This Week in Google 277 (Transcript)
Leo Laporte: It's time for TWiG, This Week in Google, the pre-Thanksgiving edition. Gina Trapani has the week off to be with her family, but don't worry. Matthew Ingram is here from GigaOm along with Jeff Jarvis. We'll talk about the latest move by the EU to break Google up. We'll also talk about the future of journalism, Pomplamoose's failed tour and a whole lot more. It's all coming up next.
Voiceover: Netcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT! Bandwidth for This Week in Google is provided by Cachefly.com.
Leo: This is TWiG, This Week in Google, episode 277, recorded November 26th, 2014.
FU, EU!
This Week in Google is brought to you by Jack Erwin. Jack Erwin sells men’s shoes made from the finest materials at honest prices and they ship them right to your door. Check out their shoe selections at JackErwin.com/twit.
And by Personal Capital. With Personal Capital, you'll finally have all your financial life in one place and get a clear view of everything you own. Best of all, it's free. To sign up, go to PersonalCapital.com/twig.
And by Fresh Books, the number one Cloud accounting solution that helps millions of entrepreneurs and small business owners save time billing and get paid faster. Try it free at FreshBooks.com/twig and join over 5 million users running their business with ease.
It's time for TWiG! The weather outside is frightful but inside the conversation's sure delightful. Mr. Jeff Jarvis joins us from the City University of New York. He's actually wearing a down vest, and he's got a Nexus 6 in his hot hands! Hey, Jeff.
Jeff Jarvis: Hey there, good to see you.
Leo: Great to have you. Jeff's going to a show but we're going to have to make this show not short but on time today. We'll get you out of here at 6 p.m., your time. Also joining us – Gina's out today, right? She's heading -
Jeff: She's heading on a train, a very long ride to her in-laws.
Leo: To see the in-laws, in Cleveland or somewhere?
Jeff: Somewhere else.
Leo: Somewhere in a flyover state, I believe. (laughter) I love doing that.
Jeff: It's all a flyover state to me.
Leo: They're all flyover states. (laughter) Germany's a flyover state to Jeff. Also joining us from GigaOm. He's in Canada, Matthew Ingram, good to have you. Welcome. You are wearing a San Francisco t-shirt, so that's good.
(loud static)
What was that? We just blew him up.
Jason: Apparently the default transition is an explosion. Sorry about that.
Leo: Sorry, Matthew.
Matthew Ingram: That's fine.
Leo: Well, you know, that's appropriate because we've been talking about deconstructing the media before the show began and I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about that. This show normally is about – well, nominally is about Google and the Cloud. But it's normally about whatever we want to talk about and since we have great journalists here, it's always the case that we kind of talk about journalism a little bit. Actually, let's kick things off with Contributor, which is an interesting plan that Google has for removing ads from some blogs for a fee.
Matthew: Sigh.
Leo: I have to feel like this is an experiment – what is going on, Jeff? So the idea is that there's going to be a sliding scale between $1 and $3 a month and certain sites, the Onion, Mashable, Imgur, Wikihow – I don't know why they picked these. Will get the chance to remove ads, put a pixel pattern in their place -
Jeff: Just Google ads.
Matthew: I talked to a Google person about this before lunch. She said they chose sites that don't get a huge amount of traffic because they wanted to sort of experiment and iterate. I said, “Well, why would you pick Mashable, then?” It gets like 50 million unique visitors a month or something. But I guess they wanted to pick one big one and then a bunch of smaller ones. Actually, Imgur gets quite a lot of traffic too. But it feels to me like another one of those experiments that they're trying to sort of help publishers out a bit. I'm assuming they realize that for lots of smaller publishers, AdSense basically is chicken feed. I assume they're trying to think of some new ways to help them out. I don't feel – I think it's a noble gesture and it's sort of a tip jar sort of model. I just don't really see a whole lot of people doing it.
Jeff: I think it's a sop. I think that we've seen Google, and God bless them, trying to do things. But I think the things they've tried to do are trivial. They've tried to do micropayments before; I don't believe in micropayments. They tried to help people rethink the story, that didn't work very well. Then now they're doing this, it's not going to be a salvation. Google should just bring its best strategy and best technologists to this effort if they care about news. I was at Newsgeist, I think I mentioned, a week ago and we had a session on what should Google do – what could Google do for news? There are bigger strategic things. They could have enabled embeddable articles. They could enable larger even streams. There are all sorts of things they could do. This is cute but a distraction not really worth the effort, I don't think.
Leo: What if you combine this with the Google Music Key? The move to allow people to pay for Youtube music videos and remove the ads? Is that a completely unrelated thing?
Jeff: No, it's another part of the same strategy.
Matthew: Definitely the same strategy.
Jeff: But I don't think it's going to do much.
Leo: I think it might be a response to all the people who say, and a lot of people say this including Google competitors, “Well, Google just is using you, you're the product.” So could this be Google's way of saying, “Well, what if we try it so you're not the product?”
Jeff: [crosstalk] – the readers put up or shut up. If you keep complaining, then okay. You can pay to get rid of ads and you don't have to be the product any more.
Leo: If you don't want to be the product, if you don't want to see the ads … Matthew, what do you think?
Matthew: I think it is a bit of a – I mean, sop is a little harsh but I do think it's another one of those kind of little experiments that they try, like the Survey Wall where instead of having a pay wall you could ask people to ask a few questions. Apparently, lots of sites are using it. Whether they're generating a lot of revenue or not, I don't know. I doubt it.
Jeff: I hear not.
Matthew: It's still, in a way, it's worthwhile. I kind of like the fact that they're at least experimenting with this stuff. This feels very much like what Readability tried to do when they – although they went about it in a completely different way, but they tried to do kind of micro tip jar style payments. It didn't work. Google at least has the scale that it could theoretically do that. It's, to me, I don't know whether enough -
Jeff: You both know that this is not – even if this works beyond everyone's wildest imaginations successful, it is no salvation. Back to saying, what Google should be doing, I think, is bringing – if they care about news. They can say, “We don't care about news, don't give a damn. What happens, happens.” But that's not what they're saying. They hold Newsgeist, they're in trouble with publishers and jury which we'll talk about later. They do care to some extent and I think they have to bring their best brains here. Minor ways to help them use Google functionality better or to create things like this, I don't think are bringing full Google horsepower to this question.
Leo: Well, and if I'm one of these sites, what I might do is say, “Well, I could also just crowd fund, go to Patreon or somewhere. I control my destiny, get rid of Google ads. If that's what my readers want, I could do that.” In fact, you'd make more money, wouldn't you? You don't make much on AdSense.
Matthew: No.
Jeff: No.
Matthew: And you're not going to make much on Contributor. But at the same time, I do sort of feel like they get a lot of crap for stuff they do and at least they're trying to find new ways to help publishers who don't want to just do crowd funding or don't or can't run their own pay wall because they don't have the manpower or resources. It's probably not, I agree with Jeff, going to amount to much at the end of the day.
Leo: Is Youtube Music Key – that seems to be something a little bit more. First of all, they're putting more horses behind it. This isn't an experiment, this is the real deal although it is in beta. But if you have Google Play Music already, you'll have Music Key.
Jeff: It's the dreams of these sites that there's going to be a mondo paywall and everybody shares revenue from that. In some countries, the dream is it will be a tax fee like the BBC. But the problem is, music is a unique property and information is not.
Leo: That's interesting.
Matthew: Right. Which is why I don't think – I mean, I think there's probably more Youtube creators who will be able to make a significant or nominal amount from this, moreso than websites that publish news content.
Leo: Is that the next step for Susan Wojcicki, to extend the model to Youtube content itself besides music?
Matthew: I don't see why not.
Leo: It's kind of indicated she might, that she's thinking about it, right? Alternative ways to monetize.
Jeff: They also have to find ways to compete with Netflix.
Matthew: Yes, exactly. I have to say, I continually, when I don't consume a lot of content on Youtube but my kids do. They're friends do and friends' kids do. Every time I run into somebody they tell me about some Youtube star who I've literally never heard of who has 50 million subscribers. They unbox makeup or something. Or they talk about kids' toys. Or they – you've never heard of them and they have more subscribers than half of the TV network channels that you have heard of. It's a mind boggling sort of – every time it strikes me when I have these conversations. I think, “This is pretty amazing in a way.” Some woman we don't even know her name, lives somewhere in Florida and makes $15 million a year talking about kids' toys on Youtube.
Leo: Michelle Phan, who is the Youtube star who does makeup tips – but I think a lot of her money she makes selling subscriptions to a monthly makeup sampler mailer. So I'm not sure – nobody reveals what they make on Youtube exactly. So you're always speculating on this. But it seems like her model is actually kind of sensible, which is you get some money on Youtube but you also view it as a promotional vehicle for other enterprises. It seems like the people who are making money, with the exception of PewdiePie and a few other really big stars, a significant portion of their money comes from other sources that Youtube fosters.
Matthew: But if you look at – and a good example of what you talk about, I'm trying to remember the girl's name. Zoe-something, she's a Youtube star and is now writing or publishing a book. That book is going to be a #1 bestseller. Literally, as soon as she said she was writing a book because she already has this built in community of millions of desperate fans. So that book is going to fly off the shelves, or whatever, virtual shelves.
Leo: I feel like one of the things Susan Wojcicki is going to have to fight and one of the things Youtube is going to have to fight is the realization by the vast majority of Youtubers that they are not going to make much money. That they are going to have to figure out something else. There's this dream of being Michael Jordan but most of them don't get to play the NBA. It sounds like even a smaller percentage make a lot of money on Youtube. Youtube makes a lot of money on the long tail of people who are not making money but Youtube is. I feel like at some point there's going to be a come to Jesus moment for Youtube where they're going to have to provide some way for these people to make money.
Jeff: Well, they're investing – I went to the opening of their studio in New York. They're investing a tremendous amount and trying to get people to make content. They've got to do a better job. Probably what they have to do is reduce Google's share to increase the size of the network. Of course, it's not the only revenue stream for these people, as you just said. The musicians have tours. But then, Jack Conte wrote a great piece on Medium, of Pomplamoose, and Natalie Dawn of Patreon fame. I put it on Rundown at the very bottom, you're welcome to take it. He talked about the tour he and Natalie just had and what they lost in the end.
Leo: Oh we had Pomplamoose in here. I think the world of them. Jack, who learned a lot by becoming a Youtube star – they made money, they made Chevy ads and stuff. But he founded Patreon for that very reason. So they did a 28-day tour. I remember when Jack and Natalie were here, they talked about this. In fact, I said, “Come back and promote the tour.” 24 shows, 23 cities, they sold $100 thousand in tickets.
Matthew: I think they made about – the revenue was 140-something but they lost 17 thousand.
Leo: They lost money on the tour?
Jeff: Yes. He says they could have gone out as a duo but it wasn't what they wanted to do. He says, “I'm not complaining, we're very lucky we get to make a living from music.” He says right out what they pay themselves in stipends and what they do, the rest they invest back.
Matthew: It's a very detailed breakdown.
Leo: I wish everybody would do this. What we don't have is this information about Youtube. I wish people would do the same thing for Youtube but maybe Youtube prevents them from doing that, I don't know.
Matthew: To be fair, what they said was they saw this as an investment.
Leo: They knew they weren't going to make money.
Matthew: Right, they knew they weren't going to make money but this was a way of getting themselves and their music and so on out to more people and places.
Jeff: It's a circle, isn't it? Because we always say they don't make money selling albums any more but they make money selling tickets. So now they go out and make money on selling tickets. They use money on that to try and make money selling albums, and they'll make it up in volume. You know, it's a vicious cycle.
Leo: To be fair, every rock band in history lost money on a tour or two. This stuff is very easy to lose money on if you're not extraordinarily careful.
Matthew: It's usually expensive. Actually, Bob Lefsetz, who's hilarious to read all the time.
Leo: The Lefsetz Letter is so great.
Matthew: He wrote a letter about Pomplamoose and about this piece. I thought he was overly harsh because I don't think they were writing it to say, “Oh poor us, we're not making money.”
Jeff: Not at all.
Matthew: In fact, they distinctly didn't say that. But his point was basically, you're on your own. If you decide to do these tours, then you have to either do them in a way that makes money or accept the fact that you're not going to make money. You can't blame anyone else for the fact that people don't come to your shows or don't buy your stuff.
Leo: Lately I've been binge reading rock and roll biographies. Graham Nash writes about Crosby, Stills and Nash tour that I think David Crosby called the tour from hell, I can't remember what he called it.
Matthew: I thought they were all the tour from hell.
Leo: They were all! They lost a ton of money and putting a record company into this mix isn't going to make things better for Pomplamoose. It's just going to make one more company sucking profits out of it. It's hard to do, it's always been hard to do.
Matthew: The fact that they came that close to breaking even, I thought was a success. They did a pretty good job, for people who have never put together a nationwide tour before.
Leo: That's a good point. They did it all on their own, pretty amazing.
Matthew: But it shows you. I thought he made a point partway down that – which I thought was sort of the optimistic way of looking at what we're talking about. The industry has expanded in such a massive way. You know, there's a whole middle category now of groups that can maybe not become super famous or super rich but can actually make a living doing the things they want to do and connecting with their fans without the label. So sure, they're not going to be Britney Spears, but they can at least do it. That literally wasn't possible before.
Jeff: There's a whole chain of value in creativity. I think I mentioned on the show before, I've been involved on this [?] reform project on post copyright. In that chain of value, we need more ways to recognize the creation of value, like creating audiences and remixing and adding in. And more ways to extract value, like getting data about your audience and being able to sell tickets and things. It's going to have to be a new mix we figure out. Again, I want to make a point, talking about it when it comes to a creative, unique, entertaining entity like a singer, movie or novel is very different than the model of an information-based industry like news. But we conflated the two because we think they're all storytellers and they all have attention and time. But they're incredibly different models. They need to be incredibly different business models. On both sides, they're disrupted and need to reinvent themselves.
Matthew: Although I think there is some overlap. I mean, someone like Andrew Sullivan for example in the Daily Dish to me – I wrote a whole column comparing him to Amanda Palmer. Because to me, the sort of model that they're both pursuing is fundamentally identical. “I'm a musician, I'm a columnist style blogger/writer but I have a community of fans who adore me, hate me or some combination thereof and are fascinated of me and want to come to things that I'm involved with. They want to buy things that are related to me.” The one is talking about politics and one is music, but the sort of approach to the community and how you derive value from that, that personal relationship is very similar.
Leo: You actually just wrote an article -
Jeff: Yes, but he's in essence an entertainer and it doesn't hold to me to go to straight news. To find out what the grand jury's verdict was in Ferguson is not to be controlled.
Matthew: Right, but to me it reinforces the need for a sort of not pure personality but a personal voice in a personal perspective.
Jeff: Yes, if you can really do it and do it well. But to have the 87th take on the same news we already know and to say, “My value was to add a little personality to that.” That goes thin real fast. I'm saying it in a place where we're not doing reporting right now, we're just - [crosstalk]
Leo: By the way, that's exactly what you do Jeff, so thanks.
Jeff: (laughter) But you do well!
Matthew: But you're not number 87, you're only number 40.
Leo: The top 40 make money, huh? (laughter)
Matthew: But the thing I like about Andrew's model and Amanda Palmer's model is it is just them and their fans. That was why Andrew wanted to do the sort of direct crowd funding or pay wall or whatever you want to call it. He wanted it to just be him and his audience, readers or community. That's all that matters. There's no one else involved in that relationship. So there's no intermediary and there weren't even any advertisers to begin with, just him and his community. If he serves them, he wins.
Leo: Is he doing well?
Matthew: Yes, he's making a million dollars.
Leo: Okay, that's well. (laughter)
Matthew: That's pretty good. I mean, he's got a team. It's not just him, but I still think that's a substantial amount of money.
Leo: Why is Andrew – is this … okay, so what does this mean for the others, this model? He had quite a following to begin with.
Matthew: He did.
Leo: That seems to be a big part of this, right?
Matthew: It does, yes. Although one of the guys that I'm interested in is Ben Thompson, who I wrote about recently.
Leo: We love Ben.
Matthew: Super smart guy, his blog is great.
Leo: By the way, I'm glad you brought him up because here's a guy who didn't have a following but because he's so smart people like us, we've had him on TWiT many times. People like you, a lot of people talk about him because he's so smart. It's possible, yes, to start without a following but you have to be exceptional if you're going to do that.
Matthew: You do.
Jeff: I think what it amounts to is you still end up in what I would say is a blockbuster economy. You can support a certain number of stars. You, Andrew Sullivan, Thompson, fine. But there's only so much. It's harder and harder and harder in an abundant world to get up to that top level where you can make it work. It's been true. How many musicians have there been and how many have been supported?
Leo: It's always been that way, that's right.
Jeff: How many – (crosstalk)
Matthew: It's always been that way, but the interesting thing – (crosstalk)
Leo: I think we have a better – this is better than the blockbuster. I think you can have more smaller successes to be the high-up bigger, right?
Matthew: I think Ben is a great example of that. Ben is a perfect example of Kevin Kelley's thousand true fans. When I spoke to him recently he had just crossed that threshold.
Leo: His revenue comes not from advertising but from selling a newsletter.
Matthew: Zero advertising, so just the newsletter, just access to his forums. I think there's advertising on the podcast or there will be, but -
Leo: He gives away a huge amount of content on his site, as much is free.
Jeff: Which he uses that.
Matthew: He's making on his sort of run rate right now, he's making a living for himself from a thousand true fans. So that's the potential.
Leo: So $10 a month, $100 a year to subscribe to his daily newsletter. So it's very affordable. I compare that to Jessica Lessons, the information which is $400 a year.
Matthew: $400, right. So is he making a killing, no. Is he hugely wealthy, no. But he's a guy. He's making a living and he is one guy. There is no one else. So what has enabled him to do that is the web and social media and all the Cloud tools and all the things that have allowed startups to grow and prosper with lower cost. It's just the barriers to entry are a lot lower. Not everyone is going to be able to do that but your ability to do that is far greater than it used to be.
Leo: Is it kind of a meritocracy?
Jeff: Yes.
Matthew: I think so. I mean, Ben Thompson, before he started writing his blog, maybe a few people knew him because he was a PM at Apple or Google or whatever. But he was virtually unknown and then he started writing smart analysis of tech topics. There's always going to be a hunger for that. He's made it harder for the next person to try and do the same thing because now he's kind of, yes.
Jeff: That's my point.
Leo: I don't know that's true. I think that, to me, there's a real close parallel to the music industry, where the era of the platinum artist making hundreds of millions of dollars is over. Well, maybe not. But it's less important and what that does mean is that many more artists, even Pomplamoose, can make a living doing what they're doing. I think that's preferable, to me, that's preferable to the other way of doing things, but regardless of whether it's preferable or not, that's kind of where we're headed. I think the only real concern was that no one would make a living.
Matthew: I know when I first wrote about – I don't know if it was Ben but I mentioned the thousand true fans idea and I got an email from someone, a musician, who had been inspired by Kevin Kelley's post which was years ago now. He said that he was effectively doing that. The only thing he pointed out was that it's a lot of work. It's a lot more work than just getting signed by a label and they send you checks and you have a handler who takes you around places, whatever.
Jeff: The number of people who get that deal is tiny.
Matthew: Exactly.
Jeff: Your point a minute ago is there are more people who can be the independent and scrape by a living with really hard work than there were people who could make a living in music before.
Leo: How hard do you think Taylor Swift works these days?
Matthew: She works pretty hard.
Leo: I think she works pretty hard. She has all the benefits of a major label, managers, social media managers, no doubt. But to be really a success these days, I don't care who you are. I think you need to work really hard.
Matthew: But I would agree that we've still got the big hits. We've still got Taylor Swift. We've still got big artists, multimillions.
Leo: Those don't seem to be going away.
Matthew: No, but there's more room in between, you know? In between them and the sort of starving artist at the bottom.
Leo: You don't have to get the label, the record label deal. You know, reading – I really enjoyed Keith Richards' book Life. He says we were all struggling, you know, in England, to get that record deal. That was all we lived for. Every moment, that's what we lived for because that's the only path to success. Now there are many paths to success. That's good, right?
Matthew: Definitely. In fact, you could argue Amanda Palmer, by telling her record label to get lost and doing what she wanted to, is far better off.
Leo: Well the Dresden Dolls were kind of an arty group, right? They were never going to be platinum.
Matthew: No.
Jeff: No, and she has a book out now about just this model, about giving people the opportunity to give.
Leo: But I have to say, there is no one path and I love that. Everybody's writing a book on, “This is how I did it.” The truth is, what's great is there are as many paths now as there are people. That's how it's supposed to be. That's how it should be. It means there's opportunity. It doesn't mean you don't have to work hard.
Jeff: Amen.
Matthew: In fact, it's -
Jeff: Also, the generosity of Jack Conte and Amanda Palmer in sharing how the do it and sharing what they've done - (crosstalk)
Leo: That's part of the ethos, isn't it? I think. That's what bothers me a little bit about Youtube is it's such a black box. I'm glad to see Jack Conte giving us the info. That's what we do here at TWiT and I think that's the ethos and it's important. TWiT is no model for anybody except me, but I think it's good for people to see the inside guts of it so they can think about their model.
Jeff: There are lessons there. Even if you don't 0:28:24.3? with what TWiT does. Hello, Jason Calacanis. There are lessons and models in what you do and people can steal the best of it, what's right for them.
Matthew: And there are good – Amanda Palmer has talked about some of the difficult parts of her model. You know, she got a lot of criticism for her tour, inviting people up to play and not paying them. That turned into a big deal. She talked about that quite openly. She talked about where the money went. I think once you kind of make that leap to crowd funding or having your fans support you, it's incumbent on you to talk to them and sort of, you know, be open about those things and discuss those things.
Leo: Transparency.
Matthew: Transparency. You have to.
Leo: I would argue that now everybody is dependent on their community. That's pretty much the way it's always been but we just didn't know it. You cannot hide and transparency is good. Boy, I just read an article, this was on Slate, about poor Jennifer Lawrence. Her career is mirroring Katniss' career in the Hunger Games. It's kind of the involuntary – you know, she didn't know what she signed up for. She said, “I knew that the paparazzi would be annoying, I didn't know they'd be terrifying.” And some people make it – she's making it because she is able to somehow survive all the attention and scrutiny, the terrifying events, and be an interesting human. Maybe she's not authentic but she feels very authentic. That's going to be going forward. I don't care if you're in the old blockbuster movie model or if you're in community-funded independent artist model. That's going to be going forward, I think, a requirement. That's why Taylor Swift has to work her butt off, because she's posting on Instagram and tweeting. She's out there. The old, invisible stars are not going to make it anymore. They're not going to play.
Matthew: I think Jeff and I definitely agree. I think we agree that media companies of all kinds have to, and in fact journalists, I think, have to be much more aware of the relationship that they have with the readers if they have one. If they don't have one, they should get one.
Leo: Get one soon!
Matthew: Because it's super important.
Leo: That is the lesson, isn't it?
Jeff: And that, Matthew, my book should be there any day. That's exactly what I'm 0:30:53.3 is. It's about relationship based model.
Leo: I think if there's one common thread in all these different models, it's that.
Matthew: I know, this kind of ties in with what we were talking about with Facebook and how media companies and individuals, even, are kind of relying on these platforms to do a lot of the work for them and to sort of reach a community. I've had people say, “So what should you do if you're a media company and Facebook basically controls how people see your content and you have no say over how that happens, or even any understanding of how it happens.” My only response has been that you have to be able to give your readers and your community something that Facebook cannot. Facebook can give them a link. Facebook can give them lots of other stuff, but Facebook can't give them what you can give them, which is a personal connection with them and other ways of pursuing that relationship other than just clicking on things on the internet.
Leo: Facebook is just one instance, though, of a whole lot of – copyright has broken apart. Patents are breaking. The things we used in the past traditionally to protect a creator and to guarantee them a revenue stream, those things don't work anymore. Modern things like Facebook, they're ultimately going to break. It all comes down to building a community that you're in a relationship with and that will transcend all these other broken models like copyright and Facebook.
Matthew: I think that when I worked for a newspaper, the model was, if you were a person like me, was get X or Y job with X or Y publication. Then you're set.
Leo: Yes, not any more.
Matthew: You have a platform; you have a distribution channel that you control. You just get to say whatever you want, the end. Then you just cash your checks and go home. That just doesn't work any more.
Leo: I find this exciting. It's always disruption, you know? This kind of disruption is always tough on people but I think that ultimately, this is – I hope this is leading to what we thought the internet would be all about, which is democratizing media and giving everybody an opportunity.
Jeff: Yes, that's what I celebrate.
Leo: I hope that's true.
Matthew: Definitely.
Jeff: The first newspapers came in 1605 – sorry, breaking game amount of time, you guys. 150 years, eventually the Gutenberg press and the first ones all failed. They didn't have a business model, they didn't know what they were doing. It was hard. Newspapers fell by the wayside one after another, after another. Then they figured it out, along came the steam press which helped a lot. But it took time to get the models. It took time to figure it out. We're nowhere near where we should be and can be.
Matthew: I mean, the consumer web, you know, is barely what? 20 years old.
Leo: So you expect it'll change again?
Matthew: I think it is still changing.
Leo: It's going to constantly change. Will there be, though – is it fair to say that building community will be always a key? Authenticity?
Matthew: I think it will be, because I mean, Amanda talks about this all the time. She was a busker before she started being a professional musician. Busking has been around probably since streets were invented and so that's the original model. You play and people throw things in your case. Now the street is infinitely long and you can theoretically reach lots of people. There's also lots of other people doing the same thing.
Leo: Yes, she was – what? She was a bride, in Boston, she'd stand on a box. She was a robot bride and would bend down and I mean, she's – her TED talk is a great introduction to that and I would love to see other stuff that she's done.
Matthew: One thing about Amanda, not everyone can do what she does. She goes, she takes her connection to her fans to lengths that I'm not sure lots of other artists would.
Leo: She goes to their homes and sleeps in their beds.
Matthew: She has parties where, like some of the things she did for her Kickstarter, for the record were – she offered private listening parties and performance parties then afterwards she would take all her clothes off and people could paint her with paint. Well, not every artist is going to be comfortable taking their relationship to that extreme.
Leo: That's her.
Matthew: Right, that's what she wants to do.
Leo: That's the other part of it. You have to be true to yourself. That's authenticity, I guess.
Matthew: I have also tried that, by the way. But no one was willing.
Leo: No one wanted to paint you? (laughter)
Jeff: Riveting visual, Matthew.
Matthew: I was allergic to the pain, it was, you know.
Leo: I find this stuff very interesting. If you just tuning in, Gina has the day off. She's getting ready for Thanksgiving. I hope you all are – well, you already had your Thanksgiving, Matthew, last month.
Matthew: The real Thanksgiving.
Leo: The real Canadian Thanksgiving. What are you doing, Jeff?
Jeff: Oh, sticking around.
Leo: No turkey for Lisa and I. We're going to a 49ers game.
Jeff: (laughter) I heard the call for you to have a turkey dog.
Leo: I'll have a turkey dog, yes. A lot more with Matthew – I love getting Matthew Ingram and Jeff Jarvis on, and I apologize for those of you tuning in for information about the latest Nexus phone, because whenever we get these two together, we're going to talk about stuff like this. But I, you know, I think that if we do add value – it's not regurgitating the latest news story but it's doing the deep thought stuff where we kind of think about what it means, what it means for us and for all of us. I think that stuff is important and to the extent that we do that, I think that we create original content. So please forgive us.
Jeff: I want to talk about shoes. (laughter)
Leo: “Shoes make the man, you know.” Dad always told me that, he said, “Always get a shoe shine before you go to a meeting.” And nowadays, you look at people. We're all wearing sneakers. Here's an opportunity to stand out with some great looking, beautiful shoes that will make you look stylish. Sara Lane was telling me yesterday, on iPad Today, or actually it was Monday. Guys, women look at your shoes. They judge you by the shoes you wear. So how about JackErwin.com? Some beautiful shoes from Jack Erwin. These are my new shoes from Jack Erwin.
Now, what's great about these? These are shoes that would usually cost you $800-1000 in a store because it's all Italian leather and these are handmade in Spain. These are works of art. They're gorgeous shoes, the kind of shoes that when you see somebody walking down the street in them, you actually notice, “Those are nice shoes.” Look closely at the finish, the soles, the uppers, the hand-stitched leather. The quality is there, and Jack Erwin is disrupting the men's shoe industry by creating a luxury brand but at non-luxury prices. That's because they cut out the retailers and sell directly to you. Shipping is free, returns are free. In fact, when you buy a Jack Erwin, and I encourage you to go to JackErwin.com/twit for our holiday picks, I do – when you choose the size, subtract one full size from your shoe size to order. So if you wear a size 10, buy the size 9 because Jack Erwin doesn't skimp. They don't skimp on the size. Normally I wear a 9, I got 8 1/2s. They're beautiful. Look at these, I can't wait to wear to the holiday parties. These are wing tips. Beautiful shoes, again, the leather soles.
Every Jack Erwin pair of shoes comes with a nice shoe bag for travel, some extra insoles as well and we're talking prices that are one-quarter to one-third as much the high-quality fine men's stores that you'd go to. You go into Barney's, you're going to spend a lot more than if you go to JackErwin.com. Of course, many of us can't even get to Barney's. Buying shoes should be fun. The experience should be memorable. The quality should be right. Ah. (laughter) I'm sorry, I can't stop smelling these. They smell so good. That's because nobody's worn them. These, I'm saving these.
Jeff: Put them on and – (crosstalk)
Leo: (laughter) I'm saving these. My god, look at these boots. I love these Chase boots on the website here. Those look so nice. I didn't – I wasn't sure if I'm a boot man. But I think – look at these, it's the suede. Ah, I just love these. JackErwin.com/twit, offerings are limited and they change frequently so if you see a pair you want, buy them and don't wait. Trust me, they won't be there long. These are all in limited supply but that's how they get the price down. That's how they get the quality up and I want you to try them right now. JackErwin.com/twit. I can't wait to go to the holiday party, our TWiT holiday party in my Jack Erwin shoes. We thank them for their support of TWiG.
We're happy to say that Apple has buried the hatchet. Apple had purchased, along with Erickson, SONY, Microsoft, had purchased the Nortel patents. Apple put $2.6 billion into those patents. Their consortium outbid Google and paid $4.5 billion a few years ago for the patents. Then, the partners Microsoft and Apple formed a company called Rockstar, up your way in Canada. Actually, I think they're on the West coast. They are what we call euphemistically a non-practicing entity. That means a patent troll, my friends and in October of last year, Rockstar sued Google, handset manufacturers like HTC and Samsung, Android handset saying that they had infringed seven Nortel patents. Actually, in the case of Google, all related to search engine technology. Google and Rockstar have settled and I have a feeling that Rockstar has also settled with the handset makers, including Samsung. This is Apple finally saying, “Okay, enough of the thermonuclear war. It's done.” I think this is very, very good news. Sysco has signed a term sheet with Rockstar. It looks like it's over.
Matthew: We don't know what the settlement was, though. Right?
Leo: Not for Google. For Sysco, we think it was fairly hefty because they said they're taking $188 million charge. But I don't know if there is any money changing hands for these other ones. I think it's often thought that Apple either lost its stomach for the lawsuits or maybe, more likely, realized it was hurting Apple. The lawsuits were revealing stuff about Apple that they didn't want to have revealed and they weren't winning outright. Even in the Samsung case, they didn't get the money they wanted. So I think that's what is partly happening, is that these companies are seeing that this is bad for business, all of these patent trolling.
Matthew: I'm glad to see somebody making some money off of Nortel Networks.
Leo: (laughter) Is it a Canadian company? Is that why Rockstar is in Canada?
Matthew: Oh, yes. Nortel was huge.
Leo: I used to have a Nortel phone.
Matthew: Yes, it was a gigantic part of the Canadian economy and it flamed out in spectacular fashion.
Jeff: Phones have been good to Canada over the long term, haven't they?
Leo: Blackberry, Nortel...
Matthew: But Nortel definitely had, like Nortel labs, did some of the early groundbreaking work on networks and Telecom. All sorts of stuff.
Leo: It's not that those patents weren't real.
Matthew: No, no, they were definitely real.
Leo: It's just that, I believe, Apple and Microsoft were using them competitively. They were trying to put other companies out of business. Not that Samsung doesn't do the same thing in the other direction, by the way.
Matthew: Right, everybody does it. It's thermonuclear war, right?
Leo: Just stop, now. It's not good for us end users. Because so much money is poured into this litigation instead of innovation.
Matthew: There's lots of, you know, you can – it's hard to sort of argue based on what hasn't been created. But you can certainly imagine lots of interesting things - someone who owned a huge ton of allegedly related patents.
Leo: Oh, I think there are startups that die stillborn all the time because people realize that they would be sued out of existence and they say, “You know what, we're not going there.”
Matthew: For a long time, when I was writing about tech companies and stocks as investments, advisors were telling companies, “Look, you have to get – you have to have something proprietary that is patentable or has been patented, or you have to buy something just so that you can wave it around”, you know -
Leo: Defensively.
Matthew: Exactly.
Leo: Where was it? What article was I reading about Apple where lawyers would come to the engineers and say, “Okay, what have you done today?” The engineer would say, “Oh, I did this -” “Oh, that's patentable. What else?” And just, they would be filing patents on anything. “Oh, that's patentable.” It's because, and I hope that this happens too, it's because of these process patents and software patents that don't have anything to do with physical machines.
Matthew: Yes, they're an abomination.
Leo: Yes. Google has turned on the .Google TLD. Currently, it redirects to the Google Registry. Google also owns .Ads, .dad, .fly, .how, .new, .move, .rsvp, .eat, .soy and something in Japanese. I don't know what the heck that is.
Jeff: Translate it.
Leo: Oh yes, should I? Let's see. I think if I just paste it into Google it translates stuff like that, right?
Matthew: Does anybody have – (crosstalk)
Leo: Oh, great. That's not helpful!
Jeff: Just type “translate” in front of it.
Leo: Oh yeah. Translate, I'm sorry. You guys know how to use this thing, this Google thing. I'm still learning. It's complicated.
Matthew: It's complicated.
Leo: Translate that. “Everyone”. .everyone in Japanese. .dad, .esquire, .here, .meme. So...
Matthew: I don't get it. Maybe I'm just not smart.
Leo: I don't get why Google's doing it, frankly.
Jeff: It gets more and more and more crowded. It's territory.
Leo: By the way, .soy, please don't think it's about the bean. It's Spanish for “I am.” So, Leo soy, Leo.soy would be, “I am Leo.” Right?
Matthew: So like, .me or...
Leo: They say it's the new web for US Hispanics. There it is, yes, Japanese. Everyone in Japanese and the first domain in hiragana.
Matthew: .dad, though. I mean, really?
Leo: Well, I'm a dad. Fathers know best. (laughter)
Matthew: (crosstalk) – something called .dad. Or .eat, or I don't know.
Leo: .dad! .fu. I want leo.fu – oh, it's for developers.
Matthew: Yes.
Leo: Well, do they have .bar? They have .foo and they have .boo.
Matthew: But .rsvp? What is the purpose of that?
Leo: Oh, for an invite, invitations.
Matthew: But it serves no purpose.
Leo: I know. But all the good .coms are gone, so – (laughter) Have they opened up – oh, yeah. “Trademark owners can apply for .soy domains in the sunrise period.” That was July through September. Then September through October, anybody can apply for .soy, that's the land rush period. Now we're in general availability.
Matthew: It's just a giant I Can money grab.
Leo: It's not Google, it's I Can that makes the money on this, huh? Yes. Here's some .soys. Interesting. Oh, these are other registrars you can go to, ah.
What is – I seem to remember that some of these are not actually TLDs. I don't know how this works, but they don't necessarily work at all DNSs.
Matthew: Really? I thought they did.
Leo: Well, they ought too. Otherwise that breaks the web, right? But I think – well, I don't know. I don't know how it goes. .Google is a brand TLD, remember I Can – that was the I Can thing where if you had, you know, a couple thousand dollars lying around, you can get your own domain. So I could have gotten .twit.
Matthew: There's .apple, .lego, .ferrari.
Leo: .bbc, .intel, .fedex and .hines among the brands. .Google has gone live. Who wants to type something “.Google”?
Matthew: Well, nobody.
Jeff: Better they own it than somebody else does.
Leo: Maybe that's the idea.
Matthew: Or .hines or .dad, nobody wants to – do you remember .mobi? Do you remember that?
Leo: Yes, whatever happened to that?
Matthew: We had a big discussion at The Globe, the newspaper I work for, to should we register for a .mobi address. Well, no. Because no one uses them. They don't know they exist.
Leo: You don't really want a mobile only site. You want a site that's mobile friendly, but yes. You can't keep track of the web. You just can't, it moves too fast.
So the GOP and Breitbart have tricked Google. Tell me about this, Jeffrey.
Jeff: Just a minor thing, that they – you know what we used to call that, when you'd pile all kinds of -
Leo: Google bombing.
Jeff: Right. So Breitbart is just happy that if you search for, what do I have for you?
Leo: I think “King of the USA,” “King of the United States,” you'll get – (laughter) Well, to be honest and to be fair, we did this to the left – we did this, yes. “King of the United States,” ask Google, “Who is king of the United States” and they will inform you. This is funny, because this is actually a knowledge graph that refers back to the search engine land article about the Google bomb.
Jeff: The Google bomb, yes. So it's minor.
Leo: That's bizarre. “All hail King Barack Obama, emperor of the United States,” says Breitbart. They said it enough, I guess, that Google said, “Okay.” But for some reason when I get this story from a media hype, it's got a picture of Darren Wilson next to it. So now I'm really confused at what's going on.
Matthew: That is confusing.
Jeff: The photo algorithm does screw up.
Leo: It screws up a lot, yes.
Matthew: Random photo.
Leo: All right. So Google bombing still exists. What are you going to do?
Matthew: Hey, that's interesting, I just learned something. The second link when I did that search was Prince Henry of Prussia, who apparently was at one point suggested as candidate for King of the US.
Leo: Well there's a little history for you there. Google Fiber, if you're lucky enough to have it in Austin – you dogs, you. It will be $70 a month for the Gigabit service -
Jeff: The basic service, Leo. This is the amazing part to me.
Leo: There will be 5 megabit per second, 5-1 basic service for free.
Jeff: For free! You pay a $300 build fee and then you'll be on the internet for free.
Leo: That's aimed straight at DSL providers, because 5-1 is kind of a typical DSL speed for which they charge $20 to $40 a month. So, free.
Matthew: It says there's a construction fee of $300 for set up.
Leo: But you know, amortize that over a couple of years and then it's free from then on.
Jeff: It goes with the Google business model. The more you use the internet, the more Google makes full stop.
Leo: Now, $70 will get you a terabyte of Cloud storage, 1 gigabit of service. $130 a month, you will get TV channels as well and a DVR that will record eight shows at once. I imagine it's a Cloud DVR. Gosh, how do we – so it started in Kansas City, a lot of fanfare. Provo, UT. Austin. They're planning to go to Phoenix, AZ and Tennessee. Do you think this is now a business for Google, that maybe they're going to roll this out everywhere? I know at first it was just to rattle the cages of the ISPs.
Jeff: They seem to be running it like a business.
Leo: It feels like this is growing.
Matthew: I don't see why they wouldn't roll it out.
Leo: God, that would make me happy.
Matthew: If there's more people online.
Jeff: There's lot of capital. It's capital intensive for the build but lord knows they've got the capital as a way to put it to work. They get a higher dividend than anyone else because you're using the internet.
Leo: Right. They have a business model around this that makes sense, compared to T-Mobile which doesn't. (laughter) The more you use it, the more they don't like that. If you went over your cap, they've been reducing you to 128 kilobits or even 64 kilobits unless you ran a speed test. Then they'd say, “Oh, speed test, quick. Turn it up.”
Matthew: You're kidding.
Leo: No.
Jeff: That's for real.
Matthew: That's for real? Is that legal?
Leo: That's not legal any more. They now are going to have to tell you. The Federal Communications Commission investigated and they made T-Mobile, T-Mobile has agreed, that they will actually send text messages to customers to tell them exactly what's happening and that their speed has been reduced because they exceeded the caps.
Matthew: So they wouldn't tell people?
Leo: No, not only would they not tell them but they would lie and turn it up on the speed test. (laughter)
Matthew: That's mind boggling. That sounds like a conspiracy theory.
Jeff: Really, the company is trying to do the right thing and make a big marketing push about how, “We're the un-carrier.” That's a very carrier move.
Leo: They are also – they exempt some streaming music services from download caps and data limits. That fast lane prioritization we've been talking about.
Jeff: That is neutral.
Leo: One of them, by the way, Google Music, and the other Xbox Music. See, this is one where you go – and SoundCloud too, as well. This is where you go, “God, that's great.” (laughter) But it's not really great because if you're not Google, Xbox or SoundCloud...
Matthew: You're screwed.
Leo: It's anti-competitive. Actually, they now do 27 streaming services. So maybe the goal is to sell more T-Mobile accounts than to actually make money off of these guys. Pandora, Rhapsody, I Heart Radio, iTunes, Samsung has something called Milk I've never heard of. Very poor name, by the way.
Jeff: Yes.
Leo: “I got that Milk service.” (laughter) Slacker, Spotify, Grooveshark, Ardio. There are now 14 new services including Xbox, as we mentioned. Google Play, SoundCloud, Radiotunes, digitally imported Fit Radio, Fresca Radio, Jazz Radio, Live 365, Mad Genius Radio, Radio Pup, Radio.com, Rock Radio and Sabin. I think you could probably say that this is no longer – it's pretty clear this is not the way to make money and do fast link prioritization but really, it's just to make T-Mobile more desirable.
Matthew: Right.
Leo: If you let everybody in on this, you're not really choosing winners and losers. And AT&T does the same thing, by the way. But yes, from now on if you're – see, I am a T-Mobile customer. They say, and I asked them again and again, “Unlimited?” “Yeah, it's unlimited.” “Truly unlimited?” “Yes, truly unlimited.” Well, it is except that after a certain point they throttle you to 64 kilobits. That's not limiting it.
Matthew: It sort of feels like it is, though.
Leo: Kind of feels like you don't want to use it!
Jason: I've had that happen a couple of times and it is practically unusable.
Leo: Yes, it's like 2G.
Jason: Like, maybe technically it falls into the category of, “Well, we're still giving you data.” But you're not.
Matthew: Right.
Leo: What was the limit that you crossed, Jason?
Jason: Because I'm on the $30 plan, which has the 5 gigs of data per month, and then once you pass that you get throttled down. And yes.
Leo: 5 seems right in that area where you probably hover around 5 but sometimes you go over.
Jason: Exactly. It hasn't – you know, I've had that plan for a while now. Probably a little more than a year and I think it's happened to me twice.
Matthew: But they told you that was going to happen?
Jeff: This is why I still don't give up on my – (crosstalk)
Jason: Yes, they tell you right out that it's unlimited but after you pass 5 gigs, you're going to be throttled down to slower speeds.
Leo: So, I think I pay the $70 or $80 a month, and they say, “No, no, it's unlimited.” So I'm not going to get throttled. I've never gotten throttled, so I don't know.
Matthew: I bet you will, though.
Leo: I bet I will. But I bet unlimited.
Matthew: There was actually a court case in Canada. Rogers Communication, who I use, or “Robbers” as I like to call them. They actually went to court and got a decision that said they could call something unlimited even if it wasn't technically unlimited.
Leo: Rogers is the worst.
Matthew: Isn't that great?
Leo: Sheesh.
Jeff: Is AT&T's grandfathered unlimited truly unlimited?
Leo: I don't think anybody is truly unlimited. I think unlimited, unless you go over 5 gigs.
I want to talk about Eurotechnopanic. That's the new Leistungsschutzrecht.
Jeff: (laughter)
Matthew: It's a new band.
Jeff: New band, sprache.
Leo: Eurotechnopanic. Jeff Jarvis spoke about the old technopanic at Zeit. We'll talk about it in just a second. First, a word from Personal Capital.
Personal Capital is designed to make it easier for you to save for your future, whether it's retirement, buying a house, just saving up for a rainy day. The problem, of course, is it's hard to know what your money is doing. First of all, they're all in different accounts, different websites with different passwords and sometimes it's hard to tell whether you're paying, how much you're paying in fees. They hide all that stuff. If you're having somebody manage it, how much are you paying them? You're probably paying too much.
Personal Capital makes it easy by getting all of your account information in one place, in a single page, so you can see where your accounts are, where your assets and liabilities are. You can use it for budgeting but you can also use it for planning your investments. They'll even tell you – and by the way, this is on Android, this is on iOS, this is on your desktop. They have an Android Ware app, which is so cool so you get notifications on your watch. And then, they'll let you know if your 401k is overpaying in fees or needs to be rebalanced, how to optimize. You can get tailored advice in optimizing your investment. Best of all, all of this is free. It takes a few minutes to set up and it will pay you big dividends.
Person Capital, we love it. It's free and I've been using it for a couple of years. It's so cool and it's a smart way to grow your money. You know, what's really nice is that I get the Android Ware watch to say, “Hey, you made $800 today.” What? What? “Yes, you did.” Not so nice when it says, “Oh, you lost $800 today.”
Matthew: Jeff, are you okay?
Jeff: No, I lost my camera. I got to call you right back.
Leo: Okay. His camera fell off his set up. Okay.
Matthew: We were just about to read his -
Leo: Techno. His Eurotechnopanic.
Matthew: The translated version says, instead of fighting Google, shoulder stand. I'm not – shoulder stand is not a term I'm familiar with. (laughter)
Leo: “Shoulder stand.” Stand on the shoulders of giants.
Matthew: I guess.
Leo: So the story starts with a kind of, I don't think a serious plan, but the European parliament – somebody there suggested. It turns out that somebody might be a lawyer for some of the big German publishers like, what is it, Springer?
Jeff: Springer. Axel [?] Springer.
Leo: He's proposed that Google should be broken up into smaller companies. I have to be fair -
Matthew: They have no power to do that.
Leo: They can't do that. But I have to be fair, I've often said I wish Google wasn't a content business with Youtube. I wish Google weren't in the flight business with ITA. It kind of muddies the waters, if they're a search engine, that they also own some of the results that they will turn up. I understand the concern about that.
Jeff: I get that much, but it's also an absurd thing and it's purely political. Even the new head of Digital for the EU said, “This ain't happening. That would be an action for a planned economy, not a market economy.” He's been trying to hit the drumbeats against Google, but it's gotten absurd in Europe. I wrote a 3000-word essay. Warning, folks, a 3000-word essay on Leistungsschutzrecht and such. The back-story here is that I went to the Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung, which has been the leader of technopanic. They wouldn't run it.
But my good friends at Zeit, which is a far better newspaper anyway, posted it online and did run it in German and English. Both links are on the rundown. So what I said was, I think that Europe is becoming a hostile environment for technology. You add up all the things we've talked about on this show in Germany, plus the Spanish link tax, plus the right to be forgotten, plus the efforts to force the EU into breaking up Google. Who the hell would go invest in Europe? So I go on about that. I go on about technopanic, we've heard that term before. But later, at the end, I do criticize Google for saying, I don't think they've done enough. They need to – even though the legally do what's right about taxes, they've got to solve that. They haven't been open enough about the NSA. Even if I believe them that they're not cooperating, they still need to be more open. They should be investing more in technology companies in Europe to create a technology environment there. They should be doing, as we discussed earlier, real things to try and fix and help the new business – not necessarily incumbents but news as a society.
What I hope for is kind of a return to the wonder of the old days of world's fairs and such. But I just see that it's all added up in Europe and it's a pretty frightening picture if you get right down to it. And so this was my effort to bring it all to one place. If you really have nothing to do after dinner tomorrow on Thanksgiving, if it weren’t for apps, this is the way.
Leo: Hey, fix your mic. I think you're using your laptop mic.
Jeff: Ugh.
Leo: Pope Francis agrees with you. Did you know that he addressed the European parliament – or, I'm sorry, the Council of Europe in Strasbourg and he called Europe an “old, infertile granny.”
Matthew: Wow, burn.
Leo: (laughter) Ow! Pope Francis said, “Europe should stop treating people as cogs in the machine. Europe is aging and weary in many quarters.” The Pope said, “We encounter a general impression of weariness and aging of a Europe which is now a grandmother, no longer fertile and vibrant. As a result, the great ideas which once inspired Europe seem to have lost their attraction only to be replaced by the bureaucratic technicalities of its institutions.” So says the head of the most bureaucratic and oldest institution in Europe, the Pope. You've got a big ally here, Jeff.
Jeff: Jeez.
Matthew: You've got a problem when the Pope is criticizing you.
Leo: If the Pope calls you a granny.
Matthew: An infertile granny.
Leo: An infertile granny! (laughter) I'm liking this Pope, I got to tell you. He's not like any Pope I can remember.
Jeff: No, he's a New Worlder.
Leo: He's a something. “Men and women are risked being reduced to being mere cogs in the machine that treats them as items of consumption to be exploited with the result that, as is so tragically apparent whenever a human life no longer proves useful for that machine, it is discarded with few qualms as in the case with the terminally ill, the elderly who are abandoned and uncared for -” Oh, here we go, here's the Pope I know and love. “And children who are killed in the womb.” He had to throw that one in.
Jeff: There we go.
Leo: Wow, okay. So you're in good hands, good partnership there.
Matthew: Good company.
Jeff: St. Jarvis.
Leo: St. Jarvis. (laughter) I wonder, he's coming to the US. I wonder what he has to say to us and you! “Europe may be an infertile granny but you, you're like a granny in hot pants!” I don't know what he's going to say and I don't know why he had a Jewish accent
Matthew: I was going to say, you had a Borschvelt comedian kind of thing going.
Leo: “You, you!” (laughter)
Matthew: Like Billy Crystal.
Leo: Oh, lord.
Matthew: “And another thing.”
Leo: “And another thing!” Google has been pushed to extend the right to be forgotten request to Google.com.
Jeff: This is truly, truly appalling. So this is Europe saying, “Censor the entirety of the internet, including ours.” If that precedent is set, by the way, what's to say that Iran and China and Popes and lots of others don't say that, “You're going to censor the net to my lowest common denominator of freedom.” This is why this right to be forgotten is so [Latin term], so – pardon my Latin. It's so wrong. It's just so wrong and Europe is so wrong to think that it should rule the net.
Leo: But they've seen the problem that you can have the right to be forgotten. But if it's just forgotten on .br, then you just go to .com and there you are.
Jeff: As I often say about this, Europe, of anywhere on Earth, should be cautious about the idea of erasing history and telling people what they're not allowed to know. For God's sakes. And now to spread this beyond the borders of Europe to tell the rest of the world what we're not allowed to know, all I have to say is, “Eff you, EU.”
Leo: (laughter)
Matthew: Get that on a t-shirt.
Leo: It's good, I like it. Eff you, EU.
Jeff: There's our show title.
Leo: There's your show. Thank you for doing that, it'll save me a lot of time at the end of the show.
Jeff: It's a little too ribald for TWiT.
Leo: I don't know. I'll have to think about it.
Matthew: I mean, that's the biggest issue though, with the right to be forgotten. It sounds like a great idea but then who decides who has the right to be forgotten and who doesn't? Who decides what things deserve to be forgotten? Then you have some sort of antiquated court system deciding, “This needs to be forgotten but this doesn't need to be forgotten.”
Jeff: It's in the court system, Matthew. They pushed it over to Google and they don't like how Google is doing it. So they're telling Google, “You have to forget more. You have to forget more places. Forget, forget, forget.”
Matthew: I have a feeling – I don't know this, but I have a feeling that Google kind of deliberately made it seem more dramatic when it first started forgetting things.
Jeff: I think that's cynical, Matthew.
Matthew: You don't think they tried to -
Jeff: The court decision is terrible. Google doesn't want to do this. They're going to do it to the minimum they have to do it. Of course they are. What are they going to do? Go at it and be aggressive? They bring together a panel of experts to advise them. They treated it far more seriously than I would have treated it. I would have done the absolute minimum. I would've torpedoed it every way. They're trying not to and again, I was just critical of Google in all kinds of ways. I'm not critical of them on this, I think that's wrong.
Leo: Well I'm glad we have a Canadian on for our next story, because Canada has a twitter account and it's not sorry.
Jeff: (laughter) That's the greatest tweet I've seen in ages.
Leo: @Canada is a verified account on Twitter, so I guess it's actually Canada. This is the tweet, “@Canada,” by the way, they know what they're doing. They started it with a dot, “does not apologize for this new Twitter account. #sorrynotsorry” Retweeted 3438 times, favorited 2331 times. Actually, make is 2332 because I'm favoriting this too. What is that all about, Matthew Ingram?
Matthew: You know, it came as a surprise to me. I saw it earlier today and I thought, “I didn't know that. I didn't know Canada was on Twitter.”
Leo: So weird.
Matthew: Someone told me they were subtweeting the Verge.
Leo: Subtweeting the Verge?
Matthew: Yes, that story, not story response.
Leo: Here's the pinned tweet at the top of their profile, “Canada's now on Twitter, eh?”
Matthew: Yes, I wish they hadn't gone with that one.
Leo: Why are they perpetuating Canadian stereotypes?
Matthew: Especially ones that aren't true. Not a lot of Canadians say that, but it's a very popular...
Leo: I guess it's self-deprecating, right?
Jeff: Well, it's Canadian.
Matthew: Yes, which is great.
Leo: And apparently they want the Simpsons picture of – (laughter), a Simpsons kid in a Mountie outfit.
Jeff: This is why I wanted to move to Canada. I love a nation that has an official sense of humor.
Leo: So they've only got a handle of tweets here. The first one was, “@Canada will aim to capture the interest of audiences beyond our borders #digitaldiplomacy.” Then, “@Canada will act as a shop window for everything that makes Canada the best country in the world #digitaldiplomacy.” And then, “@Canada does not apologize for this new Twitter account.” Then they're saying Ralph Wiggum should be the profile picture. (laughter) And then, “Canada is now on Twitter, eh?” This is just weird.
Jeff: It's great.
Leo: I love it. You wouldn't – who do you think is doing this?
Matthew: I don't know. I'm trying to find that out right now.
Leo: Is it the Prime Minister?
Jeff: (feedback) right now. Sorry, Matthew, couldn't help it.
Leo: If you want, of course you couldn't have @Canada without @AuCanada which is the French version of it. It's exactly the same.
Matthew: Oh, there we go. So the Verge did something about it and said, “Canada has just joined Twitter and whoever's running it could have said sorry for being late but didn't.” So that's why @Canada said, “We're not sorry.”
Leo: But the whole thing is kind of humorous. By the way, is this the equivalent of eh is Ouais? “@AuCanada est maintenant sur Twitter, Ouais!” (laughter)
Matthew: That's the eh?
Leo: Ouais.
Jeff: It takes a lot of letters in French to make an eh.
Leo: Ouais. Weh. (laughter) I love it. I love it.
Matthew: I wonder if we'll do – have you ever watched @Sweden?
Leo: No.
Matthew: So, @Sweden they periodically – it's the official country account. Periodically they hand it over to just some random Swede who then tweets as the country. Some are hysterical. Some are a little disturbing.
Leo: Here it is. A new Swede every week. She, Tanya, is taking over the Swedish national Twitter account right now.
Matthew: It's a great idea but it has backfired sometimes.
Leo: Well, her tag is, “On being Russian and Sweden, sex, psychology, clothes she wears and student orchestras.” I can't imagine even Canada going this far. (laughter)
Matthew: Oh, me neither. It's a great idea though.
Leo: Wow. That's very egalitarian of Sweden.
Matthew: They gave it to someone, this was a couple years ago now, who started saying anti-Semite things. So that was uncomfortable.
Leo: Oh dear, that didn't work out well. Is there a twitter.com/usa? Am I going to get in trouble if we go to it? There it is.
Matthew: Is there?
Leo: Yes, but it's not a verified account. So it's not really USA. “Who doesn't love pie?” (laughter)
Matthew: I guess anybody could set one up but I don't think there's any -
Leo: What are you going to do, reserve the country names?
Matthew: But I don't know who did it. I don't know if it's a Minister or something. I will look into it.
Leo: Somebody. Somebody did it.
Matthew: I'll call my friends.
Leo: Would you get on this?
Matthew: In Harper's office.
Leo: Canada has a Twitter account and Matthew Ingram is on it! Let's see. Is there anything else you guys want to talk about before we go to our picks of the week? Samsung Galaxy S5 only sold 12 million units, kind of a flop for Samsung. Samsung's really actually struggling a little bit in the Android market.
Matthew: They do seem to be.
Jeff: They seemed to be all powerful, they were going to take over the phone market. And again, this is part of the story to even Google. That kind of power doesn't last forever.
Matthew: Well, they were raking in money. I thought Samsung was making billions. What happened to that?
Jeff: They were.
Leo: What happened to that? Jeff and I both have, as does Jason Haldeman, now. We've all got our Nexus. You've had it the longest though, Jeff. In fact, we did a weird unboxing last week right after TWiG because it arrived.
Jeff: Not two minutes after the show ends, the doorbell rings and there's my Nexus 6. So I came back on the chat before Leo had run off and I couldn't get the phone call to work. So I was using my old phone to show opening the new phone.
Leo: What do you think?
Matthew: Should I get one?
Jeff: The problem I had was, my wonderful, wonderful card holder thing, it was too small. It was that big. Luckily, this is the Plus size. So I went and got a new one of those. Yes, it's big. The battery life is fine. I think it's better engineering, I mean, things like Bluetooth it didn’t work so well, and my OnePlusOne, are working beautifully. The screen is gorgeous.
Matthew: How about the camera?
Leo: Camera's very good.
Jeff: The camera, it works good. Lollipop is working well.
Leo: I'll show you some pictures. I haven't taken a lot of pictures, I've only had it for a few days. It is a – what is it, 13 megapixels?
Matthew: I believe so.
Leo: Let me, so...
Matthew: Because that was my criticism with the Nexus 4 was the camera was just – (crosstalk)
Leo: Well if that's what you're comparing it to, it's much better than that. The question is, how it compares to the Galaxy Note 4 which is an excellent camera or the Droid Turbo. It's better than the – here's a daylight picture. I think the colors are very accurate, the detail is excellent. I think it's a good camera. The Camera app is – well, here's one thing. It is pure Lollipop, pure Google and many of the Moto X features are not on there. So that's, I mean, if you like the Moto X always listening and all that. You can't rechange the phrase, it has to be, “Okay,” followed by, “Google.” No, even when I did that it went off.
Matthew: Because Kevin Tofel, our mobile guy, was saying he just bought the Moto X because he's gotten so addicted to the Motorola stuff.
Leo: I have too, yes.
Matthew: The assist stuff, he just uses it all the time, especially in the car or, you know, wherever.
Leo: This is a much better screen, a bigger screen. Here's a comparison of the two – of the three, actually. The original Moto X on the left, the 2014 Moto X in the middle and you can see how much bigger the Nexus 6 is. It's significantly bigger. It also lacks some of the beauty of the Moto X design. But it's a better battery life. It's a 2560 x 1440 screen, so the screen is amazingly crisp. I like the real estate. Do you like the real estate, Jeff? I mean, you're not usually using such a giant phone.
Jeff: I like it. My OnePlus One – it's wider than my OnePlus One, it takes a little bit of getting used to for my old, old eyes. But I like it. I'm still using my Nexus 7. If you compare the size of the two, it's hugely different. No, that's basically it. I can't see though, here we go.
Leo: Here's a low light photo. This will give you an example, this was in a darkened restaurant and I think it's very good.
Matthew: Yes, that's pretty good.
Leo: This is Michael's birthday party at a Mexican restaurant.
Matthew: Can you put it in your pocket, Jeff?
Jeff: Yes, yes.
Leo: I can.
Jeff: Actually, it hangs out a little more than a regular phone would, but it's as tall as the OnePlus One was.
Leo: I wish the battery life was as good as the OnePlus One. That's my only grief really.
Jeff: Have you had a problem yet?
Leo: Yes, it doesn't go all day but I want it to go from when I unplug – actually, by the way, having wireless charging is very nice. But I want it to go from when I unplug at 7 a.m. to when I go back to bed at 10 or 11 and it doesn't do that. In fact, this is a particularly bad day here. I unplugged at about 8:30 and it's supposed to go to midnight. I guess maybe I'll get a full day out of it.
Matthew: Really? I never get a full day. I can't get it to go past dinner.
Leo: Yes, I don't find that – if this went as long as the OnePlus One, if it had – I know it's a pure Google experience so it's not going to have the Moto stuff but I love that Moto stuff. You know, the flipping your wrist to launch the camera and knowing when you're driving, knowing when you're sleeping.
Matthew: Kevin says he uses the voice activation all the time instead of having the -
Leo: I changed mine to, “Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi,” which meant that it didn't go off by accident. This one goes off more by accident.
Matthew: Yes, someone sitting next to you can say, “Okay, Google.”
Leo: One thing Lollipop does let you do is train for your voice.
Matthew: Oh, it does. Okay.
Leo: Jason, you just got it so you can't really comment.
Jason: I just got it. But yes, I got the white variant which could be why I ordered day one and only just got it this morning. I'm pretty sure, it was the white 64 gig.
Leo: This is a 32 gig and it has more free space after the operating system than any other 32 gig phone I've used, including the Moto Xs. So I've had no trouble with lack of space on this at all.
Matthew: And there's no card slot?
Leo: No card slot, no removable battery. You know, this is kind of – I liken it to the iPhone of Android phones. It's kind of pure and beautiful and simple. It doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles but it feels elegant and nice in the hand, I think. You know, it's kind of a pure Android experience like the iPhone might be a pure iOS experience, not that there's a choice. I actually like it, I feel like this is kind of elegant. I do like Lollipop.
Jeff: It is. I like it.
Leo: So with 32 gigs, I think I had 27 free. I had a lot, which was nice because that means – I put a lot of audio books on here and some music. I take a lot of pictures. Anyway, yes. So we all have our Nexus 6. What do you use right now, a Nexus 5, Matthew?
Matthew: I've got the 4, believe it or not.
Leo: So you're due.
Matthew: Yes, I'm definitely due. I'm trying to decide.
Leo: The other one to consider is the Galaxy Note 4.
Matthew: Really?
Leo: Yes. Because there's a removable battery, it has an SD card. Really, the arguable best Android camera. And they didn't cruft it up as much as they had in the past, however it is not a pure Google experience by any means.
Matthew: Yes, that's why I went with a Nexus. I wanted pure Google. I didn't want a lot of crap.
Leo: Then you should get this.
Jason: Yes, or if you're thinking about the Moto X, they actually announced that they're going to have a sale on Cyber Monday through Motorola's site. $140 off an unlocked Moto X, which brings it to like $350 or something like that, which is awesome for that device.
Leo: Or, one penny if you go to Verizon and get is subsidized. So it's free on Verizon, basically.
Our picks of the week, coming up in just a bit. By the way, I Fix It gave it a very high repair-ability score. They said, “If you can pry it apart, the Nexus 6, you need a spudger, but once you get to it, it's very easy.”
Jason: It was something like 18 screws or something like that.
Leo: It's very tedious. 21 screws, very tedious to unscrew all the screws. However, you know.
Jason: I'd take that over Blue any day.
Leo: Everybody says, “If you want battery life, get the Sony Z3.” The Experia Z3, because it's got remarkable battery life and it's got a 1080p screen. That's part of the reason. I did not like the Z2 that much.
Jason: I've heard great things about the Z3, continually.
Leo: I'm going to have to get one just to test it. But that Moto X at $350, that's a good deal.
Our show today brought to you today by FreshBooks.com. Of course, you heard the conversation that we just had in Microcosm of the full show every Tuesday with Jason Howl, Gina Trapani, Ron Richards at 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern time. Fabulous All About Android, that's what they talk about all the time.
Jason: Yes, for two hours.
Jeff: Ish. (laughter)
Leo: It's still not long enough.
Jason: Actually, more like an hour and a half, but yes.
Leo: You could talk forever, because I am – Android is exciting.
Jason: Yes, it is.
Leo: Fresh Books accounting is exciting. This is a Cloud accounting solution that's from Canada. I discovered this, Amber McArthur told me about it. When I was working for Rogers, I was going up there once a month for five days to do a call for help and I had to invoice them in Canadian dollars. I was using MS Word, so kind of, I wouldn't invoice them for months at a time and then I'd send all the invoices at once. They didn't like that very much. Amber said, “Leo, try Fresh Books.” Fresh Books is the easiest way to invoice clients, organize expenses – and I had to do that too. To track your time online and with Fresh Books' award winning mobile apps you can do it all from anywhere on your Android or iOS device. Fresh Books users get paid faster, on average. Fresh Books customers double their revenue in the first 24 months. They're paid an average of five days faster. You might say, “Why is that?” Well, I think partly it's because it's easier to invoice so you invoice on time. Partly because every emailed invoice has a “Pay me” button that makes it really easy for your clients to pay. Plus, automated late payment reminders to eliminate those awkward emails and phone calls, which I like.
Fresh Books integrates with your apps, too. Google apps, Paypal, Stripe, Mailchip, Fundbox. You can record billable hours and track your team's time on the go. IN fact, you even get free auto-billing with Fresh Books in-app online payments. Number one customer support team in the world, the Fresh Books support rock stars will give you support free forever and you will speak to a real live human every time. It's really a great service. Tina Roth Eisenberg, founder of Creative Mornings at SwissMiss.com says, “Fresh Books not only makes me look professional, it saves me a huge amount of time. I love it.”
I used it for a long time, till I had my own company and I could hire people to do this for me. But when you're a solo freelancer, man, this is a lifesaver. We're a small business. Actually, visit FreshBooks.com/twig right now and you could try it free for 30 days with no obligation. FreshBooks.com/twig. Just do me a favor, when they ask you, “How did you hear about us?” and you see that form, put it in and give Jeff and Gina a little credit. FreshBooks.com/twig, 30 days free. I swear to you, you will say, “Where have you been all my life?”
Matthew: It is a great service, I'd just like to point out that I have used it, I am a user. I'm also – Mike McDermott, the founder, is an old friend.
Leo: Oh, I didn't know that. Are they in Toronto? Where are they?
Matthew: Yes. He was one of the cofounders of Mesh, the conference that I'm involved with up here.
Leo: Oh. I was so happy, yes. I was really happy when I discovered it. That was 2005 or 2006, it's been around for a while.
Matthew: He ran it out of his parent's basement for about five or six years. He actually started it – he's an ultimate Frisbee player and he started it because he was running ultimate tournaments and needed a way to invoice. All the ways he could use were broken, so he just came up with his own.
Leo: It was actually good because that's the other reason I really liked it. I could bill Rogers in Canadian dollars – I know, we're still doing the ad, thank you, Jason.
Jason: I'll just put that back up.
Leo: Could bill Rogers in Canadian dollars and then my other clients in US dollars. Multiple currencies makes a big difference. It really was a lifesaver for me. Well, good, I didn't know he was a friend of yours.
Matthew: Let me know and I can email him.
Leo: Is he still running it?
Matthew: Yes.
Leo: It's a big business now. They've got five million customers. That's really great. But because they're Canadian, they're still nice.
Matthew: Very nice.
Leo: There, look at them. Is Mike in that picture?
Matthew: Is Mike in that picture...
Leo: Maybe that's the support team. That might be the support team.
Matthew: Yes, I don't think he's in that one. They have a great space, though, I've been in that office.
Leo: Not in his mom's garage any more, that's for sure. (laughter)
Matthew: He raised $30 million or something.
Leo: Yes. It's a really neat story. On Golden Avenue in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Jeff Jarvis – oh, wait a minute. Normally -
Jeff: Do I go first and then leave?
Leo: Yes, you got to get out of here. You've got a show to go to.
Jeff: Google has rented America's biggest billboard for a couple months in Time Square and the resolution is 2368 x 10048.
Leo: And they put the beat together, not the same – well, yes, that does seem low, doesn't it?
Matthew: Yes.
Leo: That's not quite – it's a little bit bigger than my phone but not much. (laughter)
Jeff: Yes. (laughter)
Leo: But remember, retina depends on how far away you are. Unless you're standing right next to the billboard, you cannot see the pixels.
Jeff: So you can also make your own Android appear on it.
Leo: Oh, that's neat.
Jeff: Which would be fun.
Leo: I like that. That's one thing that's kind of fun in Time Square. A lot of those billboards are interactive in some way. That's nice. That's on the Marriott Marquee there.
Jeff: So I apologize, I'm going to run off. Happy Thanksgiving to the Americans. Always good to see you, Matthew, and I apologize for running but it's snowing here.
Matthew: Enjoy your show.
Leo: Yes, have a great time. Jeff Jarvis, Professor of Journalism at the City University of New York, author of What Would Google Do?, Public Parts and his newest, Geeks Beware Geeks Bearing Gifts. Reimagining news, just kind of what we were talking about at the beginning of the show, really a must read if you're interested in the future of journalism. Thank you very much, Jeff.
Jeff: Thanks much.
Leo: Matthew, what have you been using, anything you want to tell us about lately that you like?
Matthew: Well I've actually been using Google's Inbox for a little while.
Leo: Me too! What do you think?
Matthew: Well, I have to say I like it a lot more on mobile than I do on the desktop and maybe that's deliberate. Maybe that's kind of what they were going for. It's really easy to swipe through things and mark a whole bunch of things as done with the check mark, which I really like. So I don't scroll through 35 email newslettery things, I just archive them all instantly. I like the ability to pin things and to set time – say, “Remind me tomorrow about this thing because I know I'm going to need to know about it.” But it doesn't have to clutter up your inbox. I think I have some issues with the UI, I don't really like the colors and the sort of some of that stuff. But functionally, I really like it.
Leo: I feel like it's the early, early days on this. It's the first app that's every gotten me to Inbox 0, ever, ever, ever. So for that, I'm very grateful.
Matthew: See, I'm kind of OCD about that. I reach Inbox 0 all the time. Not every day, but I have to – actually, I was talking to Craig Newmark about this, believe it or not, when I was in San Francisco. We had coffee and he admitted he was sort of OCD about email as well. I have friends who are the opposite, like they have 25 thousand messages in their inbox.
Leo: That's me. That was me.
Matthew: So I can't even conceive of that. If I have anything more than a page I start to get anxious. Inbox is a great way of dealing with it, it makes it a lot easier.
Leo: I like these previews, you can see them on the screen if you're watching the video, that if it's a Youtube video, you can actually play it in the mail. If you want to track a package, you just tap the link. If you want to view the map, you just tap the link. I find this very elegant and simple.
Matthew: It's well done.
Leo: There's a lot missing. I would love to see – there's no signatures. That's kind of a bit of a missing piece, but you know. I would love to see encryption or some form of signing, because I really like to do digital signing in my email so people know it came from me. A few things like that but, boy, I tell you. I think they've got the right thing. You can delay an email till another time, but you can also delay an email to another place. Did you know that? Is that something they added?
Matthew: I didn't know that.
Leo: Yes, here, I'll show you. Here's an email from John C. Devorak saying I should sue the Washington Times for their new podcast because it's TWT. So I can snooze this, I click the little clock and there's some prebaked things – later today, tomorrow, next Sunday. That's a getting things done thing, where you put it off. But you can also pick a place. So, for instance, I could say, “You know, I'm going to handle that when I get home.” And I can put my home address in there and this email would disappear until my phone sensed that I was home, then it would say, “Okay,” and it would show up again in the inbox.
Matthew: That's very useful.
Leo: Yes. I feel like I would like to see faster iteration on this but you get the feeling this is a fairly serious enterprise for Google. So I'm sure we will see improvements with it.
Matthew: That's a cool feature.
Leo: Yes, isn't that neat? It's kind of like reminders. That's another – go ahead.
Matthew: I was going to say, they do the sort of sorting is quite good. All travel related stuff is in one. That's pretty smart. The three tabs in Gmail, I didn't find was granular enough, they've done a good job kind of categorizing things.
Leo: And you can add your own, so I have, for instance, emails from TWiT is its own mailbox so I can go through those very quickly.
Matthew: Archive them instantly.
Leo: Yes, throw them away right away, yes. Yes, I highly recommend it and I think it's getting easier to get invited to it. A lot of us Inbox users have received new emails, new invites for the friends.
Matthew: I didn't actually get invites for – maybe they give you a time limit where you have to use a certain amount before you get invites. Because once I got it, I said, “Hey, let me know if you want me to invite you.” But I didn't get invites for about a week.
Leo: They have to make sure you're serious.
Matthew: I had to use it. But I like it.
Leo: Yes, very happy with it. I have to say, I've gone back to using Agent. We've mentioned this before and I'm sure you have, on All About Android. But I was saying, I don't have the Moto X features on my Nexus 6. But you know, Agent adds most of those features and does not seem to hurt the battery life too badly. I didn't -
Matthew: What's Agent?
Leo: Agent is really great. On Moto X, you know, it's situational awareness so it knows when you set your sleep times, for instance, and it will make sure it doesn't disturb you. That's the simplest one. This does something that actually, Google Maps now does, which is record your parking spots based on Bluetooth or motion. But if you're in a meeting, which I am right now, so it'll take your calendar. This is what the Moto X does, it'll refuse calls, it'll send a text – you have your choices. You can say who can ring you, who can vibrate you, or you can say, if you wish, a text saying, “I'm in a meeting right now.” Actually, I say, “I'm on the air right now, but if it's urgent, text me the word urgent.” Then Agent, any time you call, will let you through. It also knows when you're driving and will read you texts. This is most of the capability of Moto X's, what do they call that? Situational awareness is what I call it. So I like that a lot and Agent is free.
Matthew: Is it built in?
Leo: No, and that's the thing. It is built into the Moto X, but this will give you a lot of those features. It also has a nice widget, which I use, where if I'm in a meeting I can just tap the widget. If it doesn't know I'm in a meeting, I tap the widget and it puts me in meeting mode. Meeting Agent will continue to run unless you stop it. So that's Agent, it's a free program somebody told me about. I know Jason knows it.
Jason: I love it. It's one of my favorite apps this year, for sure.
Leo: It makes the Nexus 6 better, I think. There's still things missing. I still can't do this! But I think that's kind of the base line of stuff from the Moto X I really want. So I highly recommend it.
Ladies and gentlemen, we've come to the end of this edition of This Week in Google. Matthew Ingram, from Gigaom.com, I am so grateful to you for joining us this week and filling in for Gina.
Matthew: Thanks for having me.
Leo: It was – you know, the timing was good in having this conversation about new journalism and so forth. I highly recommend Matthew's articles at Gigaom about that topic and everything else. He's really one of the best.
Matthew: Thank you.
Leo: Thank you. Thanks to Jeff Jarvis too, for joining us. Jeff and Gina will be back next week. We do This Week in Google every Wednesday afternoon, 1 p.m. Pacific and 4 p.m. Eastern time, 2100 UTC on twit.tv. Watch live if you can, and if not on demand audio and video at twit.tv/twig, youtube.com/thisweekingoogle or you can subscribe in your favorite pod catcher or use one of our great TWiT apps. We didn't write any of them, all are written by our volunteer third party developers. They all do a great job and it's on every platform, iOS, Android, Windows phone, Windows 8, Metrostore and on Roku, which is nice if you want to watch on the big screen. So however you watch, we invite you to do it each and every week, we're glad you're here. Thanks for joining me! I'll see you next time on TWiG.
