This Week in Tech 472 (Transcripts)

Leo Laporte: It’s time for TWIT. Robert Scoble joins Clayton Morris and Tim Stevens. Who won the earthquake news Olympics? I say Twitter, Robert Scoble says Facebook. Find out why he thinks Facebook is the best and why I disagree. We’ll also talk about Google’s vehicles, apparently they’re allowed to go 10 mph over the speed limit and whole lot more. This Week in Tech coming up next.

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This is TWIT, This Week in Tech, episode 472 recorded August 24, 2014

Like a Fine Cheese

This Week in Tech is brought to you by Gazelle the fast and simple way to sell your used gadgets. Find out what your used iPhone, iPad or other Apple product is worth at gazelle.com. And by Citrix GoTo Meeting. The powerfully simple way to meet with coworkers and clients anywhere. Share the same screen and see each other face to face with HD video conferencing. Even present from an iPad. Start your 30 day free trial from GoTo Meeting today. Visit GoTomeeting.com and click on the try it free button and use the promo code TWIT. And by Nature Box. Order great tasting, healthy snacks delivered right to your door. Forget the vending machine. Get in shape with healthy, delicious treats like honey Dijon pretzels. To get 50% off your first box go to naturebox.com/twit. And by Legalzoom. Visit Legalzoom.com to save on your legal needs and gain access to a network of legal plan attorneys for guidance. Legalzoom is not a law firm but provides self-help services at your specific direction. Visit legalzoom.com and use the offer code TWIT to receive $10 off at checkout. It’s time for TWIT, This Week in Tech. The show where we cover the week’s tech news such as it is this week, you know pretty much the dog days of August, and there is nothing to talk about. Good news, we’ve got some of the best technology analysts in the business here to not talk about it. I’ll start with Robert Scoble, the Scobilizer is here. He came into my office on Friday and we couldn’t get rid of him.

Robert Scoble: Well I had to wear your Mickey Mouse ears.

Leo: Did you only post that picture on Facebook? Did you post it anywhere else?

Robert: Just on Facebook and Tanya took one as well.

Leo: That’s intriguing, are you a Facebook only kind of guy now?

Robert: I’m spending more and more time on Facebook. Particularly, for the funny littler personal stuff like that.

Leo: I hate Facebook with a passion that burns like the flames of hell but we’ll talk about that. Here is a picture of Robert invading my space.

Robert: Sitting on the ball and taking control man. Isn’t that every geek’s dream, to be Leo Laporte and run this empire?

Leo: You can bet it’s my dream. Did we disinfect the ball? Also with us Mr. Tim Stevens of CNET their automotive editor. You should be here, we got the big races going on at the raceway over here.

Tim Stevens: Yeah, I know. I would love to be there. I’ll be coming out soon maybe, early September I should be out there again.

Leo: Good. Well come up and visit us when you do.

Tim: I would love to.

Leo: We’re just down the road, not far at all. Looks like you’re in upper New York State. Where are you?

Tim: Yes, I’m at home around Albany, NY.

Leo: Albany, NY. Also in New York State from beautiful Lake Tinky Winky Mr. Clayton Morris. That is a beautiful shot.

Clayton Morris: Thank you. Tim I didn’t see you at the community center this afternoon. I’ll see you there later for shuffleboard.

Tim: Wasn’t sure when the co-op opened today. I wanted to get there early.

Clayton: Tonight is pot luck, you’ll need to bring, are you going to bring some of your fabulous biscuits?

Tim: Absolutely and we got some fresh honey today.

Leo: That concludes the farm report on this addition of TWIT. I’m glad, you guys are on vacation and this is the time to be on vacation. It’s the slow time in tech and we’re about to head into a busy time because September 4^th, Motorola will make its announcement. September 9^th of course the Apple announcements. Right now is the slow period where we all…

Robert: Let’s be honest, you had to find three people that were not at burning man.

Leo: Wow, Burning man is I guess now, gentrified by all the tech executives who fly in via helicopter and drive in customized busses and airstreams. I’ve never been to burning man. I take it back, I haven’t been to burning man since it happened on Ocean Beach in San Francisco which is many years ago. It’s now in the desert. Any hankering to go? Tim have you ever been to burning man?

Tim: No I’ve been. It sounds like a hell of a show but I’m not sure if it’s my cup of tea. It would be good to visit for a day but I don’t know if I’d want to do the whole week up there.

Leo: A lot of the day visitors go later, it’s Labor Day Weekend. The people that are going now are building stuff right?

Tim: Yeah there are some amazing buildings that they put up out there. I’ve been watching the videos of all the sculptures and things like that but that is a long time in the desert for me.

Robert: There is also many parties that are world class. A lot of creative people go there to experiment with performance arts.

Leo: The orgy tent.

Robert: Yeah there is that too.

Clayton: Yeah I was going to go to the orgy tent this year.

Leo: That’s the reason people go to burning man. I know why, they go there to use drugs and have sexual relations.

Robert: Some people don’t use drugs that go there.

Leo: That is the last thing you would want to do. It’s full of alkaline sand.

Clayton: I misread the invitation, it said orgy tent and I thought it said hoagie tent.

Leo: Now that I’d go to.

Clayton: I love a good hoagie. Last year our mutual friend, Trey Ratcliffe invited me to go. Trey loves photography and that aspect of it would be appealing to me. I don’t know if I can justify telling Fox though.

Leo: No, you could lose your credentials if you went. If you go you should wear a nice suit and the British collar that you wear, the tie, red tie, white shirt, blue suit, you’d fit right in.

Clayton: And no pants.

Leo: You know what that would work.

Clayton: And ride around on a giant unicycle.

Leo: The results are in and Twitter won the internet this week. The earthquake that eat the San Francisco Bay area at 3:21 this morning woke up apparently every start up entrepreneur and every Twitter user, the first thing I did after I jumped out of bed and shouted earthquake and ran around in circles. I pulled out my smartphone and looked at Twitter. There was nothing on Google+, well Facebook there was a lot of people doing the ALS Bucket Challenge three days ago. Then Twitter was all about the earthquake. I got the magnitude, the epicenter, almost instantly.

Robert: What you didn’t see, I did Facebook first and then Tweeted and several people said I was the first one to Tweet. I was still writing when the house was shaking on both. Because that is what we do. We don’t care about saving our lives, we care about getting the first Tweet out.

Clayton: So while the futon was shaking, you were Tweeting?

Robert: Exactly

Leo: What was your first Tweet?

Robert: I said big earthquake. Big earthquake was my first one on Facebook and then big earthquake woke me up was my Tweet.

Leo: Out of curiosity…

Robert: Within a minute, because I put both screens up, within a minute my entire Facebook feed was the earthquake and my entire Twitter feed was the earthquake. It depends on who you followed, who you liked, who you taught the engine that you want to see. Even what you put into the engine. I bet it saw that I’m interested in the earthquake because I tweeted and I posted something about earthquake and it brought me a whole bunch of stuff immediately. It was pretty interesting.

Leo: Facebook’s algorithm baffles me. I can’t figure it out. I’ve complained about it before and you said I should come over and show me how to get Facebook working. I have yet to, in fact I was trying to find the picture of you in my studio on Facebook. I saw it immediately and then it disappeared and I never found it again. I have to go to your page to find it now. I can’t figure out how it works at all.

Robert: It doesn’t work. You’re supposed to read it, click like and then it’ll show you something else.

Leo: As Matt Holden showed, if you like everything it’s going to go haywire.

Robert: Or if you like nothing right?

Leo: Maybe that’s it, you don’t think I like enough? If I like more stuff?

Robert: What things you’ve liked, who your friends are, who you’ve put on close friends list and who you put on acquaintance list. If you put someone on close friends list, you’ll see more items from them. You’re actually on my close friends list, because I want to see every time you talk about TWIT or something.

Leo: Close friends list.

Tim: The more I hide I find, the more focused my newsfeed gets.

Leo: It takes really cultivating it for it to be any good. But they do not expose how you do it. They don’t say this is what you should do.

Robert: No, because it’s trying to study your emotional attachment to things, content, places and to people. I’m giving it more signal than most human beings. When you haven’t given it enough signal it doesn’t really work.

Leo: Here is my question. I see this post from Julio Ojeda-Zapada, the journalist from Minnesota Twin Press, and it’s of salsa dancing. If I like this what is the signal? Am I sending a signal I like salsa dancing or I like Julio.

Robert: You like Julio, you like salsa dancing, you like videos. Every one of them is a tiny little vote for more of that.

Leo: How do I vote for less of this?

Robert: Click hide, over on the right side there is a little button.

Leo: This is my problem. Am I hiding Julio?

Robert: You’re hiding that specific post and

Leo: What’s the signal? Is it going to give me less Julio?

Robert: You’re going to see maybe less salsa dancing, you don’t know how it works but it does work.

Leo: You admit this that you are guessing.

Robert: I know that it’s a signal

Leo: You have no clue

Robert: They are watching…

Leo: I know they’re watching but do you have any clue what any of this is doing?

Robert: Quite a bit actually. Here is an example, if I post a family photo. The first person to like it are almost always my family members. If I post something like I’m on TWIT, like I just did. It goes to a more general audience and it goes further. It’s keeping track of the kind of content that you click on and hide and it’s trying to bring you more of it.

Leo: I disagree. I don’t see how Facebook could possibly distinguish between a post about family members or post, how does it know that your family is not named TWIT?

Robert: Because they’re all on my list. I put them all on my family list.

Clayton: What if you call a family member a twit?

Leo: Yeah exactly. Robert I don’t want to see your feed.

Robert: There is a family list over here. You click family and there is 32 people in that. Facebook knows that these people. I never see her stuff because she’s on my family list and I’ve taught my main feed not to show me her stuff. See there is a cat photo, I never see cat photos on my main feed.

Leo: You’re drunk Robert. This makes no sense. You’re saying I don’t see her because she’s on my family list. But I see more family, I don’t understand.

Robert: Its building a contextual system that is studying how to get news to you, route news to you. It’s trying to pick the best 30 things to show you right now.

Leo: You’re not drunk, Facebook is drunk.

Robert: Here, I don’t want to see this type of post so I hide that.

Leo: Is this all stuff that you want to see?

Robert: Yes, this is all high quality.

Leo: How do you know that other stuff that you want to see is not on there?

Robert: Because I can use a list to see all of it. When I click on my acquaintances list, I see all of my acquaintances.

Leo: You’re the only person in the world that has done this much work.

Robert: That’s why I know it’s superior.

Clayton: Don’t you think that much curation, no way in the world the average user of Facebook is doing this much curation like you do. You do this on Google+ and on Twitter.

Robert: My signals are helping the engine learn. The way Gmail’s filters work, the way the machine learning on Facebook works, if I teach it how to create a good feed, and there is whole team working on this at Facebook, they are trying to pick the right thing, for the right person at the right time. If I help that engine by liking things it brings more things into your view.

Leo: It feels to me like a pinball game. If you like something than something else comes and then you have too much of that. It doesn’t seem to really suit as far as I’m concerned.

Robert: It does get better and my friends and I compare, and I pull out the feed it is running away with the game.

Leo: Not even close

Robert: I guarantee you in a year you are going to come back to me and say I was wrong, that Facebook is running away with the game, particularly if shipped a search engine and an at work thing. It is running away with the game. Here is another way it’s running away with the game. I post a video done on the iPhone on the Facebook app and its uploaded in two minutes because it’s compressing on the GPU of the iPhone and then its uploading while I’m typing the description. By the time I hit publish it nearly goes live instantly. Google+, I just did the same thing three days ago. It took 10 hours for a video from my iPhone to get online live. Facebook is running away with the game on a whole lot of levels and if Twitter and Google+ don’t fix what is going on they are going to notice that other people are going away from it.

Clayton: What game are we talking about? Are those videos searchable?

Robert: Not yet.

Clayton: That’s the issue, someone takes a video of themselves in their backyard doing an ice bucket challenge and.

Leo: The first place I went after the earthquake was Twitter. I didn’t even consider Facebook.

Robert: Facebook in one minute brought me 20 posts. I posted a whole bunch of them instantly off my iPhone.

Leo: Tim, what was your first? Well, neither of you were in the bay area. You probably didn’t jump up at 3:21 am for no reason and say let me check Twitter.

Clayton: It didn’t even occur to me to go to Facebook.

Leo: I’ll give you another example. When you heard Robin Williams died, did you go to Twitter?

Clayton: I flipped it on television.

Leo: You’re a TV guy.

Robert: My wife yelled, she saw it on Facebook. I went to Twitter and Facebook instantly and I was still very early in the story. Most people when I said Robin Williams just died, people were saying, dude is that a hoax. Because they didn’t believe, because it was so early in the news cycle.

Leo: I don’t think that your typical though Robert. Most people don’t think of Facebook as a source for breaking news.

Robert: Absolutely true. I’m ahead and that’s why I know in a year you’re going to come back to me and say you were right. This thing is running away with the game.

Clayton: By game do you mean Farmville? My feed is just filled with Huffington Post articles.

Leo: Farmville that’s the game.

Robert: I don’t see any games on my feed. I taught it not to show those.

Leo: I don’t see any more games on my feed either, I have to say.

Clayton: But the Huffington Post junk, viral news articles are the ones and maybe it’s because I click like

Leo: The Upworthy, you like Upworthy.

Robert: I don’t see any Upworthy.

Leo: I’ve taken Upworthy out. I liked one Robert Scoble post, now I can’t help but see Robert Scoble every time I go to Facebook.

Robert: Because it’s studying your signal

Leo: Look at this, this is my Facebook feed. Here is a video that was posted 4 hours ago. I don’t know when you liked Wicks, I guess this is an ad so I’m not going to care about that. Russell posted this Tweet about the earthquake about 11 hours ago. 9 hours ago, 2 hours, this is not current. Is it me? Are you blaming me for this?

Robert: Yes.

Leo: 11 hours ago, hey Petaluma friends did you feel that quake? That’s in my current feed, just now.

Robert: Yes it’s your fault because you haven’t been on Facebook. It’s just showing you interested stuff from the past hours that you haven’t been on Facebook. I’ve been on Facebook all day so it’s showing.

Leo: That’s wrong Robert I’ve been on Facebook a lot because I’ve been looking…

Robert: Here is something 23 minutes ago on my feed, business week 24 minutes ago.

Leo: I admit, you’re winning at Facebook. Get this I just refreshed my feed and what did I get? A YouTube post from August 22. Two days ago.

Clayton: Let me ask you this Robert.

Leo: It thinks Paul Ferot is still in Barcelona, according to Facebook. Paul Ferot has been home for a week and he’s still in Barcelona. This is useless.

Clayton: Pictures get such a huge reaction right? So in my Facebook feed I just posted that we were heading out on vacation. I was playing around on one of these giant ass Windows phones and just shooting some photos while my wife was driving. That post that I put up on the road for a family vacation, its public. That photo post got 245 likes in just a matter of minutes. I had linked to a, via Twitter, this earthquake course on iTunes university. An excellent iTunes u-course from Cal Academy and said here is something great I was fooling around on my iPad when your child asks what’s an earthquake. Almost no likes. Because I pushed it from Twitter, no likes compare to nearly 300 likes for a photo. That seems, anytime I post a news piece on Facebook, very rarely do I get any kind of interest on it. It’s usually just casual junk that gets the most response.

Robert: You have not picked your friends very well.

Leo: See it’s always our fault isn’t it?

Robert: Your friends are choosing to like your photos.

Leo: Facebook sucks Robert you’re so wrong.

Robert: Here’s how the filter works.

Leo: Not that Twitter is a whole lot better but at least when there is an earthquake I know I can go to Twitter and I will immediately see confirmation and information about the earthquake.

Tim: I think Robert needs to start a school on how to use Facebook and we can send all of our friends to this school I’m guessing tuition will be affordable and maybe financial aid will be available. If we send all of our friends then maybe Facebook will be a better experience.

Leo: How can you say something is good if it requires this much energy. Even Mark Zuckerberg himself said no one makes lists.

Robert: Because it’s like driving a Ferrari. If you don’t put the work into knowing how to drive a Ferrari you’re going to probably wreck the car and kill yourself. The CEO of Eagle Computer did it on the first day of going public. He bought a Ferrari and killed himself on the first day.

Clayton: Let me say this about local advertising. You’re absolutely right, I see a lot of small businesses that I work with and help them with their Facebook advertising and talk with them about this. I’ve done some myself and it’s been tremendous, the amount of granularity that you can get in the community. If you’re a local pet store owner in some small town in New Jersey, what better way to get foot traffic into your store, in addition to the general traffic that is walking by, but taking out a Facebook ad locally that targets specifically with all of the information you can do now with the power editor inside of Facebook advertising, to target those people who A – have a pet in that town, might be over 33 years old so they might have some more disposable income than the 18 year old, maybe they own their own home. You can target all of those people specifically within a zip code and you can offer them a coupon, 20% off or even a free toy to come in and say hello for the first week we’re opening at the grand opening. Nowhere else can you get that kind of granularity from advertising. It pays, Robert to your point, to learn how to use that system. Instead of just putting up one of those generic posts to drive traffic to a post. But actually how to use the power editor inside of Facebook and be tremendous for local businesses.

Leo: We’re talking about Facebook as end users not as advertisers.

Robert: Here is the problem for end users, for normal people. Not me. They’re going to open up Facebook and Twitter and Google+ on their phone. Probably an Android phone and they’re going to compare the three. Of the three, Facebook will have more interesting things to them. Their friends are on it first of all. Their co-workers are on it. The brands that they care about are on it. They’ve done enough to get something interesting on that first feed, for me I see it as a platform that gives me news because I have notifications coming to my phone. If I was somewhere else and there was an earthquake I would see it on Twitter and Facebook at the same time and I know who would be the most credible and authoritative person in talking about that. Normal people don’t care about that. They just want to see if there are any baby photos on the feed. You go over to Twitter and they follow the Kardashians and that’s all they see.

Leo: I like audio in our chatroom said Facebook is a data mining tool that is trying to socially engineer and then monetize our relationships. I feel socially engineered every time I use Facebook. Do you all not feel manipulated every time you use Facebook? Am I wrong? Don’t you feel a little manipulated when you use Facebook?

Robert: I’ve gotten over that feeling.

Leo: By suppressing it. Robert you know you’re being manipulated you just compartmentalize it.

Robert: I’m using it to make a news feed for myself which it is the best news feed by far. It has less noise than Twitter has and it has certainly less noise than Google+. I can prove this if you come over, I will show you.

Leo: What if you follow the right people on Twitter, wouldn’t you have a great news feed? If you put that kind of effort into Twitter you would also have…

Robert: I have put that effort into it.

Leo: The problem I have with Facebook is its opaque. I don’t know what Facebook is doing. With Twitter if I follow somebody I will see their stuff. All of it. If I don’t than I won’t. I think you can cultivate a Twitter feed in a way that you can’t cultivate a Facebook feed because it’s opaque. You don’t know what Facebook is doing with your signals.

Robert: That is where you have to get into just letting the engine do something for you. Twitter yes will show you every post but I’m sorry there is a lot of noise in this feed right?

Leo: Robert has drunk the Kool Aid hasn’t he? The last time you were with Zuck did he give you anything to eat or drink? Mushrooms of any kind?

Robert: Evan Williams bought me a whiskey at the Ritz one time.

Leo: Evan isn’t even involved with Twitter anymore. Tim Stevens is wisely staying out of this.

Tim: I think Clayton and I should maybe branch off and do a separate show at this point.

Clayton: I was on the air during the earthquake. Four hour show this morning at 6am eastern time so about 3 am local time there in Petaluma. I went right to Twitter about 3:20 after we were getting word that, we had come out of a commercial break and we had to break in with breaking news that there was a 6.0 earthquake in California. Immediately I think about my in-laws that live right there. I jumped on Twitter to see what the news and if there were any images being shared at that hour it was certainly dark so getting cameras was going to be a problem. We were able to pull up images, I was able to get great local reports from people who were right in downtown Napa, we were seeing people were trapped and buildings had collapsed. Minutes, maybe 30 minutes before we were able to get actual cameras on the ground there. It was great to be able to supplement that reporting live on the air from credible sources and some of our reporters who were actually able to get boots on the ground in that area. One of our reporters lives right in Napa and he grew up there. We were able to see reports and photos that he posted to Twitter and pull those up right on the show. Using Streamboard, a great app that Robert told me about last year, to be able to watch all the commentary and follow specific hashtags and follow what’s being said. You can make it more granular to follow just verified accounts or people with a certain amount of followers so it might be a news organization or something like that. It was a great source of news on the air and I have a tendency to always go to Twitter when there’s pieces of breaking news and information where you want to see the conversation. I never really see it unfolding on Facebook. Maybe it’s my fault because I’m not following the right people.

Leo: Or I might say Google+ and I love Google+ for certain things but I went to Google+ to see if anyone was talking about the earthquake there and there really wasn’t.

Robert: You guys haven’t’ built the structures that will bring you what you want. I have a list of mainstream news, here let me show it to you.

Leo: Robert I understand, if you put the energy in. Here is why I don’t do it. It’s not exactly clear what you’re going to get.

Robert: It is to me now. I’m on the other side. Somebody asked me what the reason I’m doing this, I want the best of breed of the feeds period. You guys aren’t getting it because you’re not using it.

Leo: I use Facebook everyday with revulsion and nausea in my mouth

Robert: Not with these lists. Look at this list, I have a list that I built of 537 tech journalist in the world. I can scroll through here and get just tech news. There is no photos here, there is no personal memes. It’s everything happening in the tech industry right now. It’s better than what I see on Twitter for the general part. Breaking news and searching, absolutely Twitter is still there. I keep Twitter on my screen most of the time. It’s not really a Facebook vs Twitter thing but Google+ is falling way behind.

Leo: How many of the 1 billion Facebook users are doing this?

Robert: None

Leo: Thank you

Robert: But I am. First of all, if we had a show 8 years ago there was nobody on Facebook. None of us used Facebook. I think that argument is a bull shit argument.

Clayton: Let’s say I go to a news organization’s Facebook page. At the top they’ve got the big cover art, if I like that page what the hell does that do? If I follow that page, what the hell does that do?

Leo: No one knows because it’s opaque. Facebook is explicitly keeping you from knowing that.

Robert: I’ll tell you if you’re a person, you have a personal profile, and you can turn on a feature called follow. The foundation of Facebook as a friend, means that I want to see some of your stuff and you want to see some of my stuff. That is what a friend on Facebook means. Not a friend in real life but a friend on Facebook. If I don’t want to see your stuff, I don’t friend you and make you follow me. Follow me means you see some of my stuff and I don’t see much of any of your stuff. If you have a brand page and you click like on it, it adds that to your like area on your profile so everybody can see that you like Target or Formula One Racing or something like that. You will see a few of those posts on your main feed as well. It also automatically adds them to this list over here called pages and public figures. This is everything that I’ve liked. You’ll notice the quality is way lower than the main feed. There is a lot of memes and cat photos on here. A lot of personal photos.

Leo: I’d love to have you do this but it scrolls so fast we can’t see the results. It does seem that this technique requires a PHD in Facebook so let’s. I’m not kidding, I want you to come over and spend some time we’ll do a special on how to Scoblize your feed. I’d be very curious and I’d be willing to try it. We have somebody in the chatroom, who has written a script on how to use the Facebook graph APR, using some java code he downloads just what he wants from Facebook and he never actually goes to Facebook. This is how I want to use Facebook. I’m going to download his tool.

Robert: There is a lot of ways to use all of these tools right?

Leo: It’s pretty clear, we’re going to move on because this is incredibly boring to most people…

Robert: The chatroom is having fun with it because we’re all nerds in there.

Leo: A number of people pointed out linda.com has a tutorial on getting Facebook running. My guess it’s not anywhere near as bizarre and sophisticated as what Robert is doing. As you say, Robert, I doubt many people if any are doing this on Facebook.

Robert: I’ve put thousands of hours into Facebook

Leo: That is the last thing in the world I would want to do.

Robert: It’s like getting an Apple 2

Leo: I understand, you’re creating.

Robert: If you buy a Ferrari you’re going to need to go to the race track and learn how to drive it.

Leo: Ferrari doesn’t keep moving the brake pedal and the problem with spending this amount of energy on Facebook is tomorrow they could change it all and everything you’ve done will stop working. Absolutely because they’ve done that before.

Robert: Google+ could do the same thing.

Leo: Anybody could. I’m not going to put a 1,000 hours into any of these because tomorrow that could be completely wasted energy.

Robert: I find them to be where the people are and therefore where the information is

Leo: I know that, what about their strategy? I think this is brilliant. Facebook has a strategy that they don’t care if you spend most of your time at the blue page. I noticed my daughter, she’s 22, using her smartphone, and she goes to Facebook because she’s got groups there. Her dorm group and her friends from one school and another school. She’ll check on them and then she goes to Instagram to see the pictures there. She’s probably not fully aware that she never left Facebook by going to Instagram it’s just another branch. Mike Elgan our news director thinks, and I think he’s right, that in a few years Facebook could have a 100 apps. They don’t care, what’s interesting, to watch my daughter not really ever leave Facebook but in fact use messenger and messenger being extracted from Facebook now as a separate app. Use whatsapp, when she was in Mexico everybody used Whatsapp. She never left the Facebook ecosystem. And yet it seemed like she was. To me that is a very smart move.

Robert: I predict that they’re working on a work version of Facebook. I don’t know if they’ll call it Facebook, they might call it something like WorkBook or something. Zuckerberg is running Facebook on a version of Facebook that we can’t see. I find that interesting and I’m sure that he is working on the search feature that Twitter has. My former boss is at Twitter, so he’s working hard so that people stay addicted to Twitter and don’t go to Facebook.

Leo: Twitter has its own structural issues. There is the troll issue because it’s so easy on Twitter to create a phony account. It’s whack-a-mole to stop trolls and we’ve seen a lot of people of late really complain about that on Twitter.

Robert: The one thing you did stay that was very astute, they are changing the rules every week. Every week I notice something changes about the news feed. It generally gets better and sometimes it gets worse in a little way. The trend line is like this and it’s getting better. IT’s dramatically better than what it was a year ago. Partly because I put in more work on it and given it more signal because the feed is changing and what they want through the feed is changing. They do the ability to turn you off. They do have the ability to turn up the knob on you and get you more distribution.

Leo: Or post happy thoughts so you’ll have happy posts.

Robert: That’s why they might turn you up. They might say well, everybody’s feed doesn’t have enough happiness right now, everybody is talking about a tragedy they might look for somebody that has a happy….

Leo: How come you’re sitting there on Fox & Friends and you don’t pull up on the Facebook feed?

Clayton: That’s a great question. I do when we ask a question of the day. A story might be controversial and we see if 50/50 response. Are half the people torn by this story or this story and I like to see responses from people. We post the story on our Facebook page and we’ll get thousands of responses during the show and it’s great to see all those responses. I don’t go there for news typically. Breaking news during the show doesn’t seem, I don’t ever see it in my feed so I don’t think to go there. When I go to Facebook the stuff I end up seeing is old, not old information but it certainly doesn’t feel like its breaking.

Leo: Robert would say that’s your fault.

Robert: All you have to do is follow my tech news list. I’ve done the work so you don’t have to do the work.

Clayton: I don’t know if I’m in your tech news list

Robert: You sure are

Clayton: If I post something, for instance I posted this kick starter project about this awesome butter knife that I want and I want it right now. I added it from Flipboard and it’s awesome. Will that because, you’re saying your technology feed is fantastic but how does your technology feed know to remove pictures of my kids and just put my butter knife?

Robert: It does

Leo: Somehow, it’s magic

Robert: Look, do you see kid’s photos?

Leo: I see no kid photos.

Clayton: I’m just fascinated by why that does it that way.

Robert: It knows when you talk about tech versus when you tag your kids in the photo. That is exactly how it works.

Leo: I feel like no social media right now…

Robert: Look at my tech feed just right now. CNET, Hacker News…

Leo: What are the dates?

Robert: 24 minutes

Leo: Those are all pretty current. Are you sorting that by recent?

Robert: No, I’m just clicking on the list.

Chad Johnson: When it’s a list, it’s everything. It’s not filtering

Leo: So it would be chronological. Well I started this by saying Twitter won the earthquake.

Robert: Here’s the first thing, has a wedding photo.

Leo: That’s exciting

Clayton: You’re holding Facebook wrong.

Leo: Heard an interesting call on a radio show today. All of a sudden, I have a very limited bandwidth because I’m using a MIFI, all of a sudden my I’m way over the cap and I realize it was the auto play videos on my Facebook stream. How do I turn that off?

Robert: There is a setting.

Leo: There is a way, I found the setting. That’s interesting, I didn’t think of that but that is a significant increase in bandwidth use.

Tim: They basically said they would do some caching on mobile devices when you’re on WIFI but if you’re using a MIFI then they don’t really have any idea of whether you’re actually on a local WIFI connection or a remote one so that’s very unfortunate.

Robert: The chatroom is getting bored now.

Leo: They’ve been bored since day one. That’s a congenital condition.

Robert: They’re all nerds…

Leo: We’re all a little ADD. The truth is I don’t mind going on a little on this A – because you and I have been offline talking about this and I am sincere in saying that I would like you to come up and we’ll do a special on how to Scobolize your Facebook. You can coach me. I would love to see this.

Robert: I’m having this argument with my boss and he’s really studying LinkedIn and he sees a lot of value in LinkedIn.

Leo: I think what I might come away with is no social network is perfect for any one purpose. Each of us, I think most people now use as many as possible and in different ways and are satisfied in different ways right?

Robert: 3 or 4. Most people have Snapchat, Facebook and LinkedIn, maybe Google+.

Leo: I actually re-upped at LinkedIn, I had deleted.

Robert: I think people that aren’t on social networks are weird.

Leo: They think you’re weird Robert.

Robert: Exactly.

Leo: It’s pretty much mutual. We’re going to take a break. Robert Scoble is here, Tim Stevens is here, we’ve got Clayton Morris out at Lake Tinky Wink. How’s the Read Quick App doing? Doing well?

Clayton: It was actually chosen as the app of the week a few weeks ago. That was insane.

Leo: Do you get paid even though they are giving it away? When they do that?

Clayton: No, but to have many millions of people download the app and people all over the world write in wonderful things. I was blown away by the response from people really it was just such a special week. Seeing people who couldn’t afford the app before saying this really has changed the way I read the papers from school now. It was really touching because I built it as a scratch your itch thing for myself. Just to see millions of responses from people!

Leo: Are you going to pull a Kevin Rose? Are you going to drop out of the television business and go full hog on apps?

Clayton: No

Leo: You see Kevin did that. He kind of stepped back at Google Ventures. He’s building an app, he posted pictures of them staying up last night writing something, I don’t know what.

Clayton: I’ve loved television since I was a little kid watching Carson and Letterman so it’s in my blood to be in television. I built Read Quick as a way to supplement news fast for my job. Really it’s a supplement for that and it’s doing really well and I’m really curious just with the different size iPhones what is the definition of a universal app anymore with the different phone sizes? 5.5, 4.7 inch screen, iPad mini, iPad Air, what is that mean anymore? What features do you not enable for a larger screen or smaller screen? Kind of going though that right now.

Leo: That’s a good topic for when we come back. We are getting close, we think, to an iPhone launch. I wonder what September 9^th will bring, let’s talk about it. But first a word from Gazelle. If you’ve got an iPhone, I’ve got a tip for you. It is likely we are going to see new phones from Motorola next week and a new iPhone in two weeks. Perhaps new phones, the Galaxy Note 4 in the next couple of weeks, Eifa is coming up in Berlin you’ll see new stuff there. I can tell you one thing for sure, the minute they announce a new iPhone, your current iPhone is going to drop in value, and it’s dropping right now. Go to Gazelle and lock that value in. This is your chance to get some money for your old stuff to help pay for the new stuff. Gazelle.com you very likely have a few other gadgets in your gadget drawer that you are not using. Think of it as bundles of greenbacks sitting in that drawer collecting dust. This could be money. Right now when you lock in the price for your iPhone they are going to extend it, normally it’s 30 days but they’re going to extend it all the way to October 10. Giving you time no matter when the ship date is on the new iPhone, no matter how long the lines are to get that new iPhone and get your data transferred over and then ship the iPhone back. That price will be the price from today and that’s the beauty part. Go to Gazelle.com and sell your cellphone, your tablet, your iPad, your Surface, your Apple computer, your Samsung, your Galaxy, all of it they’ll buy it. There is 3 ways you can get paid. You can get a check, you can get a PayPal credit and if you buy a lot of stuff on Amazon, I’d get the Amazon gift card, because they bump that up by 5%. Let’s see what an old iPad Mini is worth today. $110. That’s just sitting in the drawer. You’re locking it in for 30 days. Actually, you’re locking it in if it’s an iPhone until October 10. Now when you get the new phone and you’re ready to ship the old one in, checkout and they’ll send you a box, prepaid postage. If you forget to wipe the data, don’t worry they’ll do it for you. Then they’ll send you the money. It’s a really great way to sell your gadgets. The fast and simple way if you’re upgrading to a new iPad, new MacBook do it with Gazelle. Do not delay because those gadgets are not gaining in value. The minute the announcement happens they are going to plummet. 5S is worth how much unlocked? $300. I’m going to make money. New iPhone, I’m thinking the rumors are congealing.

Tim: Yeah definitely

Leo: That’s not a very auspicious image in your eyes. The rumors feel like they’re converging, maybe a better word, onto two iPhones. A 4.7 inch and a 5.5. You think we’ll see both on September 9^th?

Tim: Yeah, I’m inclined to think that we will see both devices on that date. I don’t know if they’ll launch simultaneously. There is definitely a chance that Apple will say one is out next week and the other will be a month later. Certainly we’ve heard issues of low yield on some of their display components that may cause some shortages when it comes to supply. Short of that I think they would like to have both devices launch simultaneously. It will be interesting to see how they message the two, how they differentiate the two because they did launch the 5C not too long ago and the messaging there was not much. This is not a cheaper phone this is just a different type of phone. I think that these are going to have to be a little more focused devices when it comes messaging. A little more focused in terms of usage and maybe aiming towards professionals instead of just casual users and that sort of thing. I think we’ll see some interesting marketing and advertising and I’m curious to see what the message is on September 9^th.

Leo: Reuters says because of the new display, the new in cell touch screen screens are using they are having a hard time getting those from LG and Sharp. That’s on concern that might hold up either or both of the phones. This makes it a little bit thinner because the in cell touch screen eliminates some layers.

Clayton: Every year they talk about how the newest device from Apple will be delayed and they’re never right.

Leo: I mean they understand, these rumors are complete speculation in most cases. Although, I do trust the supply rumors a little more because it’s hard to keep a lid on the suppliers. Even Foxcon is starting to leak a little bit about this stuff.

Clayton: My sources are telling me we’re going to see two phones for sure.

Leo: You’ve had some very good sources in the past Clayton. Are you still in touch with those folks?

Clayton: Absolutely, I really think we’re going to see two new phones. The question for me is whether or not, I don’t know, I walk around just to test obviously the larger

Leo: The Nokia 1520?

Clayton: Yeah, to me it’s just too big. But I’m not a senior citizen yet so maybe I wouldn’t enjoy a much larger iPhone.

Leo: I am, and I like the big phone.

Clayton: You have the Note.

Leo: I have the 1520, I loved it until I bricked it.

Clayton: I’m hearing that the screen resolution on the larger phone is going to be much better.

Leo: That’s a good question. What is the resolution going to be on the 4.7 and the 5.5? Do we know?

Clayton: What I’m hearing from a couple of sources is 3 times retina on the larger screen.

Leo: That’s the pixels per inch.

Clayton: Right,

Leo: You’re saying 3x that would be like 600

Clayton: Gruber had a great post about it the other day where he broke it down and this is jiving with what I’ve been hearing as well. 461 PPI, on the 5.5 inch. 2208 x 1248 on the 5.5 inch screen?

Leo: 2208x1242. That would 461 pixels per inch, ironically more than the smaller iPhone. You’d think that those would have a higher density. The 4.7 will be 1374x750. Is this because it’s doubled and tripled? Is that why they’ve come up with this?

Clayton: I think so yeah, I’m terrible with math I’d have to get out my abacus but. The amount of time that John has been going through all of the different variables but it’s jiving.

Leo: John used the Pythagorean Theorem. I remember the name, I have no idea. Is that a²+b²=C²?

Clayton: Yeah I think so.

Leo: Well that sure helps me. Did Gruber have to go back and get his 8^th grade math book or what?

Clayton: This raises some very good questions for all of the different apps like when I think about Read Quick for instance. There is a difference, we made it a universal app for a reason right. There is different versions of it. What does it mean to have the app running on an iPad Air and an iPad Mini? What does it mean to have it on such a small device when you’re in line at the Starbucks? Now what does it mean to have it on a 5.5 inch screen? What sorts of buttons can we employ there? What sorts of things will pop up, what sorts of tools will pop up on that screen? I know that Apple seems to be pushing developers in that direction to really consider these different screen sized when they’re building their apps tall. With split screen apps like on the Surface.

Leo: We know iOS 8 will have that.

Clayton: A lot of developer questions I’ve been having the last couple of weeks.

Leo: His point is that if you make the 4.7 inch 1374x750 that’s double the pixel density. Double is easy to do for a developer. You want to do multiples, you don’t want to do 1.68 times because then that’s tough. The 5.5 he’s thinking will be 3x the density. I’ll read you his reasoning; first I’m assuming that both the 4.7 and 5.5 rumors are true. Second, I’m assuming a 16:9 aspect ratio for both displays. Given these assumptions and the Pythagorean Theorem, it’s easy to create a spreadsheet model that gives you the pixels per square inch resolution for a given pixel count. Given the height and width in pixels we can solve for the diagonal pixels; a²+b²=C^2. He’s just showing off now. That makes sense because you want to make it easy for developers. Did you see the Android presentation graphic that came out this week? It shows you what Apple is trying to avoid. There are so many different Android devices. This is the graphic for Android from open signal. This looks like my hard drive defragging. Each rectangle represents a different Android device. According to Open Signal which makes software for mobile devices that track cell phone towers and WIFI signal. They’re getting this data from the field. There are 18,796 different unique Android devices. Imagine, do you do Read quick for Android?

Clayton: No

Leo: Now you know why.

Clayton: I’ve been back and forth with it for months. People ask for it.

Leo: This is the various Android screen sizes that you have to deal with. They are all over the place. Now iPad and iPhone it is very linear and this is the key if you add the new iPhone it goes right in here in the box. It’s not nearly so crazy. Android versions over time. These graphs are just bizarre. 91% of iOS devices run the latest version. That’s also simplification for you.

Tim: There is a graph missing there and that is Android sales versus iOS sales. That would tell a very different story wouldn’t it.

Leo: Yeah. Android has 80% market share globally. Frankly, I use this OnePlus One I love it. This is a 5.5. It’s big.

Clayton: What is that one?

Leo: This is the crazy one where they wanted women to put tattoos on their butt. The OnePlus One.

Clayton: Did that marketing campaign work for them.

Leo: Did not work for them no. However, this is the irony of it, it’s $350 for 64 gig and it’s a really great phone. I am very intrigued by the new iPhone and I know I will get one. Actually the things that have got me off of the iPhone the last couple of years are screen size and the god awful keyboard and both of these are going to be solved with the new iPhone.

Clayton: Couple of questions I have too is will be there be any difference between the two devices for features? Because they’re both being releases at the same time will there be a wow feature of the larger iPhone. I’m hearing better battery, but that is to be expected with a larger phone. The 4S had Siri, the 4 did not because they’re being released at the same time probably same camera, and everything else will be the same. My question will be will one of them have larger storage. Will that be an incentive to get the larger iPhone because it has an increased storage capacity for business? If you’re on the road and you need that extra storage I don’t know. Everything else probably will be the same.

Leo: Thoughts Tim Stevens? You covered this for years when you were in gadget.

Tim: We’ve been waiting for 128 GB phones for a long time now, this would certainly be a good time for them to do that. Battery life, absolutely, I would definitely expect a much bigger battery life from the larger device. I’m curious what they will advertise it as. They’ve always advertised the same battery life for each new generation of iPhone. It will be interesting and good for them to maybe finally step away from that and show something a little bit different with these new larger devices. Pixel density does play a role in that too. The more pixels require a more powerful back light which then decreases your battery life. That is probably another issue that they’re trying to deal with if indeed those display yields are indeed lower than they are supposed to be. I think batter life should be better, pixel density higher is great of course. There has been a lot of talk about NFC which is interesting.

Leo: That’s surprised me, we saw a schematic that showed more RAM and NFC. Now we don’t know if it’s true or not but that would be a bit of a turnaround for Apple.

Tim: Definitely would be but that would be something that we would maybe only see on the larger phone. We saw a bit of a turnaround on the USB 3.0 as well.

Clayton: I’m hearing NFC as well. I had heard that Apple had wanted to do a significant move for passbook last year but really wasn’t ready for prime time with what they wanted to do with NFC so it will be interesting to see perhaps who takes the stage with Apple or at least who is featured with Apple. I think about NFC and I think about the stores that I would like to see with an NFC play. I hate carrying my wallet with the giant Costanza sized wallet. Now when I go into the city, I just take my phone and I can buy my train ticket using my phone. If I want to get Starbucks, I use my phone.

Leo: Robert you’re an I beacon fan, is there anything I beacon can do that NFC can’t or vice versa?

Robert: Yeah, NFC needs to be close. I beacon can be seen 100 meters away if I remember right.

Leo: Apple has clearly been on I beacon, why would they do NFC?

Robert: Because it’s cheap and it’s deployed in a lot of places. They’re wanted to get into the payments business. They want to get into Square’s business so you’re going to take your iPhone…

Leo: It’s funny because Square is getting out of that business by the way.

Clayton: They’ve already got your credit card so if you think about it.

Leo: That’s right.

Robert: We should tell people what I beacon is. It’s a little radio that costs less than $3 that spits 3 numbers into the air every second and your phone, Android or iPhone can see how close it is. Your iPhone has one of these radios in it. It’s not on, but the I beacon software can turn it on. If you get a new app from Target or Macy’s, as you walk around stuff can happen on your iPhone that can show you where you are.

Leo: It seems to me that Apple could do everything that you could do with NFC, they could do with I Beacon, ranging and so forth. They put a big bet on I beacon and kind of own I beacon. Why would they even consider NFC?

Clayton: Security. I have to think something with touch id and security and being able to hold that information.

Leo: You can do the same thing with I beacon, no I have to be within a cm or I’m not going to that. You can do that right Robert? I beacon knows how close you are.

Robert: There is a latency, so it takes a few seconds holding it there. NFC you can just tap and go.

Leo: It’s right away.

Clayton: We are woefully behind the times when you look at our mutual friend Renee Ritchie about its crazy to think about Canada how far advanced they are for payments with NFC up there for everything. Train tickets to gas payments to food purchases. All NFC enabled but come to the United States we’re woefully behind the times. If somebody partners with Google, I go to Home Depot quite a bit, and at the checkout at Home Depot they have the Google wallet and PayPal. This is one of the rare occasions that I see Google Wallet payment out in the wild. It will be important to have who appears on stage with Apple for a NFC announcement in a few weeks.

Leo: One of the things that people are using NFC for a lot now is not payments but tap to pair where NFC does the Bluetooth pairing automatically. I see devices in the store all over the place where you just tap your phone to it and it will handle all of the ugly details of a Bluetooth pairing. You can't do it on an iPhone. That alone might be a reason. Even iHome, which makes all of those iPhone gadgets has NFC tap to pair. That might be a reason too, not just payments. But you are right, the money is in payments. Somebody in the chat room said, "Here we go again, the annual 'the iPhone will have NFC' fantasy." This year it is going to happen.

Clayton: I would be really surprised if it doesn't this year. I would be willing to drink on it.

Leo: Wow.

Clayton: That's a stretch.

Leo: He will drink on anything folks. You pair NFC with Touch ID, the fingerprint reader in the iPhone, and now you have something very interesting because you have an additional layer of security. I'm going to trust something with Touch ID and NFC much more than I am with a credit card with NFC in it.

Clayton: Right, like Coin. I would love to be able to partner with a lot of major credit card companies and payment structure that way so that I could just put my credit card information right inside of my iPhone. Type it in the way that you would keep on inside now. What's the name of Apples' one password structure? The one you keep credit cards on.

Leo: Keychain.

Clayton: Keychain. Right, exactly. You can already keep your credit cards on file with Keychain, so enabling Keychain support through NFC and being able to pay with your credit card of choice upon checkout without having to carry your wallet, your MetroCard, and all of these other things would be fantastic.

Leo: You know, I totally buy into this and the idea that Apple could have this ecosystem. They've got the credit cards and they've got the whole thing, but so many times we've seen them poised, really ready to do something like this and just unable to pull the trigger for whatever reason. Passbook is a good example. They've had that for how many years and they have really done nothing with it. It's got my Target card in it and an airplane boarding pass.

Clayton: I was really disappointed after that long. I was super excited about it, you know, thinking Amtrak, and mobile boarding passes, and all of those things, and after launch it was impossible to even figure out how to get it from the App into Passbook to be able to even use the certificate, the little share sheet certificate that you take with you.

Leo: Who's fault is that?

Clayton: Well, I seemed like before IOS 8 it was using some weird URL scheme, right?

Leo: That was the only way you could do a hand off before extensions.

Clayton: So now with extensions you are going to see a whole new life for Passbook using extensions. Before it was some janky URL hand off, and most of the apps, you would wonder why Delta could do it, but Southwest didn't know how to do it. United had the user app but couldn't do it.

Leo: Because it's Apples' job then to go to all of those people and say we will help you, we will do it with you, we will assign an engineer to you, and we will make sure that it happens. Apple just seems so, whether they lack the resources, whether they lack the commitment, they don't have the leadership from the top. Something is missing that is keeping them from capitalizing on iBeacon. Right, Robert? I mean iBeacon has been around for two years now.

Robert: No, no, no, iBeacon came out after my book shipped, so last September.

Leo: Okay, so it's not that long then. A year.

Tim: I think that it's really Apples' MO to throw it in the hands of developer like that and try to bring corporate partners on board. I think that they just expect that everyone is going to want to be on board and want to be a part of it. I think that probably plays a part in the reason for the lack of success, and I also wonder how much, talking about NFC and why we had to wait so long for it, how much they really expected Bluetooth LE to take off. Maybe they were making some movements behind the scene to try and get that rolled out to point of sale terminals, and ultimately that just got no traction whatsoever and they are finally throwing in the bag and going with NFC now.

Clayton: I agree with that. I heard rumblings of that a few years ago, that Apple seemed to be all in with Bluetooth LE and I don't know what happened.

Leo: That's the risk, though, of doing NFC. You are flip flopping. As you know, Clayton Morris, working at Fox and Friends, flip flopping is bad. I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.

Clayton: I'm wearing sneakers right now.

Leo: I could not resist. He's taken his suit off, folks. It's a different person entirely. I just feel like Apple for some reason cannot pull the trigger on these. They get these great technologies. They get these great ideas. You sit there, you watch the WWBC speech at IOS 8, and you go yeah, when they integrate that all together it's going to be a whole great new world. And then nothing.

Clayton: The proof will be in the pudding, right? When we saw the announcement of HomeKit and the health initiative from Apple. We are all pontificating about how great this is going to be for blood pressure being sent right to your doctor. If you live in rural West Virginia, a place I know well because I was a reporter years ago, it was like 45 minutes to 1 hour to get to a Heart Center. That's a real concern for people that live in those areas. I lead a panel on healthcare at CES talking about the inefficiency of getting information to certain parts of the world and being able to have smartphones in those areas with heart rate monitors on the back to be able to put your thumbprint on there to read the information. So can HomeKit carry the torch? It's exactly what you are saying Leo. HomeKit and also the health initiative. Here it is, here's our HomeKit. Now are we going to work with a few big partners to make sure? Are we going to work with Hu, are we going to work with NEST (owned by Google) to make some of these big things happen? Or are we just going to wait and let it die on the vine again?

Leo: Isn't that part of the problem? That Apple wants to keep it all to themselves. It doesn't work that way. Although, Jeff Engals points out that this is endemic in the tech industry. How many initiatives has Google announced and then just forgotten about? I think there is a lack of follow-through in general with all of these companies. They are ADD, and they are like, what, squirrel! And then they are off to something else.

Robert: It's hard. These technologies need time to get rolled out and get people to understand their value. I've given several speeches in the last couple of months, some to computer science people, and they have no idea what Beacons are. So it's an education process. It takes time. This is why Doug Engelbart got kicked out of his own research lab in the 1970's.

Leo: He's the guy who invented the mouse and Windows.

Robert: Yeah, because his ideas were too far ahead of even his friends at the research lab.

Clayton: Even the companies like Delta, United, and those would roll out those apps so that you can have boarding passes that aren't Passbook necessarily enabled, but even when they integrated with Passbook later. You would go up to the attendants, I don't know if you noticed that as you went to the different gates, and they would look at you like you were an idiot.

Leo: What? You have a boarding pass? No.

Clayton: Right. You have a boarding pass in your phone? What is that? You have to go back to the counter.

Leo: Now I do it on my watch and they ignore me there, too.

Clayton: Do you really?

Tim: Yeah, I get funny looks when I do that, too. Especially when it's the wrong boarding pass on your watch and you have no way to go back to the right boarding pass.

Leo: I got stuck at a TSA kiosk because it wouldn't work. They said, well, do you have to email that came in? I'm going like this on my phone. Everybody is going by me, I know. I finally got in, though. It's just flaky. Speaking of, you mentioned Coin. How many of you bought the $55 one card to rule them all? Robert, of course you love every new technology.

Robert: Anything new is really great.

Leo: Love it. Clayton, you didn't buy it, but you reported on it.

Clayton: Yeah, I didn't buy it yet.

Leo: Yet is a very important word. You want to keep that yet going. Tim, did you fall for Coin?

Tim: I have not invested yet. I'm fascinated by the concept, but I'm still optimistic that credit cards in general are going to be retired in the not too distant future, so I'm holding out hope for them.

Leo: So they took $55 from lots of people. We don't know how many total, but lots of people. And they charged them. Coin is delayed now until least spring 2015.

Robert: By the way, there are a couple of companies, Tapingo (pronounced tapingo) is one of them.

Leo: I think it’s Tapingo.

Robert: The guy who invented it said it's Tapingo.

Leo: What?

Robert: Tapingo is how he says it.

Leo: Lord. It's Tapingo. You tap it and you go.

Robert: That's how I said it. But he said no, it's Tapingo (pronounced tapingo).

Leo: Tapingo.

Clayton: Ralph Lauren.

Robert: Is it JIF or GIF?

Leo: Everybody knows it's GIF. It doesn't matter what Tapingo says.

Robert: I know. It's the same argument, right? We are going to have this argument for 20 years. If you are a college kid at Santa Clara University you use it to buy everything, your sandwich, your coffee in the morning, and your books. There is a machine in the sandwich shop, so when you say "I want a sandwich" it sends the order to the machine, it lights up, it beeps, it sends out a receipt, the receipt goes into the workflow of the restaurant, and you walk in and pick up your sandwich and you leave. You don't hand them a credit card. Already 70% of all the transactions at Santa Clara University are going through Tapingo.

Leo: Is that an NFC technology? What is the technology?

Jason: No, you don't even need that because you know that you are there at the store.

Leo: It's Geofencing.

Robert: Geofencing, right. And who cares if you steal a sandwich?

Leo: See, I thought that was the problem with SquareWallet. That Geofencing was so inaccurate that you couldn't have two stores next to each other use it.

Robert: This works. And it is working at scale for Santa Clara University and 25 other campuses. I think 75 other campuses are getting it this fall. He's growing like a weed, like a virus. In 6 years I bet we are all going to be using it for everything.

Leo: That's pretty cool.

Robert: He's going to own a cut of every transaction on the internet. He could be a trillionare if he is successful.

Leo: You know, what is amazing is that he came out of nowhere. Square is going out of this business.

Robert: His dad is a famous entrepreneur. His dad started Zoran. His family has a lot of...

Leo: I think it's pronounced "Sharde". I'm just joking. That's an old joke, I'm sorry.

Tim: I got it Leo.

Leo: Thank you.

Robert: Anyways, he is a smart kid.

Leo: Yeah. Tapingo, AKA Tapingo.

Robert: Tapingo!

Leo: Tapingo!

Robert: You can't use it if you are not a college kid. I remember some other company doing the same thing.

Leo: Yeah. So it's iPhone and Android, and then it's an app. So it just knows that you are in line. "Never wait in line. Delivery orders appear at your door." Do you remotely?

Robert: It's remote ordering. You pick it up. It's also a contextualizer. That's why I got interested in it. After buying iced lattes at 9 am every morning it was like, would you just like your iced latte this morning?

Leo: Wow.

Robert: And it saves you on scrolling.

Leo: If Google did that there would be protests.

Robert: There will be protests for this company as well. It's just that nobody knows about it yet.

Leo: Yeah, that's just because they are pronouncing their name wrong. Tapingo. T-a-p-i-n...well it looks like Tapingo to be fair. We are going to take a break and come back with more. Scoble is here, the Scoblizer, will you do that? Will you come up here? Can I book you and can you come up for an hour? Can you teach?

Robert: I can come up and we can trade. You can teach me about other things.

Leo: I don't know anything.

Robert: You have actually, for people who don't know why you are Leo Leporte...

Leo: Why am I Leo Leporte?

Robert: Why are you famous and a big deal? Because you would help people on the radio and you would know the most bizarre stuff about OS 2 and Windows and Macintosh.

Leo: I still do. But it's really not much use anymore. That's the sad thing.

Robert: That's true. But that's why you are sitting on the ball, right?

Leo: But when I get questions about OS 2 I can really get in there and leap in there.

Robert: You know. For the 15 people who are still holding out.

Leo: LoopPay, is that something that you used at Boston University, or Northeastern, or wherever the hell you went to school? Everywhere, LoopPay. That's a similar idea? It's a FOB. NFC probably then. No? It sends a magnetic pulse.

Robert: The problem is, the thing that Tapingo actually solves is integrating into the restaurant and having the restaurant pay attention to your order so that it's ready when you come in.

Leo: Yeah, but it also solves Constanza walletitis. I think that is really...

Robert: If somebody asks me where I come up with these? It's my job to see startups. 

Leo: That's what you do for Rackspace.

Robert: I go around the world and study the future. I just see stuff before most other people.

Leo: Robert Scoble. Never met a technology that he didn't like.

Robert: I want to see it all.

Leo: Tim Stevens is also here. He is, among other things at CNET, doing a lot of automotive stuff, which is cool.

Tim: It is cool. It's a lot of fun.

Leo: Anything new and exciting you want to plug or promote?

Tim: Well, we just had Pebble Beach last weekend, which I sadly didn't get to go out to. But we did have our XCAR team was there. They did some amazing videos and did some work with...

Leo: That Mercedes concept car. That's what I want.

Tim: Yes. And the new Aston Martin car was there as well, the DP 100 I think it is called. A lot of great video footage out of there. Some great galleries as well. And the Monterey, hopefully I will be able to go next year. Then we are not too far away from the Paris Auto Show; that's early October, which is always amazing, beautiful concept cars out of Paris. Looking forward to that.

Leo: I don't remember, the Carmel Car Show used to be, what did they call it, the Contours d'Elegance? It used to be all about, you know, beautifully fixed up cars and Lamborghinis. This new concept, it used to be at the auto shows that you had to get the concept cars. I guess since they didn't want to drive them around.

Tim: The Contours d'Elegance is still the highlight of the week. It's much more of a commercial thing these days. The manufacturers, they know that a lot of the car journalists are going to be there, so they kind of use the captive audience to start to launch concept cars and that kind of thing as well. That's part of the reason that that is happening. But the focus is by and large on the Contours still on the beautiful old cars, I think the Ferrari, a post war Ferrari, the first Ferrari to win in a very long time.

Leo: To me, the new Mercedes looks very much like the Naboo Starship from Episode 1. Does it not? Am I wrong?

Tim: It does. You can drive it in Gran Turismo 6 too if you want to take it for a spin.

Leo: Can you?

Tim: Yeah. I was actually there at the launch of that car. It was kind of funny, there was a guy standing on the side of the stage that they drove it out on with an RC car controller. That was how he controlled this concept car with a giant RC car controller. There was actually no one in the car, it was him driving off the side of the stage.

Leo: Is this chrome?

Tim: It's chrome.

Leo: So it's going to look like a DeLorean in a few years. You have to have a full time shiner.

Tim: I don't know if it's all aluminum or not.

Leo: And it doesn't look like it has wheels. I mean it has wheels, but it doesn't look like it has tires.

Tim: Yeah, it's a car from the future for sure. But that will never go into production.

Leo: In the future they will have no tires?

Tim: Well, very skinny tires. They are working on a Porche 911 competitor.

Robert: Is that a chamfered edge?

Leo: That's a chamfered edge right there. You've seen it in person.

Tim: Thank you Johnny Ive.

Leo: Johnny Ive would love. This is the best Mercedes we've ever made. Our show today brought to us today by our friends at Citrix who do GoToMeeting. I've told you so many times how important GoToMeeting is. In fact, it’s the only way that we meet at the TWiT brick house because nowadays many of the people that we meet with are not here. Just like this show, they are spread out all over the world. That shouldn't stop you. Thanks to the internet we can still meet practically face to face using GoToMeeting. Their video conferencing is crystal clear. Everybody has got a camera now. You see people just like you are in the same room as them. Because you are using GoToMeeting you see their screens, or they see your screens just as if you are showing them your PowerPoint presentation or collaborating together on a document. Eliminate the expensive and time consuming travel. Make those meetings more effective. Everybody knows that meetings are kind of the backbone of business, but you don't want to spend more time than you have to. Citrix GoToMeeting makes it easy. And by the way, one low flat rate per month makes it easy to have as many meetings as you need as long as you want anytime, anywhere. It is a fabulous system, and I want you to try it free for 30 days. If you visit gotomeeting.com and you click the "try it free" button, that big orange button there, and use the promo code TWIT, you've got 30 days free. I don't think they even ask you for a credit card. It really is simple, gotomeeting.com promo code TWIT, 30 days free from Citrix. It is definitely the way to meet in modern times. It is in effect the Mercedes concept car of online meeting. It's funny, I just saw this, and I'm not even a car guy, and I said, "I want that". Vic Gondotra was there. We now know what Vic is doing now that he left Google and Google +. He's going to car shows. 

Tim: Pretty much what everybody wants to do, I think, which is great.

Leo: Yeah. He's retired. What else? It's been such a weak week for news, for tech news.

Clayton: You know what I found interesting? Well, not that you care.

Leo: I care. No, Clayton please. I care deeply. I beg of you. You know what I find interesting? Natalie's new profile picture on Facebook. Whew!

Clayton: Yeah, I just saw that. It just popped up. You know, I took that of her in Portugal. We were in Portugal for a week last fall right around this time of year.

Leo: She's getting more and more beautiful. If you don't mind me saying.

Clayton: She's like a fine wine. She gets better with age.

Leo: Better and better.

Clayton: Or a fine cheese.

Leo: Okay, just a tip. Never compare your wife to a fine cheese.

Clayton: She likes and aged Gouda, too. 

Leo: Anyway, what do you find interesting? I'm sorry.

Clayton: No, this Microsoft story. I'd love Scoble's take on it too, which is that Microsoft really ought to release Windows 9 sooner rather than later because many large enterprise organizations have simply not updated to Windows 8.

Leo: I don't know how it can get any sooner. I think September 30th the Beta comes out. And it will be spring for the next version of Windows.

Clayton: Well, and I thought the piece, and I forget who wrote it, it struck me because the point of the piece was around Windows 7 being the issue, that you are going to have to pry Windows 7 from my cold, dead hand.

Leo: You know, Windows 2000 was like that.

Clayton: Exactly.

Leo: For a long time I wouldn't upgrade.

Clayton: You look around at all of the computers at the News Corp building and I pop into different offices across the city, Windows 7 or earlier. None of them have upgraded to Windows 8.

Leo: Robert, you worked at Scoble, you were their blogger and...

Robert: At Microsoft.

Leo: What did I say?

Robert: Scoble.

Leo: Scoble? Sure, you worked at Scoble.

Tim: Scoble Enterprises.

Leo: Yeah, okay, I really am officially now too old to do this show. I'm going to retire. Robert, you worked at Microsoft. What would you do now? Windows 8 clearly was a time bomb. Steven Sinofsky, the man who designed it, gone. Steven Ballmer, the guy who was running the company at the time, gone. Not only gone as the CEO, he is now out on the Board. He's going to run a basketball team.

Robert: I don't know because Windows is not where my interests are anymore. The world to me has moved to mobile phone.

Leo: Guess what, you are not alone, and that is the problem.

Robert: The world has moved to mobile phone.

Leo: And Cloud.

Robert: And Cloud, and a whole range of things. Soon it will be wearable computing. Soon being this fall, maybe, with an Apple watch or over the next 5 years you are going to see a lot of things that you are going to put on your body to study whether you are having a heart attack, or having cancer, or on and on, right? There problem is that they are being ripped apart from the low end by Chromebook and Chrome OS.

Leo: That's why Microsoft offers Windows free to anything sub 9 inches.

Robert: The school teachers are telling me that they are going to everything Chromebooks at school because they can buy one for $200 that's really nice and it has no maintenance costs because there is nothing to it other than a web browser.

Leo: It's not just that. The documents are in the cloud. If a student loses one, he hasn't lost anything. Google now has this new classroom that is essentially going to replace Moodle and Blackboard in schools. And it's free. Google is being very strategic with education, and I think smart. They are eating the business from the low end.

Robert: Yeah.

Leo: Business has really, enterprise has roundly ignored Windows 8 because they don't want to go there.

Robert: Yeah, because it is a very different UI and a training cost.

Leo: Although, let's be fair. This happens every other Windows.

Robert: That's true too. There are still people running old crap.

Leo: XP. Twenty-five percent of all Windows users are still running XP. A lot of that is enterprise because they just don't want to retrain. Windows 7 is fine. There really is no compelling reason to go to a new version of Windows.

Robert: If I was at Microsoft working for Sayta, I would be focusing all of my effort on mobile and letting Windows rot.

Leo: You've got bad news, though, because Microsoft has lost mobile already.

Robert: I know that. You know that. But that's where I would be focusing all of my effort, because if they don't get involved with mobile then everything falls apart.

Clayton: Does this new strategy work for Microsoft? Being able to piggyback on Android devices?

Robert: They made a deal with Apple to get rid of Google. So Bing is going to be the search engine, the default search engine, and this fall in the IOS 8. And in return for that they give Apple Office on iPad and iPhone. A lot of people are praising those two things.

Leo: A lot of people are pissed off especially Windows Mobile users who are not getting Touch-First Office.

Robert: Anybody who bought Windows Mobile doesn't listen to this show. Because every time I listen to the show there's no apps, there's no support, there's no venture capitalists who are investing in it, there's no entrepreneur who is carrying it around. When you go to a hackathon you don't see them. There's no love for them. It's done. So you have to change that.

Clayton: Did you see Superman? Did you see Man of Steel? Every reporter, Lois Lane uses Windows Phone.

Leo: Yeah. Yeah. It's true.

Robert: Okay, so they bought their way into a movie. But nobody loves it.

Clayton: Right.

Robert: Nobody in the app ecosystem loves it.

Clayton: Those reporters had to be on the cutting edge, right? They are breaking news. Lois Lane, Pulitzer Prize reporter, and the phone she uses gets the least amount of updates and is the slowest to respond.

Leo: Very briefly, who was it, I think Ray Donovan? For one season they were using Windows Phone and then I guess the Microsoft money dried up.

Robert: I spoke at the GROW Conference up in Whistler this week and I'm not drunk. I am sad about somebody who just said, "Is Scoble drunk?" I'm sad about my friend, who is in pain in Napa. I just saw that.

Leo: I'm so sorry. What is the matter? Do you want to go?

Robert: No, no. I can't do anything because they aren't allowed to get anybody who is not professional into the cellars. But there are a lot of people who are digging out their wineries real time in front of me.

Leo: Oh, because of the earthquake? Bad news, I know. We have friends who own Silver Oak, and one of the first pictures I saw was just a trashed wine room. Terrible.

Robert: So, where do I go with this? When I spoke at GROW this week, we asked the audience who has an iPhone and who has an Android phone. It was 80% iPhone, or 70% iPhone.

Leo: What is GROW?

Robert: GROW is Debbie Landa's conference for startup entrepreneurial enterprise.

Leo: So those are all startup people?

Robert: Startup people. But when I did the same question at South by Southwest, same answer. When I go to Web Summit, I asked the same question last year, same answer. When I asked the same question at Lyft and Web, same answer.

Leo: Well, I think what is clear is that iPhones are being purchased by high end, upscale technophiles in great numbers, and much greater numbers. Android is being purchased by the rank and file, by normal people, people who have less money, because they are less expensive worldwide. But there is no room for Windows Phone at all.

Clayton: I never see a Windows Phone. I'm in a somewhat populated city, New York City, and I'm on trains, subway, Times Square, walking through the city...

Leo: And that's another thing, techno elites, rich people, and everybody in Manhattan.

Clayton: Right, right.

Leo: I'm sorry, I left out that category. Everybody in Manhattan has an iPhone. That's why I don't think mobile is the answer for Microsoft. I think the Cloud is the answer. Microsoft has always been successful in the Cloud. They have a strong Cloud product.

Robert: This deal with Apple gives me hope. If Sayta continues making deals with Apple then Microsoft might align with the iPhone and start building pieces of it, and start building wearables and things that will work with it.

Leo: I would love to see Nokia with IOS on it.

Clayton: Is it too late, though? If you are a space alien, and you some down to Earth, and no one told you ahead of time who was the winner right now, who was the leader, who was the market cheerleader, and you have Android devices...

Leo: I think he is a space alien.

Clayton: Robert is....built into refrigerators. If you were a space alien, and you came down, and someone said, hey, can you name the most popular smartphone platform right now? And you laid out Windows Phone, Android, and IOS in front of them, you might be inclined to pick up the Windows Phone and say, hey, that looks pretty darn snazzy.

Leo: Especially this new HTC One.

Robert: I used to help run a consumer electronics store in the 80's. I learned one thing about how people buy things. They don't want to appear stupid. If all of their friends who are the people in this chat room say, you know, there are no apps on this thing, or look, I have both of them. Marques Brownlee carries both of them, or all three of them, right?

Leo: He's not a good example because he's a reviewer.

Robert: People like that influence us. If you have a teacher who is really into tech or a friend who is really into tech and you ask them, "What should I buy?" He's going to say, well the iPhone has the best apps. The Android phones have the best choice and is cheaper. The Windows Phone has no support at all. None of us use it. Which one are you going to buy? You are going to buy the one that your friends have. That's the real problem. It's a real problem for Microsoft. That's why if I was at Microsoft, that's the most interesting problem to work on. I like interesting problems. I don't like to just, you know.

Leo: But what about the Cloud? Here's my position on this. Just as in the 90's, Microsoft, by creating a solid platform for developers, in as close to a universal platform as you can get for PCs, established the PC revolution. There was no question that without Microsoft there is no PC revolution because they built a platform that everybody else can build on. It's clear that PC is not the platform, it's clear that there is fragmentation in mobile space. What is the platform for the 2010's? It's the Cloud because the Cloud is across platforms. That's were apps should be built, that's where apps are being built, and that's where the future is. Microsoft has a strong play there. Nadela knows it. He came from the Azure Services Division.

Tim: The question, though, is how do you monetize that? It's a very different sort of thing. If you are charging everybody $100 for every different version of Windows, or $200, or a lot more for each new version of Office? They can't charge for Office anymore because of Google Drive and everything that we have been speaking about. Cloud is great, but they are basically giving away OneDrive at this point. I don't know how many GB of OneDrive that I have that have been shoveled at me over the years. I have no interest in paying for it. Even if they do build out OneDrive to be the ultimate solution for consumers, and they do build out a lot of great services around that, is there any possible way of monetizing the Cloud that will bring them anywhere near where they used to be when everyone was buying Windows and everyone was buying Office? I don't think that is it.

Leo: It's very interesting. There is the rumor, and apparently pretty credible according to Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott, that the next version of Windows will be free. So that really does put them in a very difficult position. If you can't sell devices and you can't sell software...

Clayton: Well I don't know about that. They still load it up with a whole bunch of crap, right? You know most of PCs you buy you don't get a pure Windows 8 experience. You get loaded up with eBay and other random apps that come built right there when you launch it.

Leo: Well Microsoft doesn't get that money, the OEMs do. Dell does.

Clayton: Well, true.

Leo: So I think that your point is well taken, Tim. How do you monetize? How do you take a company that is based on these incredibly high margin products in Windows and Office, how do you transition that company into something that is so much lower margin? Or no margin. That's actually a very good point. And yet, the Cloud, from the point of view of the enterprise, is exactly what you need to be doing. I think there is an opportunity to sell licenses of Cloud service. SAS, Software as a Service, isn't that the future?

Tim: Absolutely. And you can make a lot of money on the back end. Ultimately there are going to be a lot of servers running this stuff. There will need to be a lot of integration, especially in corporations and that sort of thing. There's certainly a lot of money to be made on that side, but you know, if your sole revenue stream is coming from enterprises really, and you are having to chase after advertising or something, some sort of minor incremental revenue stream from consumers, then that's nowhere near if you can get the Windows NT side of things on the business side, and have all of your enterprise customers, and have all of the consumer costumers that they had 10-15 years ago. I just don't see how they can sustain it.

Leo: Maybe you have to accept that. Maybe that's what happens. I often feel like these companies are fighting against a normal business cycle. In technology that business cycle is highly sped up. You got 10 years, and then it's somebody else's turn. Well that shut everybody up. Would you like a snack? You know what, I sense low blood sugar. Robert is worried about his wine cellar friends. Tim is just enjoying the countryside and Lake Tinky Wink is calling to Mr. Clayton Morris. I think you should have some maple habanero pretzel pops. That's what I think.

Clayton: Mable habanero?

Leo: Well, wrap your mind around that. It's got the sweetness of maple. Not Mable. Mable is not in this, maple is in it. And then it's got this tang, the high capsaicin of habanero.

Clayton: Capsaicin.

Leo: What is it? Caps?

Clayton: Capsaicin.

Leo: Capsaicin.

Clayton: Capsaicin. I know that from my Latino wife.

Leo: Yes.

Clayton: Capsaicin.

Leo: Capsaicin.

Clayton: That's what gives it all the spice.

Leo: You know that the spiciness of a chili pepper is rated by the Scoble number. Isn't it? And then it's a pretzel. So wait a minute. So we have sweet maple, spicy habanero, the fabulous salty taste and the crunch of a pretzel. I don't know what the pop does, but it's what my mind is doing right now. This is a Nature Box snack. Get ready, it's nutrition is improved. No HFCs. No, that's high fructose corn syrup for those of not in the know. No trans-fat. No artificial flavors. No artificial colors. This is good stuff. See, nutrition. This is Nature Box.

Clayton: I have a capsaicin expert here.

Leo: Oh, look at that, a beautiful Natalie Morris. Like a fine cheese. You are just. You are getting...

Clayton: We were talking about capsaicin in habanero. What is capsaicin?

Natalie Morris: It is like the powder like substance that keeps peppers hot.

Leo: Peppers. Hot. Isn't the number, the rating of how hot it is the Scoble scale?

Natalie: Scoville Units.

Leo: Yeah. Scoble Units. See, I'm not making that up. Hi Natalie!

Robert: It's Scoville, right?

Leo: Yeah, with a V. But I'm going to call it Scoble Units.

Natalie: That's what I said.

Clayton: Anytime there is spicy related stuff I need to call in my Latino.

Leo: Bring in the habanero lady. Spicy Natalie Morris. Good to see you Natalie.

Natalie: It's kind of my super power is that I can eat peppers.

Leo: Which of your many children was that?

Natalie: That was Miles.

Clayton: He's spicy. He ate a spicy taco tonight that was so spicy that he had to have two glasses of milk, it was so hot.

Leo: That's good. Miles is spicy.

Natalie: We are training them here.

Leo: Miles is frat brother in the making, I can tell you right now. Is he wearing a toga?

Natalie: Don't say that about my son.

Leo: Oh, believe me, there is nothing that you can do about that.

Natalie: Now he's really upset.

Leo: Oh no, I'm so sorry. He will never join a frat, I promise.

Natalie: I was just doing candle light yoga with my son upstairs. Now I have to go de-bro him.

Leo: No. He's not a bro. No mas de. I recognize the god in your....he's a frat boy.

Clayton: Alright, go de-bro him.

Leo: Hey bro, go do your downward dog. Worship the sun. Warrior pose. Wouldn't you love to get a box of this every month? You know, if you are a business, all good businesses have snacks for their employees. Why send somebody down to Costco to buy crap, or worse have that vending machine when you can have delicious, healthy snacks. Your employees will love, your family will love Nature Box. Delivered to your door, 100 + different kinds of snacks including, how about this, Sriracha Roasted Cashews? But they are not all spicy, they also have sweet. Praline Pumpkin Seeds. They have Savory Cheddar Baked Potato Fries. Lone Star Snack, mixed with bbq flavored nut mixed with multi flavored chips. I love it. Nature Box. Here's the deal, if you go to naturebox.com and pick your box, they do have vegan, they have gluten-free, they have a variety of different dietary needs, and they have soy-free. Or you can just get a wild assortment and be surprised. You are going to get half off that first box if you use the offer code TWIT. Naturebox.com/twit, get some delicious guilt-free snacking delivered to your door every month. I love it. Staff, do you love the Nature Box? Yes they do.

Chad: Absolutely.

Leo: Staff loves the Nature Box. It makes for happy employees. Naturebox.com/twit. This is a sponsor we better keep, because I don't want to have to pay for all of those Nature Box's you guys are eating. How many Nature Box's a month do we go through? I don't want to know.

Robert: By the way Leo, you should get a sponsorship from Hint. This stuff rocks.

Leo: What is that stuff?

Robert: It's natural water. It's the number one drink at Google and Facebook right now.

Leo: Water. What a concept.

Tim: Natural water.

Robert: Yeah, because if you are drinking Diet Coke all day long you are going to want an alternative.

Leo: I've got to say, the guy who figured out you could take water out of a tap, and put it in a bottle, and charge like a buck for it must be very happy right now.

Clayton: Don't they have that in Philadelphia? When I lived in Philly, or grew up there, they had the local city water commission did like a campaign were they took the tap water and they put like Philly Tap Water on the bottles as a joke, but also to prove a point, like Philly tap water, I think New York City tap water is some of the finest water in the world. They were making a point that if you live in these cities you don't need to be buying bottled water.

Leo: Yeah. Because you have good tap water. Actually Manhattan has the best tap water in the world they say. Very famous because it’s getting it from the Schoharie Reservoir or something. I think that consumer reports rated it the best water. That you throw out the Evian, that stuff is from France, that can't be good, and have your good old fashioned American tap water right there.

Clayton: Schoharie is a beautiful place, too. It's just down the road from here as a matter of fact. They actually had snipers in the trees after 9/11 to protect the water. And to protect the bald eagles that like to hang around there.

Leo: I don't think terrorists would go after bald eagles.

Clayton: Not the eagles, but probably the water.

Robert: Leo, one of the interview questions that I had when I was trying to get into Microsoft was "how do you sell ice to Eskimos?". That was a question to study how good are you at coming up with marketing ideas.

Leo: Wow. Could you sell? Best cities for drinking water; number 1 Des Moines, Iowa. Alright, I don't buy that. What is this, Forbes? What do they know? Bunch of capitalists. Austin, Texas is number 2. Well Chad, you live in Austin. Is the water good in Austin?

Chad: Yeah, I actually like it.

Leo: Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Alright, alright, alright, alright, alright. 

Tim: Miami?

Leo: Miami.

Clayton: Florida water is terrible, isn't it? It tastes like sulfur.

Leo: Well, in fact because most of Florida is below sea level, and global warming, manmade or not, I don't know where you stand on that one, because of global warming it is believed that, for instance, Miami Beach is just going to go away in the next couple of decades.

Clayton: Yeah. Miami, because of global warming, is going to be gone in like 5 years.

Leo: Already there is a multi-billion dollar project in Miami Beach to stave back, to hold back the waters because it's encroaching on the underground sewage system. That's why the water is so good in Miami.

Robert: This might just be clean water instead of just tasting good, which makes sense because they would have to purify everything.

Leo: Here's a story I thought was very interesting. It's not breaking news, but I thought it was very interesting. A study published in Science Express, they describe 4 experiments. Based on their results people are recalling information less because of Google. Why bother to remember when you can just Google it? In fact, what people are doing instead of trying to remember something is remembering how to find it. That makes sense. Here is how you test to see if you are one of these people. Imagine somebody asks you, and I will ask you right now, everybody in the audience. How many countries have flags with only one color? Some of you, you old timers will start thinking of flags. Most of you will start thinking of where you would search to find that, yes?

Clayton: Wow.

Leo: Yeah. How do I Google that? Right? Welcome to the 21st Century. This concept, by the way, is not new to the computer age. It's called transactive memory. That's the sum of information held by a group. Think of it as a group of experts working as a team where each member has their own area of expertise. But now, of course, we don't need the team. What are you looking at? What is that? Oh, you Googled it!

Robert: I did a search for red flags.

Leo: Yeah, there you go.

Robert: And you can do one for green flags, and blue flags, and white flags.

Clayton: Is it evolutionary, though? I mean, there are certain things that we needed to remember more of 200-300 years ago. Are these things less important to us that we don't need to worry about them because the tools have come along? I don't remember phone numbers anymore.

Leo: Not shut down. Just replaced with more personal stuff that you can't Google. How about that? 

Clayton: Okay, so maybe more important things or other nuggets of information that I, you know. I can't remember the last time I paid attention to a phone number.

Leo: Perfect example.

Clayton: The only phone number I think I remember is my wife's phone number and my childhood phone number that I remember growing up in my parents' house.

Leo: I remember my home phone number as a kid. I vividly remember that, but I haven't had to remember a number since because my phone does it. In fact, when you exchange numbers these days, what's the easiest way to do it? I don't know what my number is, how about I just call you and now it's in your phone. Right?

Clayton: Right. That's the easiest way. Just call me, or text me your number, or something like that.

Leo: Isn't that better because we are remembering names not numbers? We don't need to remember numbers.

Tim: Yeah, it's way better. I was a software developer for a long time, and when I first started to learn software development in the 90's it was a lot of memorization of APIs, and calls, and things like that. But as the tools got better and as the research abilities got better you didn't have to learn APIs anymore because the tools could look up everything for you. At that point it just became kind of a game of remembering what each module could do, what each language could do roughly and knowing where to look to find it basically. But you didn't have to remember anything anymore. Suddenly you could go out and learn a new programming language in a couple of days because you only needed to get the syntax down. You didn't have to memorize every little bit. Overall, that made me a much more powerful programmer. I think that is kind of the general approach that we are able to take to our day to day lives now with the smartphones and being able to look up things that amicably and get directions to places. You don't have to remember how to even get anywhere anymore, which I think is a god thing.

Leo: I do too.

Clayton: But I worry about that vapidness, though. With the, you know, because the level of information that we have access to now, and Tim I'm sure you can speak to this as a writer and the reaction that you get from longer posts on Engadget, and we see this on BuzzFeed, and the smaller and smaller snippets of information. People are only looking at screens for a few seconds before they are moving on to the next thing. They are not really sitting there reading 40 minute articles and digesting 10,000 words like we used to. I know there was a period, I felt that there was a 2 year period, where I just don't think that I remembered a damn thing. I used to sit inside a Barnes and Noble for hours and just read Foreign Policy Magazine, and Time Magazine, and just go through these large articles. Then when I would go on the air I would be able to have deep, contextual analysis. And I would be able to pull from this as a history major, and be able to say, well, back in 1960 this happened. There was like a two year period a few years ago where I felt dumb as a rock, where I felt like I wasn't remembering anything, and I couldn't contextualize large pieces of information, I couldn't contextualize news stories in a way that I used to be able to. I really blame that on consuming small snippets of information and not sitting for long periods of time.

Leo: Factoids. Yeah. But as broadcasters we can't sit here and Google an answer when you are sitting on the set. So actually we may be the last hold outs of people who have to know anything. Or at least remember anything.

Robert: Speaking of phone numbers, Leo, have you seen this app called Humin yet?

Leo: No.

Clayton: My wife was telling me about this, yeah. I haven't played with it yet. She was annoyed by it, though. She got annoyed because it was so many notifications. What is it, like a contacts manager for everything, right?

Robert: Right.

Leo: It's a fitness thing, right?

Robert: No, no, it's a replacement for your phone and your contacts.

Leo: Oh.

Robert: So here is what it looks like.

Tim: It tracks not only the people you know, but how you know them. So people that you met at a given meeting, or you can run queries in there to say how do I know them.

Leo: Who is this? Why do I know them?

Tim: Who did I meet at this meeting? I actually recuse myself and say that I have done some advising with Humin so I should make that clear.

Leo: Oh. Don't recuse yourself. We now understand that you have some relationship with them. But tell us more. I think this is interesting.

Tim: The idea is basically to bring some of this intelligence in the modern system into your contact book. So instead of just saying, you know, so and so's last name begins with A, so he is at the top, instead it says, this is the person that I call a lot so therefore they are going to be at the top. Or I'm traveling to San Francisco, who do I know who lives in San Francisco, and then post a message that says, "Hey, I'm in San Francisco." I need to get an introduction to somebody at Google because I need to get a job there. Who do I know that works at Google or who do I know who knows somebody who works at Google? Basically trying to bring that sort of real world context in relationships to an app effectively.

Robert: It also keeps your contact list up to date because let’s say that I have an old business card from Tim Stevens that I scanned 5 years ago, and it's in my Google contacts, and he got a new job, and a new phone, and a new email address, and I don't know any of that. He can validate his account and say, "if anybody has these things in their contacts, replace them" and send it out and everybody's contact list gets up to date. That is really nice.

Leo: So, it's Plaxo?

Robert: It's similar to Plaxo, but it's for mobile phone, it's much nicer than Plaxo, and it's contextual. So if we are together it starts telling us information about each other, which is nice. Also, let's say I meet you at a party or something and I ask, "Can I enter your email address into my contact list?" it will even keep track at what party we met at so 4 years later when...

Leo: But you have to enter that in.

Robert: No, it knows where we are from the GPS. It's mobile-first thinking.

Tim: So it can actually say, if you have a meeting coming up, it will say you've got a meeting with Betty, who you met at this party, and show you Betty's picture. So when you walk into that meeting you will now know what Betty looks like. Because I'm terrible with names, which may tie back to this other issue that we are talking about with not being able to remember anything anymore. But the app will basically prompt you about the people that you are about to see and where you have met them and kind of give you some contextual clues to be able to remember who those people were.

Leo: It sounds so great. It's iPhone only?

Tim: For now. There is an Android version coming very soon.

Robert: Within days. 

Tim: I don't know about that.

Leo: It's hard to find because Humin...

Robert: I just interviewed the CEO last week. He said within days. Let's say a couple of weeks.

Leo: Okay. That could be 14 days.

Robert: Within days.

Leo: Hard to find because Humin is kind of a generic term.

Tim: It's h-u-m-i-n.

Robert: It's h-u-m...yeah.

Leo: I-n, oh, no wonder why I couldn't find it.

Tim: Like capsaicin.

Leo: Like capsaicin. Alright, let’s take a break and see. We've got a great panel here. We've got a few more stories and then we are going to wrap it up. Mr. Tim Stevens here from CNET. Good to have you.

Tim: Thank you.

Leo: Clayton Morris from Tinky Wink.

Clayton: The night has descended on the lake.

Leo: This is really straight out of Cabin in the Woods. I swear to god. I'm just waiting for a trap door to open down the hall. And Robert Scoble from space. We had a great week on TWiT. Do we also have a week ahead? No, okay. So we don't know what next week is going to look like, but if I look back, last week was a killer. Watch.

(Music Plays) Previously on TWiT. Something is wrong with this picture. Look, I finally found a good use for an iPad. This Week in Enterprise Tech. So I'm here at the Black Hat 2014 and we are talking to Fluke Networks and what they are doing to shut down drones and Google Glass in your enterprise. Marketing Mavericks. Facebook now feels like they actually have to tell us when something is satire. Not to tell us, Tonya, it’s to tell only the morons. Security Now. We now know what ISP pushed the wrong button that caused a major problem throughout the entire internet. All About Android. Ignore No More was developed by a frustrated mom who created this app that gives her the power to remotely lock and disable her kid's phone. I hope to never have to use an app like this. I never want to use an app like this. TWiT, some assembly required. Miami just appeared. I'm just going to do the rest of the show this way. Is that the travel sized Emmy? Because it doesn't look like it's to scale of the one that I have seen. He just swung that out there. You didn't even see it coming, it was like Braveheart.

Leo: And the week ahead actually is going to be pretty big. The next week we won't, next week is the last week of August. The following week we are going to do live coverage, I assume Motorola is going to do this, of the X, or whatever, in Aspen September 4th. Then Apple September 9th. What is Motorola going to announce on September 4th? We talked a lot about Apple. What about Motorola?

Tim: Watch, 360.

Leo: The 360. A new Moto X. I thought the Moto X was the best Android phone of the year. You are all iPhone users. I can't talk to you.

Tim: I have a Note 3.

Clayton: No, no, I like the Moto X. That was one of my favorite Android phones this year until the Nexus.

Leo: I loved it. By the way, Motorola is still owned by Google, right? It hasn't yet become Lenovo. So this is the last kind of Google Motorola phone. I'm excited, you don't have to be. It's just me, I understand.

Clayton: What are you most excited about? The watch?

Leo: Well, I want the watch / phone combo. See, I like the Moto X because it was a pretty pure Google experience and yet you could talk to it and it would talk back to you. It would know when you were awake, know when you were asleep. It was like a little buddy.

Clayton: It was cool, I did like that feature. It's just that the camera was so terrible.

Leo: But the camera was crappy and it was only 720p, 4.7 inches. But what I suspect is that they are going to fix the hardware with a good camera and maybe a 5 inch screen that is 1080p. 

Tim: But is it going to be ahead of the curve? I think Moto X was a good phone, but it just felt like it was maybe 6 months too late.

Leo: Maybe it was too late.

Tim: It was a phone that I think a lot of people loved because of the personalization, too which is certainly nice and I hope they maintain that.

Leo: Supposedly they are going to maintain that. The leaks show wooden backs and things like that.

Tim: Good to hear.

Leo: And then there are a lot of people who were upset, and I'm going to ruin your life, because I was excited, apparently LG is also going to do a round Wear watch. Of all of the watches so far, until Apple does its watch I think the Android Wear is the one. But they are ugly, and clunky, and square. Motorola has got this round 360, but I'm going to ruin this for you now. Somebody told me this, and it's really pissing me off, there is this black bar at the bottom. And now having seen it you can't unsee it, and it is in all of the pictures. Dammit!

Clayton: It's so weird.

Leo: Gosh darn it. There is some stuff in there.

Robert: It's hard to get a screen that is circular when the entire industry has been making square screens.

Leo: LG has announced that they will also do a round screen. John Gruber called it a "flat tire". Damn you Gruber!

Clayton: There is just a rush to get these things out, you know?

Tim: Which is interesting, because they had the Aura smartphone which had a round display. I was just looking at pictures of that and there is nothing like that on the Aura. I always figured that the displays were very similar between the Aura and the 360, but there is no little black flat tire on the Aura anywhere.

Leo: I love this. Google has admitted that it's self-driving cars are programmed to exceed the speed limits by 10 miles an hour.

Clayton: Which is how we all drive.

Leo: Might as well.

Clayton: I mean, what other person, other than my wife, drives 10 miles under the speed limit?

Leo: If you were in a self-driving car and it were going the speed limit you would go, "Hurry up, come on!"

Clayton: Or she would yell at me, "slow down" and I would be like, "Google is driving". Leave me alone.

Leo: It's not my fault lady!

Tim: For the record, Volvo's self-driving cars can break the speed limit by about the same, they said.

Leo: Yeah. That's fine. I don't have a problem with that. CHP, California Highway Patrol, might.

Clayton: Which, isn't there, I talked to a highway patrolman a few years ago on a story, and I thought the plus or minus was like the error rate, maybe it's improved now, but to hold up in court was like 7 miles per hour plus or minus? 

Leo: Lets not underestimate the embarrassment factor of hauling someone into court for going 4 miles over the speed limit.

Clayton: You know that you are trying to hit quota if you are doing that.

Leo: Yeah. I think that is really more that. I saw Bridesmaids. They look at a guy and it's like, he's going to work, it's okay. But then that guy is really going way to fast. You know, it's a judgment call. Does anybody work for the highway patrol here? I'm just curious. I was sitting on a Golden Gate transit bus going to work, and they were training a driver. I figured that these guys know because they drive every day. He said that you can go 6 miles over the speed limit and you will never get a ticket. 10? I don't know.

Tim: I drive 7 and I haven't had a ticket since 1997 I think. Something like that.

Leo: And your policy is 7 miles over the speed limit?

Tim: Seven miles an hour over, yeah.

Leo: Do you set the cruise control?

Tim: I do.

Robert: In Virginia 20 over is a misdemeanor, and I won't tell you how I know this.

Leo: Burk, you say 10? How do you know 10? Burk says 10 miles over the speed limit with a certitude that makes me think you know a CHP officer.

Burk: It's always slower than 5 mph than the faster cars.

Leo: If there are cars going 5 mph than you then you are never going to get dinged. Unless the trooper can't keep up with those faster cars, then he will just get you. You are the fish in the back of the pack that the shark eats. You don't want to be that person. Seventy-two is how fast he goes.

Robert: You can get a ticket for going too slow in the left lane, though.

Leo: That's right. My daughter got a ticket, I shouldn't tell anybody this but I'm going to. My daughter got a ticket because she didn't go when the light turned green because she was texting. So she got a ticket for texting and for obstructing traffic. Ouch.

Robert: That hurts.

Tim: Here is a question. Will the Google self-driving car have a camera looking backwards to look for flashing blue and red lights when you are getting pulled over? If so, will it hand the license and registration over automatically, or will you have to do that yourself?

Robert: It actually does look behind you and it does look for lights that are flashing in a certain pattern.

Leo: Does it?

Tim: There you go.

Robert: Yeah.

Leo: Will it pull over?

Robert: That depends on the programming.

Leo: Shouldn't the police just have like a tractor beam or something for these cars? They flip a switch and the car goes, "Oh, I give up. You got me." They should.

Robert: They will just follow you like they followed O.J. Simpson until you stop.

Leo: Somebody who sounds like they know in the chatroom says, "There is a 4-5 mph leeway due to differences in speedometer calibration, however, 6-10 is entirely up to the office and dependent on road conditions, etc." That sounds right. That sounds right. Our show today, speaking of all of this, brought to you by legalzoom.com. Need a lawyer? They are not a law firm, actually. They give you self-help services at your specific direction. You wouldn't go to them to get out of a speeding ticket, however, do you have a will? This is national Make a Will Month, the month of August. I will tell you, if you have got property, if you have got kids, you don't want the courts to say what happens. So don't procrastinate. People think maybe I can't afford to do a will. It's too expensive. It takes too much time. It doesn't. It takes about 20 minutes at legalzoom.com and it costs very little. What is the cost for a will? I think it starts at $69. We are going to get you $10 off of that if you use our offer code TWIT. Yeah, this is great. They also have things like the living wills, medical directives, they have a Healthcare Power of Attorney, but they also have a Pet Protection Agreement. You know, all of this stuff, you ought to do this. It's $39 to make sure that Fido goes to a good home. Right Ozzie? Here comes my dog. He says, have you done your Pet Protection Agreement? He wants to know. Legalzoom.com, it's an easy thing to do. You will actually enjoy it because it was developed by some of the best legal minds in the country. They make it painless for you to get the help you need. By the way, if you do want an attorney, they have pre negotiated flat rates for attorneys in almost every state that you can use in their legal plan. It's a no brianer. This is what you need. Protect your family, protect your future, at legalzoom.com. Use the offer code TWIT to save on your legal needs and get access to a network of legal plan attorneys for guidance, LegalZoom. And here is the legal disclaimer. LegalZoom was developed by top attorneys to provide self-help services at your specific direction but they are not a law firm. Legal help is furnished through the help of vetted independent attorneys. We thank LegalZoom so much for their support. Don't forget to use that offer code TWIT to save $10. Do you have a will Clayton? Of course you do.

Clayton: Oh yeah.

Leo: Wow. They just turned the lights out at Tinky Wink.

Clayton: It just got dark fast here. With all of the bears around here I'd better have a will. I have to provide.

Leo: Hey Boo Boo, I see you brought Caster, and the giant jetty. It's a picnic broadcaster. YouTube subscription service Music Key. Someone might know more about this than me, I don't understand. I do understand that most kids these days, there is no music on MTV, they are watching Big Brother if they are watching MTV. If they want to watch or listen to music, I've seen my son do this, they will queue up YouTube videos and that's how they get music. If you are under 25 that's where music comes from, from YouTube.

Tim: Right, but the big problem is you can't take that offline, of course, at least not yet. And that is part of the solution that is going to be offered by the Music Key service, supposedly at least. You will be able to take things offline with your, including, supposedly, concert footage, which should be interesting. There have been a lot of discussions and leaks about YouTubes' offline video service for a long time now. I've been pretty eager to see if YouTube could offer that. I'm pretty curious to see if that could get rolled into this as well, or if this will just be YouTube offline for music based stuff. I think it would be great if you had a big flight coming up if you could make a big playlist of, you know, subscriptions on YouTube, and funny videos, and download them all and take them on the plane with you. I think that would be great. And $10 a month, if you could pay that and have ad free videos on YouTube, that would be pretty great, too. But right now at least the leak is just pointing to music service offlineable YouTube video stuff. It will also tie into the play music service, too.

Leo: So you get both for $10 a month. Android Police has this exclusive earlier this month. I do like one of the features is no ads. That's the big drawback if you made a playlist of YouTube songs you like. There's going to be an ad in between. If you pay $10 it's going to eliminate the adds. Offline, I think that is less desirable because those are big files, right? And then background audio, so it will continue to play on your Android device after you exit out of it, which I don't think that YouTube does right now, right?

Tim: No, well if you have one of the Galaxy devices you can do the picture in picture stuff, and some of the other Android devices have customizations like that. But I'm curious as to if this is built in to the Android YouTube App, or if they are going to have a new app. Right now you can search for an artist and that sort of thing, but you can't browse down through an artist discography like you can through Spotify, for example. So I would think that they would need to do some pretty significant enhancements to the YouTube App to make it work. This kind of feels like shoving a square peg in a round hole. I'm curious to see how they handle that. How do they make the YouTube App better for music playback than it is now? Are they really going to rely on the play music services and have ties out to video when needed? That's what I'm wondering.

Leo: This looks like it is the YouTube App. It's got the YouTube App logo on it. This is the Android Police screenshots. Audio only mode, turn off your screen and listen in the background while using other apps. Ad free music and offline playback. You know, if it comes with Google Play Music, that makes Google Play Music all the more enticing. That's what I use for my music, because I love it. You've got 20 million albums. It's got all of my albums. It will store all of my stuff from my computer. Okay, I'm curious, Robert, what do you use for music? What do you do?

Robert: Spotify.

Leo: Spotify. Because you like the social stuff.

Robert: No. Well, no. It has every music that people can come up with.

Leo: Don't they all have the same? Roughly the same? I know Led Zeppelin is only on iTunes. There are a few bands that you can't, but mostly, yeah.

Robert: I got into Spotify and I love it. I tried the Beats. I tried the Google one. I just like the UI better and the quickness of it. The search is really awesome.

Leo: I love Spotify. I love the ability to make a playlist, share the playlist, and know that every song on that playlist everybody will have. What do you use, Tim?

Tim: I use Spotify as well. I still use Play Music for my offline collection, you know, my old CD's that I've ripped and that kind of thing. I almost left Spotify for Beats because it was getting difficult to manage playlists. Especially if you wanted to take an entire artist discography offline. I didn't think that they were doing that very well. But they just recently changed with the my music system where you can save an artist, and tag albums that you want, and mark those for offline playback, which is much, much easier than it used to be. Since they made that change I am pretty happy with that. I also like the inclusion of desktop apps and the ability to play from the web which means that I can play from pretty much anywhere.

Leo: How about Clayton. What do you use?

Clayton: You know, I'm still sort of old school. I love the idea of owning my own albums. I had a huge wall of CDs growing up, and I used to sit there for hours in my room and listen to Pink Floyd, and REM, and all of these other albums. So I would digest that stuff. The idea of sort of curating my own stuff has been great. But as I've gotten older, I would launch iTunes and play my own albums and playlists I have created. But as I've gotten older I've realized my playlist is about 20 songs deep now. I really just want someone else to do the thinking for me. When I'm going to listen to music I don't want to have to think about all the extra layers of building playlists. I love Songza. I'm a huge fan of Songza.

Leo: Google just bought them.

Clayton: Oh yeah, yeah. So you are able to pick the mood that you are in, so if we are out on the patio cooking on the barbeque or something like that or having a cookout, just afternoon, hit those songs and it will, you know. I love like the Ron Burgundy Bachelor Pad playlist that Songza has curated.

Leo: They have one? I want that.

Clayton: Oh yeah, there are so many great ones. They actually work with certain artists, like David Burn and others, to sort of curate their own lists as well with Songza.

Leo: That was the promise of Beats, too. Remember Jimmy Iovine saying, you know, human curation, there is nothing that can replace it. Beats has some really interesting features. You create a sentence that describes what you are in the mood for.

Clayton: Yeah, so after you guys were talking about that on MacBreak last week, I hadn't played with Beats and I downloaded it. I really love that idea. You type a sentence. Sitting by the beach having coffee. It will create a playlist given that idea, and I love that idea.

Leo: Here is a sentence. This is from the iTunes screenshot. "I'm at a party and feel like barbecuing with my best friend forever, my bff, to dance pop." And then there is a play button and you will get that. I think that is really intriguing. That's the same thing as Songza, kind of.

Clayton: Yeah.

Leo: I don't think Beats has received a lot of traction. Maybe they are doing better now than before the Apple acquisition. 

Clayton: What is the last album that you all bought?

Leo: I could tell you because I just bought albums last night. Not a physical CD or a, you know what I've been buying lately is high resolution tracks, high def tracks because my Pono Player will be here in two months. What are you laughing at? Neil Young is good. So I'm starting to be interested in digital master tracks, you know, 192 KB 24 KB samples, that sort of thing. Kilohertz, 24 bit samples. So I just bought about 8 Joni Mitchell albums.

Clayton: I think the last one I just bought was that new Michael Jackson album.

Leo: Thriller? I love that one.

Clayton: The unreleased one that just came out that was tearing up the charts a few months ago.

Leo: So a lot of the Michael Jackson stuff is on HD tracks. There are a number of places, Pono is going to have its own music store, but I've been buying HD tracks. Apparently these music companies are releasing uncompressed flac versions recorded at 96kz/24bit or 128kb or whatever, 192kz/24bit. I probably can't hear the difference because I'm an old man, but I like knowing the bits are there even if I can't hear them. You know what I'm saying?

Clayton: Right. It's like photo resolution.

Leo: Yeah, it's like photo resolution. Somehow you feel like there has got to be something there. I bought Crosby, Stills, & Nash because I'm listening to Graham Nash's new book. I bought Kind of Blue, Miles Davis.

Clayton: One of the great jazz albums of all time.

Leo: Well there is a 96/24 version of it from the master tapes. See?

Clayton: Now you are speaking my language.

Leo: But you can't play it back in iTunes. There is an app for the Mac called Vox that you can play it back in. Or you can get your Pono player. Put it on there then listen to it on $10 earbuds, and you are golden. We have wasted enough of your time. Clayton is now actually in the Milky Way, which is pretty cool.

Clayton: Right.

Leo: Look at that. 

Tim: You can see the Andromeda Galaxy up there.

Leo: Wow. Look at that. You look like Karl Sagan except he didn't have such a big mic. Clayton, go to ReadQuick app if you want to know more about Clayton's app for IOS. It's for the iPad and the iPhone. It will help you read faster and enjoy your reading more. Of course you can catch him on Fox & Friends. What else? Are you still doing the podcasts?

Clayton: Yeah, we still got our nerd podcast, the Grizzly Bear Egg Cafe. It's hard to believe we are in our 7th year of doing that podcast. We just ran through, we both watched the new CW show The Flash, the pilot show of The Flash. We dissected that. We talked about Guardians of the Galaxy. We are talking about Gotham, and some of the other nerd related shows coming out. Grizzly Bear Egg Cafe, it's just a labor of love that me and my best friend Mike have been doing for nearly 7 years now, so. 

Leo: Wow. That's great. Grizzlybearcafe.com for that. Tim Stevens, what do you want to plug? Come on, plug something. Anything.

Tim: I just finally got challenged to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge thing, in which I threw a tomahawk at a thing. So that is kind of cool, check that out.

Leo: Wait a minute. You threw a tomahawk instead of an ice bucket?

Tim: No, I made this big contraption with an ice bucket over my head held by a string that I cut with a tomahawk. It's kind of hard to explain, but check it out anyway. From a more professional standpoint, I'm working on a series of videos on the Google Lunar X Prize this summer, which is a really exciting challenge. Teams are working to get to the moon. They are basically racing. Competition ends next year. This summer a lot of teams are testing their systems so they are firing their rockets, and making sure that their rovers rove, and things like that. So I've been visiting a lot of the teams this summer. It's a really good series on CNET, it should be a new entry later this week. I went to Bremen, Germany to see a lunar camera system being tested in a simulated lunar environment. So look for that later this week.

Leo: You have a good job. Tim Stevens. Here he is with the Ice Bucket Challenge, the tomahawk at the ready.

(Video playing) Alright, thanks to Ashley Asketa, and also to Mark Hurn. I have been challenged to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

Leo: You know, I've got to say one thing. Don't get on that ladder. That thing is going to collapse.

Tim: I do stand underneath the ladder, though.

Leo: I see these ladders. They advertise them at county fairs. It just doesn't look safe. I'm just saying.

(Video playing) We are rigging up this contraption with a lot of weight and a lot of string to, hopefully, if I cut the string with my ax I will dump a bucket of water on my head. We will find out.

Leo: You just want to get in the blooper reel for best fails.

Tim: Best fails?

Leo: Oh, yeah, look at this. Whoa. It was a slow burn.

Tim: It took a while. Too much friction on the rope, I think. But it worked.

Leo: Nice job. That's great. Thank you Tim. Very Ed Ames of you. I like it. Thank you also, Robert Scoble. I'm serious, come up here and set my Facebook up.

Robert: I will come up there soon. We will talk offline.

Leo: Do it while I am here if you would.

Robert:  In my Ice Bucket Challenge the co-founder of Activision threw ice on my head and they made it colder than the ice that Tim used.

Leo: Wait a minute. How did he make it colder?

Robert: They put salt in it and they put it in the blast furnace at the restaurant.

Leo: Oh, they actually did that?

Robert: Yeah, my best friend Andy, who is one of the 12 guys who built the iPhone, also was involved.

Leo: Never allow a scientist to set up your Ice Bucket Challenge.

Robert:  I think that they are colluding with the people in the chatroom who don't want to hear any more about me.

Leo: No, we love you Robert. We do. They are putting salt in there. How many degrees colder does that make that?

Robert: I don't know. But it was salty.

Leo: Saltier. Did it feel colder?

Robert: It was colder. It was cold. Plus I had three buckets of ice thrown on my head.

Leo: Wow. Are they going to surprise you?

Robert: No, no, no. We planned it out. I was wearing my Google Glass, too, and the Google Glass, I don't know that it survived.

Leo: Oh my god, you killed your Glass.

Robert: I killed my Glasses with saltwater.

Leo: Your $1,500 Google...

Tim: Let's be honest. Somebody had to do it.

Leo: Somebody had to do it.

Robert: Somebody had to do it.

Leo: Your dopey Google accessory. Dead.

Robert: I figured since you all saw my shower picture wearing Glass that this was the revenge for that.

Leo: And where are you doing this? This looks like somewhere that maybe entrepreneurs gather.

Robert: This is right behind the Ritz at Mullan's Restaurant. It was fun. The nerds of Half Man Bay, man. Watch out for them.

Leo: Okay, stop talking and just take the ice, will you please? Oh my god, it's going on, and on, and on. Who did you challenge?

Robert: Arrington. Who else did I challenge? I challenged a few people.

Leo: Dunk the sucker.

Robert: Scott Jordan, who makes my clothes.

(Video playing) I relish every second. You are going to put it down my back, aren't you?

Leo: It is cold. I will vouch for that. It is really colder than you think. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for being here. Thank you in the studio audience. Wonderful to have you. The VMworld Conference is coming up. We have a few engineers here for that. And people from all around the world, including two who just met at their high school reunion. That's kind of sweet. What a date. Make sure that you go to tspring.com/twit. Last chance, two more days to buy the Brick House 3rd Anniversary t shirt. This shirt will never again be made. $20, it benefits TWiT, and we appreciate the support. How many have we sold so far, 870? That's great. We don't get all of the $20. Some of it goes to Chinese slaves. No, I think these are all made in America as a matter of fact.

Tim: American slaves.

Leo: American slaves. Tspring.com/twit. You can watch TWiT at 3 pm Pacific, 6 pm Eastern Time, 2200 UTC every Sunday afternoon. That's when we do it live. We love having you live but, of course on demand video and audio are always available at twit.tv and wherever you get your podcasts. Somebody said that I should mention all of the podcast apps. I can't, there are many of them. We do like Stitcher, but iTunes of course, the Xbox Music Store, the Podcast App, Instacast, Downcast, there are so many of them. We have quite a few third part TWiT apps. That's a good way to get them. Of course, if you want to be in studio email tickets@twit.tv, we will put a chair out for you. Thank you for joining us, we will see you next time! Another TWiT is in the can.