Before You Buy 129 (Transcript)
Jason Howell: Coming up on this episode of before
you buy we’ve got a Google IOS spectacular edition, we’ve got a couple of
watches to show off from the conference, game controller that’s connected to
something, we’ve got this cardboard thing. It’s time to watch Before You Buy.
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Jason: Hey everyone, welcome to this episode
of Before You Buy. My name is Jason Howell, I’m
wearing an eye patch. Let’s just get that out of the way right off the top. I’ve
got a bum eye, I improvise. I went ahead and slapped a little Android logo on
there because this episode of Before You Buy is all about Google IO. Now Leo
Laporte obviously normally does this show. He’s not here today, he’s gallivanting around the world enjoying the sun rays. And not stuck inside
a studio talking about technology. That’s up to us. And I’m actually joined
here on the set by Mike Elgan. The guy normally
produces on Tech News Today.
Mike Elgan: I love
this look. You should just stick with this. It’s just such a good look.
Jason: Thanks. I would say that this look is
good in a pinch, but not very comfortable at all.
Mike: Have you considered replacing your hand
with a hook? That would be awesome.
Jason: Considered it. But that would hurt
probably, just as much as the eye.
Mike: It would also affect your performance
on the tri caster as well.
Jason: That’s true. It would cut down my
ability to do a lot of things on the tri caster. You can do a lot on the tri
caster with one finger but… I don’t even know if I want to go there. So we were
both at Google IO last week for a couple of days. What did you think of the
conference?
Mike: Great show, it was really good. I mean,
compared to previous Google IOs, maybe it didn’t have the energy, nobody jumped
out of a blimp, but it was still really great. And I think for you and your
show All About Android, I thought it was a great show because really, Android
became the center of everything at this show. It was really astonishing.
Jason: Yeah, and previous conferences it was
like Android shared the stage with Chrome or it shared the stage with all of
these other kind of initiative that google had going on. And this year it was
really so obviously, and todays show will kind of reflect that, all about
Android being the center of Google’s efforts going forward. Fair enough, all
about Android. Ropes it right into a nice package there. So we ended up, as usual, when you leave Google IO you end up with all of these
gadgets and things that they give you, sometimes you get them if you know to go
to the right session and as one of the gadgets have on the show today is all
about. And then other ones they give to all of the attendees and it kind of
allows developers to start developing against Google’s new efforts. So we’re
going to talk about a few of these gadgets that we got. The first thing we’re
going to talk about though isn’t necessarily something that you can buy. It’s a
hardware unit that Google announced. In conjunction with its new effort called
Android TV. This is the controller for it. The hardware unit is called the
ADT1. It’s a developer kit, and it’s actually, I can’t really hold this up. You
can go to the wide, you can kind of see this set top
box here. It’s this little box right here. A tiny little
black box with a little light underneath. This is a set top box. It’s a
developer set top box, meant for developers who want to get their apps working
with Android TV. Into a development environment. So
you can basically, we’re plugged right into this TV. Via
HDMI. Of course you’re seeing the Before You Buy logo right now, we’ll
fix that here. And then it also comes with this gaming controller, because
essentially they want Android TV to not only be a video streaming thing, but
also heavy into gaming. We’ve seen a lot of things right, like the ooei, did
you ever get a chance to play with the OOEI?
Mike: A little bit. But I think it’s a really
smart move because I think the console gaming world is kind of skewed towards
the high end, hardcore gamers. And I have a feeling that the Android TV games
are going to be sort of, you know, more casual games. For the
masses. And if that’s the case, it should sell really well and as you
saw from your own playing with it and from the show, the performance for gaming
looks really good.
Jason: Yeah it does. So let’s see here, right
now what we’re looking at, I believe its set up for ChromeCast. So right off
the top this unit has ChromeCast capability built into it and that’s actually admittedly
how I’ve used it most. And if you use ChromeCast of course it’s pretty easy,
both for IOS and for Android. You open up an app that supports ChromeCast, as
long as they’re on the same WI-FI network you’ll see this little box in your
app and I can just throw video content from YouTube for example, up onto the
screen. So that works out basically the same. But if I hit, and I’ll go ahead
and show right here on my over the shoulder shot, this is the Android TV app.
There we go. It’s not a whole lot to look at, and it’s, and I asked them about
this. I said okay is this really an app that people are supposed to by and
large opt for verses their remote because there’s nothing that’s really pretty
about this. They said really it’s just you know, as this box is meant for
developers to get them started. But you can see up here this little search
icon, right? So I’ll go ahead and do the Gary Busey
test, I’ll hit that. Movies with Gary Busey. Movies
with Gary Busey, and what do you get? There we go. We get the knowledge graph
integrated in. so immediately it tells us all about this funny looking guy Gary
Busey. And then I can go down with my app and I can select any of these. And if
there’s a way to stream them online on one of the apps that I have installed in
Android TV, I can do that. There’s also down here, a little bit more, Amazon TV
commercial of Gary Busey searching Gary Busey on Amazon TV. There you go.
Mike: Eventually there will be this show
showing him doing Amazon TV, about Android TV.
Jason: See, we need to make this happen. Come
on, this is a meme in the making, I love it. So there you go. So that’s kind of
the promise of Android TV essentially, that it kind of has this universal
search up at the top that allows you to do things like academy award winning
movies of 2000. Winning movies of 2000. It didn’t get
academy award in there, but it figured it out anyways. So we’ve got all the academy
award winning movies of the year 2000. Very powerful search
there.
Mike: And that is the killer app right there.
You actually covered the two killer apps of this product, which is great Google
search. Search has always been a big problem on television and the other one is
phone centrism.
Jason: Yes.
Mike: So right out of the box, this isn’t a
situation where the phone, as a remote control, is some obscure option. The
phone is how you control this for the most part. I’m sure some companies will
come out with a remote control, but as far as Google is concerned, an Android
phone is really how they want you to control this TV. And those are the two
things. Smartphone centrism, and great Google search.
That’s what’s great about this I think.
Jason: That’s it. That’s exactly it. Now what
you’re looking at right now is just the Netflix app and it actually looks
similar to the PS4 Netflix app? I can’t remember exactly. I know that this is a
version of the Netflix app that you can see on other devices and they’ve just
kind of ported it over to Android TV. So I show this because A, it’s pretty and
of course it works with Android TV, but if I go to home, this universal search
up here should eventually surface content that’s in Netflix. But right now it
doesn’t. So if I search for Breaking Bad, so what we’ll get is a card for
Breaking Bad. All you see right now is available on Google Play Movies and TV.
What I understand about this search, eventually this search is going to have
the ability to reach into the apps that you have installed so you don’t have to
go into the apps anymore right. You can just do a search, find the content, pull it out. Right now if I wanted to watch Breaking Bad,
even though it’s on Netflix, if I trusted it I’d be paying for it on PeaceMail.
Mike: And of course reaching into apps was
one of the themes unveiled at this particular Google IO. And this is going to
be kind of a universal feature, not just for the TV, but just using the phone
and so on. The ability to do it, essentially a search or a button or a menu
item, that goes across the platform into another app and finds something inside
that app, that’s pretty cool.
Jason: Yes. Exactly. Super powerful stuff. Now if I can turn the controller on, I’ll
show you real quick here. I have installed, there is a google store, a beta,
kind of a preview version of the google store for Android TV. And another big
thing about this is the apps that are in here are not new apps. So if I already
have riptide installed on my phone, it’s the same app surfacing in the store
here. They’ve just enabled it for Android TV. Because what the developers of
riptide have done, they’ve gone in and make the changes to it to allow it to
run on Android TV. So you’re not going to get every single game in the play
store on Android TV. You’re only going to get the ones that are tailored
specifically by the developers to work in Android TV.
Mike: Do we have a sense of how difficult
that is to do? To port a-
Jason: I don’t have an exact sense of how
difficult that is to do quite yet, but I do know this is a big part of their
effort right. Between Android TV, between Android auto, all
these different initiative that they have. They’re really trying to
unify it so that it’s easier for developers to take their apps and make them
capable on all different screen sizes and configurations. And so riptide GP2 is
an app, a game that I commonly used to test gaming performance on devices. And
I have to say, it looks great, it’s really fun to play it on the console style
environment. So it’s a great kind of a, getting a lot of water effects and
everything. And I’m horrible right now because I’m wearing an eye patch. I
blame the world on my eye patch right now. There you go. So this is just kind of a sense of what Google is trying
to go with, with Android TV. Obviously this is not their first time to bat.
Google TV was their initiative before and by all accounts failed miserably so.
I suppose they’re hoping to kind of erase that memory and start over again. And
I’d say it’s a great start. It really is early days though. This is not a consumer
product quite yet. I think we should start to see things coming out that are
capable, obviously once version L, whatever that happens to be, is released
sometime in the fall I guess. And hopefully we start to see more of these set
top boxes. It’s also going to be built into the UI of TVs and everything so.
Mike: Yeah. I mean, it would have been great
if they would have had this out when they had Google TV because back then there
was very little competition in that space. By the time this thing is ready for
prime time, there are going to be so many competitors it’s going to be
ridiculous. Including from Amazon of course. And Apple and so on.
Jason: Yeah it’s an uphill battle at this
point. But I think the appeal here is search, right. Google search is always, I
mean google is just known for search. People who don’t know Google for anything
else, they definitely know them for search. And if that search extends into
this platform and makes it as powerful as it promises, I think that’s a big
win.
Mike: What I’d like to see is increased
Google Now integration. Of course they demonstrated- we’re going to talk about
the watches in a second, but controlling the TV with the watch. And I’d love to
see more Google Now integration. Already they can listen for TV shows, they can pay attention to what you watch and sort of
remind you when shows are on. That sort of thing. But I’d
love to see a lot more back and forth between the TV and Google Now and that
would be really cool.
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Speaking of watches, while we were at IO one of their big incentives, and we
already talked about it a little bit, is Android Wear. That’s Google’s wearable
platform. Wearable kind of side of Android for tiny little
screens. And to drive the point home, they sent everybody home with
their choice of either the Samsung Gear Live, which is the watch that I have
right here. There you can see it on my wrist. And then Mike, you ended up with
the LG G Watch. Or the GWatch as I like to call it.
Mike: That’s right, the GWatch is this one.
They’re very similar to each other of course because of Android Wear and
because we talked about on Tech News Today this week, they don’t let you modify
it. So Android Wear is Android Wear. You can modify it sort of, with apps. By
what you install, and there are subtle differences between what each of the
watch manufactures put on there. But for the most part Android Wear has the
same interface on all devices.
Jason: I think it makes actually a lot of
sense when you’re talking about wearables because really, a big part of wearing
a watch, for example, is the style aspect right? I trust- well, you know, I
guess I do a show about Android and about Google so maybe this is a little bit
if it rubbing off on me. But I trust Google to give me a user experience that
is going to work in this form factor. I trust the manufactures to give me a
form factor that looks appealing. That’s something that I like. So I suppose let’s
start there. Let’s start with the watch itself and them maybe we’ll circle
around at the end and talk a little bit about where is the platform. What can
you tell me about the Gwatch?
Mike: Okay, so right now the best way to
think about these, both of these watches, is to compare them against each other.
So this particular watch is, again, very similar to the Samsung watch. Although it’s smaller and ligher, a little bit. Its 1.8x1.5x1.39in. 1.3oz which is very
light. It’s almost an ounce lighter than the Samsung watch. It has a 9
axis sensor. So you notice what happens, you see, if I put my hand over this, I
put it to sleep. Right. So you see how it’s black and
white. But if I put it down and then bring it back up it lights up and it can
accept commands when I say “Okay Google.” What’s the weather outside? And so-
Jason: It’s tethered to your phone.
Mike: That’s right. Now every time I’ve
demonstrated this to somebody, it has lost its connection.
Jason: You are in TWIT studio which is a land
of 1000 wireless interferences.
Mike: That’s right. So there’s another
interesting feature about this which people don’t really- see its writing down
everything I’m saying. I put it to sleep and then go back to zero. But you can
actually use this without voice by simply tapping it. You get that and then you
can scroll down to the options. So I can basically choose one of these if I
want to set a timer, start a stopwatch or whatever, alarms. I’ll start at
stopwatch, just choose that. And then go. And so I didn’t use my voice at all
even though it starts with the voice user interface. So again, covering it puts
it to sleep. Now you see these other notifications that my timers still going
and I can pause it with that. This is similar to the
control for music and so on. So that’s, those are Android Wear things not
really related to the watch. So let’s get back to the watch. Of course its
Bluetooth tethered. It has a stronger battery. We talked about this on Tech
News Today as well. Than the Samsung, but its less, probably has worse battery
life than the Samsung because the screen is more of a power hog.
Jason: Yeah, it’s interesting actually, Ars
Technica just did a side by side and it turns out that the LG G watch performs
a little better than the Samsung. Which I would not have guessed,
considering the screen.
Mike: That’s right. now this probably gets-
this is an estimate on my part and is not based on testing, but I would guess
about somewhere between 18 hours to 36 hours of use, depending on whether
you’re a very heavy user or a very light user. And again, the screen is always
on. So the time is always shown. Either in bright mode or
dimmed mode. So you can always just look at the watch and get the time. Which is very nice.
Jason: That’s kind of important too. I even
saw in the chat room “no one ever talks about the fact that you can tell time
on these things.”
Mike: Yeah.
Jason: I think that these watches do that
pretty effectively.
Mike: They do and you can also change the
watch face. So you can choose from among, and they have some, like Peter Macks,
1972 kind of looking things. I don’t see why anybody would choose that. Its- to
me it’s not very compelling. But yeah, it’s a great watch, it’s great for telling the time and so on. So back to the
hardware here. This is a- I would say that the pros of this particular
watch compared to the Samsung, again the only comparison we can make at this
point. Is it’s very comfortable, it’s easy to charge, you simply put it on top
of a little cradle type thing. It doesn’t actually plug in, it just sits on top of it. Which is nice. Its water
resistant, it’s nearly an ounce lighter than the Gear Live. And it’s even
lighter than the Pebble watch. Which probably does
significantly less than an Android Wear watch does. Now the cons compared
to the Samsung are that it has no biometric sensors. There’s no heart rate
monitor, nothing. There is a pedometer in there but that’s not a biometric
sensor. It has poor sunlight readability, I guess they both do. Its square rather than round. Some of the better ones are
going to be round I would guess. So-so battery life. Lower screen resolution and its less vibrant. The screen is less vibrant than
the Samsung. Doesn’t look quite as good. And it costs
30 dollars more. So this is $229. And so those are the pros and cons of this
particular watch, the LG G Watch.
Mike: Okay, I’ll run through the Gear Live
and then we can kind of get our tri-by-do-bi. So the Samsung Gear Live, it
looks like, you know, it looks a lot like their recent kind of incarnation of Galaxy
Gear watches for the most part. But this of course is running Android Wear. Its 1.2 gigahertz quad core snapdragon 400. 1.63in. 320x320 amalead display. So that actually means that
when it’s in low power mode all its doing is lighting up these pixels. It’s not
blocking out the dark pixels. So in essence that should be
better for you battery life. This is what the Moto X does with active
notifications. 4 gigs of storage onboard. Although
right now it’s kind of hard to think about how you’d fill up 4 gigs. But I’m
sure at some point that that will be a reality. And of course 300 milliamp
battery which is a whole hundred milliamp hours less than the LG G Watch. You
can kind of see the design, right. Like it has the chrome edges which I kind of
like. Although the design is a little chunky. You have
to be okay with that. It actually works on my wrist. I would say that it feels
super comfortable and not too overly large on my wrist. I don’t feel like I’m
wearing a weight when I’m wearing this. But I would imagine if you have smaller
wrists, smaller hands it might stick out just a little bit more. The one
difference that this has over the G Watch is that it does have a hardware
button. It has this little power button. I never use it. But if you want to
turn it on from an off state you can. You can also hold it down and it’ll pull
up your settings menu eventually. There we go. Oh I just backed away from it
but… there you have it. So underneath, there you go. You have the heart rate monitor.
That’s the biometric sensor that you were talking about. These contacts of
course clip into a charger. And I completely spaced bringing the charger with
me and I wish I hadn’t because it’s one of my main points here. It’s really,
like the G Watch has a magnetic snap to the charger, those are great, those are
really nice. This you actually have to clip the plastic casing on into these
little notches on the side around the back. And you know, it’s just one of
those little things that is annoying over time. Every
time you’re trying to do it its sliding all over the back and you can’t quite
get it to latch. Screen/pixel wise, I think it’s totally fine. Sharp enough, rarely are you ever this close... wait a minute,
which eye am I looking through? Rarely are you ever this close so it doesn’t
matter if you can see the pixels as far as I’m concerned. Like you said, good saturation on this style of screen. Though again,
common complaint, not bright in daylight. When you get out in daylight and you
try and turn on the screen and really see what you’re looking at, it’s really
hard to tell. Battery for me lasted around one and a half days. That’s good or
bad depending on how you look at it right. That’s good if you’re comparing it
to your smartphone which is just get me through a day of normal use. Or even
heavy use. Get me to the end of the day. I’m always going to charge it late at
night anyways. And that’s kind of me. That’s bad if you compare it to some of
the competition. The Pebble. In some cases can go 3-4
days and that’s pretty impressive. So if you’re comparing it to those wearables
you’re going to have a bad day. So that is the Gear Live. I’d say the pros
definitely the heart rate monitor, the biometric sensor on the back. Android
Wear of course I think is an interesting platform for, to be on here so that’s
good. It does have a replaceable band, and in fact it snaps out with this
interesting little lever system on this particular band. But it does replace
with a normal strap, so that’s good. So does the G Watch. And then cons, you
have to have kind of a larger wrist to wear it. Battery
charging, of course. Battery performance. Depending on how you define it for a wearable. And hard to
see in daylight. So if you- so that’s both of the watches. If you had to
give the LG G watch a try, buy/don’t buy what would you give it?
Mike: I would give it a
don’t buy. Simply because we have a lot of information about the
upcoming Moto 360 watch and that just looks great.
Jason: Yeah it does.
Mike: It’s a round interface, the way the
screen is presented it looks, it doesn’t look like there’s screen under glass. It’s
right on the surface which is really beautiful. They’re doing all kinds of
magic stuff that they’re not really talking about that much. But people who
have tried it have said it’s just really beautiful to use. It’s even lighter
than this watch somehow. Even though it looks pretty- it’s actually higher that
the LG G. but it’s significantly lighter than this watch. And this watch is
light. So that is kind of an interesting thing. So that’s coming out near the
end of summer and that’s not very far away. So I recommend Android Wear very
highly. I would give Android Wear a buy. And I actually think this is a controversial
statement, but I actually think Pebble is in trouble here. We don’t know what
Apple is going to come out with. But Android Wear is I think, a show in as a killer environment for one reason. And we’ve talked about this
on Tech News Today. Which is that it has, its Google Now on
your wrist. Google Now is a super compelling platform. By Google Now I
mean not only Google Now but also voice search and voice command and also the
preemptive notifications that come with Google Now. Add a bunch of really
killer apps that app developers are going to create to that and it’s just a
fantastic platform that is going to be very difficult to beat. The only company
that I can think of that might get close to it is Apple, because they have Siri
and they’ve been improving Siri recently. And so I think it’s going to be the
Google Now watch vs. the Siri watch. I think that’s, a year from now that’s
going to be the battle.
Jason: Yeah, that all makes perfect sense to
me and I completely agree. Android Wear as a platform. I mean it’s super
powerful with Google Now. Google Now as far as the “personal assistant”, that
far of technology is concerned, Google Now seems to be winning it as far as
effectiveness is concerned right now in giving you what you want to see before
you realize you want to see it. I know that first hand that’s been the case for
me. So I would absolutely agree with that. I also think that it’s very
interesting that most apps are compatible with Wear and functional in certain
ways without the developer having to go do anything. Because what it’s doing is
it’s pulling in notifications right. From your device. So if a developer has already created an app with an actionable notification-
so in other words they’ve created an app that through the notification you can
skip forward or backwards on a track or archive mail or whatever the case may
be- those are going to surface on Android Wear as actions that you can do in
the Android Wear interface.
Mike: To a certain extent, it has to be said
that if you create an app for Android Wear, you can do things directly from the
notification. You can reply, do things like that.
Jason: Right.
Mike: A random notification that has no
awareness or was built long before Android Wear existed will show up but you can’t
do as much with that. But it’s still great to have it on your wrist and I think
it also needs to be said- there is so much to be said about Android Wear, it’s
just a fantastic interface, it’s a fantastic platform generally- but one of the
craziest things about it is that I’ve found that the voice recognition and also
the performance of voice recognition, is significantly better than any other
place that I’ve seen it. It’s better than on, by Moto X. it’s just fast and it
recognizes everything. It’s just really accurate in how it recognizes voice. I
don’t know how they do that. It just seems instantaneous. And that is a big win
for Google on this. Because you’d think you would have to wait and it’s a low
powered device and it’s going back and forth via Bluetooth so it must be- no.
no, it’s faster than directly on the phone. And you can do that because if you
hold the phone and the watch side by side and say “okay Google Now” they both
do it at the same time. I lost my connection couldn’t use the studio. But it’s
faster and more accurate, I don’t know how they do it.
Jason: Yeah, it’s pretty impressive. One thing
that I will say is a downside of Android Wear, because it’s so voice enabled or
touch enabled, to wake it up. Like I have kids right, and if I’m holding my
kids, so many phantom touches. Because I’m just wearing my watch but I can feel
it vibrating on my wrist because either their clothes rubbed
up against it and it registered as a touch, or their hands went down
there. So I’ve found mail will be archived without me wanting to do it. So that
can happen.
Mike: And here’s the other thing that can
happen. If you hold up your watch, I’m going to launch both of them. Okay
Google. Yeah. So it did. Mine is still asleep so whatever. But I launched yours
so if there’s four people with an Android Wear watch,
one person using their watch will set off a search on all of them or whatever
the command is. So that’s going to be weird. That’s going to be funny actually,
let’s be honest.
Jason: Sure, it’ll be hilarious. I would agree
though, Android Wear definitely a platform that I’m really curious to see what
comes out of it. As for the Samsung Gear Live, my recommendation was a little
bit looser than that. I was saying try. Only because right now if you want to
get in on Android Wear, there are two options. These are the two options and I
wouldn’t necessarily say don’t buy this because I’ve actually really enjoyed
using this hardware. But like you said, we know the Moto 360 is right around
the corner. It’s got the round interface. The round watch
face. And very excited about that. So I wouldn’t
necessarily say rush out and buy this but if you want to get in on the Android
Wear bandwagon right now, I could recommend that you get this. And check it
out. Its only 200 bucks so it’s not the end of the world I suppose.
Mike: The truth is if I didn’t have this eval
unit from Google, I would buy one of these, and then I would probably sell it
when the Moto 360 came out. Because I’m such a gadget freak. And that’s always an option if you buy this for 229, you’ll probably be able to
sell it for 150 bucks. Totally worth it for that 2 month interim
or whatever. You really want Google Now on your wrist. It just improves
your life. And it’s really fantastic to have all this on your wrist.
Jason: It saves you from taking your phone out
of your pocket 150 times a day.
Mike: Which is hard. It’s so hard.
Jason: And that’s quite a promise actually,
but I have noticed that to be true. That has saved me from pulling my phone out
as much.
Mike: It’s true. It is true.
Jason: So finally we have something on this
show just real quick, to show off. While we were at Google IO, where do I have
this? At the presentation Sundar Pichai of Google made mention of on your away
out pick up this thing of cardboard. Didn’t really talk about
it at all. This is it, it’s totally- this is directly from their hands
to mine. It’s called Cardboard. Big surprise. And I
haven’t opened it. So I haven’t assembled it. But you have played around with
it a lot. I actually have only one eye so playing around with this would do me
no good.
Mike: Yeah. I have both the assembled kit
here and binocular vision. So we can look at this. If you put
the camera on this phone here. There it is. This is the app here called
Cardboard. And by launching that you sort of get this sort of thing. Which is really cool. And then you open this up and you just
slip your phone in like this.
Jason: Does it only take a certain size phone?
Mike: It’ll take most- it’ll take the Nexus
and the Moto X. but it can stick out the edges as well. They really thought
this through. And again this is a very fascinating project because it’s just
cardboard with a rubber band, two lenses, these are
off the shelf lenses. And this is a magnetic control. You can actually control
the app using this. And so if you haven’t tried this, you can- basically it’s
like as you move this around, inside what I see is I see the options. And when
I find one that I want I simply do that. And now I’m looking at this sort of, it’s
like a virtual reality.
Jason: Yeah, it really is. I mean, people are
comparing it to Opulous. And it’s Opulous on the cheap I’ve read everywhere.
But it’s exactly what it is. And it’s not nearly as cheap as it may seem. I
mean, it’s kind of a hilarious statement right. We’re doing virtual reality in
a super convincing way, with a sheet of cardboard.
Mike: Yeah, it’s cool. And just to clarify what’s
going on here, Google is sort of open sourcing this
project. Within hours after developing this, the people who make the DoDo cases
came out with their own version which they’re now selling. You can order this
right now. Its 15 bucks or so, and you can get an optional NFC chip in it. I don’t
now what you do with that but I guess you could have more communication with
the phone. And that’s a few bucks more. But this is open sourced. They want
people to build these. They want people to make their own, which some people
have. They want people to sell them, which other people have. But most of all,
they want developers to create apps for this platform. The
idea that you can do Oculous Rift type VR and also augment a reality. You’ll
notice that the camera is visible through this opening here. So you could
easily create an app that integrates and combines what you see through the camera
with virtual objects that interact with the camera. And so the possibilities
are endless, so that’s really what they’re trying to drive here. They’re trying
to drive software development of Android apps that can be used like Ocoulous
rift type virtual reality. And I showed this to a bunch of- we should go
through some of the options. So one of them is sort of Google Maps fly through.
So you can fly around through 3D Google Maps. Another one is you will actually
go find your own photospheres and you can sort have look around the
photospheres by just moving this. Like this. You can look at 3D YouTube videos
and then remember that game on the Moto X with the red thing you chase around,
that’s in here.
Jason: Oh, the little demo, the Pixar style-
Buggy night is one of them.
Mike: Exactly. That is in here as well.
Something like that yeah. And I showed this to bunch
of high school kids who were touring the TWIT studios yesterday, and this was
the highlight of their tour I think. Because they just couldn’t believe that
you look into it and you’re transported to another world. Again,
through the magic of cardboard.
Jason: How cool that it’s such a low rent one
more thing ended up creating such a conversation, both at the conference and
then outside. It’s really impressive that they were able to do it with a sheet
of cardboard.
Mike: It really is. And
just to take a look at the inside here. There’s really nothing to it. It’s
just cardboard folded together with little instructions. Insert tab A into slot
B, etc. and there it is.
Jason: Excellent. So for $15
through DodoCase, yeah.
Mike: Just go to the Dodo people. Search for
Dodo online and you’ll get this.
Jason: Awesome. I think that probably
qualifies as a buy.
Mike: And that’ll probably be one of the more
expensive versions.
Jason: Yeah, absolutely. That
about does it. Man, so last thoughts about IO? Sorry SmartThing!
Mike: One thought from a Google, the company
perspective… don’t worry, those were free.
Jason: Alright, good! I thought I just broke
SmartThings. They’re a lot tougher than that.
Mike: One thing is the ascendance of Sundar
Pichai. Sundar Pichai is the vice president. He used to be just in charge of
the Chrome world. And then when Andy Ruben left to go play with robots, he
inherited Android and it seems like every new inactive that comes along goes
under Sundar Pichai. Including, you talk about some of the experimental things
that Google does for example, the modular phone and the electronic tattoos that
they have that we’ve talked about. Those are all under Sundar Pichai. He’s got
his own- not only does he have the whole Chrome, Chromebooks, Chromium, all of that stuff platform. But
all of Android. So Android TV, Android everything. But he also has this, essentially it’s a research lab.
The guy is a rock star at Google and you should see, you saw him at the end of
the keynote, he kind of waited out in the audience and it was like he was
Justin Bieber. But tall.
Jason: Mmhm. Well
that is definitely his audience for sure. So yeah. I
would completely agree. Rock star of Google is Sundar Pichai. And who would
have thought about a year ago when he took the reins that Chrome and OS- or
Chrome and Android would begin to merge as closely as they seem to be merging
right now. We heard a little bit about that here and there. And it really does
seem like we’re beginning to see that conversion in a crazy way. And like we
said at the top of the show Android really kind of showing that this is
Google’s effort, and this is what unifies everything
that Google is doing right now and that’s a pretty major thing so. Mike Elgon thank you for being so pleasant on this, my first
episode of Before You Buy, while Leo is out. A little intimidating with
one eye but I appreciate you joining me and making it easy for me.
Mike: It was my pleasure. It was a lot of fun
and I’ve always wanted to be a pirate too.
Jason: Alright, well I actually have like 11 eye patches back at my desk. The party store would
only sell them in packs of 12. So everybody gets an eye patch, yay! Alright. I’m not sure that got anybody excited except me.
Mike: No, not really. I heard one voice.
Jason: Well thanks again Mike, I appreciate
it. And thank you guys so much for watching this episode of Before You Buy. I
believe, correct me if I’m wrong random voices in the room
that Leo Laporte is back next week and will be on Before You Buy. No one is
saying anything so I assume that will be true. But until then you can find full
reviews by going to YouTube. Go to youtube.com/beforeyoubuy. You can find all
the reviews that we do at Before You Buy there. You can also send us an email
if you want to be part of the conversation to the show. Its byb@twit.tv. And of course you can find
and buy many of the products that we’ve shown on the show, both today and other
shows, you can find those picks on our site. At twit picks. Just go to twit.tv/byb. And I think that’s about it. Until next time, I’m Jason
Howell. And you gotta watch before you buy! See you later.