This Week in Google 265 (Transcript)
Leo Laporte: It's time for TWiG - This Week in Google, Jeff and
Gina are here. We'll talk about the big Samsung announcement, what cloud
security means to Google, and Emil Dash will join us to talk a little bit about
the notion of public versus private. it’s all coming
up next, on TWiG.
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Leo: This is TWiG - This Week in Google, episode 265. Recorded September 3, 2014
You Can't Handle the Nudes!
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Google, and of course as always this wouldn't be TWiG without the great Gina Trapani of ThinkUp, always
great to have her, also the host of All About Android. And she got up early
with me this morning. Not so early for you, but nine am your time, six am ours,
to do the Samsung event. Good to see you.
Gina Trapani: Yes. Good to see you, hello again.
Leo: it’s really nice to have you and
Mike Elgin and we did a special, which is available now on our feed... We'll
talk a little bit about what Samsung announced, because it is Android focused. Also here, Jeff Jarvis. Couldn't do it without him,
professor at the city university of New York, of
journalism. He is at Buzzmachine.com, where he blogs. It’s great to have you
again, Jeff. And we brought in Gina's partner, Anil Dash.
Anil Dash: Hello everybody.
Leo: It’s so nice to have Anil here. If
you're not familiar with Anil, you should be. He's been involved in the
community for so long, I mean, your tweets often are the conversations you have
on Twitter... Are so important, are so invaluable. I became aware of Anil when
he was an evangelist for SixApart, right?
Anil: Yeah, that was like a decade ago.
Leo: Has it been that long?
Anil: Almost.
Leo: Yikes. Where else have you been?
Anil: A bunch of stuff. I was in the
music biz for a while, newspaper biz for a while. And of course the last
several years has been working with Gina on ThinkUp, and that has been super exciting and fun.
Leo: Really neat. So are you the founder
and CEO?? What is your...?
Anil: Co-founder, with Gina... And um,
yeah, we started the project as sort of an open source thing we were doing
while working non-profit, and it’s just snowballed and
grown. I think TWiG folks especially probably know a
little bit about ThinkUp, but it’s been really really fun, to kind of watch everybody jump on board and I
think just the last month I feel like we've done the best. New features, and
exciting stuff around it, so that's been the most fun I've had while working on
this, even for the past couple of years.
Leo: And of course, Anil is well known
as a blogger at dashes.com, right?
Anil: Yup, yup. And I've been
contributing at EDM and I used to write for Wired...
Jeff Jarvis: The free sampling lead to growth?
Anil: Yeah, yeah. it’s been... it’s one of those things where you sort of cross your fingers and you
hope that you're talking to the right people that are going to understand what
you're making, when you're making your project. And I think Fourchan,
when you talk to the TWiG audience and they're actually
curious and interested it’s nice.
Leo: So what's the story with this
Prince blog post from last month? From
July? I wanted to ask you, what is going on? You have a very long blog
post...
Anil: Yeah, so... I'm a fan of Prince, in
particularly I like his music, right? And, but... I
almost never write about him, all my friends that are really, "Oh you're a
huge fan..." And he does something and they sort of say, "Oh, you're
going to write about it." And I pretty much never do. And last month, and
I’ll apologize in advance to all of us that are going to feel the pain of this
statement. Last month was the thirtieth anniversary of Purple Rain.
Leo: Oh my god. Thirtieth
anniversary, wow.
Anil: Yes. Yeah, thirty
years. And so I thought, what would be something fun to do about the
anniversary and everybody sort of knew it was a big album, it sold a lot of
tickets as a movie, fairly obvious things. And what I did, instead was because
this is... I'm okay at technology, I'm pretty good at
Prince. I wrote about how...
Leo: Your secret power is Prince.
Anil: Totally, totally. I wrote about how
the song Purple Rain came together, and it was basically, you know a good five,
ten years of Prince's career to sort of come together on this thing and how did
all the members of the band contribute to it, and what were the aspects of
it... But I actually cut some stuff out, that was
about how the housing policy and zoning regulations in Minneapolis at the time
influenced... The song being created, but other than that pretty much everything
else is in there that could possibly shape the song. And it was one of those, like, I've been meaning to write this for about twenty years
so let me get it out there. Response has been great, for music it has been
really nice, and for everybody else they sort of politely distance themselves,
it was great.
Leo: It reminded me of Wendy and Lisa,
who I haven't thought about in thirty years. Wendy who will be celebrating her
fiftieth birthday this year...
Anil: Yeah, but they're fantastic.
Leo: Are they still around? Are they
still...?
Anil: Yeah, they do music composition.
They have a special Emmy this year, they composed for
a TV series. They're really active on Twitter and Facebook. And really just
sort of smart and engaging the fans.
Leo: I'm glad to see that. I'll have to
find them on Facebook. Not that I'm... A big Facebook fan. So, Robert Scoville came and he had been saying,
challenging me, saying, "You're doing it wrong, Facebook..." He
literally said, "Facebook is going to be it. In a year, you'll come back
to me, saying you were absolutely right. There is no other social network,
nothing else matters. Facebook is number one." And I
said, you're crazy. I mean Google Plus is so much better. He said that's
because you're doing it wrong. So on Sunday he came in and we recorded an hour,
and we were going to release it as a triangulation later this month but there's
been so much interest I think we've got to move that up because people really
want to see this. He showed me how to go through Facebook, how to categorize
everybody, how to give Facebook... It turns out, if you are assiduous about
giving Facebook signals about what you want, Facebook, he says, "Its
artificial intelligence, there's a lot of smart software behind Facebook, to
give you what you want, if you just give it enough signals." And so I did
that... I'm still not sure if I'm getting a great experience, but, I'm giving
it a try.
Anil: A very bold Robert Scovill prediction that Facebook will be a popular social
network.
Leo: I think it is kind of bold. I keep
waiting for Facebook to go away. He convinced me to put Facebook back on my
mobile device, and messenger...
Anil: I don't know. Any place you get a
billion people showing up is probably not going away anytime soon.
Leo: I guess. There's the network
effect... I don't know, anyway it’s still just as goofy as it was, to me. In
fact, the saddest thing is that Google+ is getting more like Facebook, not
less. I don't like it. I've decided, I'm going to...
I've registered the domain names, and I think this is what the world needs is a
verified social network... Google can't do it, because of the tying the Google
services into this real personality but anybody else could, where you have to
send me a driver's license picture and today's newspaper and I can then
demonstratively prove it’s you and this is going to be a verified social
network. Wouldn't that solve all of our problems with Twitter especially? Jeff,
what do you think? I already registered, verified.zone.
Jeff
Jarvis: I know a lot of a-holes by name...
Leo: Yeah, but don't you think that if
somebody... If you do know who they are, that really tempers that conversation
a little bit.
Jeff: Yeah, I mean, thinking about our
talk last week... This show does that, and the idea that we're acting as if
we're in a crowded space, when in fact we're in this wide open space and you
look at Twitter and say, "Oh my god, I've got to talk to those
people!" Well, it’s not actually that many people who actually see the
tweets, so okay, you can announce things there and do things there, but the
world doesn't demand that you're there.
Leo: We know that now, thanks to Twitter
analytics, how few people see our Tweets...
Jeff: Yeah, so I'm not sure it’s worth
all the hubbub and hoohah, um... You know, I remain
troubled by the places that come up with difficult people and difficult
behavior, and that's really what you're trying to answer. Um... And I don't know whether identity is it. Maybe it’s... Gina had the kernel of
it, as is her habit. Mahybe it's more about getting
signals about people who are nice people, and people who aren't acting nice. I
had a case, where somebody we all love retweeted a... An anti-TWiT troll, who trolled me, and it
was to me and that's how I noticed. And this person we love had retweeted it or
responded or something, and I said, that's a TWiT troll, and you're feeding him. And our friend said,
"OK, great. Thanks for telling me." And I killed the reference, so I
think that in a society you kind of band together in a way so I think you're on
to something, partially. Which is, you want to know who
someone is. But I think there's another thing, which is how we recommend
people to each other and what that matters. There's got to be friction, there's
got to be loss, which is what Mike Elgin's point was. You have to be able to
lose some value by acting like an a-hole.
Leo: Well, there were some a-holes out
there this week. This was the week that pictures of a great number of Hollywood
celebrities were leaked. Apparently hackers got into their accounts. We
think... The best thinking right now, Apple said there's no structural flaw
with iCloud or Find My iPhone. These were targeted attacks. And the best
thinking is that there was in fact, we know there was a flaw in FindMyiPhone that allowed unlimited brute force style
attacks, password attacks. It wasn't what we call rate limited. In other words,
most sites if you enter a password and it’s wrong, it tells you but it limits
the number of times you could do that or it slows the process down. It makes it
difficult to do a high speed brute force attack. Find My iPhone was not one of those. That by the way, was
fixed on Monday, after these photos were released. So, the best guest of many,
including Jonathan Jodarski is that this brute force
attack was used to get the passwords of these celebrities and that their iPhone
or iPad backups were stored on iCloud, were then grabbed and it was there that
the photos came from. That's a little scary because that means other
information, lots of information, was also grabbed in those backups. The photos
posted on Fourchan, most sites, including Reddit responded pretty well, even Perez Hilton after
initially posting images realized what a mistake that was, pulled it down and
apologized, said that, "In the heat of the moment I posted that, but that
wasn't a good thing."
Jeff: Which is a really important moment,
I think. I saw beginnings of norms being agreed upon here. Now it’s weird to me
that we gathered around nude celebrities, not around beheaded journalists...
Leo: A similar thing happened with the
beheaded journalist. I think it was a one, two punch,, wasn't it?
Jeff: I think that was a good point, yes,
I'll buy that.
Leo: And the second time that the
beheading videos went up, they were not nearly as
widespread, were they?
Jeff: That's true. That's true.
Leo: I feel like I...
Jeff: Maybe we're getting to some level
of norms on this, and that includes the technology services.
Leo: If it gets officially egregious,
reasonable people go, "Whoa, wait a minute, let’s just hold on here."
Jeff: Right, right. And... It... Would be wrong to even look. In
both cases. So it’s not just about being wrong to post them, or about
being wrong just to spread them, it’s about being wrong just to look, I think.
Anil: There's an interesting thing here
where people make jokes about nudes leaking, right? And there's this sort of
fake distance. One, pretending as if every attractive twenty something year old
doesn't have nude pictures somewhere. And two, is if this was...
Leo: Some of us older, uglier fellas do.
Jeff: Oh, Leo. TMI. TMI, Leo. Forbidden visuals. I don't... Now I can't...
Leo: Oh, stop it! You can handle it! You
can't handle the nudes!
Anil: Jokes aside, to an approximation
everybody has something.
Leo: it’s normal behavior and there's
nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with it.
Anil: it’s totally normal. And so there's
at least the push back against this sort of joking or, I have a right to see it
or whatever, and that's really good. And the second step, the deeper conversation,
especially in our context as we're talking about tech, what were the defaults?
What were the choices the platform made? Look at the case of Apple, assuming
that, you know, Apple is obviously a big player in this for most of these
images, you know... What Apple does with your thumbprint, is this really deeply
secure design to never let it off your device. Really smart decision about what
the default thing it does when it can scan your thumbprint. it’s treated like important private data. And the contrast to the default for iCloud
being accessible to not being encouraged that, you know, the rate limiting bug
that you described, a whole series of choices, five, six, seven, ten of them,
that all could have gone the other way, that would have had an impact here. And
they haven't felt the pain of that, and I think it’s interesting because this
is happening right before their big announcements next week. One of which we
know, from the developer conferences, is going to be about please upload all
your photos into the photo roll on iCloud by default, with IOS8. And that's
going to be a real challenge for them, because their whole value is simplicity,
ease of use, user experience and cool factor. And all that is
being threatened by them having made, frankly, the wrong choices about the
defaults in security.
Jeff: And the defaults is another way,
Anil, I agree, and the same policies. So twitter had a policy previously of
trying their best not to delete accounts. And when it came to both the
beheading and the photos, they started deleting accounts. And I'm okay with
that but now, that forces twitter to say, "Well what is your policy, where
are your lines, what are your limits, what are they?" And you're forced to
have policies now, which platforms the most likely. They wrote in the guardian,
technology companies aren't accountable. I disagree with that strongly, I think
they're highly accountable, but they've got to recognize they have to document
that accountability.
Leo: I think Apple is going to suffer a
big blow from this.
Jeff: The whole Cloud is going to suffer
because of the stupidity of the press, making this a Cloud issue. It wasn't a
Cloud issue.
Leo: Okay, but to be fair, if you put
something on the internet, there is a risk, and I've said this for a long
time... That it could go public, by accident, or by flaw. So you should be kind
of aware of that. Apple's default was to upload those. I suspect that the
people whose pictures were revealed did not even know that they were being
uploaded to the cloud. Anybody who has pictures like that probably exerts a
little bit of caution about how they get distributed.
Anil: You could do everything right. You
could follow the defaults, listen to Apple saying, "Its secure if you do this." You could even do what Apple said, enable two
factor authentication, which I think, you know, maybe the four of us have it.
Leo: Your two factor sucks.
Anil: it’s terrible, right? But you could
do all of those things right, and still be vulnerable because of the choices
Apple made. And they could have been different, it’s not obviously... If
something's online, connected, ultimately somebody can crack it. We're talking
about reasonable defaults, reasonable security, being less vulnerable to brute
force attack, and Apple's made bad choices here and should be held accountable
for it. There's nothing wrong with us, I mean, especially when you have this
kind of platform, putting some pressure on them saying, "Ok, now there's
hundreds of millions of people that all have at least something
incriminating..."
Leo: What about the notion that maybe
Apple should modify its camera program, as should every company, modify the
camera program so that there's a switch, just as there is in your browser, so
that this is now going to be private browsing, this is now going to be private
photos. Please make sure that these are stored more securely.
Jeff: That's a good idea.
Anil: There's a ton of ways...
Leo: The real solution, and Google's
done it quite a bit towards this in Gmail, is end to end encryption. Trust no
one, encryption. That before my stuff... There's nothing wrong with putting
stuff on the cloud if only I can decrypt it. Right? And Apple needs to give us that tool specifically.
Anil: Yeah, theoretically if you could
make the experience good enough.
Leo: And this is the problem, Apple has
a huge investment in this notion of a just works. This thing about magic and
this is one of the reasons this two factor is so poor
is that they... And they... Why they still use
security questions, which by the way they implicated in this hack...
Anil: Thumbprint is secure.
Leo: Yeah.
Anil: And it never leaves your device.
Leo: But remember, Apple, we were pretty
sure because there's been numerous stories about this, Apple on Tuesday will
announce that they have deals with Mastercard, Visa,
American Express, Nordstrom and others, to do payments using those services on
your iPhone, presumably using touch ID and passbook. Are people going to think
twice now, about using this? This is a huge blow to Apple. This couldn't have
been timed more poorly, from their point of view.
Anil: Hope so.
Jeff: I think it’s going to hurt Google
as well.
Leo: Well, as we talked about on Windows
Weekly, Google and Microsoft should step forward and say, "Unlike Apple,
if you turn on our second factor, you cannot without this second factor, ID, you cannot get any of your data from our cloud."
You can with Apple, that's part of the problem is that you don't need two
factor to get the iCloud back.
Jeff: How can second factor, Gina, you talked
about this a little bit... How can second factor be made easier, so that people will just... For the default, people would not
complain and they'd adopt it, and we'd be... What does it need?
Gina: Yeah, that's a really good
question. If I had the answer, I might not be sitting here right now. I'd have
a really high paying job at one of these companies.
Leo: Well you lose, we've talked about
this on Security Now, when you do end in Trust No One Encryption, you lose some capabilities some people want. The ability to look at your data on multiple devices, for instance. The ability to de-dupe and stuff like that. Those
things...
Anil: ... For shifting
from an iPhone to an Android or vice versa.
Leo: Right. Right.
Anil: No cloud is going to let you do that,
after it’s all encrypted, and say we'll get to it next quarter or next year.
Leo: Right. So you can...
Gina: Something like Lastpass is multi-platform, and doesn't end in encryption, right? I could decrypt
locally on whatever I have Lastpass installed, which is across multiple devices... Um, so I mean, it’s possible.
Leo: That's a good point. It is
possible.
Anil: I mean, Lastpass is great software, we use it all the time. it’s very reliable. it’s also
probably the most challenging user experience of any app I use regularly. And
it may be... Just because it’s always, there's always something that feels like
a pain.
Leo: Well security is a challenge.
That's not Lastpass, that's called security. That's
exactly why Apple has been so reluctant I think, to do
the completely secure thing. They want it to just work, and that's a tradeoff,
between convenience and security. That’s part of the trouble.
Anil: The two factors are something you
know and something you have.
Leo: Or something you are, there's three
possible factors.
Anil: Right, and then the biometrics. And
those things clearly, there's a lot of room to innovate around. There must be
better ways than typing in that code that, you know, before the timer runs out
on your app.
Leo: There are. Steve is doing squirrel,
which is very interesting form of authentication for websites. Steve Gibson. I
think there are other ways to do this...
Anil: But I think that's more interesting
than, can we make the screen more curved and add one more inch of diagonal...
Leo: But don't you think these companies
are doing what people are asking them for, and what they think will sell? A
curved screen is something that everybody grasps.
Anil: I think after this week, people
will be asking... Yeah, yeah. I think it’s a real
question.
Leo: We talked about it on Macbreak Weekly. it’s my opinion
that Apple has to grasp the nettle and step forward on Tuesday and say,
"Yes. We have always believed in protecting you online and we now know we
need to do even better, and here's what we're going to do."
Jeff: What are the odds they're going to
say that?
Leo: I think they have to.
Anil: Not Tuesday, but they could say it.
Leo: I think they have to grasp the
nettle. I think that it’s not a pleasant thing to do, but if they don't address
it there's going to be... Um. This is... Everybody
knows this happened, and not everybody is clear on why it happened. I'm not
even clear on why it happened or whether Apple is at fault. Apple needs to
address this very aggressively. Steve Jobs never would, I know that.
Jeff: Okay. Bets, bets around the table. Bets that they're going to address it, in a blunt and direct way. I say...
Anil: you know, their press releases tend to have less BASS than most. They're a little more
direct. There's no way they're going to do it on stage on Tuesday, right?
That's all about selling their new phone. No chance. I think what they'll do is
they let it cool a while. This is what they did with AntennaGate,
and all the other things. They let it cool a while.
Leo: That was a mistake with AntennaGate. That allowed it to flow over.
Anil: Well, for better or worse, this is
their pattern. Maybe they changed their pattern, but at least what they do
historically, they let it cool a while and come back maybe that Friday after,
in the lull between when they announced and when they ship a new device, and
say you know, "We hear you loud and clear, security matters. Here's what
we're doing steps 1, 2, 3, and X, Y, and Z..."
And, you know, by the time the new phone ships we'll have this in place. Maybe
they can do that. I think it’s actually the biggest challenge they have, is
intro and they can only say, it’s not a big deal if
people's passwords got guessed. That can happen to anyone if your password gets
hacked, or guessed by somebody. And that resistance is what they have to fight
internally. That sort of deny, deny, deny, hope it
goes away. Which every big company does.
Leo: I predict that there will be at
least an oblique acknowledgement of this, and it wouldn't hurt Apple to say,
"We're going to do better. We're committed to doing better. We are going
to protect your data." That's their selling point at this point, over
Google, is that we are the one place you can put your stuff that's private. And
if they can't address that, they don't address that, that's a huge advantage.
Look at Apple stock prices today, lost $4.36, almost a 5% drop.
Jeff: Go back to Google. Go back to
Google. What can Google do? Why are you saying...?
Leo: This is an opportunity for Google
to strike, to say, "We know better. We're geeks." This is, again,
nobody says this in an outright fashion, but you make it clear you know, we're the computer scientists. We understand security much
better than Apple does, and we offer you a secure solution.
Anil: Do we believe that?
Leo: Well I don't... it’s not one
whether you and I believe...
Gina: I certainly do believe it’s a
marketing opportunity as Leo said. I mean, I also, like, even though... Not to
be a cynic, I think I'm getting a little sick, so I think maybe I'm just a little
down. You know, all this has happened before, all of this will happen again. I
mean, saying that Perez Hilton, after a little bit, having a revelation, took
the photos down, like... This isn't the first celebrity, like, nude leak or sex
tape that's ever happened and it won't be the last. Is Perez, really, or Gawker
or any sites really in the moment of heat, to get page views, going to not do
that again in the future? Like, I have a hard time believing that. Matt Holman
two years ago, got hacked. What was Apple's response
then? It wasn't nude photos...
Leo: They fixed it.
Gina: They addressed it, right, and it
was a combination of Amazon and Apple and Apple did suspend password resets
over the phone and whatever. I just, I feel like these things have always
happened, they will continue to happen. The systems will iterate, the companies
will make statements, but ultimately the whole thing is kind of flawed and we
all just decide to live with it, right?
Leo: You know why it’s going to be
better? it’s going to get better, Gina, because I
think the people are saying, "You know what, this is wrong." And I
feel a distinct... but remember in these previous releases there wasn't this
kind of... Disgust with it that there is today. And I
really feel a distinct shift on this. This was too much, this is out of
control. This is wrong.
Anil: Yeah, if we go back to, you know...
Leo: And companies respond to what their
customers tell them.
Anil: it’s ancient
history but if you go back to the Paris Hilton sex tape which is a decade ago
now...
Leo: Generally greeted with salacious
excitement and exuberance.
Anil: Right, and
it was also sort of people just joking about it.
Leo: Everybody said, "Poor Paris, that is sexual assault, that's a crime..." And
that's what people are saying today.
Anil: A very young woman, and all these
other things, and I think there's a sort of... There's been a change there. There's obviously still tons of pigs that are reveling in
this, and you know, not dismissing that, but saying that there's some shift
there. And then, I think after Matt was hacked, is when Apple introduced it’s sort
of weak two factor auth on iTunes. They did sort of
put out a statement, which at that point was still very rare. They weren't just
weighing in on things back then, but they actually responded. Amazon made some
changes. Now it is... None of these are solutions, but like in terms of moving
the ball forward.
Leo: That's the key.
Anil: It had an impact.
Leo: There's not going to be a fix. But
I mean, Gina, I don't remember people saying is it right or wrong to look at
these. I don't remember anybody saying that, with Paris Hilton. They're saying
that there very much is the thought, you know, you shouldn't even... You're
committing.... You're part of a conspiracy, you're part
of the crime to look at these. That's a very big shift, don't you think?
Gina: It is, and you know, I wonder... I mean, whatever. I think that it’s like, culturally it’s more acceptable to slut shame Paris Hilton than it is Jennifer
Lawrence, for whatever reasons in popular culture. I think that people love
Jennifer Lawrence.
Leo: Nobody said, "Gee, poor
Anthony Weiner."
Gina: Yeah, people laughed and made fun
of him...
Leo: He had agency people...
Anil: He shared his photo, it’s totally
different.
Leo: With another person, not
publically.
Gina: I mean I often think it has to do
with a lot of things, the people involved I think. Matt was a very, you know
sympathetic character in his situation. I think Jennifer Lawrence is very
sympathetic, I think that whatever. Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, they're just
like, "Oh these dummies are famous for nothing, I think they deserve
that." And I think that that definitely plays into iit.
The optimist in me does want to believe this conversation evolves every
reiteration of it, right? But this will continue to happen and I like to think
that I surround myself with folks who will speak up about not saying, you know,
avoid victim blaming which is what goes on a lot... It still goes on, maybe it’s going on less. I hope so. But
yeah. I mean, the whole thing is a bummer. I think it'll continue to
happen. And look, you know, are people really going to demand...? There's a
data breach every few months, it feels like. A major data breach and all
different companies, and I just don't know... I just sort of accepted that thats part of this. Right?
Jeff: Right, but gina, part of what we have to do is change the rest
of the architecture, where putting nude pictures aside, just matters of
transactional security. Oh my god, they have my credit card number and blank
and they can now rob me. Whats wrong with that picture, is that if all you need is a number, you can get...
They're still got carbon copies of credit card slips. Thats what we have to change. So a lot of the ways in
which a leak causes harm or causes a vulnerability, and come up with solutions
from the other side of it.
Anil: Yeah. I'm on the board of the Gate
In society research institute which is Danah Boyd's
institute for looking at big data and all the implications it has on society.
She hosted an event, the White House was doing a report on big data, one of the questions was basically about social security
numbers, when they get leaked. And basically, in a room of you know, a hundred
experts on big data and me sort of crashing the party. And they're asking what are the odds that ten million social security numbers get
leaked, let’s say, in the next decade? And show of hands, how many
people think that will happen. And basically every hand goes up. What are the
odds, you know, how many people think a hundred million social security numbers
might get leaked, and most of the hands are still up. So, and then of course, credit cards. There is... I don't think there is
anybody, certainly in the United States, there's nobody that hasn't gotten that
letter saying your credit card number was probably leaked and you can free
enroll in credit protection from us, and we'll pay for it. Whether it was
Target or you know, all those other hacks. So the
universe of like, "What if..." like, can I be secure? It doesn't
exist. We're all hacked.
Jeff: So engineers, right Anil, engineers
presume a system is going to be gamed. This is the way now that data is going
to be gamed. Full stop. So we have to change, and
again this doesn't address nude photos and theft, in that sense. Not that kind
of violation, but in terms of the data breaches you mentioned Gina. I think
we're looking at it the wrong way. It’s how do we stop
the data from being breached. That horse is running over the horizon, and it’s halfway
to Australia by now. Instead we've got to presume the data will be breached, so
then where are we vulnerable then, and stop that. And that's where it goes back
to things like how to do transactions. Does the fingerprint thing do it or
other things? I don't know. I wish I could write about this with any authority.
It’s the Skeet Gibsons of the world that are going to
tell us better.
Leo: Well I now remember why we had Anil
on because of his great post on Medium about public. And when you mention Dana Boyd,
that reminded me that you'd had a back and forth with Dana over...
Anil: Sure. I love the conversation, by
the way, that you all had about that. I appreciated that.
Leo: Good. I thought that really
interesting. We'll talk a little about that, we also have the Google Change Log
coming up. I'm sorry to hear you're not feeling well, Gina. Do you feel up to
the Google Change Log?
Gina: I always...
Leo: We've worked you too hard, this is the third show in twenty four hours. it’s not fair.
Gina: I know, it’s
been a marathon. I don't know how you do it, Leo.
Leo: it’s terrible, it’s really
terrible. No one should have to do three shows... Nevermind. Um.
Gina: Don't say it, boss...
Leo: No one should ever... Nevermind. But anyway, hang on and hang in there. We're going to wrap this thing up as
quickly as we can, so that you get to go home and I get to go home. Our show
today brought to you by Squarespace, love the Squarespace. You know, it’s funny because, Anil, you
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like. That's Squarespace.com. Click the get started button, and then that. If
you decide to buy, offer code T-W-I-G. Anil Dash joins us from ThinkUp, Gina's partner in ThinkUp.com. Jeff Jarvis is also
here, and we do a thing every week Anil. I think you might know. it’s called the Google Change Log. Chad just got back from
vacation and he's still a little... Now Gina Trapani with the latest from
Google... That's Jeff. I'm sorry Chad.
Gina: Chrome's 64 Bit build for windows
just got promoted from the Canary and dev channels up
to the stable channel, which means that if you're running 64 Bit windows, you
can get 64 Bit Chrome, and that means that it’s just faster and more secure and
more stable, and can take advantage of all that extra memory space to address.
Leo: Is Chrome 64Bit on all of the other
platforms? I know that I'm in the beta channel on the Mac on the 64 Bit. I
think this was the last platform maybe to go 64Bit.
Gina: I believe that it is. Yes, indeed.
Leo: Cool.
Gina: Google renames Google Enterprise
with a friendlier name, Google For Work, that's just
this week. The new name is supposed to be friendlier and more inclusive to
small businesses and organizations and even lone entrepreneurs and hackers
using Google services, like search and Android and Cloud Platform. Nothing
about Google Enterprise products actually changes, just the name, so it’s now
Google For Work. Which, you know... Whatever.
Jeff: How friendly that is. Google, it
means nothing to you guys but it means something to Leo. I'm reminded of Maitre G Krebs.
Leo: Why do you always do the old Kreb with me?
Anil: Tell us, lets gather around the campfire, about Krebs.
Jeff: Do a search, chad please. Do a
search for Matre G Krebs.
Leo: it’s a Dobie Gillis reference,
right?
Chad:
Right, if you want to search for Krebs, you have to look on AltaVista.
Leo: Matre G
Krebs was the character played by... Beatnick character on Dobie Gillis, played by, of course, Gilligan.
Playing a video of Dobie Gillis.
Leo: That's a long way to go...
Gina: I was waiting for that punchline
there.
Leo: I think the problem is, Jeff,
people don't know what Enterprise means. For the longest time, I didn't know
what it meant.
Jeff: Thats true. You know what, Leo, words and that - I
sat in business meetings where people talk about enterprise, it’s one of those
words like fungible, I was embarrassed to ask. And I just waited until a
definition would waft my way.
Leo: See we've got a solution here. We
found that the beta c solution has been migrated upward to the BD solution and
we now feel the enterprise is the future for this company. And I go, ahhhhh....
Anil: Enterprise is easy, you just add three zeros to the price.
Jeff: Enterprise means that you gave up
your dreams of serving consumers.
Anil: Oh, that's a little too close to
home. I have... When I met Leo, I was selling a product that had just become an
enterprise product.
Jeff: I've been there too friend.
Anil: Aside from Bob Denver's least
interesting roll, there's an interesting thing here with Google.
Leo: Wait a minute. He had more than
two?
Anil: I can't imagine that... I think
Gilligan is clearly the superior.
Leo: I don't know. I think Maynard G
Krebs is a seminal role...
Anil: I wasn't alive then, so I'm
guessing.
Leo: By the way, Bob Denver looks more
and more like Bill Gates as he ages. I don't know what exactly is going on
here. But doesn't that look like Bill Gates now?
Anil: There's a tech hook for everything.
Leo: For everything, yes.
Anil: But I think going from Enterprise
to At Work is really a reflection of Google Apps exceeding in government,
succeeding in education. All these things are, we're
not business. Why else would you have a meeting and say, look, we're going to
rebrand the most important thing we do from Enterprise to At Work? And it’s well
worth the dollars. And they want to put Chromebooks into schools and they want
to put google apps and google docs into government, so those are the only
places that are going to object to calling Work, Enterprise.
Jeff: I was trying to get to a long
winded joke there, but I agree. I think it makes sense, it says that this is
ready for prime time. it’s ready for your office. I
have this... it’s my institution to switch over to Google docs. And I'd be a
lot happier if they did. I'm not sure that word change is going to do it, but
maybe if they believe there's a sweeter seed there... Services
there that makes it make sense, alright.
Leo: By the way, the little known
fact...
Gina: There is Google Apps for Education,
is there not?
Leo: I think that's why they went work
and education. I think they wanted parallelism, is what I think.
Anil: Well, in the URL is still
Google.com/enterprise, so I think that kind of tells you most of what you neeed to know.
Leo: Move on, on the Change Log. Well
one last Dobie Gillis fact, Bob Denver received, according to IMDB $250 an
episode for his work as Maynard G Krebs.
Gina: Alright, moving on. Google Play's
beautiful design collection of apps for Android just got updated. The beautiful
design collection features apps hand-picked by Google to show off great Android
UI design. Today's update includes apps that will implement UI elements from
Google's new materials design, that's coming in android L this fall, of course. New apps in the collection include, Duolingo, Lumosity, Spotify, Runtastic,
and Yahoo News digest. So starting to get a peek of material
design ahead of time from these apps. And finally, this is a new one on
me, apparently it’s been a while but they're testing some tweaks to it...
Google is testing a new search box inside their search results for certain
sites. Like, Amazon, the White House, or Stanford. So to see it in action, and
I got this in some of my tries and not all so this might be an experiment that
we know won't work for everyone, but if you search for Microsoft, say, you'll
see the top result for Microsoft, with Microsoft.com. And below that there'll
be a search box to search inside Microsoft. So a site search box in their
search results. Works for Stanford, works for Whitehouse. They all do Google
site search, but if you search for Amazon and you see the search box, it'll
actually take you to Amazon search results. So, clearly kind of one of these...
One of Google's experiments with making the search results more useful. And interesting to see them pointing to someone elses,
particularly Amazon's, search results as well. So not everybody has it,
but kind of interesting.
Jeff: Against antitrust complaints, if
they do that.
Leo: Ahhhh,
very clever.
Gina: Yeah, yup. And actually, we should,
outside of the changelog, we should discuss the how to
eat sushi google search results. But we'll do that later, but for now that's
all I've got.
Jeff: You don't want to get that on you,
huh, Gina?
Leo: Am I going to get nude pictures or
something? And that's the Google Change Log. Apparently this
advice from Google, no longer there by the way, on how to eat sushi. This is from, um. Should I even mention this? Yeah, I think I can. This is from
Google Answers. And so, it showed up in a knowledge box, right?
Gina: Yeah, it’s the knowledge graph,
right, which basically just parses data from other websites and presents it
inside the search results. So you would Google how to eat sushi, and you get a
few whatever... Instructions back, from...
Leo: It's okay to use your fingers to
eat cut sushi rolls. Don't combine ginger and sushi, or ginger and soy sauce.
Ginger, the pickled ginger is a palate cleanser. When dipping sushi in soy
sauce, dip fish side down. Didn't know that, very useful. And never shake the
soy sauce off sushi, that's like shaking your wanker in public. What? Whaaaaat?
Gina: Its... You
know... I mean, whatever... it’s not a big deal, obviously... it’s text scraped
from another site, but people made a big deal about it because it's kind of
like what we were talking about with native advertising, it maybe is not clear
that this is text from another site. People are saying, "Google is saying
this thing about how to eat sushi." But google is not saying it at all,
but it’s the presentation that creates some confusion.
Leo: And to their credit, it was a Googler who outed Google... Steven Lau, a software engineer with Google Glass tweeted, "PSA
Google how to eat sushi, do it now before it gets fixed."
Anil: This is sort of live by the sword,
die by the sword in terms of the knowledge box, or One box, right? This was from a vice article, advice of all publications should be
pretty obvious it’s going to have some stuff that maybe you don't want to
show...
Leo: Despite its name, I thought Vice
was actually pretty...
Anil: it’s very credible, they do
create-your-own, and they also do a bunch of this. Right? So tis... A little like everything. There's no... Every media outlet is very
highbrow and very lowbrow. Right? And...
Leo: It's true, isn't it?
Anil: And I don't think it even happens
anymore. But there used to be these objections about bringing content in on One
Box, in the knowledge boxes because you're competing with publishers in some
way and they don't have any... Real choice but to combinate that. Because it’s also the thing that's going to drive more traffic. Um. And so when you bring in, with Wikipedia, I'm sure
there are tons of Wikipedia articles that have been defaced at the top
automatically scraped into a knowledge box, in Google and you can get some
ridiculous results if you take a look. That should be one of the reasons that
Google should even be more cautious about bringing this content in. I mean, I
think I'm old fashioned but I remember a time when Google would give you
results that took you to another site. And as much as it sort of has been
conventional wisdom that oh, it’s convenient it's easy and faster, to get it
here. I still like that idea that they used to be about taking you to the
content as opposed to bringing the content into their site.
Leo: Boy you do sound like an old timer,
when you say Google gave you results that brought you to other sites. Those
days... Wasn't that the purpose of Google?
Jeff: I think it took you to AltaVista.
Jeff: Gina and I got up a little bit
early this morning, a little earlier for me than you, six am for you, nine AM for you. To go to Berlin
virtually, for this Samsung Unpacked event. And they called it, what... Chapter 2, because it was the second. Part
2? The second unpacking event.
Gina: Unpacking of the year.
Leo: Of the year! They did the galaxy S5,
earlier this year. The announcement was the Note, Galaxy note 4, 5.7inch tablet
that features an improved camera... Both front and back. They made a big deal
about selfies. I think selfies are increasingly going to be something
important. The front facing camera... And not for skype or facetime, but for pictures. They even showed, what do they call it? A Usie? A wife? The wife,
which is ...
Gina: You could pano.
It was basically a selfie pano. I like the shutter,
there actually was a hardware shutter on the back of the phone and I was like,
yes, I want that. We've seen that on other phones.
Leo: No, that's a good idea. I mean this
is Samsung. They just throw everything against the wall and see what sticks.
Anil: How wide does your head have to be
for a panoramic selfie? I don't...
Leo: It was to get the people...
Anil: I have a big head. I have a big fat
head...
Leo: it’s more to get the background
more, and that's what you're seeing in these selfies, now. And that's why the
selfie stick. Because you don't want just you, you want...
Gina: Right, you want... Yeah, that actually... That live demo was great. They got
the three announcers, plus the entire audience behind them
,and of course they did the call back to Ellen's selfie at the Oscars,
the wife with all the celebrities in it or whatever which made a lot of sense.
Leo: Which they paid for, we should...
Gina: Which they paid for, I'm sure
handsomely, no doubt. And then of course they had the iPhone using... Go ahead
Jeff, sorry.
Jeff: I was going to make a joke... About my needs to get the ears in the selfie.
Anil: No, I do mean I have a giant
pumpkin head, and I actually... I'm fine with people having this selfie stick.
I was down by the World Trade Center and these tourists had a selfie stick out,
and it’s sort of... At first you're like, that's strange. Then after a while,
it’s like it’s not actually that different than having a tripod or something.
People have been doing, so I'm fine with that... But I'm a little, like some of
the things... This is very Samsung. it’s a... They
just start trying whatever and seeing what sticks and I'm like, be about something. Have a point of view, say this is what we're trying to do. I wish they w3ere more directed instead of
okay... This is the selfie feature we want to enable and this is the reason
why.
Leo: I'm trying to see if they posted on
their Samsung account the picture. They have the... This is the image from the
event, of the wide selfie. Um, but I was going to try to find the picture they
took. They should have tweeted it. Because it
really... It looked good. It was really pretty impressive.
Gina;
It was a portrait pano, I was deeply troubled that these photos were taken in
portrait.
Leo: Well if you're going to do a pano and you do it in portrait you get more pixels.
Gina: You get more height, I get that.
Still it troubled me.
Leo: Here's the shot from the video of
it. And it looks like, though it’s hard to tell, that it came out pretty well.
Gina: It did, it did. I mean, forever I
will credit Bradley Cooper for landscaping that business. Ellen was going to
portrait it, but Bradley...
Leo: He knew what he was doing. That
means he's... Nowadays that counts, that means you're a geek. Oh, that's
probably why, sure.
Anil: Yeah these people stand in front of
cameras for a living, right?
Leo: They kind of know a little about
this stuff. They also showed the note 4 edge. Which is... A little tiny but smaller than an 04 because it then
has a kind of like, a hundred fifty a hundred sixty pixel curved screen on the
side. They say that's a separate screen, by the way. Now I'm reading... That
shows you... I don't know...
Gina: Shows you what? Why? it’s like a ticker. But it goes up the side of your phone! Diagonally. And it’s got its own SDK.
Anil: It shows you that one engineer was
able to get a little sliver of curved screen working and they wanted to ship it
no matter what, even if it had no point.
Leo: Well, in fact when they showed it,
I don't know if I can... Yeah, here's the publicity shot, when they... in the
publicity shot, if you look closely, you'll notice that the... Look at the
temperature on the right, there. it’s upside down. So... And this is in their shots, so...
Anil: At least maybe the photo is not
faked.
Leo: Have a little bit of something to
work on there... Um. It also means it would be very
hard to hold that phone. Because the mashable...
Jeff: Hit buttons when you don't mean to.
Leo: Mashable has video with a hands on, once I get past the...
Anil: I'll make another old person
reference, which is do you remember side talking? Have we... So side talk is
probably two thousand and three, Nokia released the first Engage, and they had
some other business phones like this where instead of you talking into your
phone, like a normal person would, you talked into the side of it.
Leo: See, it’s upside down... Maybe it
reorients itself...
Anil: And everybody made fun of it on the
internet for like a good couple weeks, about why were you talking into the side
of your phone. Side touching. it’s like side...
Gina: Side touching.
Anil: And I don't... Sides are for
buttons. Sides aren't for...
Leo: But they are buttons. They're just
virtual buttons.
Jeff: With this phone, I'd pull it out of
my pocket and it’s like it’s a gigantic USB because I'm constantly turning it
around, saying is it upside down or right side up?
Leo: This way you'll know. I'm going to
reserve judgment on the face of it, looks like it’s not going to be great,
but... And then they announced also a watch that is clearly way too big. This
is... We were just counting off the air, I think there
are six or seven watches from Samsung. They actually showed three. Including a
watch that looks like it’s an iPhone strapped to your wrist. Um... It... They didn't, by the way... None of the prices or availability was
revealed for any of this. And it...
Gina: they showed three watches today? I
thought it was just the curved, six hundred watch today? And
the VR? And the Edge...
Leo: They had the band, remember, that
had the e-paper. They didn't call it a watch?
Jeff: That was Sony, wasn't it?
Leo: Was that Sony? You're right. Sony
had it. I think I'm confusing the two. Sony had their first Android wear watch.
There it is. And the band... And it was this big
galaxy watch, that they showed. You're absolutely
right.
Anil: So Samsung might only be offering
five watches, not six.
Leo: I might have miscounted. The GearS smartwatch is the size of an iPhone on your wrist... Um... And has a band to match, which is interesting.
Jeff: I'm with Leo, yes. You're unfashionable
now, officially.
Leo: I'm so out of it with my old
Android wear watch.
Jeff: And your white band.
Leo: And my white band, oh no. I tried
to change the band and it didn't work. So I'm just going to stick with the
white band. And I realized I'm going to have a new watch any minute now, why
bother?
Gina: Either the watcher or the 360 going
to show up, or the S... Yeah.
Leo: They also announced a virtual
reality helmet that they've worked on in conjunction with Oculus Rift, that
John Carmack joined the stage... To talk a little bit
about the technology and they modified the android kernel to make this thing
fast. You slide a note four, and it will only work with a Note Four, and this
headset, and you've got Oculus Rift style virtual reality. This is just, of
course, like the Google CardBoard version,
that was given away at Google IO. A little spiffier and I'm sure a lot
more expensive. And equally nauseating, probably.
Anil: Who is the phablet headset user?
Who's that person? Who is that?
Leo: Who is that?
Anil: I've never met the phablet headset
target audience.
Jeff: Scoville.
Leo: They made one use case which
actually I thought wasn't bad, which was in an airplane. They said it’s like
having a hundred twenty seven being two feet away from a hundred twenty seven
inch screen.
Gina: So watching a movie on the
airplane...
Leo: But if you want it...
Anil: that's how you program people's
brains, that's not...
Leo: Keep your eyes open, and the
stewardess could drop a little visine in them once in
a while.
Jeff: The chair in front of you will slam
back and hit your head... Because it’s so far extended.
Leo: And that looks like it was a
prototype.
Anil: That Scoville would put it on his head is not a statement... He'll put anything on his head.
Leo: And has.
Anil: Right.
Leo: And this does require the Note4, this
won't work with just any phone. You can see it’s carefully made to fit the
Note4, exactly.
Gina: Really it’s crazy, how well Google
preempted this whole thing with Cardboard.
Leo: Yeah, they knew it was coming.
Anil: Well it’s also a brilliant thing
Google did where they literally took the second most costly acquisition focus
ever made, and said, "We can do this for one dollar's worth of
cardboard." Like, in terms of just, you know...
Gina: Yeah, it was the ultimate troll.
Leo: It was nicely done.
Anil: Beautifully, tastefully done,
completely mean spirited thing. I love that. It was great.
Leo: It was really good. We could do
that. Oh yeah, we could do that.
Anil: Just ruined their birthday party,
it was so good.
Leo: Right after the Samsung event... By
the way all of those devices will be available someday. They announced that. And...
Gina: One is going to be in October.
Leo: Yeah, the phone, the Note4 will be
out in October, available in all four, actually five US carriers including US
Cellular.
Anil: I don't think that strap a note to
your head thing is ever going to be available. They'll say it got released but
there will be no actual humans...
Leo: Maybe Google Glass... How many
people bought Google Glass?
Jeff: A few schmucks like me. Ask me when
I last turned it on.
Leo: I spent a considerable amount of
money on the Kickstarter project for the Oculus Rift, and I just yesterday gave
away my Rift to a deaf kid. To a young lad... On the street.
Anil: Protective safety goggles would
look nicer.
Leo: Exactly, they made a point of how
good it looked, actually. Right after, it was the Sony event and the Sony folks
announced a new Zed 3, phones with very high resolution screens, very high
quality. 20 megapixel cameras... And then of course, this is just the
beginning, tomorrow is the Motorola event. Not in Berlin, but unaccountably in
Chicago, where no one is right now. And they actually... The entire city is
empty. Um. And they're going to announce the moto 360
flat tire watch.
Gina: Flat tire watch...
Anil: The 270, yeah.
Leo: And then, the Moto X and the G2.
Both of which I think, the G has turned out to be kind of a successful
surprise, excess. I love the Moto X and I'm looking forward to the next
generation. I think it was Androidcentral who said it
will be called the Moto X, just the new Moto X, and the G will be called the
G2.
Jeff: When will it be available?
Leo: Yeah, well, your guess is as good
as mine. This fall, I guess. These companies have been a little bit cagey about
release dates, which inclines me to think they're
rushing to get these announcements out before Apple makes its announcement next
week.
Anil: For sure. What model was that
Motorola that I loaned you?
Gina: It was the MotoX.
Anil: Yeah, that was a great phone.
Leo: MotoX is...
Anil: I disliked it, but I don't remember
what model.
Leo;
One of the best phones of the year, even though it was a little below par on
specs, I just loved it’s functionality. If this MotoX brings it up to flagship standards, and retains some
of that, always on functionality, I think it’s just going to be a great phone.
Gina: Despite the red hat, it wasn't a
terrible phone. It was a pretty good phone.
Leo: I liked the red hat!
Gina: Oh, man.
Leo: You can do that on your cardboard,
did you know that?
Gina: The red hat thing? The flying hat? Well it makes sense, right? Sense for what
it was.
Leo: Yeah!
Gina: You know, Anil got like the special
edition that came with a special box, with like a forest that you'd unfold it
or whatever and it came with a little plastic red hat that had a magnet on it, you could touch to the screen to invoke the software. It
was... Just like absurd beyond... I couldn't believe it...
Anil: It was literally the prettiest
packaging I've ever seen, certainly of any electronics.
Leo: How do I get on that list?
Anil: I don't know! I think it was... It
must have been an error. They must have mistaken me...
Jeff: If anyone on earth should have
that, it’s Chad.
Leo: Because he's got red hair. He
should have a red hat to go along with it...
Anil: I got on the wrong list somehow
when they were... They mistook me for somebody that was literate in these
things.
Leo: Perhaps you mistook me for someone
who cares!
Anil: No, I was... I mean it’s a great
phone. it’s an amazing phone... And I actually liked
the red hat experience, I thought it was very
cinematic and engaging.
Leo: There's two of them. So there's the red hat, and then there’s a squirrel and his nuts.
Anil: Yeah.
Gina: The mouse and the squirrel, yeah...
Anil: I think I had an email about you
can go check that out, and I didn't do that... But, the phone itself was great. it’s a great piece of hardware so I think any
improvement to that will be awesome.
Leo: Tomorrow, there will be, I am told,
a Dyson vacuum cleaner announcement as well...
Gina: There you go.
Leo: Secret product...
Jeff: I'm headed EFA on Sunday.
Leo: Are you?
Gina: Oh, good for you!
Leo: It's over, isn't it?
Jeff: No, there's an EFA+ thing I'm
speaking at, so hello Berlin.
Leo: And
somebody in the chat room, apparently talking about our mocking of the virtual
reality helmet, says, "You guys don't even know what it's for. You are not
funny”, so apparently one guy wants it.
Jeff: What's the problem? This
was the problem last week with trying to explain Twitch to me and all of the
abuse we got.
Anil: I will gladly fall on
the sword of unfunny about wearing a fablet on your
head.
Leo: Where do you stand on
twitch.tv, the gaming network?
Anil: I think it is every
bit as interesting as watching sports.
Leo: Okay, there you go.
Jeff: So you too, like me,
are not a real man. Is that right Anil?
Anil: I meant exactly what
I said. You can tell from my tweets that I tweet a lot during award shows.
Leo: Yeah baby; yeah, the Golden
Globes baby. Nobody watched the Emmy's though, apparently.
Anil: No, real award shows.
Leo: Real award shows. Shows
that count.
Anil: You know, Grammys,
Oscars, that kind of stuff.
Leo: So it's the crazy
season; lots of products coming out. Next week is Apples' announcement. Will we
then be done? I don't know. It's kind of hard to imagine.
Jeff: When are we getting
the watches do you think?
Leo: No idea. I think none
of this is... Apparently they don't even have FCC approval for the Note 4 so we
are a few months off maybe even.
Jeff: No, I mean the...
Gina: The iWatch. Are you
asking about the iWatch? Is the iWatch going to happen? I don't know.
Jeff: The rumor is...
Anil: I think Apple wants
to freeze the market. They want to say don't buy it before Christmas; we aren't
going to be ready until next year. We are going to show you something really
cool, but you have got to wait. It's the perfect way to do it because it gives
developers time to get ready, it ruins Christmas for everybody else, and they still
will sell a bunch of iPhones while people save up to buy a watch in the new
year.
Jeff: Well here is a
question Anil. If you are an Apple person you are an Apple person. If you are
an Android person you are an Android person. Can Apple announce things that
will convert people back from Android?
Anil: Yeah, I think that
there are a lot more flocks and movement between the platforms that people
realize. People are up for renewal and they look at all of the phones that are
out. Outside of techies there isn't a huge amount of allegiance. Like oh, this
screen is bigger, or my friend has that so I should get that. I don't think
it's much more thought than that. I think the conversation is Android or Apple.
Leo: I tried to woo my
kids with Motorola X's after they broke their iPhone. I said, well, I'm not
buying you another iPhone because the new one is coming out, but try this Moto
X. Henry said, oh, I can't figure out how to charge it. That's such a lie.
Anil: Well kids are a
different thing, right?
Leo: But that's the
market. They are 20 and 22. These are the guys you want to get if you are Apple
or Android.
Anil: High school and
college, there is no question that Apple is the gold brand. This is why I don't
buy into a lot of the fragmentation story around Android. But, in terms of
brand fragmentation, Samsung is not cool in this way. They are respected, they
are fine, but they are not cool. Google's own phones are not a factor. You
don't have a brand that has that cache that they do when you have an Apple logo
on something. In that regard for young people it's just not the same thing. It's
a different kind of product.
Leo: I'm probably going to
go back to the iPhone with a bigger screen and customizable keyboards. But I am
also bracing myself for disappointment so we will see what happens. I am one of
those people who are looking forward to actually going back to the iPhone. Mostly
because of the variety of apps that get released on iPhone only. It's very
frustrating.
Anil: The apps are still
better. They still are.
Jeff: But that's an
absurdity right there. That's geeks not looking at enough market research.
Anil: That's assuming that
any of these decisions are based on some rational process. That's not how we
buy a thing that we hold in our hand all day.
Leo: It's totally
emotional because from a technical point of view there is not much difference
between any of the platforms.
Jeff: What I'm talking
about is the number, and I hear this basis all the time in the news business,
where they will write an app; NYT Now, they still haven't written an Android
version. That's absurd, absurd. There is a huge audience out there.
Anil: What do you think
their goals are?
Leo: Instagram says that
we will write Hyperlapse for Android as soon as the
hardware capabilities are there, or the API is there. So that's a technical
reason. But every day I see apps that are iPhone only.
Gina: I feel like that is
getting smaller. It's still there, but it's getting smaller. If you look at
small startups putting out, yeah there is going to be a couple of apps that
come out on IOS first. It happens less than it used to. I don't know, there is
certainly still this notion that you have got to prove yourself in IOS first,
and that's where the money is, and Android users don't spend as much money on
apps or internet purchase. I also think that gap is narrowing if that still
remains true now. I agree, I think that it's really stupid for companies to
release IOS first and say, oh yeah; sometime down the road we are releasing
Android. It just doesn't make sense marketsharewise.
Leo: We are going to take
a break and come back with more. Our show today is brought to you by Personal
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So
if you have seen random favorites inserted into your Twitter Timeline it's
because you don't either follow enough people or the people you are following
don't do enough. So Twitter has decided to spiff things up by sticking
favorites in there. Dick Costolo explains in a tweet,
"You get favorites when you pull to refresh twice and you have no new
tweets both times."
Jeff: The tweet response to
that in that article is precious.
Leo: And then Ed Young
responds, "Hilarious if true. Everyone: Twitter, why? Twitter: Because
monkey press lever, monkey get no snack, monkey sad." You know, this is
called reruns friends. Nothing good on TV, here are some of your favorite
tweets.
Anil: What a missed
opportunity from Twitter, right? All the sort of Twitter junkies are really mad. Why are these tweets showing up? I didn't
follow this person. If I wanted to retweet it I would retweet it and you are
just showing me favorites from my friends. All of this confusion and dismay,
right? What they could have easily done is announced it and said, you know what
we've done? We've experimented with when people want more of Twitter and they
tell us by refreshing twice we are going to give you a little magic prize of
something that your friend likes. People would be like, that's delightful, it's thoughtful that you anticipated what I want. Because
they didn't communicate about it, it went the exact opposite way.
Jeff: You loser. You know
nobody interesting.
Anil: And they have to ruin
the experience because now I can't predict what is going to be in my stream. So
now Twitter broke its promise to me about how they are only going to show me
stuff that I follow. So they go the worst of both situations, and it's one of
those things where like a one paragraph blog post would have turned this around
for them if they had got out ahead of it. It's a weird thing that the companies
that make social platforms are usually the worst at talking about them.
Leo: It's really an object
lesson in communications and marketing. Google has the same problem. If you
just announce it in a clever, creative way you can make people very happy. You
know who is good at this? Apple; Apple is so good at it, and by the way, a
great article by Mark Gurman in 9to5Mac on Apples'
marketing machine and how it manipulates the media. Really a long article,
brilliant; this guy is 20 years old.
Jeff: Smart kid.
Leo: When I was 20 years
old I was still wondering why I didn't get any prizes in my cereal, and he is
analyzing marketing strategy at Apple like a pro.
Anil: I loved that article.
There is an interesting thing in it where he says well, Apple manipulated
coverage in an outlet by doing this. He just talks about what happens and who
did it. He sort of belies which outlet was manipulated or what story it was
about, so he is sort letting the other outlets save face. It's a very
thoughtful thing to do, but the whole way through I kept asking, well who was
being manipulated? Who got snookered by Apple on this? That's the only place
where he pulls the punches is about talking about how sort of other reporters
were. I get why.
Leo: He also makes a
spreadsheet of which journalists receive early copies of which Mac products. You
can very clearly on your own correlate it to who gets
the best Apple coverage. That's a brave thing to do. That's pretty much
guaranteeing that you will be on Apple's list for some time to come.
Anil: I love that grid
because that was one of the things that I mentally had as a geek, you kind of
know, oh, that was interesting when Schenning got the
iPad or Boing Boing and I hadn't noticed that before.
I definitely remember The Root getting the iPad because I was like, oh, Apple
is pretty consciously courting the African American audience here, and they
haven't done that before. That was really cool, but seeing it all laid out was this sort of like...
Leo: They are so good.
Anil: They are thoughtful. They
have a plan. I think that is the contrast to why I get frustrated with Samsung
saying that they will just splatter stuff up against the wall with 10 different
watches. It's like; there is a lot to be said for being disciplined.
Leo: Yeah. Let me show you
this spreadsheet. When you look at it, this is deep within this article. It's
kind of telling because you can immediately see by the checkboxes. So the green
checkmarks are people who got IOS device review access prior to the release. The
reds are when nobody got it. AnandTech didn't get it
until very, very recently. Of course, interestingly, both Brian Klug and Anand Lal Shimpi from AnandTech have just defected to Apple.
Anil: Their coverage must
have been too good.
Leo: Yeah, a lot of red
x's for our friend Andy. Boing Boing got 2 specific
devices, the iPad and the iPhone 4; never again. But then you see people like
oh, David Pogue, Ed Baig, who get green checks
everywhere, even more than CNet.
Anil: Ed Baig is always interesting because he's a super talented
guy, a great writer. He's not a sort of tech household name like a Walt
Mossberg is, but he's always been this very reliable sort of Apple voice.
Leo: Well, he also has a
bully pulpit. And you can merely say, well Pogue wrote for the New York Times, Baig wrote for USA Today. Those people probably should. Although
here is Jason Snell, Editor in Chief at MacWorld Magazine, who only 3 times out of the total 12 got the device ahead of time.
Anil: Well MacWorld is on the outs with Apple. The interesting thing
about it is, Ed is still at USA today, but both Walt and Pogue have left their
sort of big newspapers. You see this sort of legacy. In the article it said
that Jobs was one of those people that judged media outlets by what he got in
print as a kid. They are still sort of saying that this is how you do reputable
and respectable; what was on dead trees years ago.
Leo: Yeah, because you
look at Mashable, which is clearly influential; bunch
of red x's.
Anil: Yeah.
Leo: Kudos to Mark Gurman to really speaking truth to power. That's brave
thing to do when you have a media machine that is so effective.
Anil: It's also a confident
thing. He knows he's got enough meat to cover that he doesn't have to rely on
the sort of the kindness of the company.
Leo: "Seeing Through
Illusion: Understanding Apple's Mastery of the Media." We will see a lot
of that soon.
Anil: This should be a
business school case study. This is how you do media.
Leo: It really stands out
because so many companies do it so poorly, just as in this case with Twitter
where they just turn a win into a loss. That's ridiculous.
Anil: Snatching defeat from
the jaws of victory.
Leo: Twitter is now kind
of improving the intake process. One of the issues that Twitter has always had
is that when you sign up to a new user to Twitter it is a little baffling. It's
like now what? So they've done the first redesign in 3 years of the sign up
process. You identify your interests; fashion, photography, entertainment,
news, and then they suggest users. They've always had a suggested users list. It's
the design to get you interested in it right from the very beginning. I haven’t
played with it.
Anil: How is it possible
that they went 3 years without changing the way that you sign up?
Leo: Isn't that odd?
Anil: It doesn't even seem
plausible, does it?
Leo: I don't know. Maybe
it's wrong, but that's what it says.
Anil: They've got hundreds
and hundreds of engineers.
Leo: They had other
things.
Gina: It feels like they
are differentiating small tweaks from major overhauls.
Leo: And they were working
on getting the Justin Bieber servers running.
Gina: Right, right. You
know, speaking of favorites, the activity column on TweetDeck is amazing. It's like every single thing that your friend's favorite. Like as
it happens. It's just like a ticker tape. It just flies down, but that column
is unbelievable. Seeing your friend's favorites is actually really, really
cool. The problem is that they legislate, just as you said, that they just
didn't pre-announce it. They just didn't handle it right.
Leo: The results are in. Of
course the FCC asking for comments pro and con on net neutrality. Over a
million comments came in. Fewer than 1% were against
net neutrality. That's a shocker. I'm again it. I don't know if that was one of
your numbers. I think we've pretty much covered everything. I'm just looking. Any
stories you guys wanted to bring up?
Jeff: I think this is
amusing. Stewart Baker said that you can tell whether Google thinks you are
famous. Did you see that one?
Leo: How do you know?
Gina: Oh yeah, the right to
be forgotten stuff. Google has some sort of measure; they indicated in their
statements about it, there is some sort of measure about whether or not you are
a public figure. In this article, I read this article really quickly, so if you
search for yourself or for someone you want to know whether or not Google
thinks they are a public figure, at the bottom if Google thinks you are a
public figure it will say, "Results may have been removed from this
person's"...
Jeff: It's the opposite,
though. That's the weird thing, isn't it?
Gina: Okay, it's the other
way.
Leo: If you are famous
they are not going to remove stuff.
Gina: If you are a public
figure they are not going to move stuff, right, because it's public interest. That's
right.
Leo: So now everyone is
Googling themselves. Let me just see.
Gina: I didn't have that at
the bottom.
Leo: I don't have it at
the bottom of mine, either.
Jeff: I don't have it at
the bottom of mine. So put in somebody who is just not famous. Let's see if
this works. You have to do it under the UK search. It has to be UK.
Gina: Right.
Leo: Oh, it's in UK.
Jeff: It has to be in UK
because it has to be part of...
Leo: Of course, because
it's not... Let me Google myself again and Google UK. Maybe I won't be famous
enough there.
Anil: I can tell myself
that I'm not famous in England, right? That's the issue.
Leo: Yeah, nothing,
nothing for me. If you are famous it doesn't say anything. If you are Chad
Johnson, let's see if it says anything.
Chad: Yeah, that's going to
kind of an issue with Ochocinco.
Leo: There are quite a few
Chad Johnsons. Well, let's pick somebody. Why did it offer me Chad Ochocinco?
Chad: You don't know who
Chad Ochocinco is?
Leo: Ochocinco.
Anil: Chad Ochocinco. He's world famous.
Leo: Is he related to Chad
Johnson?
Chad: Sports, sportsball.
Leo: Sportsball?
Chad: It's funny, that's
why I don't like my real name.
Anil: It's not there.
Chad: Jeff, we can't hear
you.
Anil: So that's not there
for me on UK.
Leo: So you are famous. I
don't know if I buy this.
Anil: That can't be right. That
can't be right.
Leo: I don't buy it.
Gina: Well, I mean, if you
have got a Wikipedia page.
Leo: You are famous. Maybe
that's how they do it.
Gina: You are something
great, right?
Leo: Yeah.
Gina: I think that that is
a signal.
Leo: Anil, don't you have
a Wikipedia page?
Anil: I do, but I'm saying
that you all do, too.
Leo: Yeah, we all have
Wikipedia.
Anil: So you are all
famous.
Leo: Yeah, that's one of
the criteria for getting on the show.
Anil: Oh.
Leo: No, I'm just kidding.
Chad: Jeff just left.
Leo: That and having a
working internet connection. Google's Android Wear team says that they will
update early and often. I'm still waiting for an update, and by the way Google
you had better hurry because I don't know if this watch is going to stay on my
wrist much longer. There seems to be some competition coming; the Moto 360, the
Apple iWatch, and that ginormous watch from Samsung.
Gina: Well, the 360 is
Android Wear. The ginormous watch is Tizen, yeah?
Leo: Tizen, yeah.
Gina: I don't think Google
is really worried about Tizen, are they? I don't
know.
Leo: No, after seeing that
watch they would be crazy to be worried. Go ahead Chad, get Jeff back. While we
are getting Jeff back I'm going to tell you a little bit about our friends at
Smart...
Jeff: You can't hear me.
Leo: I can hear you.
Anil: Yeah we can.
Gina: Welcome back Jeff.
Leo: That's marvelous.
Jeff: Sorry to interrupt
the commercial.
Leo: We have the
technology. Ochocinco.
Chad: It's Ochocinco.
Leo: Ochocinco.
Jeff: Ochocinco.
Leo: That means 8 5.
Chad: Yes, yes.
Gina: You are such an
Italian. You want to say the...
Leo: Ochocinco, Ottantacinque;
how do you say SmartThings in Italian? SmartThings? SmartThings? This, my friends, this was the Kickstarter Project that I
kicked into way. You did, actually Gina, didn't you? You were a Kickstarter
supporter of SmartThings.
Gina: I did.
Leo: Why?
Gina: In 2012. It was a
friend of a friend who was involved with it. Honestly, like any Kickstarter, I
watched the video and they got me. I wanted it. I've got to tell you, I love
it. The kit that I have I'm sure was an early prototype compared to what they
are selling now. I've loved it. I've loved it.
Leo: They have really
solved a problem. If you are trying to have a smartphone, the issue is of
course that nothing talks to anything. You could get a system like the SmartThings system that will talk to everything in the
system but never talks to anything else. So the SmartThings hub is the cornerstone to all of this. Yes, of course SmartThings has 3 home security kits, 4 brand new solution kits which are designed to solve
specific problems, but they also integrate with your GE Locks, your Schlage, your Honeywell Neon Nest thermostats, your DropCam, your Phillips 2 lights, your Wheemo remote, and your Sonos Music System. You can create
an amazing array of things. You said, what are you doing, you have it tie into
your music? What did you say Gina?
Gina: One of the sensors
that tells you whether or not something has been open or closed, I had it hooked
up to my mailbox so that when my mail came, my physical postal mail, I would
get a push notification.
Leo: That's awesome. Mail's in! I like that.
Gina: Yeah, and the
presence sensor I had on my daughter's stroller, so that when she went for a
walk and came back I would get a push notification that she was home or that
she just left. I had the lights programmed to come on, the nightlight to come
on at sunset, which is really nice. There are IFTT recipes. It's a really open
platform. It's really very cool
Leo: And now they have a
maker kit so that you can integrate your Arduino Projects. So really the sky is
the limit. This is really wide open. So every kit includes the hub, which is
the key of course, and then everything that you need to turn your home into a smarthome in as little as 15 minutes. They have new and
improved ZigBee sensors. ZigBee is one of many languages that these devices
talk to. You can get instant alerts to prevent a leak from causing a flood. You
can be notified if there is unexpected entry or movement in your home. You can
control and automate your lights and small appliances. You get the idea. Pretty
much the sky is the limit. Here's the deal, you can get started creating your smarthome by visiting smartthings.com/twit, and if you see
something that you want you are going to get 10% off of the purchase price of
any home security or solution kit. Just use the offer code TWIT10 at checkout. Those
new solution kits do some really interesting things. There are the home
security kits, but you've got solution kits that are specific to things like
energy saver, lighting automation, water detection, I mentioned the leak, and
the SmartThings Maker, which is the Arduino Kit. So
get 10% off of that. Solution kits start as low as $170, home security as low
as $350 when you use the offer code T-W-I-T-1-0, TWIT10 on checkout. SmartThings, they really are smart, .com/twit. Gina, I know
you want to get going, so let us get from you your tip of the week.
Gina: Yes, this is a new one to me. This is a tiny, subtle Google
Docs thing that I was unaware of. I'm often dealing with multipage documents in
Google Docs, and I didn't realize this, but as you are scrolling through a
multipage document there is a little tool tip on the scrollbar that tells you
what page you are on. I had just never noticed it before, but there it is, it
works. So keep an eye on that if you are reviewing long, long, boring documents
in Google Docs like I have been doing recently.
Leo: Almost
done. It's almost done.
Gina: Page 37 of 50.
Leo: God,
maybe I don't want to know.
Jeff: I will soon come out with a tome, "Okay Smartass, Now
That the Internet has Ruined Everything, What Next?” it’s 180 pages in Google Doc. It's a killer.
Gina: There you go. There's that tool tip.
Jeff: It takes forever to load.
Leo: What's
it about again?
Jeff: "Okay Smartass, Now That the
Internet has Ruined News, What Next?”
Leo: Oh.
Jeff: Everybody says, okay Jarvis, what's your view? So I kind of
had to write down everything that I think, and there it is, and believe me it's
important.
Leo: "Okay Smartass, Now That the Internet has Ruined News,
What Next?"
Jeff: It's aimed at my geeks.
Gina: I think that you need to re-brand it, though. I don't think
that white paper sells it well. Can you make it a Medium essay? Would it fit
into the text area?
Jeff: That's what I'm going to do; I'm going to put it all up on
Medium for free because with matching pay walls I can't do that. The title is
"Geeks Bearing Gifts".
Anil: Not "What Would Jarvis Do?"
Leo: That's good too.
Anil: That's where you got to go.
Leo: What
would Jeffy do?
Anil: I know exactly what that book is about, "What Would
Jarvis Do?"
Leo: What
would Jarvis do? Wait a minute, Jeff; you are going to give us a number here.
Jeff: Well, yeah, I just didn't know about this. You know about
ground truth countries in Google Maps?
Leo: No.
Jeff: There are now 50 of them. I said what the heck is a ground
truth country? Google determines certain countries need better maps; not that
there aren't also other crowd source mapping solutions. So they make an effort
and bring people in to try to improve maps and add more richness to the maps. They
now have 50 countries that they focus on to radically improve the maps there. I
just found that vaguely interesting. Not terribly interesting, but vaguely
interesting.
Leo: That's
pretty cool.
Jeff: I was also desperate for a number, so when I say 50 I jumped
at it.
Leo: OpenStreetMap is a really cool idea, but I guess this
puts it into the Google Maps, which I guess everybody uses.
Jeff: Exactly.
Leo: Cool.
Jeff: Some weeks it's funny, I will have 20 numbers, and some
weeks there is just not a number to be had.
Leo: Anil,
it looks like you wanted to share a little something with us.
Anil: Yeah, I've got a pick. It's a Twitter account that I though
everyone should follow. It's called valleyedits, and
it's a spinoff, there is a whole series of Twitter accounts, parlimentwikiedits out of the UK was the first. That led
into congressedits, which is a great follow. Congressedits is anonymous members of the staff of Congress
making edits to Wikipedia. We should see what articles they are editing. Valleyedits is that for the big tech companies. So if you
look at Twitter, and Apple, and Google, and Facebook what are their employees
while on the clock, on the job, at the office editing on Wikipedia. These are
silly and light like Apple employees editing a pressure cooker entry. But it's
something where we thing about Wikipedia is so much of the definitive record of
what culture is, then let's see if there is any self-interest going on from
these tech companies writing about things that actually directly impact them. It's
nice because it's not a ton of tweets, it's not really, really noisy, but if
you want to look at the impact of how are big tech companies trying to shape
the world and shape culture it can be really powerful. If you look at the
topics they are writing about then there can be a little bit of an indication
of well, somebody at this company thinks this is interesting. I wonder what the
implications are for their products.
Leo: So valleyedits on Twitter, @valleyedits. One of a whole set of these. Somebody should make a
list of all of these.
Anil: Yeah, actually if you go to congressedits and look at who it is following, it's following about 68 account right now and
most of them are government trackers. So government in Germany, what are the
government officials editing? There are for all different things, they are from
certain universities, from big tech companies, there's one for pharmaceutical
companies; what are their employees editing on Wikipedia? This view directly
into who is editing this information I have found really makes me wish I had it
for everything.
Leo: Yeah,
no kidding. I mean you can go into any Google article and see who has edited
it, but by IP address. You have to then match it up to Apple, or Google, or
whoever.
Anil: It's always been theoretically possible, but to be able to
just go in and in a click have it delivered to you between congressedits and valleyedits it's been very, very eye opening for
me.
Leo: We
are going to have Kevin Marks on next week to talk about the IndieWeb, something that we are very intrigued by and
excited about. I want to thank Anil Dash for being here. Thinkup.com,
now a free trial available for you. This is something new that they have
started doing for you at thinkup.com.
Anil: No credit card, just go sign up.
Leo: It
really is great, normally $5 a month. Before the show, I guess I didn't show my ThinkUp during the show, but before the show we were
going through it. It really is a great source of insight into what my tweets
mean and who I'm talking to. It's kind of fun to read, too.
Anil: I have to be so thankful to the TWiG audience. Obviously Gina is on the show, but it's been kind of the core of how
we have been able to get ThinkUp out in the world. I'm
so appreciative of folks that watch and listen to TWiG.
Leo: Yeah,
love it.
Gina: Yeah.
Jeff: Hey, you, TWiGgers. If you don't
have ThinkUp get it right now. It's free to try, it’s fun.
Leo: You
are missing the fun.
Jeff: Right.
Leo: And
Gina revealed to me, I think it was on this show last week,
that it's all about making the web a kinder, gentler place. So it's
changing the world one tweet at a time. Thank you.
Jeff: Which I really like.
Gina: Thank you.
Leo: Gina
Trapani, of course the woman behind the code, and she is also a very welcome
contributor to the TWiT Network on All About Android
every Tuesday night and This Week in Google every Wednesday. Thank you Gina, I
hope you feel better.
Gina: Oh, thank you, this was a lot of fun today.
Leo: Yeah,
always great to have you and Anil on. Thank you to Jeff Jarvis for joining us
from the City University of New York. We do TWiG every Wednesday afternoon, 1:00 pm Pacific, 4:00 pm Eastern time, 2000 UTC on
twit.tv. We would love it if you watched live, but if you can't we know that
sometimes it's a little tough. Don't worry; we have audio and video available
for download for you so you can watch any time on demand. Just visit
twit.tv/twig or subscribe using your favorite pod catcher whether it's iTunes
or whatever; DoggCatcher, and Instacast,
there are so many different ones.
Gina: Pocket Cast.
Leo: Pocket
Cast. Is that your favorite on Android?
Gina: Yes.
Leo: I
use DoggCatcher I think.
Gina: DoggCatcher is great, too.
Leo: DoggCatcher.
You know, whatever you have got your subscriptions entered in
to there is no incentive ever to change. We also have some great apps on
Android and all of the other platforms from our 3rd party developers including
Roku. Craig Malini of Houdini 7 fame, he's in our
chatroom as Houdini 7, says there is a great app for us on Roku. Find all of
the TWiT apps; watch whenever you can, we love having
you. Thanks for joining us. We will see you next time on This Week in Google! Bye,
bye.