was championed by Bloomberg, and highlighted in Waiting for Superman – wonderful documentary. 

Gina: That was a great documentary.

Leo: Fairly controversial because they take over schoolrooms in regular schools, push the kids out. They’re fairly aggressive about it. The director makes 475,000 a year. It is funded entirely by public school funds, not by private funds.

Jeff: Is this to get back at the teacher’s union?

Leo: I think it’s to get back to the teacher’s union, because the teacher’s union hates these guys, because they are all non-unionized teachers straight out of college. So deBlasio hates them.  On the other hand, the success rate of these schools is very high.  On standardized testing they do much, much better than the public schools typically do.  It’s an interesting  - I don’t know where to  -

Jeff: It’s not an easy issue.

Leo: And of course there’s a long waiting list for kids to get into these schools.

Gina: I went to private school.  My mom taught public school, and I went to private school because of the religious aspect of it was really important to my mom.  My mom wanted me to go to Catholic school.  Even though my mom thinks city public school system is amazing and she loves her school. I come from kind of a weird background.

Leo: Her name is Eva Moskowitz – she’s the director of success academy charter school. I don’t know, she’s getting really good results, so it’s hard to – They serve 6700 students, 90% black or Hispanic, but they don’t have remedial reading, they don’t have a lot of things that the public schools are required to offer. Also the schools sound a little different, but anyway it’s an interesting story.  There’s a good article about it in the New York Times today – in the New York Region.  See I read the New York Region section, pretending that I live in the -

Jeff: Wow

Leo: Just like to keep up with what’s going on in my old town. I lived there two years. Hahah

Jeff: You’ll be back working in our basement, Leo, before you know it.

Leo: The first two years of my life.

Gina: You qualify to open a studio here. It counts.

Leo: I do want to do that.  I really do want to do that.

Jeff: MMMHMM. We do too.

Gina: Yeah, we do.

Leo: It’s a good idea.  What is Oppia?  You’re the open-source expert, Gina Trapani.  Oppia, Google’s new open-source project, allows anyone to create an interactive learning experience.

Gina: Yeah, this looks pretty interesting. And actually I should have included this in the change log.

Leo: It this a mooc?

Gina: It’s a mooc. 

Leo: It’s a massive online open course.

Jeff: More of a teaching thing, more like Kahn Academy.

Gina: So you can create online courseware using this software, Oppia, which is also open-source, so you can contribute back to it.  It’s written in Python, I have determined.  Which is not surprising. 

Leo: That’s a good thing.

Gina: They’ve got a sample exploration they call it, on the front page, so you can see it, you can walk through solving a math exercise on the front page.  It looks pretty cool.

Leo: O-P-P-I-A-, Oppia.  Bite-sized learning journeys by anyone and for anyone.  I think these are really great.  Because I think they really do democratize education.

Gina: You can see Google’s interest in peer-to-peer education and providing tools and platforms for people to teach and learn each other, which I really like.

Jeff: I guess we were talking about this last week.  Google itself was running the data analysis class.

Leo: Yeah, this is kind of cool, Making Sense of Data. If you go to datasense.withgoogle.com -Do you work with surveys, demographic information, evaluation data?  This is something people really do need to learn, right?  It’s a self-paced online course for somebody who wants to learn how to structure, visualize and manipulate data. Wow! We should – we’ve got17000 responses to our survey, which we’re trying to parse.  I think Glenn you need to take this course. March 18 – April 4, so it starts in a couple weeks.  And of course they have to say course availability subject to all applicable laws, regulations and trade sanctions.  That’s sad. To get to the Oppia site, its oppia.org.  That’s the hosted version, or you can see the code at codecademy.com./oppia  All right let’s take a break, when we come back, we’re going to have a tip, number and tool - Kevin anything you want to throw in that mix?  It’s stone soup for the geek. 

Leo: But first a word from squarespace.com.  They’re making the web a better place, one website at a time.  Maybe yours.  If you’re looking for somewhere to host your site, somewhere with great content management solutions, tools to make your site look gorgeous, somewhere you can post easily, using their apps. There’s a blog app, you can moderate comments right from your phone, you can also do their metric stuff – they have a new metric app for iPhone and iPad. You can check site stats, like page views, unique visitors, social media followers.  Squarespace just gets better and better and better and the beauty of this is you can find out all about is by going to www.squarespace.com and trying it – click the GetStarted button.  You’ll be picking your template from 25 gorgeous templates, but don’t worry – template, that’s a bad word- that means “oh, all the sites must look like cookie cutters.” No! In fact, the template is just a starting point that gives you so many rich features, commerce is built into every template, they’re all mobile responsive so they look good on any screen, there’s not a separate mobile site. And yet it’s so easy to customize it, not knowing code, but just with drag and drop,  point and click, that every Squarespace site is unique.  These are all created with the same template, but they all look different, they all have the personality of your site.  Great support too, if you want help doing this.  Live chat and email support 24/7 from their New York headquarters, you’re not getting somebody who’s looking through a notebook, this is somebody who really knows they work there. Plus a completely redesigned customer help site with easy access to self-help articles, video workshops. eCommerce is something a little new to Squarespace.  If you go to the pricing, you’ll see it’s $8 a month for the basic site, and that includes eCommerce – you can sell one item, which for a lot of people – they sell an item, they sell a thing, but you can also accept donations and just think what that means.  If you’re a charity, for $8 a month you can set up a gorgeous site where you can accept donations. Or if you want a cash wedding registry right there.  A school fund-drive – you can do that all for $8 a month for the basic site.  The professional site is unlimited everything, you can sell up to 20 products, you get access to the developer platform, great for people who know CSS, HTML, Javascript.  And of course, full eCommerce, just $24 a month.  Squarespace does not take a cut of your commerce – you can sell unlimited products, real-time carrier shipping is built into your site, label-printing by a ship station, integrated accounting and of course when you register for a year, you get the domain name free – custom domain name and everything.  It’s really nice. www.squarespace.com Try it now – a 2 week trial is free, you don’t even need to give them a credit card.  Build the website, you can import everything from your old website, see what it feels like, if you decide to sign up, use TWIG as your offer code and you’ll get 10% off.  Just TWIG.  Try if free for 2 weeks, use TWIG if you decide to buy. 10% off on us and Squarespace.com

Time, ladies and gentleman, for Gina’s Tip of the Week.

Gina: I don’t remember if I’ve done this before, tell me if I have.  I was short on a tip this week, but I love this site and I look at is all the time, especially now that I’m here in New York and the weather has changed so much.  Forecast.il – this is the service that powers Dark Sky.

Leo: Can you get Dark Sky on the Android?

Gina: I don’t believe you can, but I’ve got to tell you, forcast.io, just the website is a really nice mobile experience.  This is awesome. I know this doesn’t matter as much to people who live in California, because it’s always sunny there,

Leo: OH, no we got rain.

Gina: When you’re wondering what exact time it is going to start snowing or how many inches of snow are going to be on the ground when you leave your office that day, and whether or not you should wear boots,- this is the site I look at in the morning.  I just absolutely love it.  The service matches up to weather data from a bunch of different sources and makes predictions like literally down to the minute. Like “at 2:30 it’s going to start to rain” - and it’s really really quite good. Beautiful layout and it really helps you plan out.  If you haven’t looked at it before, forecast.io It’s been awesome especially now.  I knew about it when I was in San Diego, now that I’m here on the East Coast and the weather deeply affects how my day is going to go, it’s deeply indispensable.

Leo: Do you have a weather app you like on android?

Gina: This is the one – I basically have this open in a tab at all times in Chrome on Android.  I swipe over to Google now, to see the temperature and if I see any kind of precipitation, I go over to forecast.io to get the whole story.

Leo: That’s everything you need

Kevin: I have – there’s website I like, which, open the chat.  I think it’s - part of a source they use for forecast.io – it’s the precipitable water in the atmosphere.  It’s really handy here, because you can basically see the rain storms coming in to California. 

Leo: I’m looking.

Kevin: What I found with Dark Sky, it’s not accurate here –  It would say, “It’s fine”, but it was actually raining. 

Leo: The one thing I’d like to know

Kevin: I’ve got a couple I use.  I use Weather Underground because they make a really nice widget, which is handy, so I can see when the rain’s coming.

Leo: Isn’t it funny how much we love the weather? Just something about it, I don’t understand.

Gina:  It matters

Kevin: There’s one called Radar Now, which is very simple in case you like the animated version of that map.

Leo: I use Yahoo weather, both on IOSs and android.  They’ve done a really nice job.  What’s nice about Yahoo Weather is they take pictures from Flickr so if you’ve got a bunch of cities you’ll get creative comments of Flickr picture of those cities which is really cool

Gina: OH, like the particular condition – that’s really nice.

Leo: In Petaluma, sometimes they’ll have downtown Petaluma which is cool and if you slide up you’ve got a lot of the forecast.io stuff, including maps

Kevin: The thing the forecast does is for protection.  You can look at it and say  “I can see that rainstorm is coming this way”, whereas forecast says it’s going to rain over there.

Gina: I’m just bad at maps – I look at a weather map and I don’t know what this means.  That’s what I like about forecast. “2:00 it’s going to start to rain in your location.”

Kevin: That’s nice.

Jeff: Does it give you snow accumulation maps?  You don’t need them in California, but we do.

Leo: Yeah, no kidding

Gina: It’ll tell you  - 2 inches tonight

Jeff: Oh, it will – Oh!

Gina: It’ll tell you about that – and of course that changes , but if you keep an eye on it, it will give you an accumulation.

Jeff: It’s like the ethic of the TV weather man who just keeps on. The first site I created on the internet, I got so sick of TV weatherman, I created a site that was nothing but 5 day forecasts, because that’s all I cared about.

Leo: Really?

Jeff: We called it  rareshine.com and we sold it to Accuweather.

Leo: We have tapped into some sort of weather thing here.

Gina: “You won’t believe what your commute’s going to be like tomorrow!”  That’s literally a tease for local weather, it makes me crazy.

Leo: I don’t need to watch your crappy broadcast.  One other thing I like about the Yahoo thing, because it’s connected to Yahoo and this might be a portent of things to come.  They call it Smart Weather. Easily add friend and family locations. You can log into your Facebook or your Yahoo account and it will add all the locations of your friends and family to your maps, so I can have all of these maps, because I know people in all of these areas.

Jeff: My parents, God bless them, are always calling and saying, “So you get a lot of snow”?

Leo: Yeah Yeah

Jeff: It says right here, it’s snowing.

Leo: You know what, you’re taking away from them the one topic of conversation they have.

Jeff: So maybe I shouldn’t tell them

Leo: Say “ I don’t know ma, let me look out the window.  Oh, look, your measuring cups, they’re on the sill.” Because they’re measuring the snow. Put a ruler in it. Jeff Jarvis, give us a number.

Jeff:  Okay, I think you teased this and then we didn’t do it, so I’ll do this one.

Leo: Okay

Jeff:  Google has poured another 50 million in new real estate marketplace auction.com.  Its $1.2 billion valuation means it’s the fourth company that they’ve invested in that has over a billion dollar valuation, said another report. 

Leo: Wow

Jeff: I just find this fascinating that Google is in the real estate business at any level.  Real estate business is an incredibly inefficient business.  I always get brokers mad at me when I say this, but real estate brokers do not earn 6%! 

Leo: They get paid 6%, but you’re saying they don’t earn it.

Jeff: Right

Gina: I had my house on Zillow.

Leo: Zillow is so great, I love Zillow.

Gina: It’s great and you know what? Every single place that our agent showed us was packed with people and got an offer the day after. We found a place for sale by owner on Zillow’s search set up that just emailed me new listings.  Found it on Zillow, didn’t have to pay the fee, we made an offer very quickly. Offers get made very quickly here.  It was Cochran, which is like the big real estate place here.  Zillow did better than my Cochran agent, sorry Barbara.  There’s a lot that can be done here, I think

Leo: But did Zillow give you a bottle of champagne and two glasses etched with you and your wife’s name on it the day you bought it?

Gina: No, and I will say that Zillow sent us to a place which was for sale by owner and it was clearly it turned out after a couple weeks going back and forth with the guy  - just a guy who wanted to see whether or not he could get an offer. He wasn’t serious. He kind of yanked our chain for a bit. You kind of have to take the good with the bad.

Leo: You should have done what Mark Zuckerberg did. He said “I like that house” He sent his agent to knock on the door and say how much would you take, I’ll pay twice what it’s worth and the guy said “really?”

Jeff: I never heard that.

Leo: Don’t you wish somebody would come knock on your door and pay you - - -

Jeff: It’s what he did with WhatsApp, yeah.

Leo: Right, I’ll pay you 8000 times what it’s worth.

Leo: So, I want to recommend something I’ve actually recommended on the Mac side, but it’s also an Android app, but do not look if you do not want to waste time.  If you do not want to waste time.  It was Steve Gibson who told me about this and I’ve gotten so hooked on this I can’t stop playing it.  It’s kind of a simple game; it’s called rails. Basically what you’re doing is you’re traffic directing a railroad. But there’s something so seductive about it that I just can’t stop playing.  Maybe it appeals to the same kind of mind that does knolling.  Do you know what knolling is? That’s where you arrange everything in square right angles on your desk?  In this game, trains come out of different stations and you’ve got to route them using switches and lights to they go to the right station.  “Oh no, the blue train’s going to the red station!  Stop, stop stop! And here comes the blue train, going - Oh no!”  Anyway you get the idea.  It’s a lot of fun and I can’t stop playing it.  It’s $1.99

Jeff: For those who graduated from Thomas the Tank engine.

Leo: This is like grownup Thomas the tank engine.  I earned 175 coins and set a new record!

Jeff: Wow, I’m not a gamer.  I’m just not a gamer

Leo: You would love this

Jeff: No, I know I wouldn’t.  I don’t like games, I don’t like crossword puzzles.

Leo: You would love this.  You draw lines.

Jeff: I try

Leo: You connect things

Jeff: I did Dots like twice and I said, “What’s the point?”

Leo: OH, yeah, you actually want to be productive or something. Is that it?

Jeff: Yeah

Leo: O, see I don’t care really.  I’m just a podcaster; I don’t need to be productive.  I just sit here and talk.

Jeff: I’m productive, I’m on Twitter

Leo: Oh, yeah Twitter, that’s productive. Thank you, by the way, for sending me a bunch of selfies.  People using their dogs to create parody selfies.  Let me pause this game, I want to save that. That’s Rails, $1.99. David Letterman did his own Oscar.  Oh, there’s a movie.  You want to watch a movie of trains?

Jeff: No, I don’t

Leo: Come on, you want to play this game, I know you do

Jeff: No, I don’t.

Leo: This is not good.  What is good about this? This is not even funny. I think – David, you’ve got some competition, you’ve got Kimmel, you’ve got Conan, you’ve got Fallon! What are you doing?  This isn’t funny!

Jeff: Love you, babe, but -

Leo: You know how many retweets he got? 67  Now if Kevin Spacey was making a face in the back – THEN You know what we’re going to do when we get Kevin here?  We’re going to do a selfie and have him make that face.  You see, of course, the people who’ve made the Kevin Spacey selfie.

Gina: Okay, that’s a good one.

Leo: It’s creepy. Ladies and Gentlemen, this week in google has come grinding to a halt.  Apparently it’s gone dark as well. The show would be nothing without its panelists and we thank you, Kevin Marks, for joining us.  Kevin is not gainfully employed so if anybody would like to give this guy a job and get him out

Jeff: The brilliant Kevin Marks

Leo: The wonderful, the brilliant, the talented – let me tell you something.  This guy, he’s English!  He’s got a posh accent.  He’ll add some class to your joint.

Chad: He never did his thing

Leo: What thing?

Chad: You do the tip, Jeff does the number, Kevin does his thing –

Leo: He did his things!  He did 18 weather apps, what are you talking about?

Kevin: The thing I was going to mention is that this weekend in San Francisco - -

Leo: Oh, we want to plug this.

Kevin: South by Southwest.  We’ve got an indie web cam, which is for people who are creating the indie web and there are a few places left, so if you’re interested in the independent web -

Leo: What does this mean?  Indie, how?

Kevin: Basically hosting your own site, reaching out to the large - like Google and Facebook, but not making them the center of your web experience.

Leo: Excellent, excellent.

Jeff: I don’t want to get another conversation going, because I’m tired, but –

Leo: Yes?

Jeff: Are you considering going to South by Southwest this year?

Kevin:  I thought about it and decided that it wasn’t worth what it would cost.  It’s so much more expensive now than it was a couple years ago.

Leo: Is it?  How much is it?

Kevin: It’s so overloaded – fly there, lots and lots of money.

Leo: It’s a great party.  I don’t know if there’s much information there. I think we’re going to do a special at some point, talk a little bit about what’s going on. If something big is happening there, we’ll cover it.

Kevin: It used to be a place you could depend on people to go, because it was cheap and it was a way to get together in the spring and people from all over American would go out and chat about web stuff.  It’s become such a corporate thing now, you can only afford to go if you can expense the whole thing.

Jeff: Marketing people are saying it’s over.  And I’m thinking, “You’re the guys who ruined it and now you’re abandoning it.”

Leo: Yeah

Gina: Yeah

Leo: Every app wanted to duplicate Twitter and Foursquare’s experience there, and it just became crazy.  That’s too bad. It’s a fun party, I just can’t justify it.  Isn’t that sad, if anything was our thing, this was it.  I should give, actually you have a lot of good things, Kevin Marks. fixpatents.org

Kevin: It’s looking a bit scruffy at the moment

Leo: Oh, that’s your site. I didn’t know that.

Kevin: But Julie has moved to Engine Advocacy.

Leo: Really?

Kevin: And putting up a big campaign around all the new patent bills.

Leo: engine.is

Kevin: Yes. So they asked if they could use Fix Patents, and I said yes, please do. So that’s going to change from being an ugly site that I made one day because I was grumpy.

Jeff: Cool

Leo: Is someone going to take her place?

Kevin: Well she’s still doing the patent stuff here.  EFF is going to continue campaigning too.

Leo: Good. It’s really important.

Kevin: Engine is a small group, but I’ve been impressed with them. They’ve been thinking about  these issues and how to translate the tech world in DC for quite a while, so I’m very encouraged that Julie’s going there.

Leo: And you can follow them on Twitter @engineadvocacy.  And you can follow Kevin Marks @kevinmarks or kevinmarks.com.

Leo: Jeff Jarvis is a professor at CUNY.  He also is in Brussels.  What are you doing in Brussels?

Jeff: I was speaking to a group of EU bureaucrats.

Leo: What time is it, midnight?

Jeff: It is a quarter to one.

Leo: Better put you to bed right now.

Jeff: I’m tired.

Leo: Thanks for staying up, Jeff.

Jeff: At least the Sheraton Wi-Fi___33 works. I paid for the deluxe.

Leo: It worked great, looked really good. Thank you and we’ll reimburse you for that deluxe. And that heavenly bed’s calling to you right now.  You can actually buy the heavenly bed at some store and I’m so tempted to.

Gina: Yeah

Leo: You can get it at westonhotelsathome.com. Holy cow, it’s expensive.  It would be cheaper to go stay at the hotel

Gina: I don’t have the budget for that.  But something to think about.

Leo: It includes ten layers of comfort. Gina Trapani has a cot in the basement.

Jeff: Where her mother is holding her prisoner.

Leo: Where she is so comfortable

Gina: Someday I will be in my own home.

Leo: You got a Jets blanket down there, Hummel figurines, National Geographic going back to 1938.

Jeff: You’ve got to do a panoramic

Leo: Okay, one shot of the basement.

Gina: Right now? Oh no!

Leo: Oh, this is cozy!

Gina: It’s totally, you got the low ceiling. I don’t know.

Leo: You could film a scene of Sopranos down there.  We’re going to the mattresses. Everybody. Thank you, Gina, thank you Jeff, thank you Kevin.  Gina is on All about Android every Tuesday 5 pm.  You got to watch All about Android. It’s the best show, thanks to you and Jason. 

Gina: All Jason

Leo: Great Job. Erin Newcomb, Ron Richards, great team. Great job! Our show is every Wednesday at 1 pm pacific, 4 pm Eastern time. 2100 UTC at twit.tv.  Please tune in and watch live, we love it if you do.  If you can’t, on-demand audio is available and video, too, at twit.tv/twig and, of course, you can subscribe.  So go on and do that and we will see you next time!